Climate scientist and NERC Policy Intern, Adam Levy, explores extreme weather in advance of our upcoming TalkScience event on 17^th June (doors open 6pm).

From the winter storms in the UK, to the drought currently devastating California, extreme weather is constantly in the news.  As our lives become increasingly removed from the natural world, catastrophic weather events remind us of our vulnerability and call into question how we protect ourselves from the elements.  Recently, though, headlines have begun to challenge not only our preparedness, but also whether our actions are contributing to these events.  Are we, by emitting greenhouse gases, putting ourselves at greater risk of extreme weather?

Understanding the climate

In 1990, when the first major international report on climate change was published, we were still unable to detect whether greenhouse gases were already causing the earth’s temperature to rise.  Now, not only do we know that this is extremely likely, but we can begin to unpick how the earth’s rising temperatures affects the climate of different parts of the world in different ways.

The properties of the climate that are easiest to study, though, are often far removed from the weather we experience day to day.  To those of us that don’t work in agriculture, knowing how much rainfall there will be in the average 2040s summer is of limited use.  Even when this information relates directly to our own region, it fails to resonate with our experience of the world around us.  The damages caused by extreme weather, on the other hand, are far more tangible.  In contrast to the facts and statistics that are normally presented on global warming, extreme weather is something we are naturally inquisitive about.  So can scientists tell us anything about the influence of global warming on these weather events?

Insights into our weather

In some cases, scientists have been able to use physical understanding of the climate to evaluate how rises in the earth’s temperature could affect extreme weather.  Heat waves, for example, are very likely to become both longer and more frequent, as a hotter world is biased toward more extremely hot days.  We can also expect more extreme rainfall, as hotter air holds more moisture, and so when it rains, it pours.  These findings are invaluable, but when extreme weather hits, we understandably want to know the role of climate change in that specific event, not general physical patterns.

There has always been extreme weather, so it’s not possible to claim that a particular event never could have taken place without climate change.  We can ask, however, whether emissions have changed its intensity or likelihood.  To investigate such changes, scientists use physics-based computer simulations of the climate to compare what actually happened to what might have happened had there been no manmade emissions.

Scientists in the University of Oxford recently utilised this technique to investigate the record breaking rainfall experienced by the UK this winter.  Using a computer model designed by the UK’s Met Office, they ran almost 40,000 simulations on volunteers’ home computers.  They found that the recent storms - which forced thousands from their homes and cost the UK more than £1 billion – has gone from being a one in a hundred year event to a one in eighty year event.  The implication of this amazing result is that one fifth of the storms’ costs – both human and financial – can be ascribed to manmade climate change.

Findings like these empower people to engage with the consequences of our changing climate.  Continued warnings of the future dangers of greenhouse gases have patently failed to motivate meaningful action: emissions continue to rise relentlessly year on year.  Linking extreme weather to global warming, however, enables us to see the damages our emissions are already causing.  The challenge now – not just for climate scientists, but for all of us – is to communicate this powerful science in a way that motivates us to action. 

25^th TalkScience Event - Extreme Weather: Climate Change in Action

To explore both scientific and policy perspectives on this issue, come along to the British Library on the evening of 17^th June and join James Randerson (Assistant National News Editor, The Guardian), with Professor Stephen Belcher (Head of the Met Office Hadley Centre), Laura Sandys MP (Conservative Environment Network) and George Marshall (Founder of Climate Outreach & Information Network).

More information and tickets available here.

Katie Howe takes a look back at the results from our recent survey with the Society of Biology

We in the British Library’s science team are interested in how people access scientific information and how we can facilitate that access. To this end we recently ran a survey in conjunction with our friends over at the Society of Biology asking how and why people use (or don’t use) bioscience PhD theses. Here I share some of the initial results.  

We were pleased to receive over 200 responses from bioscientists across all subject disciplines - from Anatomy to Zoology and everything in between! Most of those who responded worked in academia but we also had some respondents from fields such as science policy and research funding. The largest group of respondents was postgraduate students but other academic job roles were also well-represented including lecturers, undergraduate students and post-doctoral researchers.

Just over half the respondents told us that they use PhD theses a few times a year with some people (15%) using theses at least once a month. A third of those who replied said they never use PhD theses as a source of information. The survey results indicate that the main barriers to using PhD theses are that people do not always know where relevant material is located or they cannot find what they are looking for. These problems were experienced by both users and non-users of theses.

We were also interested to find out how people perceived PhD theses as a source of information. Some common themes that emerged were that theses may contain huge amounts of unpublished information and negative data, which could be very valuable for researchers. On the other hand, a small pool of respondents raised concerns about the reliability of the information that lies within a PhD thesis.

(Image: Shutterstock)

Thank you to everyone who responded to our survey and congratulations to Mick Cooper who was randomly selected as our winner. A £50 voucher will be winging its way to you shortly.

The results from this survey form part of a larger project to investigate how researchers use PhD theses and build on our existing thesis discovery tool EThOS - so stay tuned for future developments!

Katie Howe

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Gathering dust? Opening up access to PhD research

Lead Curator Johanna Kieniewicz ponders the weather and climate section in Beautiful Science

Whether dramatic, delightful, dull or dreary, the weather affects us all and is a source of endless fascination and conversation for the British. Monitoring local weather conditions has long interested the public, amateur scientists and national institutes alike. And data about the weather—whether collected by a citizen scientist or national monitoring station—has been central to the endeavour to predict the weather and understand global climate systems. In our Beautiful Science exhibition at The British Library, we explore how by picturing data about the weather, we can connect our individual experience to a much bigger picture—whether that over the course of the year, or across the globe.  In so doing, we also highlight the importance of archives to contemporary science—and explore the importance of the citizen scientist, past and present.

Early Ocean Currents, Eberhard Werner Happel, Die Ebbe und Fluth auff einer Flachen Landt-Karten fürgestelt. Ulm, 1685

The observations of mariners have been vital to the development of early maps of ocean currents, winds, and air temperatures—and continue to have relevance today. A particularly interesting set of data is to be found in East India Company ships’ journals, over 4000 of which are housed in the India Office Records at The British Library. In 1709, the East India Company ship, the Rochester, sailed from England for China via Batavia (now known as Jakarta, Indonesia). Its captain enlivened his journal with drawings of ships, wildlife and places as well as recording the required information about location, course and weather. On the page displayed in the exhibition from 15 May, 1710 he refers to ‘fresh gales of wind and cloudy weather with squalls and rain as well from the WNW’.

 

The journal of the Rochester, as displayed in Beautiful Science

 

Such descriptions of weather in early ships’ journals are still useful to climate scientists although they lack the precision of instrumental data. However, these journals contain not only administrative notes and comments about shipboard life, but also a huge amount of instrumental data about the weather, making them a valuable resource for modern climate studies. Digitised and transcribed, the weather data from 891 of these logbooks has been utilised by the UK Met Office to inform the development of their global climate models.

 

 

This use of ‘old weather’ data from archives by the Met Office was not a one-off. They are enormously interested in ‘data rescue’—as participants in the international ACRE project, they aim to facilitate the recovery of instrumental weather data from across the globe. These observations act as ‘ground truth’ data points to underpin global weather reconstructions spanning the past 200-250 years. An important component of this work is the OldWeather project, a citizen science project in which anyone can help with the transcription of ships logbooks. The recording of temperature and pressure at particular locations provides thousands of data points that can be fed into computer models of the atmosphere – from which a weather map might eventually emerge.

 

Luke Howard, Barometrographia: Twenty years' variation of the barometer in the climate of Britain… London, 1847.

 Citizen science – the engagement of non-experts in the enterprise of science-- is hardly a new phenomenon, despite a new proliferation of efforts—in part thanks to the popularity of Zooniverse projects like OldWeather. Indeed, there are some interesting parallels to be drawn between the roles of amateurs in science in the 21^st century, and that which they played in the 19^th, particularly in the area of weather observations. Luke Howard, a chemist and amateur meteorologist, made some of the earliest consistent scientific observations recorded. In Barometrographia (1847), he recorded the atmospheric pressure readings from 1815 to 1834 at his homes in Tottenham, London and Ackworth, Yorkshire, alongside accounts of the weather. In Beautiful Science, we display a page from 1815, where he accompanies his barometric pressure measurements with some recollections of the freezing over of the Thames in London….

 “On the 6^th of January snow falling in some quantity on the previously formed surface, the air at 33˚-34˚, it was occasionally collected by the wind into a ball which rolled on gathering from beneath until its weight stopped it; thousands of these natural snowballs covered up the fields, up to several inches in diameter. On the 9^th the snowy landscape had a bluish tint, and the thermometer fell in the night to 8˚ with us; at Croydon (more exposed) to 5˚. By the 12^th the river Lea was firmly frozen and the Thames was become scarcely navigable.” 

 

The elegance and consistency of Luke Howard’s measurements is impressive. Carried out over 20 years, the circular engravings were mechanically traced by a self-recording barograph over which he plotted the phases of the Moon in an attempt to discern the lunar influence on the weather. While his speculation that the Moon’s gravitational pull influences the weather has been proved wrong, we know that changes in air pressure play a key role, which Barometrographia illustrates. His personal anecdotes give a flavour to the data that the mere observations do not in themselves provide.

 

  

 

It is interesting to contemplate the recordings of India Office ships captains in the light of what meteorology and climate science have become today—behemoths of data—but beautiful nonetheless. Perpetual Ocean, a marvellous visualisation of ocean currents from the NASA Scientific Visualisation Studio derived primarily from satellite data, draws visitors in like flies to lamp; they stand in wonder – both in the complexity and dynamicity of our oceans, but also our ability to picture them.

 

  Beautiful Science: Picturing Data, Inspiring Insight, sponsored by Winton Capital Management, is on display at the British Library until 26 May 2014 in the Folio Society Gallery. Admission is free. 

The journal of The Rochester has been digitised and can be viewed here.

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Beautiful Science Preview

Johanna Kieniewicz introduces the section of Beautiful Science that explores the Tree of Life.

In our Beautiful Science exhibition, we explore the evolution of evolution, with a section of the exhibition dedicated to the ways in which we have pictured the tree of life—simultaneously image and metaphor for our relationship and connection to life on Earth.

We start out at the beginning, with an illustration of the universe by Renaissance alchemist Robert Fludd. The ‘Great Chain of Being’  is an ancient Greek concept that classifies life on earth into a hierarchical order with respect to the rest of the universe. A great ladder links God and other divine beings to astronomical bodies, man, animals, plants and minerals. Each animal is fixed on a rung in order of perfection (upwards towards man). This sort of hierarchical organisation of life laid the groundwork for the development of biological classification systems and ultimately evolutionary trees.

Great Chain of Being, Robert Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi majoris scilicet et minoris ... Oppenheim; Frankfurt, 1617

In On the Origin of Species (1859, 1^st ed) , Charles Darwin famously used the metaphor of a tree to articulate his ideas around evolution.

‘The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree… The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during former years may represent the long succession of extinct species. From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and these fallen branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only in a fossil state… As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.’

 

Darwin's diagram picturing his ideas of evolution from On The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, 1850

 

German scientist (and talented illustrator) Ernst Heckel was greatly inspired by Darwin’s ideas and sought to devise a great number of trees organising all life on Earth. In The Evolution of Man, Haeckel illustrates the evolutionary history of humans with a great tree, whose trunk represents our ancestral history, as our progenitors moved through stages, such as primitive worms, amphibians and apes. This tree reflects Haeckel’s (albeit not terribly Darwinian) belief that evolution was a process of perfecting, and that humans represented the pinnacle of evolution. Although the diagram reflects the attitudes of its time, it may be seen as a link between the early attempts to hierarchically organise life and contemporary approaches based on ancestral relationships and genetics.

 

The Pedigree of Man. Ernst Haeckel, The evolution of man. London, 1879.

 

Whilst the relationships pictured in early evolutionary trees were generally based on inference and shared traits, today’s phylogenetic trees are based on vast amounts of genomic data. In Beautiful Science, we show a ‘molecular time tree’ depicting the evolutionary relationships of all 9,993 living species of birds, illustrating when individual species diverged. The oldest species diverge closest to the centre of the circle, with more recent diversification closer to the edge.  Although modern birds first evolved some 145 – 66 million years ago, this diagram shows that they began to diversify exceptionally rapidly about 50 million years ago. This is particularly apparent for the songbirds, waterfowl, gulls and woodpeckers.

 

Avian Tree of Life (c) Gavin Thomas, Walter Jetz, Jeff Joy, Arne Mooers, Klass Hartmann, 2012. First published in Nature.

 

And, indeed here we are dealing with such vast amounts of information that one might begin to wonder whether there were any way in which we could meaningfully depict all of life on Earth on an A4 sheet of paper. There have been some attempts—but Imperial College London researcher James Rosindell has come up with an ingenious solution. One Zoom Tree, an interactive tree of life, allows viewers to zoom into the tree of life and explore the evolutionary relationships between tens of thousands of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians.  It  uses a branch of mathematics known as fractal geometry to create an attractive visualisation that can be explored by zooming in, to get ever more detail.  The data includes sounds from the British Library’s collections and evolutionary data from scientific literature including the ‘Avian Tree of Life’ showing how the same data can be pictured in different ways.

 

James Rosindell, Imperial College London, One Zoom Tree, http://www.onezoom.org

Highly engaging, One Zoom Tree shows how far we’ve come in our ability to rationalise our relationship to the rest of life on Earth.  As you move along the trunk of the tetrapod tree, you see where different branches diverge, and can see relationships between different species. Did you know that the elephant’s closest relatives are hyraxes and sea cows?

 

Darwin wrote at the end of On the Origin of Species,

“It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. . . There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

These new ways of picturing phylogenetic data are allowing us to better understand this beautiful, messy, complex tangled bank of life on Earth- and equip us with new ways for protecting its incredible biodiversity.

 

 Beautiful Science, sponsored by Winton Capital Management, is on display at the British Library until 26 May 2014 in the Folio Society Gallery. Admission is free.

Katie Howe reports on the latest event in our TalkScience series.

It’s been a busy few weeks here at ScienceBL. We have hosted a total of nine events as part of our Beautiful Science events season, welcoming over 2000 people to the Library to explore all aspects of science from family science shows through to serious debate and geeky science comedy.

One of these events was the latest instalment of our TalkScience debate series. On the 4^th March we welcomed a range of scientists, policy makers and patent experts to debate whether biomedical patents are a help or hindrance to scientific progress and society more generally.

The debate was chaired by Professor Jackie Hunter (Chief Executive of the BBSRC) who was joined by three expert speakers: Professor Alan Ashworth (Chief Executive of the Institute of Cancer Research), Dr Nick Bourne (Head of Commercial Development at Cardiff University) and Dr Berwyn Clarke (biomedical entrepreneur).

L-R (Alan Ashworth, Nick Bourne, Berwyn Clarke and Jackie Hunter)

Down to business

The panel started by giving a background to the area from their point of view and sharing their thoughts on whether patents are necessary to encourage innovation or if they simply stifle scientific progress. There seemed to be two key, and often conflicting, issues at play here: firstly, the potential commercial benefits of biomedical patents, and secondly, their societal impacts.

First up was Professor Alan Ashworth. Professor Ashworth was part of the team who in 1995 identified the BRCA2 gene at the same time as the American company, Myriad Genetics, sparking a 20 year long patent war over licensing. He has previously spoken of his disappointment with the recent Myriad vs US Supreme Court ruling but was of the opinion that in areas such as drug development patents are necessary to allow investors to recoup the money invested. However, in his view the nature of genetic material is ‘sacrosanct’ and this should not be overridden by commercial considerations.

Dr Bourne shared with the audience his experience of working in technology transfer. He noted that the recent REF2014 (Research Excellence Framework) required universities to report on the impact of their research. Importantly, this included both economic impacts as well as societal impacts and Dr Bourne noted that patent protection can be useful in furthering both these aims.

Dr Clarke has a background in the pharmaceutical industry and founded the diagnostics company Lab21 in 2005. Dr Clarke was firmly of the opinion that biomedical patents are necessary as they allow investors to recoup some of the money they spent on developing the drug in the first place. He also noted that much academic research is funded by the revenue generated from patent exclusivity or patent licensing. Dr Clarke also reminded that pharmaceutical companies' raison d’être is to develop drugs to help people and it is not solely about making money.

Questions from the audience at TalkScience@BL

Invention vs. discovery?

In the second part of the evening, a question from the audience shifted the debate to the issue of defining whether something is an invention or simply a discovery. Making this distinction is particularly difficult in modern biomedicine where we are now able to mimic naturally-occurring molecules and pathways synthetically.  Dr Clarke noted that in order to be patentable an invention must be ‘non-obvious’. But Professor Hunter countered this by pointing out that the definition of ‘obviousness’ is often anything but ‘obvious’!

At the end of the evening, the consensus was that biomedical patents are definitely not ‘patently obvious’!

If you were not able to join us for the debate then you can listen to the podcast here. The next TalkScience event will be held in late June so stay tuned for further information. Meanwhile, you can get your fill of data visualisation goodness by coming along to the Beautiful Science exhibition, which is open until 26^th May.

Katie Howe

The 2014 award winners for the Access to Understanding science writing competition are revealed....

Excitement mixed with nerves in equal measure on Monday night at the British Library. The ten short-listed scientists sat in the audience at the Access to Understanding Awards 2014, waiting to hear from Sir Mark Walport, Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government, if their plain English research summary had won. But before the gold envelopes are opened and the winners announced, we reflect briefly on the competition as a whole…

Now in its second year, Access to Understanding is a science writing competition delivered by the British Library’s Science Team in collaboration with Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC). We asked entrants to write a summary of a research article so that an interested member of the public would easily understand it. Entrants were required to explain the research and why it mattered in no more than 800 words. Ten articles, freely available from Europe PMC, were selected by ten different funders for inclusion in the competition.

It’s been a lot of effort all round. Effort from the 262 scientists who submitted an entry; effort from the Library’s Science Team and Europe PMC funders who honed these entries down to a shortlist of 10; and effort from our fantastic Judging Panel - ably chaired by Sharmila Nebhrajani, Chief Executive of the AMRC - who had the tough decision on picking first, second and third place. This year, we introduced the People’s Choice Award, which invited anyone to read the shortlisted articles online and vote for those that they liked.

So who won? Cue drum roll….and Sir Mark opening up the envelopes…

First place was awarded to Elizabeth Kirkham for her entry ‘Beat box: how the brain processes rhythm’, a brilliant piece explaining the brain structure involved in beat prediction. Judges awarded second place to Elizabeth McAdam for her entry ‘Reforming rheumatoid arthritis treatment: a step in the right direction’. And third place was awarded to Aidan Maartens for his entry ‘Populations within populations: drug resistance and malaria control’.

The People’s Choice award – which received 1350 votes from the public  in less than a month - went to Lucia Aronica for her entry ‘How healthy eating could starve out cancer’. Simon Denegri, Chair of INVOLVE, presented this award, noting some of the brilliant comments voters had made on the People’s Choice website about all ten articles.

From top left clockwise: Sir Mark Walport and winner Elizabeth Kirkham; Sir Mark Walport and second place Elizabeth McAdam; People's Choice winner Lucia Aronica and Simon Denegri; Sir Mark Walport and third place Aidan Maartens

All the shortlisted articles, available in our downloadable competition booklet, provide excellent summaries of research covering blood vessel growth to neurone breakdown to novel cancer treatments. Each article also mentions the original research paper, freely available in Europe PMC.

8 of the 10 shortlisted scientists: (from L to R) Aidan Maartens (3^rd), Clare Finlay, Elizabeth McAdam (2^nd), John Foster, Claire Sand, Christopher Waite, Helle Bogetofte, Elizabeth Kirkham (1^st)

We are incredibly grateful to the Access to Understanding Judges, Europe PMC Funders, and Sir Mark Walport who helped make the night so special. We are also really pleased that the scientists who authored the original research papers and attended the evening were thrilled to see these plain English summaries of their work. 

Most of all, we were yet again astounded by the enthusiasm, talent and motivation of all the scientists who entered the competition.

Given the overwhelmingly positive public response to the People’s Choice, we consider everyone a winner!

 

PS: Read more coverage of the evening on the Europe PMC blog: 'A night of winners!'

Johanna Kieniewicz tells the stories behind the public health section of Beautiful Science

The visual representation of health information has long been integral to the improving the health and wellbeing of society. The Public Health section of Beautiful Science shows how the visual representation of this data—whether in a table, map or rose diagram has helped us to identify causes and cures of disease, track the spread of epidemics, and make the case for a better world. 

 

In the beginning, there was data

John Graunt, an English haberdasher, was responsible for the first known table of public health data. As waves of plague ravaged London, parish clerks from 1603 were instructed to collect data pertaining to the causes of mortality within their constituency, collected in the Bills of Mortality, which were published on a weekly basis. In his Table of Casualties from Natural and Political Observations on the Bills of Mortality, patterns area easy to spot. 1636 was a dreadful plague year in London, whereas two years earlier, there were no recorded plague-related deaths.

The bills are also amusing from a contemporary perspective; the ‘Searchers’ who collected the mortality data were not trained health professionals and thus recorded some illnesses that from a contemporary perspective are quite amusing, or simply no longer exist. ‘Rising of the Lights’ and ‘Died of several accidents’ are personal favourites, and I recently learned that King’s Evil is actually scrofula (tuberculosis of the lymph nodes)—but so called due to the myth that if you were touched by the King (or later a coin bearing his head), then you would be cured of the disease.

John Graunt, The Table of Casualties from Natural and Political Observations on the Bills of Mortality (1662)

The data within his Table of Casualties allowed Graunt to draw conclusions including:

• That some diseases, and Casualties keep a constant proportion, whereas some others are very irregular.
• There hath been in London within this age four times of great mortality, viz. Anno 1592, 1603, 1625, and 1638, whereof that of 1603 was the greatest
• The Plague Anno 1603 lasted eight years, that of 1636 lasted 12 years, that in 1636 twelve years, but that in 1625 continued but one single year
• That Plagues always come in with Kings' Reigns is most false.
• That Autumn, or the Fall is the most unhealthful season.

John Graunt has been widely credited with as being the father of modern demography, and set the scene for the later study of vital statistics and epidemiology.

 

Maps that change the world

The mapping of public health data has its origins with a map produced by New York doctor, Valentine Seaman, during an outbreak of yellow fever in 1798 in an effort to identify the means by which the disease spread.  However, the best known and most influential map of public health data is probably Dr. John Snow’s “ghost map” in the he plotted cholera deaths on a map of Soho during the 1855 outbreak. The deaths were concentrated around a water pump on Broad Street, which it was later learned, was drawing water from a sewage-contaminated substrate. Although Snow suspected that cholera was a water-borne disease, this ran contrary to the leading theory of miasma (bad air), and he did not have the evidence necessary to prove his hypothesis. This map provided the proof he needed, even though germ theory was yet to be developed. Although Snow was not the first to plot cholera deaths on a map, his map of the 1855 outbreak in Soho was significant in that it acted as both a tool of discovery, as well as communication--  and achieved both exceedingly well.

On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, John Snow. London, 1855

 

Mapping public health data continues to be vital today, particularly when paired with other types of demographic data. The UK Chief Medical Officer publishes an annual report, featured in Beautiful Science, in which a vast number of causes of mortality and morbidity are mapped. Data within the report is commonly visualised as cartograms, in which geographic area is morphed in accordance with population size. Shading adds an additional layer of information, making geographic distribution visible alongside the proportion of England’s population affected.

 

Fast food outlets per 100,000 population by local authority, England, 2013 Department of Health, 2014 (data sourced from Ordnance Survey InterestMapTM, analysis by Public Health England, visualisation by Iconomical).

In Beautiful Science, we display a cartogram from the upcoming Chief Medical Officer’s report that pictures the unequal geographic distribution of fast food outlets per 100,000 population. The darkest shade indicates the fifth of local authorities with the highest density of fast food outlets. Other information in the annual report shows an association between areas with a high density of fast food outlets and high levels of socioeconomic deprivation. This cartogram may lead to examination of other possible associations, such as high prevalence of obesity or centres of tourism.

 

A red, black and blue rose

The visual representation of data can have an impact that dry statistics may not. In the aftermath of the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale was enlisted by the Royal Commission to write a report enquiring into army mortality in times of both war and peace. Although she presented ample statistics and made numerous recommendations, no action was taken. This may have been due to propaganda leaflets sent out by military doctors questioning her assertions; she realised she needed to make a completely airtight case in order to see these important health reforms implemented.

Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army in the East Florence Nightingale. Notes on matters, affecting the health, efficiency and hospital administration of the British Army. London, 1858.

With a keen awareness that she needed to communicate to a diverse audience ranging from Queen Victoria to government officials, Nightingale devised the rose diagram. In her diagram, Causes of Mortality in the Army in the East, she shows that far more soldiers died in hospital to preventable diseases than perished due to battle-inflicted wounds. In these ‘roses’, each segment (corresponding to mortality over a period of time) extends away from the centre of the diagram at an equal angle. The square root of the radius of each segment varies in accordance with the data.

The report and its diagrams had a profound effect—numerous health reforms were passed—including improvements in ventilation, heating sewage disposal and more. Later sub-commissions drafted a sanitary code, established a medical school and put in place new procedures for gathering medical statistics.

Nightingale's Rose-- data from Florence Nightingale's Rose diagram represented as a bar chart, by David Spiegelhalter, Mike Pearson, Ian Short 2011

It is striking to compare Nightingale’s diagram with the same data pictured as a bar chart, as presented by David Spiegelhalter. Yes, it’s the same information and actually in some ways technically easier to read. But it is much more difficult to compare months a year apart on the bar chart than the rose diagram—and from the point of view of sheer visual impact, really doesn’t compare.

 

And what does this mean for us?

The question of whether visual rhetoric can play a part in public health campaigns is one that we’ve put to some experts, who have been involved in the public health section of Beautiful Science. 

 If you’d like to learn more, please join us for Seeing is Believing: Picturing the Nation’s Health—an event on the 28^th of April featuring Professor David Spiegelhalter, Dame Sally Davies and Michael Blastland. Hope to see you there!

Beautiful Science is on display at The British Library until 26 May 2014, and is sponsored by Winton Capital Management. Entry is Free. Explore more images from the public health section of Beautiful Science on our Pinterest page!

Festival of the Spoken Nerd and Special Guest Geeks explore the highs and lows of data visualisation as part of the Beautiful Science events season at the British Library. Rebecca Withers and Allan Sudlow report on the laughs and graphs during an evening for the sci-curious.

Monday night was not a typical night at the British Library. Over 250 self-identifying nerds and geeks poured into the Conference Centre for a night of graphs and gaffs for our data-related science comedy event, "I Chart the British Library". The  show was hosted by our friends Festival of the Spoken Nerd- the phenomenal trio of geeky songstress Helen Arney, experiment maestro Steve Mould and stand-up mathematician Matt Parker- and supported by an outstanding set (collective noun) of guest nerds.

In the first half of the show Steve taught us the difference between Venn and Euler diagrams in classic FOSTN cheeky style, whilst Matt plumbed the depths of bad data visualisation, exposing the eye-watering attempts to make marketing guff look more 'mathsy'. Helen - in wonderful periodic table couture - explored with our very own Richard Ranft (Head of BL Sound & Vision) how wildlife calls had been visualised before recorded sound had been invented, and what new science the analysis of animal vocalisation data can reveal.

Erinma Ochu - one of our special guest nerds - talked about her citizen science projects, including the fantastic sunflower project she worked on with another of our guest nerds, Jonathan Swinton. A current crowdsourcing data project - hookedonmusic - inspired Helen to finish the first half with a song to test with the audience whether she was able to write a catchy tune, or not! 

The interval was crammed with data-tastic activities giving the audience a chance to get hands on, literally in the case of Matt, who was analysing audience arm spans. Steve used social media to capture numbers from the audience for some suprising statistics in the second half of the show. As well as the aforementioned hookedon music and vocal visualisations with Helen and Richard, the audience explored multispectral imaging forensics with Christina Duffy, part of the Conservation Science Team at the BL. We also got a sneak peek behind the scenes tour of the Beautiful Science exhibition with our 'stand-up' curators: Johanna Kieniewicz and Nora McGregor.

 

After the break, we were treated to some analytical mayhem from the Nerds and Jonathan, as we examined some of the graphs and gaffs generated during the break. Graphing dangerous animals and a mathematically accurate love song were a perfect way to end the show.

We'd like to thank Helen, Matt, Steve and all our wonderful guest nerds for an evening of statistically significant silliness.

Please keep an eye out for highlight vidoes of the Beautiful Science events as they appear on our blog over the coming months....

The Library hosted its first ever Science Discovery Day on Saturday 1 March. Rebecca Withers and Allan Sudlow participated. It was a day that was exhilarating, inspiring and exhausting in equal measure, and reached a brand new audience of budding scientists!

We were nervous. Our first Beautiful Science event aimed at families with children and accessible to deaf people. We knew we were in the capable hands of the BL Learning Team, who had organised the day with the wonderful Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children and Camden Family Learning. But it was a free event, it was sunny outside and we had no idea if anyone would turn up….

We needn’t have worried – over 300 families, with around 1000 people in all – enjoyed a fantastic range of activities. From photo booths, poster painting and amazing bubble shows (our friends from the Science Museum), to animal skulls (thanks to the Grant Museum), music for the deaf, and sign language storytelling. A huge cheer to all the organisations who helped deliver such a varied and exciting day!

The Science Team hosted a show and tell on some of the stories behind the Beautiful Science exhibition, including an opportunity for the budding young scientists to determine the source of a cholera outbreak in Victorian London.

 Science Team Stickers and Storytelling, with Esther, our fantastic BSL interpreter.

Families contributed their own data visualisation on their favourite bits of the exhibition through the medium of sticker science! And we received some wonderfully colourful feedback from the younger critics…

 
Voting on Beautiful Science themes and colourful feedback!

The day was a great success and we hope that the families that attended enjoyed themselves and learnt something new.

Beautiful Science is open everyday during library hours until 26 May 2014. It is a free exhibition, and after our experiences on Saturday we can guarantee it is an exhibition that appeals to all! 

 

 

Rebecca Withers shares an exciting new development about the Access to Understanding competition. Get involved now!

We are pleased to announce the launch of our first ever People’s Choice Award for the Access to Understanding science-writing competition! The competition is run by Europe PubMed Central in partnership with the Science team at the British Library.

This award gives you - the public - the opportunity to read our shortlisted entries and have your say. Our entrants rose to the difficult challenge of writing plain English summaries of research articles (all available from Europe PMC), which cover fascinating cutting-edge science including investigating alternative approaches to target tumours, clinical trials that aim to improve physical impairment associated with normal aging, using fruit fly models to understand human gene function and determining key factors in the development of Parkinson’s disease. Our rigorous judging process has ensured the scientific accuracy of the accounts, so now we want to know what you think!

The competition will remain open until 12.00 on 24 March 2014, and the winner will be announced that evening at our awards ceremony. You can vote for as many articles as you like, once a day. We encourage you to share any and all comments at any time.

When you have finished reading and voting, don’t forget to tell your family, friends and colleagues! We know these exceptional pieces will be of interest to all!