National Science Week

National Science Week took place between 10 – 19 March in 2006, giving people of all ages an opportunity to take part in science, engineering and technology activities.  It saw the start of the BA’s new three-year strategy on climate change. Its main programmes focused on personal energy consumption, and what we ourselves can do to reduce it.

Sue Hordijenko describes how the BA is enlisting the support of supermarkets to push energy-saving lighting during National Science Week itself, while Anjana Ahuja relates her shock at discovering just how much energy she was wasting by leaving domestic appliances on standby, instead of turning them off.

The larger context of the current energy debate is reflected in opposing views of the place nuclear power should have in the government’s forthcoming white paper. Andrew Simms wants to promote renewable energy sources, microgeneration and decentralisation to meet the nation’s energy needs, and ‘leave the nuclear white elephant to quietly fade away with as much radioactive dignity as it can muster’.  On the other hand, Michael Laughton believes the long-term future belongs to renewable energy, but the bridge to that future involves nuclear power.

There is more argument in the SPATalk, which focuses on whether Europe should increase its birth rate to support its ageing population. Philip Bushill-Matthews is convinced it should, to provide more young people to pay their parents’ pensions. Welcoming rising life expectancy, David Nicholson-Lord disagrees. He advocates saving more, working longer, improving preventive health so that we stay fit,  and enabling the millions of unemployed or underemployed people in Europe to get back to work.

While life expectancy is increasing, health in old age is not.  Stewart Sutherland lays out the conclusions of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee’s recent report on scientific aspects of ageing. He urges the government to focus more resources on preventing the illnesses of old age instead of treating them.

Personalised medicine, which tailors drugs to a person according to their genes, promises a future of safer and more effective medicines. David Weatherall, relating the findings of a Royal Society report on the subject, says that there is still so much we do not understand about the part genetics plays in the many causes of disease, that we will have to wait 15 to 20 years for the promise to be realised.

Elizabeth Fisher and Victor Tybulewicz have made progress in a related area, however. They have made a ‘super transgenic’ mouse:  the first animal which truly models Down syndrome. They look forward to using it to understand more about the genetic causes of the syndrome, which affects one baby in every thousand.

It was a nervous winter, with many people wondering whether they would be laid low, or worse, by one or another threatening strains of flu. Derek Smith explains how the World Health Organisation decides which strains of the influenza virus to incorporate into its jabs, to protect as many people as possible.

Wendy Barnaby, Editor

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