I have seen frequent complaints on the web about scientific conferences that have an overwhelmingly white male slate of speakers, including lists that don’t even have a single woman scheduled. This is not something peculiar to science; for instance see this link for a discussion of an equivalent problem in Philosophy. It does seem hard to believe that in all cases such a situation truly reflects the composition of the researchers in the field; indeed in many cases this is manifestly not so. Furthermore, it must be recognized that such a lack of diversity provides very little to inspire those minorities present in the audience or provide them with aspirational role models. It really should be possible to achieve a more representative balance of speakers in most cases.

An American professor, who blogs under the name of FemaleScienceProfessor, provides one explanation of why this unfortunate situation can sometimes arise: if a group of individuals are each asked to come up with two or three names for a session then, unless someone steps back and looks at the totality of names proposed, it is perfectly possible for each nominating individual to fail to think about the overall breadth. But, that overarching scrutiny is exactly what is needed because all the evidence shows that in general women and other minorities are otherwise likely to be systematically overlooked.

This kind of unconscious ‘marking down’ of women is an effect that has been well-documented more broadly. A study looking into this was recently published in the PNAS in the context of CV’s and job applications. In this study, identical dummy CV’s were randomly assigned either a male or female name and submitted as applications for a laboratory manager post. When these were evaluated by faculty in the US, both men and women systematically scored the ‘woman’ less well than the ‘man’, even though the CV’s were precisely the same. Such unconscious devaluation of women’s achievements has a name in the psychology literature – unconscious or implicit bias. If you want to test just how good or bad you are at this yourself, I highly recommend you try the tests at Havard’s Project Implicit. One of the tests specifically tests the association you make between male and female words, such as uncle or grandmother, with jobs in the sciences and arts. You may find it a real eye-opener!

So, the indications are, unless conference organisation committees consciously pay attention to the diversity of their speakers, they may end up with a very non-representative selection. But, it really shouldn’t be too difficult to make a first pass at a list of plenaries, invited talks etc and then step back and consider the names that have been put forward. And then try again. Almost invariably, when I have seen groups do this, it takes no time at all to come up with equally excellent speakers who just happen not to be white males. Then everyone is astonished why some of these ‘obvious’ names did not emerge in the first pass. It only takes a bit of deliberate thought to achieve an appropriate outcome, rather than going with the easy names which came first to mind and which anyhow most of the prospective audience will have heard talk many times before.

This type of action is relevant to how the Royal Society proceeds. Before it agrees to host meetings and conferences (Discussion meetings for instance), a committee of the Royal Society – the Hooke Committee – scrutinises the outline plans, including names of potential speakers. This takes place before there is any agreement that the meeting can go ahead. If the speaker list looks inappropriate – however topical and exciting the potential topic is – the committee will send the names back and ask for further thought to be given as to whether this really is the most suitable and appropriately diverse group to ensure the meeting’s excellence. Meetings will not go ahead on these terms unless the organisers can convince the Hooke Committee that, in order to achieve the aims of the meeting, there really are no other speakers who could and should be considered. In practice that is rarely the case. It is just the organisers had fallen into the trap of coming up with the familiar names who, more often than not, will indeed be white males.

By taking this proactive step, the Royal Society is doing what it can to ensure that speakers are appropriately representative. It is a small but significant step. The Royal Society’s Equality and Diversity Advisory Network (EDAN) also looks at the overall distribution of speakers under various headings, as well as the make-up of audiences at all events – from those for school-children to those for practicing scientists – looking at whether their composition reflects the pool from which they are drawn. This is not always an easy task. Benchmarking what percentage of ethnic minorities one might expect amongst school -children, for instance, is complicated by the fact that if the audience is drawn solely from London the numbers should be higher than if they come more broadly from anywhere within a 60 mile radius of London. Nevertheless, by monitoring the figures EDAN is able to identify any obvious anomalies and try to work to improve the situation. This is an ongoing process, into which the current BIS-funded project (aimed at increasing diversity in the scientific workforce) will feed. These are important, if small and really rather easy steps to improve the situation for minorities, both for the scientists of today and tomorrow.

As Chair of the Royal Society’s Equality and Diversity Network (EDAN), I’m interested in measuring whether the Royal Society treats people fairly. If there is a bias, we should know about it so that we can fix it.  A good place to start is the election of Fellows of the Royal Society. Each year 44 new Fellows are elected, typically including four women. This year, only two women were elected, which has understandably caused some alarm. This is a point worth thinking about.

Let me propose the following ideal model for the purpose of this short discussion. The Sectional Committees that elect Fellows have a pool of candidates to consider, of which roughly 9% are women.  They compare the candidates on the basis of scientific merit alone, disregarding whether they are male or female. This is what they are supposed to be doing so the model is a reasonable starting point. In this model, four out of the 44 Fellows elected each year are women, that being 9%. Of course, we do not expect exactly four women every year because the sex of the fellows is not taken into account when they are elected, so it is random. In fact there is only a 1-in-5 chance of choosing four women, so on average it will happen 2.4 times over 12 years – that’s what the highest blue dot shows in the figure. The blue dots on either side of this show that three and five are almost as likely as four. Even two and six are likely to happen about one and a half times each out of twelve years.

You can see this for yourself if you take a pack of 44 cards including the four aces, so that the chance of picking an ace is 9%. Shuffle the cards and look at the top one – that’s one Fellow elected. Put it back (to maintain the 9% of aces) and repeat – that’s the next Fellow.  After doing this 44 times, the number of aces you chose represents the number of women you elected.  Most probably it was not 4. Please don’t think that the election of Fellows is as random as shuffling the cards! It is a very considered process, taking many relevant things into account. But (in my model at least) the sex of the candidate is as random as the card selection and the number of women elected has the same distribution as that of the aces chosen from the pack of cards. If you are statistically inclined you can calculate this using the binomial distribution, which gives the blue dots in the figure, but the cards are more fun.

Number of times (frequency) a given number of women are elected over twelve elections. Blue dots: Average frequency. Grey area: region where 90% of actual frequencies should lie. Red dots: actual frequency of numbers elected over the last 12 years.

Correct operation of the Sectional Committees, as proposed in my model, naturally produces year-to-year variations in the number of female Fellows elected. The interesting point is that those variations are entirely consistent with what has actually happened over the last twelve years, shown by the red dots in the figure. The highest red dot represents the election of five female fellows, which has happened four times. The next highest are at two and four, both of which have been elected three times. Three and nine have each occurred once. There is noise in the red data, which is inevitable. The shaded area indicates the range of variation that we should expect 90% of the red points to occupy. And that is exactly what we see: ten of the eleven points lie within this area while one lies just outside. There is nothing in the data to suggest the model is wrong (for the experts the reduced χ² is 1.1). So I think the more pertinent question is not ‘why were only two women elected this year?’ but rather ‘why is the average fraction of women only 9%?’. The evidence suggests that the elections are fair but we need to think further about the nomination. I will write about this new question soon.

Jennie explains how her pupils are working with Neil Hewitson, a Roads Policing Inspector, to learn through science the experience of a road crash investigator. She says, “We want to put together some different scenarios of simulated crashes, based on real crashes, which would be laid out in the hall or playground. The students have to determine the causes of the accident and if crimes have been committed. Hopefully this will develop into a bank of resources that could be used by other schools and embedded as an extension to our current courses. We know that young drivers aged 17- 25 years are a particularly vulnerable group who are likely to take risks whilst driving, so in addition to the educational input, the Road Crash Investigator will give a free talk and follow up discussion on a crash that involved local young drivers. Can you think of a more exciting and relevant use of equations of motion?”

Neil Hewitson, who has been involved in roads policing for 17 of his 26 years service, says, “Crash Investigation is concerned with the way vehicles behave before, during and after a crash. The role of a crash investigator is to reconstruct the crash as much as they can from the marks and other physical evidence left at the scene. In order to carry out an effective reconstruction the crash investigator must have an in depth knowledge of a number of equations of motion together with the laws of physics and how these can be used to calculate vehicle speeds and behaviour. Both I and my team have carried out numerous investigations into crashes and I feel the science which we use on a regular basis could be transferred across to students to educate them how mathematics and physics can be used on a practical basis.”

Marie-Claude Dupuis, Education Outreach Manager at the Royal Society says, ““I think this is a really interesting project because the subject is original and it shows that science is part of a lot of professions one might not necessarily relate to science. It’s very different from the traditional image of a scientist in a white coat in a lab. It also has a different twist on traditional CSI-oriented projects. The use of the cars and the toys is a great example of how you don’t necessarily have to get expensive lab equipment to inspire students and do something hands-on.”

The vote celebrates the theme of invention and discovery in National Science & Engineering Week and has been developed by the Science Museum, National Media Museum, Museum of Science and Industry, the National Railway Museum, Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society, British Science Association and Engineering UK.

The website dedicated to the vote includes digital recordings (audioboos) from leading figures who have voted for their favourite innovation and explain how it has been so influential. The Great Vote lists British innovations in theory, scientific understanding, engineering and technology and was launched by Professor Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge.

The results of the Great British Innovation Vote will be announced on the 25th March 2013, when the site will become a database of British innovations in science, technology, mathematics and engineering.

We asked nine Research Fellows to describe an innovation in their field and how it has influenced their research today. Find out more and make sure you cast your vote and have your say on the greatest innovations of the past and the future.

At present there are 30,000 patients on the liver transplant waiting list in Europe and the US, however there are only around 12,000 liver transplants per year in these countries and some 20% of patients die while waiting for a transplant, normally because of a shortage of livers. At the moment the majority of livers for transplant come from heart-beating donors who have been declared brain dead and from whom the liver can be retrieved with minimum deprivation of oxygen, resulting in minimal organ damage.

Donors declared dead following cardiac arrest (non-heart-beating donors) are another potential source of livers. However because of the inevitable period of oxygen deprivation, most of these livers are deemed unsuitable for transplantation using current technology and only about 5% of transplanted livers come from this source.

OrganOx’s device operates by maintaining the organ in a fully functioning state during transport and storage, by providing blood flow, oxygen, nutrients and temperature within physiological parameters required by the liver. This not only enables the liver to be stored safely for a longer period (up to 24 hours) but also provides the surgeon with real-time and cumulative data with which to assess viability and make a decision whether to transplant. This is a major advance over the current method of assessment which is largely subjective.

The liver is particularly susceptible to changes in temperature and so the current method of transport, in a cooled saline solution, has the potential to cause damage and as a result render the liver unviable for transplant. OrganOx’s technology will allow the liver to be transported at body temperature, thereby causing less damage.

The technology, developed at Oxford University and now being trialled at the liver transplant centre at King’s College Hospital as part of a controlled clinical investigation, could preserve a functioning liver outside the body for 24 hours. A donated human liver connected to the device is raised to body temperature and oxygenated red blood cells are circulated through its capillaries. Once on the machine, a liver functions normally just as it would inside a human body, regaining its colour and producing bile.

So far the procedure has been performed on two patients on the liver transplant waiting list and both are making excellent recoveries. The results, carried out at King’s College Hospital in February 2013, suggest that the device could be useful for all patients needing liver transplants.

Sir Peter Williams FRS, Treasurer of the Royal Society, said:

“With almost 2000 livers being retrieved and then discarded each year and a waiting list of 30,000 in the Europe and the US, there’s an obvious need for the technology that OrganOx is working on. The Royal Society Enterprise Fund is very pleased to join OrganOx’s investors and we look forward to the results of their clinical studies later this year. This is exactly the sort of company that the fund was set up to support.”

Dr Les Russell, CEO of OrganOx, commented:

“We are delighted to have received such strong support from both our current and new investors and we offer a warm welcome to our new investors. These funds will allow us to complete our clinical studies and prepare for market launch in 2012 and also to push forward with further exciting developments aimed at increasing the number of organs available for transplant.”

Over the past few months, publishers across the UK have been submitting their best recent books that communicate science to young people.  The books may be factual or fictional, just as long as they make science exciting – no textbooks or encyclopaedias will be allowed!

Out of the many books submitted, a panel of adult judges will narrow down the choice to a shortlist of six books.  The next part is where you come in: groups of young people up and down the country will discuss these shortlisted books and vote for the winner.  Participation is open to any groups who are able to read and discuss the shortlist and vote for their favourite.

So, if you’re a member of an after school club, reading group, or any other type of youth group, the Royal Society wants to invite YOU to help to decide the winner of this year’s book prize.   If you’d like your group to take part, please get your group leader to visit our Book Prize web pages to find out more.  Entries to participate must be received by Monday 29 April 2013.

Previous prize winners have included Science experiments by Robert Winston and Ian Graham, How the world works by Christiane Dorion and Beverley Young and Can you feel the force? by Richard Hammond.

One of the ways that the Royal Society supports science in industry is through its Industry Fellowships. These fellowships allow scientists from academia to work on a collaborative project with industry, or industrial scientists to work on a collaborative project with an academic institution.

To celebrate the launch of the Year of Science and Industry our first research image of 2013 is ‘Mixing lightning with water to improve the surface of aluminium’ and comes from Dr James Curran, an Industry Fellow and Principal Materials Engineer at Keronite International Ltd. Dr Curran is working with Cambridge University to understand the underlying science behind Plasma Electrolysis.

The image shows an aluminium high performance racing piston immersed in a bath of water based electrolyte. The surface is glowing with millions of microscopic discharges – like microscopic bolts of lightning. Temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun are achieved and it is these extreme conditions that help convert the surface of the aluminium into an extremely hard sapphire-like crystalline material. This process makes the metal far more durable and has many real-life applications from F1 engine parts and aircraft landing gear to high performance cycle rims and scratch-resistant phone cases. Using this process to improve the durability of metal components, for example in manufacturing, results in a reduction in energy consumption and waste. It also improves efficiency as parts no longer need to be replaced as frequently.

Dr Curran and his partner organisation, the University of Cambridge, use modern techniques such as those used to study light emissions from stars and galaxies, coupled with the data processing capabilities of the latest generation of computers. Their ultimate aim is to explore the process in detail to explain the mechanism and make it more efficient and more widely used.

Want to hear Dr Curran explain his research and how the Royal Society Industry Fellowship has supported him, have a look at our video case study here.

This high viscosity also means that crystal growth is sluggish and the few crystals that do form include rounded masses called spherulites that are rich in the mineral cristobalite, a mineral hazardous to human health. Some of these enigmatic crystals are captured in the image, along with dark bands picked out by micron-scale crystals. These bands record how the magma flowed and folded around a perfectly circular bubble of trapped gas.

Dr Tuffen is a volcanologist who investigates the processes that control hazardous eruptions. He is currently using a combination of field studies on active volcanoes and experimental approaches in the lab to address how gases escape from magma and how crystals such as spherulites grow. He was one of the lucky few to witness an obsidian lava flow when he visited Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano in Chile and the second image here shows the setting sun lighting up the plume as Puyehue-Cordon Caulle erupts.

During his 10 day trip in January 2012 he collected samples, videos and images, providing a rich resource for future research. If being there to witness the eruption wasn’t exciting enough, he also shot a film of the expedition that was featured in the BBC Volcano Live series. The clip can be found here and is definitely worth a watch.

HRH The Duke of York with Professor Russell

Professor Russell Morris, from the University of St Andrews, has used an exciting development in chemical technology – metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) – to apply small, beneficial amounts of the gas, nitric oxide, to wounds safely in order speed up healing. Nitric oxide is a simple gas molecule which in large amounts is significantly toxic; however in small amounts it has essential roles in the body, such as controlling blood pressure in the cardiovascular system and also in wound healing.

When a wound occurs in normal skin the body produces nitric oxide to fight infection through its antibacterial properties and then to signal the production of new blood vessels to increase blood flow to the damaged area. Unfortunately people who suffer from diabetes, or those who are elderly or obese often don’t produce enough nitric oxide naturally which can lead to poor wound healing. In bad cases, such as chronic wounds which do not heal, the affected limbs may need to be amputated.

There is strong evidence that the addition of nitric oxide to wounds can be extremely beneficial in these situations. However because nitric oxide is a toxic gas there needs to be a method of applying small, beneficial amounts of gas safely to a wound.

The MOFs that Professor Morris is working on offer an opportunity to do just this. These solids are extremely porous and have a very large internal surface area and can store large quantities of gas safely. Professor Morris and his team are developing non toxic MOFs to be incorporated into wound dressings which deliver nitric oxide slowly and at levels which do not cause any toxic or inflammatory effects but show beneficial effect of improved wound healing.

Professor Russell Morris said: “The highly porous metal-organic frameworks act as miniature gas tanks, allowing us to deliver only safe and beneficial amounts of nitric oxide from something as easy to use as a wound dressing. This will transform how we can use this gas to help people with debilitating chronic wounds.”

Professor Morris received his prize at a special event at the Royal Society on 5 December. He will receive just under £200,000 from the Society to develop the technology further so that it can be put into clinical trials.

The Brian Mercer Award for Innovation is a scheme for scientists who wish to develop an already proven concept or prototype into a near-market product ready for commercial exploitation. Professor Morris has already benefited from Royal Society support including a University Research Fellowship (1998-2006), Wolfson Research Merit Award (2009-2010), the Brian Mercer Feasibility Award (2008) and a current Industry Fellowship.

Upon receiving the award, James Gleick said: “This is a very unexpected surprise. I am not a scientist, but I have my nose pressed against the glass. I visited the Royal Society 12 years ago to research a biography of Isaac Newton. It is a pleasure to be back again.”

The £10,000 prize was awarded to James Gleick by Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society at a ceremony at the Society.  The book saw off strong competition from a heavyweight shortlist, including Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature and Nathan Wolfe’s The Viral Storm.

Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell DBE FRS, Chair of the judges, said: “The Information is an ambitious and insightful book that takes us, with verve and fizz, on a journey from African drums to computers, throwing in generous helpings of evidence and examples along the way.  It is one of those very rare books that provide a completely new framework for understanding the world around us. It was a privilege to read.”

The six shortlisted books were:

• Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, published by Allen Lane (Penguin Books)
• My Beautiful Genome by Lone Frank, published by Oneworld
• The Information by James Gleick, published by Fourth Estate
• The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene, published by Allen Lane (Penguin Books)
• The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, published by Allen Lane (Penguin Books)
• The Viral Storm by Nathan Wolfe, published by Allen Lane (Penguin Books)

The shortlisted authors were each awarded £1,000 and the winner £10,000.  The first chapter of each book is available to download for free at: royalsociety.org/awards/science-books/shortlist/.

The judges on this year’s judging panel are Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell DBE FRS, Visiting Professor in Astrophysics, University of Oxford (Chair); Jasper Fforde, author; Tania Hershman, author; Kim Shillinglaw, BBC Commissioning Editor for Science and Natural History and Dr Samuel Turvey, Royal Society University Research Fellow, Institute of Zoology.

The Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books is the leading award for popular science writing. Books shortlisted for the award are accessible, interesting and compelling accounts of the world around us or inside us. Commencing last year, the global investment management company Winton Capital Management agreed a five year sponsorship deal of the prize.

David Harding, Founder and Chairman of Winton Capital Management said:  “Congratulations to James Gleick on winning this year’s Royal Society Winton Prize, a worthy winner in a strong field. As a 21st century scientific research company Winton is working at the heart of exploring Big Data. The Information is an erudite, superbly researched, account of how humans have learned to transmit information and created a world where research such as ours is not just possible but can flourish.”