Monthly Archives: November 2017

Rocket woman

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The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle of the Indian Space Research Organisation, which carried the Mars Orbiter Mission satellite Mangalyaan. The payload included instruments developed by Dutta and her team.{credit}ISRO{/credit}

3Q: Moumita Dutta

A physicist at the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Space Applications Centre, Moumita Dutta was part of the team that put a probe into Mars orbit in 2014. The instruments they designed for the Mangalyaan are still beaming back data. Now India is gearing up for its third planetary mission in 2018 — Chandrayaan-2, a return to the Moon. As Dutta prepares to take part in the London Science Museum’s Illuminating India events, she talks about the lure of optics, the challenge of crafting super-light sensors, and the rise in Indian women entering space science.  

Tell me about your work with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Moumitta Dutta.

Moumitta Dutta.

In my childhood I had dreamed about space, aliens, the Universe, the stars – particularly the aliens! But I didn’t think I would be involved in space science. I became interested in physics when I saw the magnificent colours coming out of a prism in an experiment at school. I ended up doing a master’s in applied physics, specialising in optics. Then one morning in 2004 I read in the local newspaper that India was preparing for its first lunar mission, and I thought ‘What a phenomenal thing’. From that moment on I wanted to join the ISRO. A year and a half later, I did, ending up working on two sensors that would fly on the Chandrayaan-1 project [India’s first lunar mission, which launched in 2008 and found evidence of water before losing contact with Earth.] My base is the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad, mainly working on optical sensors for studying Earth and for planetary missions. For India’s 2018 lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, we will use advanced versions of the sensors flown in the last mission, carrying out a very detailed study of the lunar surface and mineralogical mapping. There will be an orbiter, a lander and a rover, with mounted instruments to carry out experiments on the surface.

Mangalyaan launched just 18 months from its conception, costing a relatively low US$75 million.  What challenges did you face in building its sensors? 

All the sensors were designed in India: a colour camera, an infrared spectrometer generating a thermal map of the Martian surface and a methane sensor. We had 15 months or so to develop them. The main challenge was to make them very compact, lightweight and low-power, because the mission was to be launched with minimum fuel. We fought for every gram. The sensors were all first of a kind, and to develop them quickly we had to use off-the-shelf — rather than space-qualified — components, then test each under extreme conditions. The team of almost 500 engineers working  across the centres on the mission worked day and night. I feel like people worked from their heart and no one cared about the clock. The mindset was that they were working for our country, and the mission had to be successful. When we received the first signal after the spacecraft was captured into Mars orbit, a wave of joy spread across the country. The project team members became the superstars of India, with people even holding their pictures on placards, like film stars. Eagerness about Indian space research has rocketed. Three years on, the orbiter still transmits data from all the sensors, which we are analysing today.

Methane sensor for Mars.

Methane sensor for Mangalyaan.{credit}Space Application Centre, ISRO{/credit}

Mars colour camera.

Colour camera for Mangalyaan.{credit}Space Application Centre, ISRO{/credit}

Is space science in India welcoming women?

In the past few years we have seen a significant increase in the number of women joining Indian space science: right now, they constitute 20% or 25% of ISRO. The organisation is always ready to welcome women. As a government body, we get a minimum of six months’ maternity leave, for example, and women are given equal responsibilities. I feel like it’s not about whether someone is a man or woman, it is all about how they can handle the challenges. Now, whenever I give a talk and a small girl comes up to me and says, “I want to work for ISRO, I want to be an astronaut,” I feel wonderful. Women scientists of ISRO have also featured in the media, including Vogue India; and when our work is recognised, we represent the contributions of all the women involved.  That is the best part of it.

Interview by Elizabeth Gibney, a senior reporter for Nature based in London. This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.

Dutta will be appear in conversation with space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock at the London Science Museum’s Lates: Illuminating India on 29 November.

 

For Nature’s full coverage of science in culture, visit www.nature.com/news/booksandarts.

Maths and murals: Leiden’s wall formulae

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One of Einstein's field equations - part of the Leiden wall formulae project.

One of Einstein’s field equations – part of the Leiden wall formulae project.{credit}Ivo van Vulpen and Sense Jan van der Molen. Photograph by Hielco Kuipers.{/credit}

Albert Einstein’s field equations from his theory of general relativity combine wonderful scientific intuition with the honed concision of poetry. Yet relatively few of the culturally inclined marvel at the shape of a mathematical equation in the way they might at a line from Shakespeare. Now, however, the Dutch university town of Leiden is giving its citizens a chance to try, through iconic formulae by physicists and astronomers painted on walls throughout the city.

The formulae join 100-plus murals of poems, painted by artists over more than two decades as a way of highlighting Leiden’s long connection with the arts, not least as Rembrandt’s birthplace. These celebratory artworks, some in delicate Japanese calligraphy, have become part of an urban aesthetic. But the city is also a crucible for discoveries such as superconductivity, by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, in 1911.

lorentzkracht

The Lorentz force formula.{credit}Ivo van Vulpen and Sense Jan van der Molen. Photograph by Hielco Kuipers.{/credit}

The idea of ‘wall formulae’ arose a few years ago, when physicists Ivo van Vulpen and Sense Jan van der Molen convinced municipal authorities (and house-owners) to embrace the scheme as a way of celebrating science in the city. Dutch artists Jan Willem Bruins and Ben Walenkamp were first in, painting Willebrord Snellius’s law of refraction (Snell’s law), Hendrik Lorentz’s force formula, and Einstein’s field equations. These were unveiled in 2016. Three more – the Oort constants, the Lorentz contraction and electron spin (discovered by Lorentz’s students Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenbeck) – are officially unveiled today.

Oort constants.

Oort constants.{credit}Ivo van Vulpen and Sense Jan van der Molen. Photograph by Hielco Kuipers.{/credit}

Van der Molen notes that the equations, like poems, distil realities and are “beautiful to behold and inspiring”. To help convey their meaning to non-mathematicians, the artists add a simple graphical representation of the physical phenomenon described. Thus the Lorentz contraction, which expresses how objects shrink to an observer travelling near speed of light, is illustrated by a circle and a series of ‘squeezed’ ellipses. The Oort constants, which refer to the angular velocity of the Sun around the centre of the Milky Way, are symbolized by a spiral galaxy (with a dot showing the Sun’s position). And to picture Einstein’s field equations – which describe how space is deformed by big objects – we see a ray of starlight’s curved path around a heavy mass, known as gravitational lensing.

By inviting comparison between these and more familiar lines of beauty, Leiden is leading the way in inspiring its citizens about physics and maths on the hoof.

Quirin Schiermeier is a senior reporter for Nature based in Munich.

 The Leiden wall formulae feature on city-centre buildings including the Boerhaave science history museum. Tourists can visit the sites on a leisurely 90-minute walk. Guided tours and an app for smartphones, developed by Leiden physics students involved in a science communication project, will be available by the start of 2018.

 

For Nature’s full coverage of science in culture, visit www.nature.com/news/booksandarts.

Superbugs: fighting the flood of antimicrobial resistance

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Enterobacter cloacae, Enterococcus faecalis, Staphylococcus epidermidis and the Superbugs exhibition.

Petri dishes with cultured Enterobacter cloacae, Enterococcus faecalis, Staphylococcus epidermidis and Escherichia coli at the London Science Museum’s Superbugs exhibition.{credit}® The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum{/credit}

Antimicrobial resistance has spread to London this month. The source of the outbreak? The Science Museum: its new exhibition, Superbugs, explores this monumental issue and our responses to it.

As Superbugs graphically shows, the inflammatory tone of the many headlines predicting an impending antibiotic apocalypse is not baseless. The evolution and spread of resistance among serious (and increasingly commonplace) bacterial infections continues to blunt much of our antibiotic arsenal, and make routine operations significantly more risky. Such infections now claim almost 700,000 lives annually, a figure that could rise to more than 10 million by 2050.

Superbugs isn’t out simply to scare, however. Much like Nature Microbiology, the journal I edit, the Science Museum aims to join the ‘resistance against resistance’ by shining a light on the problem’s scale, and the range of potential solutions.

The monumental 'wall' and towers at the exhibition.

The monumental ‘wall’ and towers at the exhibition.{credit}{credit}® The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum{/credit}{/credit}

The physical design of the installation aptly reflects aspects of the crisis. A vast illuminated wall dominates; set into it is a series of displays. This monolith, emblazoned with the show’s title, speaks of antibiotics’ barrier function — how they act as a great dam holding back a flood of infections. Standing in front of this cracked levee are 12 small towers into which have been set Petri dishes. Each contains a different type of (inactive) microbe, including MRSA and Neisseria gonorrhoeae — like outposts of resistance that have breached the barricade and now mingle among the crowds. It’s a powerful scene.

I was drawn irresistibly to the inset display cases. Combining text with striking visuals and interactive content, these take the visitor through medical history, from the discovery and introduction of antibiotics in the first half of the twentieth century, to the rise of resistance in the years following the introduction of each new drug, to ongoing efforts to revitalize our dwindling drug cabinet. Peppered through are personal testimonies. We meet doctors explaining why antibiotics are overprescribed; a nurse reminding of the fundamental importance of their work on infection control; designers who create products that enable no-touch use, or incorporate anti-bacterial materials, to reduce the risk of transmission.

Interviews with nurses, medics and others waging war on antibiotic resistance feature in the exhibition.

A display on the people at the frontline of ‘resistance against resistance’.{credit}® The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum{/credit}

We hear a recording of bacteriologist and discoverer of penicillin Alexander Fleming, describing how microbes can become ‘educated’ to resist a drug. A culture of Penicillium mold grown from a stock of his original sample is shown nearby. A video describes the harrowing experience of Geoffrey Pattie, a cancer patient who during surgery contracted a strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae resistant to all current antibiotics. He spent five months in an isolation ward, and today lives with the life-altering effects of the infection, such as reduced mobility.

Nearly half of antibiotic use occurs in agriculture, to treat and prevent infection in livestock, but often also to promote growth. The drugs and bacterial resistance genes that they select for become widespread in terrestrial and marine environments, giving a large potential reservoir from which resistance can leap into clinically relevant pathogens. Inevitably, that is a serious problem for human health. The show reveals some of the technological fixes that are being investigated, including automated systems for monitoring livestock welfare to allow targeted interventions rather than treating an entire herd prophylactically. Also presented are possible alternative approaches to tackling infections, such as phages (viruses that kill bacteria) sourcing new antibiotic leads from oceans, soils and host-associated microbiomes in humans, komodo dragons and leafcutter ants.

The promise of such efforts is stirring. But finding a new antibiotic class that will make it to the clinic is “like searching for a needle in a field of haystacks”, cautions one researcher interviewed.

The bacteria leafcutter ants use to defend their nests against fungi and microbes excrete chemicals that are effective antibiotics.

The bacteria leafcutter ants use to defend their nests against fungi and microbes excrete chemicals that are effectively antibiotics.{credit}® The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum{/credit}

What isn’t covered in much depth is the parlous state of the antibiotic R&D pipeline. Many large pharmaceutical companies have closed their antibiotic development programmes in recent years. That includes Pfizer, the main sponsor of the exhibit — although the company did announce in 2016 that it planned to acquire AstraZeneca’s antibiotics division, and reinforced a strategic focus on tackling infectious diseases. The economics of antibiotic discovery and development is complicated: to bring a drug to market takes a massive investment in time and finances. Yet we will need these new drugs to be used ever more sparingly in future. So, under the current system, there is actually a disincentive for industry to put in the necessary investment – they would never break even, let alone see a return.

Superbugs is doubly timely. This week (13-19 November) is the World Health Organization’s World Antibiotics Awareness Week 2017, an opportunity to take stock of progress. Antibiotic resistance, until recent years a concern only of clinicians and microbiologists, is now globally recognised as a crisis through the work of key individuals, such as Britain’s chief medical officer Sally Davies, and reports from national and international bodies. In 2016 this culminated in the UN High-Level Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance (see this Nature Microbiology editorial).The rise in academic research and conferences focused on antimicrobial resistance is a positive sign that new approaches can and will be found, despite the issues with the pharma marketplace and the ongoing hunger for antibiotics in agriculture and medicine.

But we remain a long way from winning what the Science Museum describes succinctly as the “fight for our lives”. Hopefully this polished, fact-packed exhibition will call many more to arms — from the lay visitor to the family doctor, local farmer and political representative.

Andrew Jermy is chief editor at Nature Microbiology. He tweets at @jermynation.

Superbugs: The Fight for Our Lives is free, and at the Science Museum until spring 2019.

 

For Nature’s full coverage of science in culture, visit www.nature.com/news/booksandarts.