Delving behind abstract formulae to show how science helps everyday Irish life

BOOK OF THE DAY:Transformations: How Research is Changing Ireland

CLONDALKIN IN west Dublin seems an improbable place to kick off a treatise on scientific research, but in fact it provides an ideal starting point for a book that seeks to explain how the State's massive investment in research is changing Ireland.

Science can be abstract and a challenge to understand, but the human side of scientific research emerges powerfully in this book. Beautifully illustrated and with a clean, non-imposing layout, it takes the reader into the world of science without any necessity for jargon, buzz words or gobbledegook.

Transformations: How Research is Changing Ireland is a coffee table book well worth having. It is published by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its major research funding scheme, the awkwardly named Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions (PRTLI).

The PRTLI does exactly what it says on the tin and, over the past decade, has invested more than €865 million in scientific and humanities research towards the betterment of Irish science and society. Much of this has come from State coffers, but the country is also indebted to bodies such as Atlantic Philanthropies which have contributed so much, along with private sector research support.

The HEA wanted to produce something that helped ordinary people understand just how ordinary and "normal" people working in scientific, engineering, mathematical and humanities research actually are.

Transformations delivers such an entity, explaining real research in everyday language so that anyone can marvel at the remarkable progress that has been made under the PRTLI.

You needn't have an abiding interest in science to enjoy this book. In fact, the authors are at pains to bring you gently into the world of research, first describing an education research programme benefiting disadvantaged children in a Dublin suburb and then an oral history project under way at University College Cork. This involved 42 women telling stories of their life and experiences while growing up in Munster during the 1930s and through to the 1960s.

This book offers dozens of vignettes which describe people either participating in or benefiting from research.

Take, for example, the scheme run by Dublin City University which links a collection of primary schools in Dublin with remote sensors installed at the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin. The children can monitor conditions inside the garden's beautiful Turner glasshouses, learning about botany, climate change, computers and sensor technology.

Have a look at the efforts to develop not just treatments but cures for cancer at NUI Galway in its National Centre for Biomedical Engineering Science.

They are studying ways of destroying cancer cells without damaging healthy cells.

The book also describes a joint Met Éireann/University College Dublin effort to look into our climate's future. It tells how powerful computers help them model global warming to provide predictions of how the climate here might change.

All of the dozens of stories are written in simple, straight-forward language that anyone can understand. This is a science book without formulae, charts or complex graphics.

Rather, it talks about people, tells stories about how research is helping to change society and how our capacity to do world-class research strengthens daily.

The stories come from all parts of Ireland and from a mix of our universities and institutes of technology.

It is about keeping our roads safe and about reducing the number of pot holes. It is about launching Irish software into orbit and about finding ways to dispose of sewage sludge. Real people, real challenges and answers to real problems. It tells of efforts to develop new drugs, the challenge of getting more benefit from the foods we eat, marine research, studying how atmospheric pollution can trigger asthma and how solar energy might one day power our homes.

Dick Ahlstrom is Science Editor of The Irish Times

Transformations: How Research is Changing Ireland By the Higher Education Authority 182pp, €20