Talk - Creating meat with stem cell technology - Kings College London - 13th March

When news came out last year that a real burger had been made in a lab using stem cell technology I was immensely excited. As I've mentioned before, I care deeply about both animal farming practices and the environment, which could both be affected for the better by this research. 

It is extremely unlikely that people will just stop eating meat (it is DELICIOUS - I may be heading towards vegetarianism but I'm not ready yet - it's a struggle to even only eat free range meat, damn my love for greasy spoon fry ups and cheap fried chicken! I think I manage it 90% of the time though!)

Animals for meat require a lot of land, which could instead be used to grow food - grains, vegetables etc that could feed many more people than can be fed by meat produced on the same amount of land. Plus the huge amount of methane produced by cows, adding to the problem of global warming problem. And farming practices can be awful, causing unnecessary pain and suffering to the animals we eat to make it cheaper and use less space. As the population ever increases, the problems also increase.

So when I saw that Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University (whose team is behind this research and the burger) was giving a talk at KCL, I had to go. 

And I found it very interesting and informative. Prof Post explained the reasons behind the research (see above - environment/animal welfare) before explaining how the burger was created. This made sense to me at the time but I wasn't making notes so cannot now remember the how, but moving on, they are now working on perfecting the taste/texture of the burger, increasing the efficiency of production/sustainability and lowering the cost! Also - creating a steak is on the agenda. They think that in 7-10 years these burgers could be in shops, though this sounds rather overly optimistic to me considering the cost for the burger last year was something like £220,000!!

I do hope this research succeeds in creating affordable, ethical meat on a mass market scale though. How amazing!


Links:

BBC news - World's first lab grown burger
KCL - Creating meat with stem cell technology
Evening Standard article - image taken from this page
Scientific American - Meat/Environment
Wiki - Meat/Environment
Compassion in World Farming

Collider - Science Museum

This exhibition gives the effect of visiting the Large Hadron Collider, the massive experiment that I had heard of but didn't really understand. I can't tell you I really understand it now, but I understand it better.

It begins with a video on a massive curved screen (you are supposed to feel you are in the lecture theatre with the scientists who are talking about their excitement about the experiment and finding out the results) which is a nice start but I did find the computer generated people used to fill seats in video lecture theatre a bit weird and distracting.

You then walk round a model of the experiment complete with photographic tabletops scattered with notes ad safety goggles etc which is a lovely touch! There are whiteboards and videos explaining things along the way. You then enter another large curved screen area which gives you an idea of the scale of the experiment and visualizes the particles travelling through at almost the speed of light and colliding.

The last bit shows the offices of the scientist and gives a little more information on what/why they wanted to discover.

I get the gist of how the Large Hadron Collider works and it's great to feel I learned some science, 10 years after dropping AS Level Biology and Chemistry. What I don't fully understand is why the Boson Higgs Particle (that they proved exists with this experiment) is so important and what it really means and where things go from here.

It is entirely possible that this information is explained and I missed it. Although I chatted with some cleverer people than me (my dad that day, my scientist boss the next day) and both said it was very difficult to understand even for scientists....which is both comforting and frustrating as I hate being unable to understand! I think I'll need to learn slowly for myself.

Full understanding or not, this is a fascinating exhibition and provides insight and inspiration. On till 6th May 2014.


Links:

Science Museum - Collider
Wiki - Higgs Boson
CERN - Large Hadron Collider