Irish student wins first prize in annual physics competition
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Irish Times
10 hours ago
- Irish Times
When too many conductors result in cellular discord and cancer
What is your PhD about? I'm looking for new treatment strategies for lung cancer. The issue with lung cancer , and really all cancers, is that what drives the disease in one patient may not be the same in the next patient and this can result in different responses to therapy. For example, some people will respond better to chemotherapy than others. How is your project tackling this issue? My project at UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science looks at a subset of lung cancer that typically doesn't respond well to current treatments. READ MORE We want to find factors that are driving the cancer to grow in these subtypes so that we can create a treatment to go in and stop these drivers' activities and hopefully stop the disease in its tracks. In my project, the 'drivers' we are looking at are called long non-coding RNAs. What are long non-coding RNAs? Each cell in our body is a tiny, complex system made up of many components that have specific roles. Long non-coding RNAs can control this system by interacting directly with these cell components and guiding their activity. Unfortunately, sometimes these controllers go awry and can guide the cell components incorrectly, which leads to the cell becoming unhealthy, and potentially cancerous. It is only in the last two decades that scientists have uncovered the true importance of long non-coding RNAs, so it is a very new and exciting field of research. You recently won a speaking competition with a metaphor – tell us more. I was lucky enough to take part in the UCD Engage competition, where PhD researchers come up with metaphorical way of explaining their projects in an engaging and accessible manner. My project funders, Breakthrough Cancer Research, introduced me to patient advocates Marian O'Mahony, Mary Neville and Siobh Siobhánes, and together we curated the metaphor of an orchestra. How does it apply to your project? In essence, a healthy cell is like a perfect symphony orchestra producing beautiful music. Imagine there are too many conductors, they are all shouting over each other and causing havoc, ultimately losing control, and what was once a harmony is now a screeching tragedy. It's the same in the cell, if there are too many long non-coding RNAs, they can start to act a bit crazy and lose control of the cell components, and what was once a healthy cell can be driven to become an unhealthy, out-of-control, cancerous cell. So the question is, if we can fire the excess conductors in the orchestra, or get rid of the extra long non-coding RNAs in the cell, can we bring back our perfect symphony or our healthy cell? What do you hope the impact of your research will be? If we find the long non-coding RNAs that are responsible for driving the cancer progression in our subset of lung cancer, we can create a treatment to target it. This means personalised treatments for many patients that currently don't have many options. However, the process of drug discovery, testing and approval is extremely lengthy, meaning it will likely be some years before such a drug will be available clinically. My project is in essence a cog in the wheel of getting these treatments to patients, but each cog is important. What do you like to do outside of research? Sometimes the lab work can be quite stressful, so you need to have things outside the lab that you enjoy. For me, that's often spending time with family, heading to a pilates class or even doing a crossword – my grandad's love for The Irish Times crossword has been successfully passed down!
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Irish Times
Mars review: INO's exhilarating space-travel opera comes from a mind exploding with ideas
Mars Leisureland, Galway ★★★★★ Jennifer Walshe 's new opera, staged as part of Galway International Arts Festival , is like no other previously presented by Irish National Opera , which commissioned it with Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, Klangforum Wien and Opéra de Lille. This is only partly because it features astronauts and is set mostly in the command module of a rocket. What's novel is the exhilarating speed at which it shifts between what it wants to say – about humanity, the future, history, culture high and low, colonisation – and the moods in which it says them, from comic and satirical to profoundly poignant. Walshe has a mind exploding with ideas and a seemingly unfettered and limitless creativity for expressing them. Early in the opera's long gestation, begun during Covid, she was already talking to the award-winning writer (and Irish Times columnist ) Mark O'Connell, whose books include explorations of transhumanism and the colonisation of Mars. He ended up making a first foray outside nonfiction to write the libretto for Walshe. Tom Creed, directing alongside Walshe, completes the artistic leadership. [ Mars: Mark O'Connell and Jennifer Walshe on their new collaboration Opens in new window ] The four women astronauts are travelling to the planet with the intention of helping to preserve the human race. Before they reach it the project is purchased by a tech-bro billionaire. Attached to this simple scaffold is a wide range of interactions involving not only the profound but also the day-to-day realities of space travel. Delivering this range results in a tour de force from the four-member cast: the sopranos Nina Guo and Jade Phoenix and the mezzo-sopranos Sarah Richmond and Doreen Curran. Between them, within the claustrophobic confines of their space capsule, they convey grief and longing from separation, excitement and fear for the future, camaraderie, frustration, anger, laughter and cynicism. Guided by the movement director Bryan Burroughs, they provide inspired re-creations of zero gravity and the violent vibration of lift-off and set-down. The singers take turns to voice Arabella, the spaceship's on-board AI , and Axel Parchment, the obnoxious billionaire behind the takeover, his distorted AI-manufactured face superimposed on to one of the singers and projected on to an overhead screen. In Mars, the performance of the INO Orchestra requires singing and movement as well as playing. Photograph: Karen Cox/New York Times Other screens depict the planet; show footage from the Apollo space programme or clips from black-and-white sci-fi movies; or relay live feeds from cameras inside the capsule. There is a lot of simultaneous information. This and the realistic technical detail throughout – visual and aural – shape the production's power to captivate and immerse you. The large technical and design team is led by Aedín Cosgrove (set and lighting), Conor McIver (video), Úna Monaghan (sound) and Catherine Fay (costumes). Walshe's powerful, expressionistic music contains the same far-flung eclecticism as the scope of her ideas, matching everything from the enormous energy of the technology to the astronauts' whispered awe upon arrival on Mars, and incorporating Nasa sound files, AI-generated dubstep for Axel Parchment, and extended techniques for both voice and instruments. Here, too, is a tour de force, from the conductor Elaine Kelly and the INO Orchestra, whose performance requires singing and movement as well as playing. Mars is at the Abbey Theatre , Dublin, from Thursday, August 7th, until Saturday, August 9th
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Irish Times
OPW to end contracts with Elon Musk's Starlink once Irish alternative is available
The Office of Public Works (OPW) has said it will discontinue its contracts with Elon Musk's Starlink satellite service once an alternative from an Irish company is available. The OPW is one of a number of State agencies that relies on the controversial former Donald Trump ally's satellite internet services company. An Garda Síochána, the Prison Service and the Revenue Commissioners also currently have Starlink contracts. Starlink, which is owned by SpaceX , is a powerful broadband internet system based on a constellation of thousands of low-orbit satellites. It offers internet services to more than six million people across 140 countries. The OPW contracts Starlink to bring internet and phone data coverage to two historic sites in remote parts of the country with poor connectivity. READ MORE The first is Tintern Abbey, a Cistercian monastery in partial ruins on the Hook peninsula in Co Wexford. The second is Annes Grove, an estate near Castletownroche in Co Cork. The OPW started using Starlink last June. The OPW said it signed up to Starlink for 'remote sites where we were unable to acquire a suitable broadband service locally or through existing procurement frameworks'. 'These satellite services are procured on a month-to-month basis and are likely to be discontinued once terrestrial alternatives become available in the future,' it said. The Office of the Revenue Commissioners also uses Starlink for maritime satellite internet communication units on each of its three anti-smuggling patrol vessels. These vessels, called cutters, need internet services for their analytics and detection technologies. Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe said the three Revenue cutters are 'utilising services provided by Starlink', which were 'procured in line with public procurement procedures'. Mr Donohoe was responding to a series of parliamentary questions from Fine Gael TD for Longford-Westmeath Micheál Carrigy. Mr Carrigy asked a number of Government Ministers if their departments or any agencies under their aegis had contracts with Starlink. Revenue said it had spent €93,237 on Starlink since 2023, and the SpaceX-owned service is 'widely used as a cost-effective marine data provider across the marine industry internationally'. It said it has 'no issues or concerns' regarding the current services provided by Starlink. [ Elon Musk's Irish friends and their influence on the powerful billionaire Opens in new window ] Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan said both An Garda Síochána and the Irish Prison Service 'have procured Starlink satellite services to support their telecommunications requirements'. A spokesman for the prison service said it 'does not comment on operational or security matters'. On Thursday, Mr Musk was forced to apologise after Starlink suffered a major international outage that knocked tens of thousands of users offline. On X, the social media platform which he also owns, Mr Musk wrote: 'Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn't happen again.' The rare disruption, which affected Starlink users across the US and Europe, was blamed on an internal software failure. [ Profits jump at Irish unit of Musk's Starlink Opens in new window ] [ Starlink's Irish unit proves a lucrative one for its staff Opens in new window ]
