Sunday, December 02, 2018

An evidence-based approach to pinpoint genotoxicity in the River Danube

In this study we combined bioassays, chemical analysis, and QSAR modelling to identify genotoxic contaminants in the surface water samples from the River Danube. We started with a screening for the three most bioactive samples using the fish embryo toxicity test (FET). Thereafter we tested for genotoxicity by means of the Ames fluctuation and the micronucleus assays. The chemicals found in the samples after non-target analysis (different study) were then filtered for the genotoxicants based on QSAR modelling and literature data. An artificial mixture of all these potential genotoxicants was tested in Ames and micronucleus, and we could explain nearly 50 % of the genotoxicity with 18 of the substances found in the samples.

Find out more about "Integrating bioassays, chemical analysis and in silico techniques to identify genotoxicants in surface water" (fulltext only with a subscription to the journal, sorry...)

Saturday, December 01, 2018

On their way to becoming scientists, students can have fun with science theories

It is certainly a good idea to expose students to the principles, concepts, and challenges of science theories before they ente the world of independent research during their first job or PhD thesis. Unfortunately, this is a rather hard, dry topic. Science theories stem from philosophy, which is in my point of view primarily one thing: incomprehensibly complicated, while offering some of the best solutions to the worlds biggest problems - quite useless, when a negligible part of society understands them.

And so are science theories. They all deliver some really good thoughts, buried in a pile of endless sentences filled with all kind of technical terms in a usage of language that is definitely not meant for non-philosophers. When in addition science theories are not part of the curriculum (bad enough), and hence a class on these concepts is voluntary for the students, you end up with the only option: to offer an evening course.

Science theories for interested students after regular classes, after an already exhausting eight-hour-day in lectures, seminars, practicals?! Can this attract, let alone excite students? Well, seems I found a way in my new skill course „Students Running Scientific“.

In this advanced skill course running every summer semester science theories are the background of everything. We start with an introduction, a bit of recap of the winter course "Students Going Scientific", and some additional thoughts on the Münchhausen trilemma. This enters already the world of scientific theories, since this thought experiment is about proving the final truth. The trilemma knows three possible ways how to eventually fail - and one will always fail:

  1. infinite regress
  2. circular argument
  3. termination.

To illustrate the infinite regress I use an "infinite painting" (guy holds a painting of a guy holding a painting of a guy...). This helps to understand the fact that there's no final proof in science - only 99.9+ empircal evidence. To depict the circular argument the "Hole in the bucket" by Harry Belafonte (actually, it originates from a German folk song) is really helpful. Henry had it all thought through already, when his lady still believes the problem could be solved. This eventually leads to the termination, which is nicely represented by M.C. Escher's painting "Ascending and Descending".

At the end of this first unit the students get to pick their topic for the next two units from a wide range of different scientific theories, where these theories are introduced and explained in 10-minute presentations. However, there's a catch: everyone will give the presentation of someone else, which is known as "PowerPoint karaoke". The students are challenged to prepare their slides in a way that any other course member would be able to present and thus understand them. This way preparing, giving and hearing presentations on scientific theories is not only great fun, but tremendously helps the students to experience what the audience would be able to catch from their presentation. It is a means to step outside their own head and take a look at their topic from an external perspective. Long texts are definitely not working well, but meaningful images with few words do a pretty good job. Rings a bell? This is a key concept in "presentationzen", which I introduce in the other skill course. And here we learn why presentations with too much text greatly fail.

In unit 3 we have the presentations again, but this time each student gives their own one. Only, every thirty seconds someone in the audience shows a sign with an emotion on it, like "aggressive", "happy", "sad". Presenters have to continue their talk for the next thirty seconds with expressing that emotion. The emotion changes every minute, so there's always thirty seconds inbetween without any imposed emotion. This is a nice exercise to be more expressive in presentations. People really need to start acting. They would never do that (well, most wouldn't) without being "forced" to, but it gains them a great deal of very valuable experience. It can also help to manage spontaneous emotions when giving a talk. I coined this approach "sudden mood swings".

By surviving these two units students have withstand their ordeal by fire: giving a presentation they never saw before on a topic they don't know in an uncontrollable state of mind. Anything thereafter in their career is easier than this. And what should I say: so far all of them were doing great. It certainly is the challenge they face, which takes them to new levels.

For the next unit, each student has to prepare a role in the science communcation chain. They get randomly assigned one of these: Journalist, Newspaper Editor, Press Officer, News Agency Editor, Tabloid Editor, Blogger. The students should have an idea about the specific language their role uses, the aims and goals in communication, the target audience, typical desires, interests, concerns and maybe fears.

The unit starts with an insight into the most relevant concepts of scientific writing. We practice "one sentence, one fact", "implicit wording", and "active language" by optimising short key statements on a selection of science theories. Thereafter, we feed short news pieces on another selection of science theories into certain communication chains. Such a chain can, e.g., start with a press release from a press officer, picked up by a journalist, and finaly edited and published by a newspaper editor. Or a blogger writes about something interesting, this is picked up by a newspaper editor and finally covered by a tabloid editor. After running several news through a large variety of communication chains we read out the different steps and results and discuss what happened - and why. In this unit we learn how news from science can be altered, generalised, and also misused based on the specific culture in different news outlets. It is hands-on experience, and also some fun.

Finally, in the last unit I present the students my own good and bad examples of poster design, in chronological order, to show them how I developed over the years. We intensely discuss the do's and don'ts, the continuous improvement, and further ideas for a really good poster. Then, the students are tasked in several groups to design their own poster based on what they just worked out as best practice. The topics are one last time science theories. Each group can pick the topic they want to present. It is maybe astonishing: they all can do really nice posters (far better than my first tries) in less than three hours.

Students leave the course with a deep understanding of the basic concepts of science theories, a good idea about slides design that takes the audience into account, the confidence that they can master any situation when giving a talk, some basic knowledge in scientific writing and poster design, and a fundamental understanding of the difficulties to get ones key message through a given communication chain. And once more they took a step towards becoming scientists.