Gareth Mitchell:

Hello everyone. I'm Gareth Mitchell. Today, let's talk COVID and flu. How worried should we be about viruses this winter? And another question, are engineers scientists?

Ji Young Yoon:

I don't usually call myself a scientist. I'm a mechanical engineer and a scientist might not agree if I start to call myself a scientist, I think. But however, we are like cousins.

Gareth Mitchell:

Yes, an engineer keeps it in the STEM family. As for your family back home, how should you all stay warm and green this winter?

Gareth Mitchell:

Well, I think we should just look at a couple of stories that have been making waves here at Imperial College, including a very alluring story, shall I say, about an exoplanet and the James Webb Space Telescope. I won't do any more of a spoiler than that, other than to hand you right over to Hayley Dunning here who's going to tell us more. What do we need to know, Hayley?

Hayley Dunning:

This is a great new study from the James Web Space Telescope. That's the one that launched Christmas Day last year, and then they're studying a planet called WASP-39b, that is about 700 light years away. But this planet is fantastic because it has a really big atmosphere. It's a planet that's about, radius is a little larger than Jupiter, but less than half the mass, so most of it's just puffy atmosphere. That means that it's nice and easy for the researchers to study.

What they've been able to do this time is to find some new molecules in the atmosphere of the planet that they haven't been found before. They found carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, some other common elements like water. But also for the first time in any exoplanet atmosphere, they found something called sulphur dioxide, which is an interesting chemical.

Gareth Mitchell:

What's the significance of that then?

Hayley Dunning:

Well, sulphur dioxide is produced by photochemistry, so that's chemical reactions caused by starlight. This is the first time a photochemical reaction has been detected on an exoplanet of any kind. Photochemistry is kind of, it makes a lot of stuff happen, so it's fundamental for life on earth, for example. It produces the ozone in the upper atmosphere and it helps photosynthesis in plants and algae, and the production of vitamin D in our skin.

Gareth Mitchell:

What's the Imperial involvement?

Hayley Dunning:

Of course, there are teams across the world that have been part of this and led by NASA, but we've got our Dr James Kirk, who actually produced some software to model the results that came back from the telescope to work out exactly what molecules there were. He was one of the first people to see some of this data, and he said that it's just incredible.

Gareth Mitchell:

Fantastic. Hayley, thank you very much indeed. Well, funny enough, we're going to hop from one planet to another because Caroline Brogan is here with, well, let's just say a high impact story about Mars, shall we, Caroline?

Caroline Brogan:

Thanks, Gareth. Yeah, high impact indeed. In fact, this is the largest crater forming impact we have ever observed as humans in the solar system. This was a meteorite that smashed into Mars while we were there to see and hear it, which is absolutely amazing. The meteoroid left a crater one and a half times the size of Trafalgar Square in London, and produced a blast zone around the crater equivalent in size to the area inside London's M25 motorway, so that puts it into perspective.

Gareth Mitchell:

Wow. A bad day for Mars, wasn't it?

Caroline Brogan:

Yeah. They say that the space rock that caused the crater is about the size of a van weighing 200 tons, and we managed to catch it. This is the first time we've caught a crater forming impact in the solar system.

Gareth Mitchell:

Right, so this is Mars Insight's seismometer. Let's listen to some of it, which is very dramatic, especially when you know the context of the sound. I'll tell you what, let's keep that playing in the background whilst you tell me a bit more about this, Caroline. That's absolutely stunning.

Caroline Brogan:

Well, as you said, Gareth, it was detected by NASA's Mars Insight Lander. On Mars Insight is an instrument called a seismometer, which measures things like earthquakes, and Imperial co-developed these seismometers to put on Mars to detect Marsquakes. The presence of Marsquakes can tell us about the interior of Mars, and therefore eventually whether Mars was once able to host life.

Now, the Imperial developed seismometer is what picked up the vibrations from the impact on Christmas Eve 2021. While cameras aboard another orbiter spotted the new crater from space.

Gareth Mitchell:

What are the scientists themselves saying about all this?

Caroline Brogan:

Well, they say that this reveals quite a lot about Mars and about the impact process. They could tell us things in the future about how to recognize other impact signals and just how effective its impacts are at shaking the ground, which is important for understanding the hazards of larger impacts on Earth.

Gareth Mitchell:

So now we know. Thanks very much for that, Caroline. I love those sounds from Mars. Incredible. All right, back to Earth now.

As autumn gives way to winter, there's more and more talk of viruses doing the rounds. As for COVID, thankfully as we record this podcast, we've just had two consecutive weeks of falling infections. The current booster program is well underway. Many of us need them. After all, vaccines do lose their effect over time. People had two doses initially, then came a round of boosters late in 2021, and another round this winter for those in certain age groups or with certain clinical issues.

To assess what might be in store for the coming winter, I caught up with Professor Azeem Majeed of the School of Public Health. He's also a GP in South London, and Azeem began by telling me what we've already seen this year.

Professor Azeem Majeed:

We've seen, in fact three waves this year of COVID. One at the start of the year, one in the spring, one in the summer, and we saw a smaller wave recently. That wave looks like it's now peaked and the numbers are going down again. Case numbers, deaths, admissions to hospital are all declining, which is good news, but we're still early in the winter, so there's still some time to go yet before we're past winter.

Gareth Mitchell:

How worried should we be about new variants? Is there a risk that some new variant could come in that we don't even know about yet that could surprise everybody and cause real problems?

Professor Azeem Majeed:

The virus that causes COVID-19 does mutate consistently and regularly, so we have seen mutations over time and occasionally those can lead to variants that cause a big wave of disease. So we saw that with the Alpha variant about two years ago. Delta, about just over a year ago, and then Omicron towards the end of last year.

Currently we are seeing new variants arising, but they seem to be mainly variants of Omicron. They're what we call sub-variants. We aren't seeing anything that replaces Omicron in terms of its overall impact. So yes, the virus is mutating, we are seeing sub- variants, but they're mainly sub-variants of Omicron.

So far the vaccines are working well in terms of stopping disease and death from any variant that we've seen from Omicron and the variants that are currently in circulation across the globe.

Gareth Mitchell:

I've noticed an increasing number of people certainly here in London wearing face coverings, especially on public transport, and I do as well now on public transport. I've just started doing that. What is your advice about how we can all protect ourselves and each other as the winter progresses?

Professor Azeem Majeed:

It's all right to wear a face mask on public transport, but I think a face mask is a bit limited, so they do help certainly in settings where you are crowded and in contact with other people, and they also help against problems like flu as well. So yes, they have some role to play, I think, and I do advise people to wear them if they're concerned about their health.

I think the problem we have with face masks is that most infections tend to transmit within households where people aren't wearing face masks. So yes, when you wear face mask outside, if it's on public transport or a shop, you have got some protection from infection. But a lot of infections do actually occur within people's households where they aren't generally wearing a mask. They have some effect, but they're not a panacea to stop infection entirely, and so therefore vaccination remains very important.

Gareth Mitchell:

Let's talk about another virus that people are concerned about this winter, of course the flu. I've read reports that we could be in for quite a severe flu season, especially if we compare what might happen in the UK with what we know happened in Australia during the winter that they've just gone through. What can you tell us about that?

Professor Azeem Majeed:

Over the past two winters, we've seen very low rates of flu, probably a combination of measures, vaccination plus linked with COVID measures that were brought in like the face masks, home working, etc. We've been fortunate for the past two years to have had very low rates of flu.

We'll probably see a higher rate of flu this winter, but I expect it won't be as bad as we have seen in some previous years. Yes, higher rates than previously, but not at the level we've seen in some very big outbreaks in previous years.

Gareth Mitchell:

Would you recommend that people rush out to get the flu jab? I've had mine for instance.

Professor Azeem Majeed:

Yeah, again, if you're eligible, if you're over 50 or in one of the at risk groups under 50 or you're a healthcare worker or carer, yes, I would get the vaccine. I got my flu jab along with my COVID jab, so I'd recommend that for all my patients, friends, colleagues, and family members.

Gareth Mitchell:

As for your patients, what are you seeing in the clinic? Are you seeing more people coming to you with various viruses, whether it's the flu or COVID or others?

Professor Azeem Majeed:

We have seen an increase in viral infections this winter compared to previous winters, particularly in children. We are seeing a lot of children coming in with problems like coughs, colds, RSV, for example. It's certainly higher rates than the previous years, but not at dangerous levels yet, but certainly higher than the last two years where rates are quite low because of COVID measures that we had in place.

Gareth Mitchell:

And with COVID, is this just a story about vaccines?

Professor Azeem Majeed:

Vaccines are very important, but also some people in high risk groups can also get drugs as well for COVID-19. If you're a high risk group, you ought to be supplied with a test and if you test positive, you ought to be then supplied the medication to help and reduce the severity of your illness. People ought to check if they're eligible for medication as well as for vaccination.

Gareth Mitchell:

That's Azeem Majeed. Well, now let's take this month's installment of Andrew Youngson's miniseries, Feeling Like a Scientist. It's a multimedia collection of audio interviews, images and transcripts, and it looks at what being a scientist is all about and what advice our interviewees might have for people considering getting into science.

The question today, is an engineer a scientist? As a member of the engineering species myself, it's a question in which I'm especially interested. Here's Andrew.

Andrew Youngson:

Each month in the podcast, we've been featuring some audio highlights from the series. We kicked things off for those that remember two episodes ago by hearing from space science PhD student Jesus. Then last time we shifted focus to medical student Tani. Here we are, number three of four in the series, and this is Ji Young Yoon, who is a mechanical workshop technician in the faculty of engineering.

Gareth Mitchell:

All right, so what can you tell us about Ji? I know she's followed an interesting path into engineering, so tell me more.

Andrew Youngson:

Yeah, she certainly has. She actually began her university journey in dentistry, believe it or not. However, she quickly realized that her real interest lay in mechanical engineering, so she made the brave choice to change her path and she's never looked back. Anyway, enough from me. Here she is talking about just that.

Ji Young Yoon:

I was certainly an engineer growing up. I always had this problem solving mindset and I loved making, creating things. When I was a student, I still remember I built a canoe out of concrete because that was aim of the project. You'll be on the boat and you'll be rowing this canoe.

I still remember in end of the race, I start to see these cracks getting worse and worse and then water was coming in and I was really fun experience, even though the outcome was not something I was hoping for, but I was becoming engineer or better engineer, and even now I'm learning every day.

Am I an engineer? Yes, I think I am, but I think I'm becoming better engineer every day by putting myself to fail every day or some kind of mistake or something.

Andrew Youngson:

Always looking for the cracks in the canoe.

Ji Young Yoon:

Yeah, it was a Titanic moment.

Gareth Mitchell:

Yeah, I really like that insight, all about learning from failure. Engineering really is problem solving. So one big question then. When was the first moment that she felt like a scientist?

Andrew Youngson:

Well, as with other people on this series, this is always the really interesting thing. It varies so much. Ji doesn't actually tend to describe herself as a scientist. It's not necessarily that engineers don't follow a scientific process, she says, but it's more that engineers and scientists approach problems from different sides. So here she is.

Ji Young Yoon:

I don't usually call myself a scientist. I'm a mechanical engineer and a scientist might not agree if I start to call myself a scientist I think. But however, we are like cousins, I will call it. I work with scientists every day here at Imperial, and we are all under the umbrella of STEM, which is the term for science, technology, engineering, and math.

Because of this question, I thought about it and I looked up what is actually real difference between scientists and engineer, and the goal of science is to produce more knowledge, and they ask questions like why does this happen? They, scientists observe and investigate.

Engineers are problem solvers and they ask questions like, how can I make something happen? Engineers provide solutions to programs and try to improve basically human life. It is most likely if you work at a place like Imperial, you will be working with people from various background in their specialism, but under the umbrella term of STEM.

Gareth Mitchell:

Oh yes, it's one big happy STEM family, isn't it? Clearly Ji is passionate about what she does, but what advice does she have for others wanting to follow a similar path?

Andrew Youngson:

I think that the fact that she changed pathways from dentistry to mechanical engineering early on in that university journey that she mentioned, I think this has all had a really big impact on how she's views this. So here's her advice.

Ji Young Yoon:

It is okay not to know what you want to do in life. It is so much pressure at young age, especially when you are not quite sure what you want to do in life. If you look at STEM, there are so many different things you can do. Biology, chemistry, engineering. Even within engineering, there's chemical engineering, mechanical engineering. What do I want to do? It's hard to choose.

Also, even if you think you know, your dream can change and your interest can change. You could apply for apprenticeships program. Here at Imperial, we have great apprenticeships opportunities. Once you complete, you can work for Imperial, mostly in a lab setting or within other higher education institution. If you want to get bachelor's or master's degree, you still can do that after completing apprenticeships.

I am currently finishing master's degree and I'm working full-time job and doing this. So learning is lifelong journey. You really don't know.

Gareth Mitchell:

More words of wisdom. I'm learning so much from this series, Andrew. Where can people hear even more and get even more wisdom like that?

Andrew Youngson:

Oh, there's plenty more, Gareth. The Feeling Like a Scientist series is now live and full on Imperial Stories. That's our home for the college's best storytelling. The easiest way to do this is literally go to your favorite search engine and just put Imperial Stories into it and you'll find the whole series there.

Gareth Mitchell:

That is Andrew Youngson. Well, finally. It's in the news of course. Energy prices are going up and inflation is pushing everyone's spending power down, and temperatures are going south too as the winter sets in. A pretty grim situation really, especially for those worse off.

Hayley Dunning has been discussing it all with Dr Kate Simpson of the Dyson School of Design Engineering. She researches housing, including user experiences of energy and technology upgrades, and the decarbonization of our homes. Hayley and Kate discussed the current energy crisis and how we can retrofit our homes for better energy efficiency. But fuel poverty was the first topic.

Dr Kate Simpson:

Fuel poverty is a result of three things, a low income, high energy prices and inefficient homes. It typically means spending over 10% of an income on fuel and also having insufficient funds for other basic needs.

Prior to the energy crisis, we had around three to four million households categorized as fuel poor. That's from government data from 2020. We don't yet have the government data for 2021 or 2022, but the charities involved in the space estimate that we're now looking at around seven million households in fuel poverty this winter.

Hayley Dunning:

How can retrofitting help tackle fuel poverty?

Dr Kate Simpson:

While we can't do much about energy prices right now and incomes, what we can do is upgrade the energy efficiency of homes. Through insulation, we can reduce the demand for heat within a home. In the UK, we typically heat our homes with primarily gas boilers and that is becoming increasingly expensive because of the current energy crisis related to the war in Ukraine.

If we insulate our homes, that will reduce the amount of energy that is needed to heat that space and consequently reduce the cost of energy for the household living in the home.

Hayley Dunning:

What's the current state of insulation and retrofitting and other technologies like that in the UK?

Dr Kate Simpson:

I've gathered some stats on the percentage of insulation measures installed because I think that's quite easy for people to relate to. We're doing quite well with double glazing. Around 87% of homes have double glazing and around 70% of homes with cavities in their walls, that they have a gap between two masonry pieces, have insulation within them.

However, only 12% of solid wall homes are now insulated and 39% of all homes have sufficient loft insulation, which is over 200 millimeters of insulation. That is quite an easy one, so we've got almost two-thirds of homes without sufficient loft insulation and we should be able to tackle that in a cheap and easy way.

Then if we think around power and heat, only 5% of UK homes have solar panels, 1% have solar thermal, and less than 1% have a heat pump installed already. We've got a lot of opportunity for improvement with our homes.

Hayley Dunning:

There's a lot of ways we can make our homes more energy efficient. But how can access to retrofitting be improved?

Dr Kate Simpson:

Policy has a big role in retrofitting. When the Green Deal replaced Warm Front in 2012, we saw a drop from around 1.6 million lofts being insulated a year through the Warm Front scheme, to around 200,000 per year. For measures such as loft insulation, which are relatively cheap to install, it seems like an easy win to provide grants or interest-free loans for people to install those measures.

Some of the other insulation measures such as external wall insulation are likely more expensive, but then as the gas prices go up, payback periods are coming down. That should really help with making measures more affordable in the way that we have traditionally thought about paying back with the savings on the energy bills.

Something like loft insulation could repay itself within a few months, cavity wall insulation within a couple of years. But one of the big challenges that we also see is that households lack support and information, and if they go to their local authority, the building control teams or the planning teams don't always have capacity or skills and expertise to advise them.

If we were to equip every local area with information points, possibly information hubs, maybe in empty shops in high streets, that could go a long way in providing information to households.

Alongside that, we really need to have a skilled sector of people that can do it. Measures such as loft insulation that can be quite disruptive if the loft needs to be emptied first, but that's a quite low skilled job. If we think around heat pumps, we really need a big push within the gas safe sector to help people move from installing gas appliances to installing heat pumps.

If they were to see that there's a long term policy or a national retrofit strategy, which they can train within and that will lead to a pipeline of work, that should really help the sector and the households at the same time.

Hayley Dunning:

All these schemes sound amazing, but of course they'll take time. So what can we do to weather the current crisis this winter?

Dr Kate Simpson:

Yeah, you're right. Retrofitting will take time. We have over 28 million homes to upgrade this winter. We need emergency support for the households most at risk, the most vulnerable groups. We need to ensure that everybody in every home can achieve a basic level of comfort, and that needs to come through financial support on energy bills during this time of unprecedented high energy bills.

In addition to emergency support through energy services, advice to households, emergency blankets, ways that people can get warm with the minimal cost. Then in the longer term, we need a national retrofit strategy to work on upgrading every single home with a whole house plan to deliver those.

I support the requests made by the End Fuel Poverty Coalition: 60 charities who offer support to the most vulnerable households have come together to request support from the government and they've set out a detailed plan of financial support that would be needed for that.

Gareth Mitchell:

That's Kate Simpson speaking there to Hayley Dunning. And that's it for this edition. But I'll tell you what though, just before I go. Podcasting, there's a lot of it about you know, isn't there? Now to help you, we have a podcast directory of quality conversation and audio from around the college. For your listening pleasure, we've split it into categories. Fancy browsing climate and environment? Or how about science and technology? Or health and medicine? There's the perfect podcast for you up there, and it's dead easy to find what you want to listen to. Check out the multimedia section of Imperial's Be Inspired pages.

But with lots of fancy new podcasts to enjoy, don't forget us, will you? We'll be back with more where this came from in a month's time and we hope that you'll be as well. From me, Gareth Mitchell and all of us on the podcast team, thanks for listening and goodbye.