NEW exciting happenings at the OpenLab

Many exciting things are happening this year. The OpenLab has been bursting at its seams since the beginning of the school year with the many various JIP electives, molecular workshop for Year 6 Bio RA students, consultations for SSEF poster presentations and now the research immersion programme  (RIP) projects for the Year 5 Bio RA students! To say 2011 has been hectic would be an understatement!

Apart from all the Biology-related activities, we have a new scientist, Dr Tan Guoxian, on board the RSI team! Dr Tan specialises in signal pattern recognition in the area of forensic science! So exciting right! Still, I don’t think I’m doing it enough justice so I think I should ask him to write a post about his PhD work here. Dr Tan will soon be heading the ClusterLabs at Level 6, so don’t worry all you Physics and Chemistry students, you’ll soon be getting your own version of the OpenLab. We have many new Physics research projects supervised by Dr Tan. Please click here for the list of research topics.

Today I announced the new RSI Bio research projects as well as my new marine biology programme. If you would like to know more about them, please click here for the research projects and here for the marine biology programme. Just an observation, I think the projects get more interesting every year. Just so you know, in our first year of operation, we submitted ONE project to the Singapore Science and Engineering Fair, and unfortunately it didn’t get in to the final round. in 2010, we submitted 12, and eight got in! That’s a huge leap forward if I don’t say so myself. Of course, I’m not saying that this is completely thanks to the effort of RSI staff, the students definitely worked very hard to get that far (judging for SSEF is tomorrow, let’s cross our fingers and hope for the best!).

If you would like to apply for either the research or marine bio programme, please download the relevant forms and submit them to OpenLab by 11th March. Also, please feel free to pop by the OpenLab or email me if you would like to know more.

Cheers,

Dr Ng

Application forms:

Research projects (please read list of topics here first)

Marine biology programme

JIP 2011 – Semiconductor Processes

That’s right, RI (year 5-6) has our very own cleanroom facility to fabricate silicon wafers! Imagine investigating fabricating your very own electronics component or designing your electronics circuit boards for the next generation iPhone. Such research projects and more can now be done at our in-house cleanroom facility. Feel free to drop by Research Labs if you are interested in knowing more.

Silicon wafer-in-hand

Group photo for JIP 2011

In the blower room

Marine Ecology Workshop for RA and BioO students

If you are in the Raffles Academy and/or Bio Olympiad programme and would like to know more about marine biology, we are organising a marine ecology workshop on the 23rd and 24th of November 2010.

Please see this page for more information

Taiwan International Science Fair

The Taiwan International Science Fair is a competition for top young researchers that aims to encourage scientific research and promote cross-cultural communication and academic exchange. Each year, the Ministry of Education sends 2 Singaporean students who have completed a research project to present and compete at the Science Fair. Besides having to present his/her project findings to a panel of judges, selected students will also have opportunities to visit various scientific and cultural institutions. The students will interact with participants from countries in the region and beyond, including the United States of America, France, Hong Kong and Korea.

Students who have completed project(s) in any one of the following fields of science are welcome to apply:
a. Mathematics
b. Physics & Space Sciences
c. Chemistry
d. Earth Sciences
e. Zoology
f. Botany
g. Microbiology
h. Biochemistry
i. Medicine and Health
j. Engineering
k. Computer Science
l. Environmental Science

Interested students are to complete Sections A to F of the application form and return the form to Ms Soh Yeing Yeing by 20th October 2010.

Application form is available at the OpenLab (please make a copy for yourself).

A mini-”World Food Programme”

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 I asked for articles about Norman Borlaug from my friends when I got this email digest link on a retrospective on Norman Ernest Borlaug. Immediately Siva sent me the pdf and also mentioned that he “talks about Borlaug in soil ecology and south east asia conservation. 3-4 slides only with Ehrlich saying millions would starve and then came along Borlaug with dwarf spring wheat…” Siva, NUS Biodiversity lecturer, also mentioned that he had seen an episode in the West Wing that mentioned Borlaug. He blogged about it here, as I discover.

Norman Borlaug’s scientific contribution and industry was compelling and something I felt I could share with my science class. So I did up a just-in-time lecture. It’s true that when you teach, you learn twice as my landlady used to say. So the more I did up my slides, the more I learnt of his enormous contribution to alleviating hunger. We’ve heard so much about the Green Revolution but when I dip-stick any class about who Norman Borlaugh was, I get blank stares. Then again, lots of people I know don’t even know what types of food are made from wheat flour. And here was a man who almost single-handedly solved world hunger; and for India and Pakistan, their wheat yields went from famine levels to levels of self-sufficiency in just over half a decade, with India going on to becoming a net wheat exporter.

Within a few days of doing up the JIT lecture, I heard that the National Institute of Education was hosting Dr. M. Vijaya Gupta, World Food Prize Laureate who would talk about his fish programme in Bangladesh in the 1980s. The stories of how women become empowered through rural aquaculture were riveting and heartwarming.

It became a need for me now to package this into some sort of programme for students to get a more first-hand experience of “food”. So that was how the Raffles “World Food Programme” was born. Interestingly, this food programme idea got people I spoke to, more interested than when i spoke about any other science workshops or electives that I have carried out. Food is such a common denominator.

and our first harvest of pak choy. Extremely delicious with a taste of the earth.

And just when I thought food issues were not going to be resurfaced again, Nature.com publishes a special feature entitled “Can science feed the world?” yesterday.

Raffles Water Forum 2010

Coming up on July 7th!

Happy Birthday OpenLab!

June 1st 2010 marks the first anniversary of RSI’s OpenLab.!

We thank all those who have shown us tremendous support (including those who hid their skepticism) at our work over the last 12 months. From research projects to fieldtrips, we hoped we have contributed in a small way in making science education a little more fun :)

SPWNED!

This afternoon some fragments of Acropora hyacinthus were brought up and placed in tanks and at about 8pm they started setting (egg bundles were seen at the mouth of the polyps). At 9:10pm they started releasing their egg bundles (bundles of eggs and sperm). It was great! It’s almost midnight now so more updates tomorrow! We’ll be doing a dive tomorrow night so there’ll probably be more action! (and pictures!)

Here are some pictures

Coral fragments in flower pots

Before night fell the coral fragments (collected a day earlier) were placed in flower pots floating in a large tank. This is so that when the corals release their egg bundles, we can isolate the egg bundles from each colony (and cross fertilise them later).

Acropora millepora releasing egg bundles

About about 8pm (an hour after dusk) we could see pinkish egg bundles sitting at the mouth of each coral polyp. At this point, we would regard the coral as “set” and would most likely spawn within an hour or so. However, it was also possible that the corals would not spawn and somehow reabsorb their eggs, although I’m not quite sure how.

The corals that were setting in the tanks spawned at about 9pm. There were some others that didn’t spawn, but perhaps they will spawn the next day instead. Spawning started with just a few of the egg bundles being released, followed by lots more. Sometimes only part of a colony of a coral spawns.

After the corals release their egg bundles, the egg bundles float to the surface because they are positively buoyant. After about half an hour or so, it looks something like this

Egg bundles floating above Acropora hyacinthus

Note that these photos were taken after most of the spawning had already occurred because it’s best not to use camera flashes or any white light for that matter on corals that are close to spawning as it might mess up their cues. The corals depend on cues like sunlight, moonlight, water currents etc to know when to spawn. White light on a coral might make the coral think that it’s still day time and so it may not spawn. Most of the time we were working more like this

Checking for coral spawn using red light

At the end of the spawning session, the egg bundles were collected

Collecting egg bundles. The pink parts are eggs, the whitish parts are sperm

Each egg bundle contains a mixture of eggs and sperm from the same parent and self-fertilised embryos tend not to survive so well (and would also defeat the purpose of sexual reproduction). So we cross fertilised the eggs with sperm from another colony to get best results. All these were done in the lab and in-vitro fertilisation seems to yield more successful fertilisation rates than would occur naturally because we eliminate factors such as predation and increase chances of egg and sperm fusion.

18 hour old fertilised embryos look something like this:

Coral embryos

They kinda look like the eggs but slightly mis-shapened. But don’t worry, they’re good embryos that later develop into hard corals! Cool yeah? More updates soon!

SECORE workshop

I’m here at St. John’s Island attending a 10-day workshop to learn how to rear coral larvae. This workshop is organised be SECORE which stands for SExual COral REproduction. YES. Corals do reproduce sexually (and yes, they are animals). Corals can reproduce both sexually and asexually. When we say “sexual reproduction” we refer to reproduction by fusion of gametes (sperm and eggs). “Asexual reproduction” on the other hand, means reproduction (increase in numbers) by other means (no fusion of gametes) such as fragmentation and budding. Asexual reproduction generates progeny that are identical to their parent while sexual reproduction produces diversity in the offspring. There are pros and cos to both reproductive strategies, can you think of some of them?

What is SECORE, you might ask. The main focus of the organisation is establish sexual reproduction methods for captive coral colonies (in laboratories). Aiding the sexual reproduction corals yields a higher success rate than allowing nature to take its course, probably due to the increasing the chances of survival (not bring swept away by the current, lowering predation rate) and increasing the chances of fertilisation (since eggs and sperm are confined to an area) by allowing fertilisation and rearing the larvae in a controlled environment. Although original intention was to create a sustainable source of corals for aquariums, it’s now quite clear that there are many implications for coral conservation and restoration efforts as well.

This is the first time SECORE is having a workshop here in Singapore (or South East Asia for that matter) and I’m glad to have a chance to attend it. Every year around this time, many species of corals will release their eggs and sperm in a synchronised event which takes place over a few days. This mass-synchronous event is cued by the full moon, increased temperatures and nightfall. This isn’t my first time observing the mass spawning event, I’ve participated in the survey dives organised by the Marine bio lab at NUS a few times before since Dr James Guest (one of the organisers of this year’s workshop) did his PhD there and we would help him out. But still! The spawning is something out of this world! I love diving because underwater, it’s like being in a different realm altogether. Everything seems to defy gravity (even myself sometimes) and fish swim above you, under you, and sometimes even upside down. The creatures you see underwater come in different shapes and sizes it really blows my mind. And then spawning… it’s amazing. In my own words, it’s like reverse snow. The little bundles of pink eggs and sperm are released from different colonies of coral roughly around the same time and before you know it, you’re caught in a blizzard, except it’s coming from below you and floating to the surface.

If I manage to take a video of it I’ll upload it for you guys to see. You’ll be amazed.

Anyway, today is the first day of the workshop and we’ve had a few lectures. I’ve already learnt quite a bit. Here are some snippets:

Ocean acidification is possibly one of the biggest threats to our coral reefs. Although the oceans are a carbon sink for our carbon emissions, if photosynthetic organisms (algae, plants etc) are unable to take in as much CO2 as is being dissolved in it (due to increased atmospheric CO2), our reefs will die.

Current atmospheric CO2 concentration is something like 380ppm (parts per million) at the moment (and increasing). If it reaches 450ppm, corals will not be able to incorporate the calcium into their skeletons and reefbuilding processes will be halted. IF (and there is a high chance it will) it reaches 550ppm, the calcification process will reverse and our corals reefs will start to dissolve (and acidification levels will skyrocket i.e. pH will be lowered by alot alot).

Dr Mary Hagedorn (from the Smithsonian Institute and based in Hawaii) is currently doing some research into cryopreservation of coral fragments as well as coral sperm. Did you know that there are 3 cryogenic coral banks in the world? That’s amazing.

I’m a bit tired of typing for now, so I’ll leave you with that thought. Think about all the implications of having cryogenically frozen coral sperm. :) More updates tomorrow!

More about the workshop: http://tinyurl.com/secoreworkshop

RSI Project selections

We’re in the midst of selecting students for the RSI projects at the moment. Applications are still open but only for the project on Water Technology as PUB has kindly agreed to supervise more projects.

If you have applied earlier for an RSI project, we will be contacting you with 3 possible kinds of information:

a) you have been selected;

b) you need to come for an interview; or

c) you have not been selected

If you have already committed to another research project (SRP/NRP/A*star) or would like to give up your place for whatever reasons, please let us know as early on as possible.