Hello From the Pilbara

I am almost a week into a three week odyssey in the Pilbara. Two weeks of it will be work in a lab broken in the middle with a week spent in Port Hedland. I’ve got a story to follow up and write about in Hedland for Science Network WA and that is all the work I am doing. Beyond that I’m going to take it easy and have a look around and take a few photos though my travels will be dependent on what roads are open.

There has been a lot of rain up here. The wet has arrived in the Pilbara. There has been two cyclones this month. Tropical Cyclone Heidi crossed the coast near Hedland and Tropical Cyclone Iggy, the most recent one is disintegrating in the Indian Ocean. With them there has been storm activity though I missed both lightning storms much to my frustration. No storm chasing in the Pilbara yet. I say yet with hope.

However, I have not missed out on awakening 4WD driving skills. The roads here have gotten incredibly soggy. The dirt roads that is. There is so much water out here small pools form and in some cases streams run across them. In some instances local traffic management teams directs traffic to minimise damage to the wet roads and to slow people down though this is when things get rather wet.

Anyhow, enough blathering from me. Here’s a really quick video from my point of view when driving in soft mud. It really is me driving and swearing quietly under my breath, (this can’t be heard, I’ve checked), as I get through and hoping that my poorly mounted iPhone doesn’t fall into the dirt encrusted crevices of the car. It was like driving through mousse or cheesecake. There was no grip. It was really slippery. It is definitely for 4WD vehicles only and takes skill to get through without getting bogged.

This is where my science degrees have gotten me so far. It’s an incredibly stunning landscape that I want to spend time in relaxing. Not every FIFO worker is just about the work and getting home to spend up big.

The Garden of Awesome

Waiting to enter The Garden of Unearthly Delights

Last night I went to the opening night of The Garden of Unearthly Delights in Rundle Park in Adelaide. I had been told by many people that it was definitely something I had to go. The first night was supposed to be a chilled out affair. I turned up before entry was thrown out the the general public and it didn’t take long for a line to form.

After the sun had set, lights sparkled along the garden paths guiding my view towards venues. I could smell the aroma of food cooking from where I was standing and despite telling my stomach that I had already eaten two rounds of dinner, it wanted a sample of the source of the delicious aroma.

At the stroke of 9:00PM, I was allowed in after a quick check of photo ID.

Upon entry as a first time visitor to The Garden of Unearthly Delights, my senses were completely overwhelmed. All my preconceived ideas of what should be a festival in a garden had come into being right before my eyes. The lighting was delightful, enough to see the way and venues without being blinded by spotlights or out of place fluorescent tubes.

I walked with the flow of people in the garden. I walked past food stalls and noticed amongst the offerings, gozleme, poffertjes, crepes, gourmet burgers, nachos and chips served in a cone. Also dotted around the garden were bars ready to serve a thirsty crowd. I noticed beers, ciders, wine and frozen cocktails, perfect for summer night in a garden.

 

Crowd entering The Garden of Unearthly Delights

 

 

I delighted at finding a Mutant Barnyard.

The Space Cowboy with Bubbles, a Two Faced Calf

 

It’s a travelling freak show promising prospective audiences to view mutants like two faced cows, elongated skulls, an albino kangaroo and even a two headed turkey with three legs. This all curated by the Space Cowboy who has the largest collection of freak animals in the Southern Hemisphere. Science in a fringe festival? I am definitely making the time to go see this.

Everywhere I looked there were people everywhere enjoying the atmosphere. People were grooving away to the live performance emanating from the stage. Others were sitting back enjoying drinks and just hanging out. It was such a wonderful laid back atmosphere that just invited you to relax amongst friends and also let new friendships form. I will be back on more than one night.

 

Chilling in The Garden of Unearthly Delights

 

 

 

We are all Children of the Stars

Last week I was walking behind the South Australian Museum past Artlab Australia when something in their foyer caught my attention. It was a large black spider. Actually, it was an entire wall of large black spiders and luckily they were not real. It was part of Simone Kennedy‘s installation of We are all Children of the Stars.

Installation of We are all Children of the Stars, Source: Simone Kennedy

I walked up to the wall installation of spiders in the foyer of Artlab Australia. I don’t particularly like spiders and they enjoy the sport of freaking me out so we are locked forever in a battle of wits. I felt claustrophobic being surrounded by so many spiders. They didn’t have eyes drawn but I felt them watching me and ready to rush at me. My discomfort caused me to look closer at their bodies. They were not ready to pounce as the legs of the spiders were curled inwards and seemingly capable of carrying a baby. It was calming if a little unsettling.

When I turned around, I saw a series of 20cm x 20cm prints comprising of animal, anatomical and decorative elements. It was stunning and beautifully surreal. Some of them stirred conflicting emotions in me that I had not felt since adolescence. I was intrigued by the strange combination of the clear scientific sketches of a brain, a human eye with a spider and parts of a flower. There was a story to go with the images. It started with a girl cleaning who reacted with caution to the stimuli around her. It seemed that the girl had an anxiety to change that she had no control over. And the girl was the spider in the image!

The Girl Moved to Leave, Source: Simone Kennedy

Emotionally, I was able to relate to the girl mentioned in the text accompanying the images in We are all Children of the Stars but not to the girl in the images. I was constantly battling my gut instinct of revulsion of the spider while hoping that the girl in the text would be okay. I bought a small booklet of the images with the text and I keep looking through it. Sometimes to read and sometimes to look at an image with a comfortable unease.

Images are subject to copyright and permission has been granted by Simone Kennedy for the use of these images in this blog post.

Megan O’Hara’s Cell Cycle Series

I have spent two weeks in the old Adelaide Stock Exchange Building on an internship with the Australian Science Media Centre and it hasn’t been all work. There has been time given to exploring the old building. It was built in 1901 to commemorate the Australian Federation. It started its life as a stock exchange and survived two fires, one of which gutted the building. Today with a touch of modern renovation, it has been rejuvenated into The Science Exchange where the RiAus organise science event inviting the public to attend. What I love most about these events is that they do not awaken dusty memories of boring science lessons on a hot afternoon. There is even art. Yes, art can coexist with science.

Recently in the basement of The Exchange building there was a solo art exhibition by a well known Adelaide artist, Megan O’Hara.

Megan O'Hara in front of one of her pieces

Her work is inspired by naturally occurring patterns found in nature and of the symbolism that people have attached to nature. Megan’s inspiration for her Cell Cycle Series came from black and white electron micrographs, (photos taken through a scanning electron microscope), of specimens from plants and people.

 

I have spent many hours as a scientist looking down a microscope. I have used many types of optical microscopes, single lens microscope, confocal microscopes and petrographic microscopes to name a few and I have spent many hours in a darkened room looking at samples using a scanning electron microscope. All in the name of science, usually to observe a snapshot of a naturally occurring process like cells dividing. Sometimes it would be out of curiosity and wanting to see what the leaves fallen from the big gum tree in the backyard looked like up close. Yes, I do have my very own microscope and can prepare slides and samples as sublimely as I prepare a salad though I make sure not to get the two confused!

Stained lung tissue from a patient with emphesyma, Source: Wikipedia

Megan has transformed what scientists view from an eyepiece of a microscope or on a computer monitor to large colourful paintings. At times you could be mistaken that some of her works in the Cell Cycle Series were of aerial landscapes rather than human or plant tissue. What struck me most was Megan’s use of blues, pinks and greens in her paintings. The colours reminded me of the staining techniques I have used in the past to increase the contrast of the samples I was looking at under the microscope.

“I have always been interested in cellular images. It’s amazing that science can take a photo of something in the body to be able to see it.” Megan said.

Megan O’Hara is a well-known Adelaide artist whose work has been exhibited and collected both nationally and internationally.

Her artwork is inspired by naturally occurring patterns found in nature and of the symbolic references in natural forms.

The creative process within her art practice enables her to present the viewer with a unique interpretation of science and nature into large bold paintings.

“We can’t see the microscopic world. I wanted to create large pieces. I find it interesting when people see my pieces. They will look at them with a preconceived idea and it speaks to them. They are taken aback when they realise it is something that is inside them. And instead of just seeing a beautiful image, it is something that exists in them.”

Megan’s Cell Cycle Series is sublime. She has combined art and science so neatly that they have become one in her magnificent pieces.

If you missed the Cell Cycle Series you can view some of Megan O’Hara’s work in the Biodiversity Gallery in the South Australian Museum. She was part of a team of artists that helped to add colour to the specimens in the exhibits from fish, snakes, birds and an entire array of wildlife. You can also visit the Museum of Economic Botany where Megan drew inspiration from the specimens on display.

Gluttony: The Lure of Chocolate

I love chocolate. Let’s get that out there and if you read this blog then you know it’s something I write about occasionally. There is something about chocolate that keeps us, (well certainly me), to go back for more. For some people including myself, it is a food group. Last night at the Royal Institution of Australia, (RiAus), I attended the start of their Seven Deadly Sins series, Gluttony: The Lure of Chocolate. There are six more sessions to follow in the next couple of months.

Brendan Somerville, the chief taster of chocolate maker Haigh’s kickstarted things with the history of chocolate. The Aztecs were the first to harvest cocoa beans and even used them as currency. Following the discovery of the Americas, chocolate made its way to Europe as a drink mixed with maize flour, chilli and spices. It was more of a savoury drink than the sweet hot chocolate drink that we know today and it was called the drink of pigs. With developments in technology and improvements to the processing and cooking of chocolate, it wasn’t long before a palatable drink was created.

Brendan guided the audience in a tasting from the nibs of roasted cocoa beans, chocolate liquor and through to chocolate. He also passed around samples of raw cocoa beans for the audience to have a look at. They don’t look like much. They have the appearance of shrivelled almonds and do not look at all appealing. At least that’s what I thought. I was sitting next to Will who decided to pop one in his mouth.

“It doesn’t have a developed taste of chocolate. There is a tart tangy taste to it.” he said of the cocoa bean.

Brendan also mentioned that a riot began after a bishop banned chocolate. I looked up the story when I got home and lo and behold, it was true. I would probably start a small riot if chocolate was banned today too. The church in Europe disapproved of chocolate and there were numerous attempts to ban it. A bishop in the Spanish town of Chiapa Real did this. He was especially irked by the local women in the church asking their maids to bring them chocolate during Mass. The bishop issued a ban in an effort to stop this and a riot began. Swords were even drawn in that church. This situation was resolved when the bishop suddenly and mysteriously died. The general opinion was that he drunk a cup of hot chocolate that had been poisoned.

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People will do anything to satisfy their craving for chocolate. For most people the occasional piece of chocolate is an enjoyment but for some, the lure is irresistible and the overwhelming desire is never satisfied. Dr Robyn Vast, a Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO Food and Nutritional Sciences took the audience through the tools that people use to control food cravings and a recent study she performed on 110 self-identified chocolate addicts. These are people who cannot go without chocolate and need to eat it.

The group of 110 volunteers were divided into three groups and given a bag of chocolate for a week. The idea of the study was to see how much of that chocolate remained at the end of the week when people brought them back for weighing. Imagine being given a whole bag of free chocolate for a week and being told not to eat it. Could you do it?

Would you be able to go about your daily activities and ignore a bag of free chocolate? What would you do? Would you place the bag somewhere out of sight and possibly even difficult to get to and distract yourself? Or perhaps use sheer willpower and control the inner voice telling you that one piece wouldn’t hurt. Or perhaps to try a combination of these methods?

Well one group of volunteers of the study were left to their own devices to try to not eat any of the chocolate in the bag. The second group of volunteers were taught techniques to control their chocolate cravings. The third group was told to accept their cravings as part of who they are and to recognise their mind as a separate entity so that they could identify unhelpful thoughts and to ignore them. Of the thoughts that we have, somewhere between 80-90% of them are negative. It isn’t to say that we are all negative and pessimistic people. That is that thoughts that do not help with our main objective especially when the goal is a difficult one.

The success rates of the three groups went like this:

• No intervention: 43%
• Control Based Techniques: 56%
• Acceptance Based Techniques: 81%

Even with no intervention, people were able to resist their urge to eat chocolate. The most successful group was the one that had been taught to accept their cravings and to identify their mind as an entity producing thoughts. This is the cognitive defusion theory.

Dr Vast finished her talk by taking the audience on a tasting of a Haigh’s milk chocolate button. She told us to observe the appearance of the chocolate and to smell it before placing it in our mouths and letting it melt before biting it. And then to notice how it travelled down the back of our throats towards our stomachs. It was a reminder to savour our experiences and enjoy them. This can reduce the amount of chocolate or indeed any other food that you may have a tendency to consume a lot of.