Want to block earworms from conscious awareness? B(u)y gum!

Three experiments examine the role of articulatory motor planning in experiencing an involuntary musical recollection (an “earworm”). Experiment 1 shows that interfering with articulatory motor programming by chewing gum reduces both the number of voluntary and the number of involuntary—unwanted—musical thoughts. This is consistent with other findings that chewing gum interferes with voluntary processes such as recollections from verbal memory, the interpretation of ambiguous auditory images, and the scanning of familiar melodies, but is not predicted by theories of thought suppression, which assume that suppression is made more difficult by concurrent tasks or cognitive loads. Experiment 2 shows that chewing the gum affects the experience of “hearing” the music and cannot be ascribed to a general effect on thinking about a tune only in abstract terms. Experiment 3 confirms that the reduction of musical recollections by chewing gum is not the consequence of a general attentional or dual-task demand. The data support a link between articulatory motor programming and the appearance in consciousness of both voluntary and unwanted musical recollections

Let’s get virtual! Reinventing a science festival during a pandemic: Limitations and insights

Non-formal, yet educative, activities such as science festivals can positively influence the public regarding their attitude towards Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) subjects and students’ willingness to pursue STEM-related careers. We evaluate the changes made to adapt the Oxford Brookes Science Bazaar, a science festival that has been delivered face-to-face since 2008, to a virtual format in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The online festival included 28 pre-recorded and 12 live activities of different types (hands-on, demonstration, games, lectures, podcasts, virtual tours). Hands-on activities and virtual tours had the highest number of unique viewers, while lectures and podcasts were the least watched. The videos were watched also after the advertised date of the festival and reached a broader audience than the physical events. The number of participants, the holding time, and the proportion of people who filled the feedback forms, however, were lower in the online than the physical events. STEM organisations should consider hybrid events, with both virtual and in-person contents, to reach a broader audience and to create more inclusive events. We provide recommendations on how to maximise the benefit of virtual formats, including expanding blended virtual activities to reach a wider variety of age groups

Science Bazaar Beyond and Science Bazaar Saturday Resources

Resources to accompany the activity Science Bazaar and Science Bazaar Saturday events

Dr Steenberg on Her Research into Gladiatorial Imagery in the Media

In this instalment, Lindsay Steenberg discusses her research into gladiatorial imagery in the media and the recent release of her book on the subject, Are You Not Entertained? Mapping the Gladiator in Visual Culture. She also guides the listener through the paradoxical pleasures of the contemporary action cinema as part of her new project on the fight scene. The film recommendations that Lindsay shared are: The Old Guard, Triple Threat, The Raid, The Raid 2, Shadow and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Dr Lindsay Steenberg, BA (hons), MA, PhD, Cert HEP, SFHEA Lindsay Steenberg is Reader in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University where she co-ordinates their graduate programme in Popular Cinema. She has published numerous articles on violence and gender in postmodern and postfeminist media culture. She is the author of Forensic Science in Contemporary American Popular Culture: Gender, Crime, and Science and the recently published Are You Not Entertained? Mapping the Gladiator in Visual Culture, for which she was awarded Brookes’ Research Excellence Fellowship. She on the steering committee for the Inclusion, Diversity and Gender Research Network and serves as mentor to early career researchers for the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies. She has recently begun a new project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, to map the fight sequence in post-millennial action cinema with Dr Lisa Coulthard at the University of British Columbia

Investigations into altered cellular glycosylation associated with metastatic competence in breast cancer cell lines

Metastasis is the main cause of cancer patient death owing to the fact that metastatic disease is difficult to treat. Aberrant glycosylation is characteristic of cancer and plays a role in metastatic mechanisms. HPA, a lectin from the Roman snail Helix pomatia, recognises glycans terminating in α-GalNAc, and is associated with aggressive biological behaviour, poor patient prognosis and metastasis in breast and other cancers. Three breast cancer cell lines characterised to stably synthesise an array of GalNAc-glycans were employed in the work reported here (MCF7, ZR751 and BT474). HPA lectin labelling and quantification were optimised and it revealed a more complex HPA-binding profile than previously reported. It was observed that HPA-positive cells were rounded, reminiscent of epithelial cells, and HPA-negative cells were elongated, and reminiscent of mesenchymal cells. One of the aberrant glycans that HPA reportedly binds is the initial O-glycan Tn structure which is commonly exposed in cancer. qPCR was performed to assess the gene expression levels of O-linked glycosylation initiation enzymes, GALNTs as well as C1GalT and its molecular chaperone COSMC. This analysis revealed that there is no clear association between aberrant glycosylation recognised by HPA-binding, although down-regulation of C1GalT and COSMC may result in failed normal chain extension. A method of isolating cells based on their HPA-binding profile was developed. Cells were separated and grown on post-separation for 3 days. It was observed that the glycosylation profiles of the HPA-positive cell population and the HPA-negative cell population reverted to a mixed population over time that was similar to the unseparated lectin labelling proportions. The cell morphologies also reverted. The plasticity observed was reminiscent of EMT. Microarray analysis revealed that several EMT-associated genes were differentially expressed between the HPA-positive and HPA-negative isolated cell populations. Using a Matrigel invasion assay it was observed that HPA-negative cells were significantly more invasive than HPA-positive cells. While in a static adhesion assay HPA-positive cells were significantly more adhesive to endothelial cell monolayers than HPA-negative cells. HPA-binding glycans were demonstrated to be functionally involved in HPA-positive cells adhesion to the endothelial cell monolayer as their adhesion was inhibited when HPA-binding glycans were masked. Furthermore, using conditioned medium transfer experiments it was observed that cell-cell signalling was occurring between the HPA-positive and HPA-negative cells and altering their adhesive characteristics. To conclude the work reported here demonstrates that cells can modulate their glycosylation profiles and their subsequent morphologies and that this plasticity is important in cancer metastasis

Professor Simon Kövesi on his research in Romantic-period literature

Simon Kövesi is Professor of English Literature at Oxford Brookes University. He researches working-class writing from the Romantic period through to contemporary literature. His books include Eighteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets, 1700-1800 (3 vols, 2003), James Kelman (2007), New Essays on John Clare: Poetry, Culture and Community (2015), and John Clare: Nature, Criticism and History (2017). He is currently working on a book entitled Literature and Poverty: 1800–2000, and a paperback edition of Pierce Egan’s 1821 smash hit Life in London. He appears as a boxer-cum-fool in the 2015 feature film By Our Selves, made by Andrew Kötting

Dr Pink on His Research and The Science Behind MetaGuideX

Dr Ryan C Pink PhD MSc BSc (hons) AFHEA After completing an Msc in Medical Diagnostics and Molecular biology PhD on dietary linked Oesophageal cancer in developing world South Africa, he worked for industry around Europe on a 6 million Euro point-of-care early diagnostic cancer tool, which lead on to working on an early cancer diagnostic tool for the International Technology Research Institute, Taiwan. Ryan went to Oxford Brookes as a Research Fellow in 2009 to set up primary blood cell culture and gene profiling in partnership with WIMM, University of Oxford and The Babraham Institute, Cambridge. Ryan is now a Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biology and Genomics at Oxford Brookes University focusing on the effect of extracellular vesicles in cancer and CEO of MetaGuideX cancer diagnostics. Ryan help set up the AHSC MSc Medical Genomics course. He is the assistant manager for the Oxford Academic Health Science Partners promoting biomedical research between Oxford Brookes University, University of Oxford, Oxford University Hospitals and Oxford Health NHS Trust. He is widely involved in Public Engagement projects from Art to science festivals and has presented and published his work internationally, including BBC, House of Commons, London Science Museum, Natural History Museum. For his community engagement projects he has a BBC award and made an honouree member of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. [email protected] - @drpin