Exhibition gives visitors power to control the rain

By Sabrina Sweeney Entertainment reporter, BBC News

 

  The Rain Room has been described as a "cocooning experience" by its creators.

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Most of us have been caught in a torrential downpour and wished we could make it stop, but how would it feel to have the power to control the weather?

Rain Room, a new 3D exhibition at London's Barbican Centre marries art, science and technology to do just that.
Despite standing in a space filled with drops of falling water, visitors remain dry, as the water halts above them.
Its creators have described it as "a social experiment" which "extracts behavioural experiences".
"We wanted to give people the cocooning experience of being immersed in a 3D rain room and watch their reaction," Hannes Koch told the BBC.
Koch met Florian Ortkrass and Briton Stuart Wood in 2005 while studying at the Royal College of Art in London and together they formed Random International.
As well as audience participation, science and technology play a big part in bringing their experimental exhibition to life.
Gravity effect With several 3D sensory cameras fixed to the ceiling of the Rain Room, every person who walks into the 100 square metre space is recognised.

Florian Ortkrass, Stuart Wood and Hannes Koch met at London's Royal College of Art.

As they move around "slowly", the rain stops overhead.
"If you run around you'll get wet because while the sensor picks up the movement, gravity limits the speed of the drops falling from the ceiling," explained Koch.
The artists said he and collaborators hoped the experience would give people a sense of "playful empowerment".
"By your sheer presence you can control the rain."
The installation has been designed to create an intimate atmosphere of contemplation.
"There's no distractive sound, you are very close [to the rain] and it is beautiful as it becomes hypnotic and the sound of the rain is extremely calming.
"Behavioural experiences" "It is very different to having an umbrella as you don't have the sound of the rain battering on the umbrella," said Koch."
This is not Random International's first experiment with visitor participation.
Its 2008 exhibition, Audience, used motorised mirrors to respond to the individual facing them with each viewer becoming the subject of the exhibition.
"It has been interesting and a lot of fun for us to watch people, as this kind of installation piece extracts behavioural experiences," said Koch.
"In the Rain Room, shy people may wait to see others' reaction and may act quite cautiously, while more excitable visitors will just rush in."
If the Rain Room is filled with participants, the "collective power of the crowd stops the rain", which Koch admits may limit the experience.
"We have recommended to our hosts that a little crowd control may be required to give people the full experience."
Rain Room at The Curve runs until March next year.

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Rationality in Action: Look at a Problem as an Outsider

Life created from eggs made from skin cells

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

 

  The resulting mice were fully fertile

Stem cells made from skin have become "grandparents" after generations of life were created in experiments by scientists in Japan.

The cells were used to create eggs, which were fertilised to produce baby mice. These later had their own babies.
If the technique could be adapted for people, it could help infertile couples have children and even allow women to overcome the menopause.
But experts say many scientific and ethical hurdles must be overcome.
Healthy and fertile Stem cells are able to become any other type of cell in the body from blood to bone, nerves to skin.
Last year the team at Kyoto University managed to make viable sperm from stem cells. Now they have performed a similar feat with eggs.
They used stem cells from two sources: those collected from an embryo and skin-like cells which were reprogrammed into becoming stem cells.

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“Start Quote

I just thought wow! The science is quite brilliant”

Dr Evelyn Telfer University of Edinburgh

The first step, reported in the journal Science, was to turn the stem cells into early versions of eggs.

A "reconstituted ovary" was then built by surrounding the early eggs with other types of supporting cells which are normally found in an ovary. This was transplanted into female mice.
Surrounding the eggs in this environment helped them to mature.
IVF techniques were used to collect the eggs, fertilise them with sperm from a male mouse and implant the fertilised egg into a surrogate mother.
Dr Katsuhiko Hayashi, from Kyoto University, told the BBC: "They develop to be healthy and fertile offspring."
Those babies then had babies of their own, whose "grandmother" was a cell in a laboratory dish.
Devastating blow The ultimate aim of the research is to help infertile couples have children. If the same methods could be used in people then cells in skin could be turned into an egg. Any resulting child would be genetically related to the mother.
However, Dr Hayashi said that was still a distant prospect: "I must say that it is impossible to adapt immediately this system to human stem cells, due to a number of not only scientific reasons, but also ethical reasons."
He said that the level of understanding of human egg development was still too limited. There would also be questions about the long-term consequences on the health of any resulting child.
Dr Evelyn Telfer, from the University of Edinburgh, said: "It's an absolutely brilliant paper - they made oocytes [eggs] from scratch and get live offspring. I just thought wow! The science is quite brilliant."
However, she warned that this had "no clinical relevance" as there were still too many gaps in understanding about how human eggs developed.
"If you can show it works in human cells it is like the Holy Grail of reproductive biology," she added.
Prof Robert Norman, from the University of Adelaide, said: "For many infertile couples, finding they have no sperm or eggs is a devastating blow.
"This paper offers light to those who want a child, who is genetically related to them, by using personalised stem cells to create eggs that can produce an offspring that appears to be healthy.
"It also offers the potential for women to have their own children well past menopause raising even more ethical issues.
"Application to humans is still a long way off, but for the first time the goal appears to be in sight."
Dr Allan Pacey, from the British Fertility Society and the University of Sheffield, said: "What is remarkable about this work is the fact that, although the process is still quite inefficient, the offspring appeared healthy and were themselves fertile as adults."

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'50-hour genome' test for babies with genetic diseases

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

 

  Faster results mean sick babies can be given the correct medication

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Doctors in the US say they have taken a big step forward in the speed of analysing the DNA of seriously ill babies with genetic diseases.

The whole of a baby's genetic code - genome - was sequenced, analysed and the results given to doctors within 50 hours in intensive care units at Children's Mercy Hospital, Kansas City.
The process would normally take at least a month, they said.
Experts in the UK said it was an "impressive" technical achievement.
US doctors say up to a third of babies admitted to neonatal intensive care units are there because of genetic diseases caused by mutations in their DNA. However, there are more than 3,500 different genetic diseases meaning many are rare and difficult to diagnose.
The first copy of the blueprint of human life - the Human Genome Project - took years to accomplish and an incredible amount of money. Since then both the time and the cost have fallen dramatically.
Children's Mercy Hospital has been testing a new way of reading the genetic code which takes 50 hours from the moment a blood sample is taken.
They were able to make a diagnosis in three out of the four babies they tested, according to a study published in Science Translational Medicine.
Costly business Dr Stephen Kingsmore, director of the Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine at the hospital, said: "We can now consider whole genome sequencing to be relevant for hospital medicine.
"It is now feasible to decode an entire genome and provide interim results back to the physician in two days.
"We think this is going to transform the world of neonataology."
The results could help doctors provide the best treatment and counsel families. However, at a cost of about £8,400 ($13,500) it is still expensive.
Prof David Bonthron, from the University of Leeds, said: "It's pretty impressive technically, they're pushing the envelope of how fast you can turn this stuff around - two days is pretty fast."
He said speed was also vital in analysing the genes of a foetus still in the womb if abnormalities have been identified.
However, he added: "The speed issue is maybe a bit restricted in its applicability as other areas are not that time pressured. In outpatients a few days is not that important."

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Nato's exit strategy in Afghanistan

18 May 2012 Last updated at 00:47 ET Help

As Nato prepares to leave Afghanistan in 2014, questions on how this withdrawal will logistically take place have yet to be answered.
With the road route through Pakistan blocked, and instability and hostility from neighbouring countries making air and rail exits difficult, will it be possible to transport all the weapons and hardware of nearly 100,000 troops from this landlocked country?

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Liquid air 'offers energy storage hope'

By Roger Harrabin Environment analyst

 

  Renewable power generation, such as wind turbines, can produce electricity when it is not in demand

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Turning air into liquid may offer a solution to one of the great challenges in engineering - how to store energy.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers says liquid air can compete with batteries and hydrogen to store excess energy generated from renewables.
IMechE says "wrong-time" electricity generated by wind farms at night can be used to chill air to a cryogenic state at a distant location.
When demand increases, the air can be warmed to drive a turbine.
Engineers say the process to produce "right-time" electricity can achieve an efficiency of up to 70%.
IMechE is holding a conference today to discuss new ideas on how using "cryo-power" can benefit the low-carbon economy.
The technology was originally developed by Peter Dearman, a garage inventor in Hertfordshire, to power vehicles.
A new firm, Highview Power Storage, was created to transfer Mr Dearman's technology to a system that can store energy to be used on the power grid.
The process, part-funded by the government, has now been trialled for two years at the back of a power station in Slough, Buckinghamshire.
More than hot air The results have attracted the admiration of IMechE officials.

The energy storage technology has been tested for two years at a power station

"I get half a dozen people a week trying to persuade me they have a brilliant invention," head of energy Tim Fox told BBC News.
"In this case, it is a very clever application that really does look like a potential solution to a really great challenge that faces us as we increase the amount of intermittent power from renewables."
Dr Fox urged the government to provide incentives in its forthcoming electricity legislation for firms to store energy on a commercial scale with this and other technologies.
IMechE says the simplicity and elegance of the Highview process is appealing, especially as it addresses not just the problem of storage but also the separate problem of waste industrial heat.
The process follows a number of stages:

1. "Wrong-time electricity" is used to take in air, remove the CO2 and water vapour (these would freeze otherwise)
2. the remaining air, mostly nitrogen, is chilled to -190C (-310F) and turns to liquid (changing the state of the air from gas to liquid is what stores the energy)
3. the liquid air is held in a giant vacuum flask until it is needed
4. when demand for power rises, the liquid is warmed to ambient temperature. As it vaporizes, it drives a turbine to produce electricity - no combustion is involved

IMechE says this process is only 25% efficient but it is massively improved by co-siting the cryo-generator next to an industrial plant or power station producing low-grade heat that is currently vented and being released into the atmosphere.
The heat can be used to boost the thermal expansion of the liquid air.
More energy is saved by taking the waste cool air when the air has finished chilling, and passing it through three tanks containing gravel.
The chilled gravel stores the coolness until it is needed to restart the air-chilling process.
Delivering durability Highview believes that, produced at scale, their kits could be up to 70% efficient, and IMechE agrees this figure is realistic.
"Batteries can get 80% efficiency so this isn't as good in that respect," explains Dr Fox.
"But we do not have a battery industry in the UK and we do have plenty of respected engineers to produce a technology like this.
"What's more, it uses standard industrial components - which reduces commercial risk; it will last for decades and it can be fixed with a spanner."
In the future, it is expected that batteries currently used in electric cars may play a part in household energy storage.
But Richard Smith, head of energy strategy for National Grid, told BBC News that other sorts of storage would be increasingly important in coming decades and should be incentivised to commercial scale by government.
He said: "Storage is one of four tools we have to balance supply and demand, including thermal flexing (switching on and off gas-fired power stations); interconnections, and demand-side management. Ultimately it will be down to economics."
Mr Dearman, who also invented the MicroVent resuscitation device used in ambulances, told BBC News he was delighted at the success of his ideas.
He said he believed his liquid air engine would prevail against other storage technologies because it did not rely on potentially scarce materials for batteries. "I have been working on this off and on for close on 50 years," he told BBC News.
"I started when I was a teenager because I thought there wouldn't be enough raw materials in the world for everyone to have a car. There had to be a different way. Then somehow I came up with the idea of storing energy in cold.
"It's hard to put into words to see what's happening with my ideas today."
John Scott, from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), added: "At present, pumped-hydro storage is the only practical bulk storage medium in the British grid.
"However, locations are very restricted," he told BBC News. "In the future, if new storage technologies can be deployed at a lower cost than alternatives, it would benefit the power system."
A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said it would shortly launch a scheme to incentivise innovation in energy storage. Other grants are available from Ofgem.
Follow Roger Harrabin on Twitter: @RogerHarrabin

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