Sean O'Neill, Author at ��è��Ƶ

The science skills most in demand

Sean O'Neill — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 18:00:00 +0000

As the UK prepares for a massive increase in R&D spending, which skills are the hardest to recruit for?

Gender pay gap widens for UK scientists and engineers

Sean O'Neill — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 18:00:00 +0000

On average, female scientists and engineers earn less than their male counterparts, and the difference is getting bigger, according to the 2019 ��è��Ƶ/SRG salary survey

How do you square a passion for the ocean with deep-sea mining?

Sean O'Neill — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 15:18:27 +0000

Marine ecologist Andrew Thaler is fascinated by how humans interact with the ocean, but concerned about the mining robots that are soon to be unleashed in the deep sea

UK science salaries top £40k for the first time

Sean O'Neill — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 18:00:00 +0000

Earnings for scientists and engineers in the UK have grown faster than inflation this year, but Brexit uncertainty casts a shadow over future prospects, according to the 2019 ��è��Ƶ/SRG salary survey

How to 3D-print a living, beating heart

Sean O'Neill — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 18:00:00 +0000

Think 3D printing is all about obscure plastic widgets? Think again – bioprinting pioneer Jennifer Lewis has a plan to make living, breathing human organs

Stan Lee’s legacy isn’t just superheroes but the humanity he gave them

Sean O'Neill — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 16:42:31 +0000

Ann Johansson/Corbis via Getty

Twelve minutes into the pilot episode of the 1970s TV series, The Amazing Spider Man, a young Peter Parker, played by Nicholas Hammond, is bitten in a lab by a radioactive spider. Moments later out on the street, his brand-new spidey sense already tingling, he is chased by a car to the end of a blind alley. Without thinking, he launches himself onto the smooth wall and effortlessly climbs several storeys – much to his own surprise.

I was 6 or 7 years old when I saw this for the first time, and it blew my tiny mind. Rewatching today gave me a physical shiver of nostalgia. Those moments were my gateway drug into Stan Lee’s comic-book world. Four decades later, it’s an entire Marvel Universe, and one which Lee sadly left on 12 November, aged 95.

Lee’s decades as Marvel’s top writer and editor helped to revolutionise comic-book superheroes and villains. Much of his success came because he focused on depth of character as much as spectacle. Sure, his characters had cool superpowers, but they also had flaws, and personal difficulties to deal with.

Peter Parker’s adolescent angst, David Banner’s anger management issues, Tony Stark’s battle with alcoholism. As often as not, his heroes’ powers caused them great personal difficulty – yes, Hulk, I’m looking at you – making them more relatable, and attractive to a wider audience.

Captain diversity

In the 1960s, Lee was instrumental in increasing diversity in superhero characters, says psychologist and mental health counsellor Parker Shaw, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who has researched the psychological effects of reading superhero comics. “Most people had a superhero that looked like them, and struggled with the same challenges,” says Shaw. “Stan’s contributions of diverse characters allowed a larger audience to feel recognised, valued, and understood.”

Today, Shaw sometimes uses comic book narratives in therapy. “As a mental health counsellor, I am trying to connect with my patients in a way that both of us can relate to. Superheroes offer a safe, relatable outlet for children, adolescents and adults to openly discuss superheroes’ struggles, while indirectly processing their own struggles.”

Classic Image/Alamy

Radiation – is there nothing it can’t do?

Tributes have been pouring in for Lee. The current Hulk, Mark Ruffalo, : “You let us be extra human… superhuman even.” And that “extra human” was a key to Lee’s success. While DC comics served up superheroes often destined for greatness (think Superman and Aquaman), Lee took everyday people, and thrust superpowers upon them, often courtesy of, let’s face it, some very dubious science. Where would Lee be without radiation?

A radioactive spider created Spider-Man, exposure to gamma radiation produced the Hulk, while cosmic rays turned four astronauts into the Fantastic Four. As Lee admitted in : “I’m the least scientific person you’ll ever know, but I try to seem scientific with our characters. I wouldn’t know a gamma ray if I saw it… But if it sounds good, I’ll use it.”

But perhaps Lee was being too self-deprecating. From artificial silk with curious properties (though unlikely to catch thieves just like flies), to power-lifting exoskeletons (though without Tony Stark’s jet boots – yet), the futuristic technology that features in many Marvel creations may be just around the corner.

As well as his extraordinary creativity, Lee’s own superpowers included his longevity. “I was first interviewed for Stan Lee’s obituary about 20 years ago,” writer. “I was happy he defied the reaper and carried on. With Stan gone, an era really does come to an end. He was the happy huckster that comics needed. And he really did alliterate like that when you talked to him.”

Perhaps Chris Evans, who plays Captain America, summed it up best, ending with Lee’s own trademark sign-off: “There will never be another Stan Lee. For decades he provided both young and old with adventure, escape, comfort, confidence, inspiration, strength, friendship and joy. He exuded love and kindness and will leave an indelible mark on so, so, so many lives. Excelsior!!”

Why the quest for ethical AI is doomed to failure

Sean O'Neill — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 18:00:00 +0000

You wouldn't buy a self-driving car that would kill you to save pedestrians – and that's why we must rethink how we make AI behave, says researcher Iyad Rahwan

Recreating star fusion on Earth could solve our energy crisis

Sean O'Neill — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 15:00:58 +0000

Melanie Windridge’s company has heated plasma to sun-like temperatures

Fusion could solve the world’s energy problems and curb climate change, says physicist and Everest-conquering adventurer Melanie Windridge, who reveals some of the latest innovations. What inspired you to get into fusion energy as a career? When I realised that it could solve the world’s energy problems if only we could do it, and that it would decarbonise our energy system, helping to curb climate change. And that was just for starters. What does your work involve? I work with a fusion start-up called , which is aiming to show the commercial feasibility of fusion by 2030. We have an experimental machine called the ST40, which is a spherical tokamak. Tokamak reactors are the best performing fusion device that scientists have come up with so far. The reaction chamber is a torus shape, a bit like a ring doughnut, though ST40 is squashed up like an apple. The world’s biggest fusion reactor, ITER, being built in France, is a tokamak machine, but we want to use advanced superconducting magnets to bring the size down.

How do we get fusion energy? ��è��Ƶs have already achieved fusion. It’s just that no one has yet got more energy out of the reaction than they put in – quite important if you want to make a power station! To do it, we first have to create the conditions that are found inside of stars. In fact, even hotter than that, because we want to use a slightly different reaction that won’t take millions of years to get going. 100 million °C is the threshold we’re looking to reach, to get fusion going. We may even operate at 150 million °C or more. Then, of course, you need to contain that plasma, that hot fusion fuel. Magnetic fields are used for that. How close are you to creating star-like conditions? This year, we hit 15 million °C, though I was on Mount Everest at the time. That temperature milestone was really good news – that’s hotter than the sun. To heat the plasma we used an experimental technique called merging compression – joining two rings of plasma and then compressing it with an intense magnetic field. We didn’t have any external heating from things like neutral , which is an additional way to heat plasma. We’re now starting to upgrade to use neutral beams; we want to achieve 100 million °C in the next year or so. If the magnetic field fails to contain superheated plasma, what happens to the machine? This is a really good thing about fusion energy. It’s inherently safe, because there’s so little plasma in the machine at any one time. If you lose control of it, there’s not enough fuel there for a big explosion or anything catastrophic. It would simply cool very quickly, though that can put strain on the machine structure. When are we likely to see fusion power become a reality? Science is an exploration and we don’t know what we’re going to find along the way, but I think I could speak for the whole fusion community when I say we want it as soon as possible. At Tokamak Energy we’re aiming for the 2030s. What innovations will improve fusion? One thing is high-temperature superconductors. They can operate at around 76 degrees above absolute zero – about -200 °C – instead of about 4 degrees above absolute zero, which is what conventional superconductors operate at. Tokamak Energy is developing high-temperature superconductors for fusion, though we would still cool them to between about 20 and 30 kelvin (-256 °C and -246 °C), because their performance is better in that range. It’s a fivefold energy saving compared with conventional superconductors, and they produce stronger magnetic fields. The world’s biggest fusion reactor, ITER, is due to start up in 2025. What can we expect? They are aiming to get about 10 times more energy out of the fusion reaction than they put in. That will prove fusion energy is possible. ITER is going to test other systems as well, because ultimately, fusion is just a heat source, and once you start developing experimental reactors into real power stations, you need lots of other systems – like how do you extract that heat energy? There’s still lots to do then? Loads to do, yes. But it’s not intractable: there are clear steps along the pathway and things that we need to do. Humans have done incredible things – we’ve flown to the moon, for goodness sake. It just takes money, people and time. But the politics takes its toll. ITER, for example, has been hugely delayed because it turned into a big political thing. It’s a worldwide collaboration, which means it’s bureaucratic, really slow and inefficient. Before the delays and inefficiencies with ITER led the costs to spiral, one country could have built it for less than it costs to run the Olympics. Now, everyone’s quite happy for one country to run the Olympics, but apparently nobody wants one country to solve the world’s energy problem. You seem to enjoy tough challenges in life as well as science. Congrats on reaching the summit of Mount Everest in June. Thank you! I was really lucky to have such a positive experience up there. I arrived at the summit with my Sherpa partner at 4:30am, just as the sun was coming up. We were the first of the day to arrive, which is amazing, because it meant that I had this really pure experience. We spent almost an hour there alone. What prompted you to go to Everest? I loved mountains already, but five years ago I read the 1953 book The Ascent of Everest by John Hunt, and I realised that the main reason that the British got up in 1953 and had failed in previous decades, was mostly to do with the scientific understanding and the technology that was available. I am really interested in science and exploration and how they drive each other. • is a physicist, speaker and writer. She is Communications Consultant for fusion start-up Tokamak Energy, Academic Visitor at Imperial College London and author of .��

Four ways dolphins are amazing – and one way they’re not

Sean O'Neill — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 10:00:00 +0000

We certainly click with dolphins, but they are also otherworldly creatures with a suite of senses divergent from our own. Here’s our top 5 facts about them

The pint-sized pygmy sloth found only on one island in the world

Sean O'Neill — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 18:00:00 +0000

This adorable sloth is almost half the size of its mainland sibling and is found only on Escudo de Veraguas, off the coast of Panama, but it's critically endangered

Sean O'Neill, Author at ��è����Ƶ