iSCAN Newsletter
Vol. 11 January 2001

Autumn 2000 Meeting

National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin

The iSCAN Autumn Meeting was held at the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin on Saturday, 7 October, by kind invitation of the Director, Mr Donal Synnott. The theme of the meeting was Thinking Plants and Planting Thoughts and the keynote speaker was Dr Peter Wyse Jackson, Secretary General of Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) which is based at Kew Gardens in London.

Dr Wyse Jackson's visit to Dublin was kindly sponsored by the British Council and he also gave a public lecture on the evening of Friday, 6 October on Botanic Gardens of the World to an audience of over a hundred. As Donal Synnott pointed out in his introductory remarks, the occasion was historic in being the first public lecture in the Botanic Gardens' magnificent new Visitor Centre. Dr Wyse Jackson's lecture dealt with his work for BGCI which takes him all over the world; he explained the role of botanic gardens in education, conservation and research and he treated the audience to superb colour slides of some of the most interesting gardens.

The Autumn Meeting attracted an attendance of about fifty, the most that have attended one of our regular one-day meetings. In the morning we had two speakers from the Glasnevin staff: Felicity Gaffney on First Steps in Public Education at Glasnevin and Dr Matthew Jebb on Hidden Marriages and Phantom Pregnancies. They were followed by Dr Wyse Jackson on The Role of Botanic Gardens in the 21st Century

Lunch was taken in the well-appointed restaurant in the Visitor Centre and afterwards Mr Synnott led a guided tour of the Gardens. The afternoon session consisted of four presentations: Jack Sullivan and Dr Fiona Doris on Upward Bound in the Dublin Liberties; Mary Waldron, President of the Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland on Modern Gardening and the Green Agenda; Dr Con O'Rourke of Teagasc on Can Biotechnology and Organic Farming be Friends?; and Dr Tom Mason of Armagh Planetarium on Fossil Woodworm.

Short accounts of some of the presentations are given below.

We are very grateful to Mr Donal Synnott for making available the Visitor Centre for the meetings and for the excellent arrangements. We thank Mr Harold Fish of the British Council for his support of iSCAN over the years and we wish him well as he leaves his Dublin posting.

This newsletter includes items about the Callan Museum, a Gulbenkian award, a book review and a reprint of an article from the ECSITE Newsletter by Dr Jorge Wagensberg who spoke at our Autumn 1997 meeting. We invite members to renew their membership for 2001 and the appropriate form is enclosed.

First Steps in Public Education at Glasnevin

by Felicity Gaffney

The National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin was founded in 1795 by an act of parliament, and was run under the auspices of the Royal Dublin Society. It came into state care in 1878 and is now part of Duchas, the Heritage Service. Today it covers fifty acres and is home to some 20,000 different plant species, from habitats as diverse as arctic tundra, to tropical rainforest, parched desert, and blanket bog. There are ten glasshouses in all, displaying the sheer richness of plant diversity, which is the very essence of a botanic garden. There is also a botanical library, botanical art collection, an extensive herbarium and museum collection, each unique in its own right, and all of national importance. September 2000 saw the opening of a new Education / Visitor Centre which includes a lecture theatre and reception facilities.

One of the traditional functions of Glasnevin has been that of passive recreation. Situated just one and a half miles from the city centre it is one of the valuable green spaces of the city. Through visitor surveys and general interaction with the public it has become very clear that many visitors do not understand the role of Glasnevin, the importance of plants in general, in our lives, or indeed what exactly a Botanic garden is. Effective and sensitive interpretation, both in the visitor centre and throughout the gardens, will hopefully alter the perception that many people have, i.e. that recreation is the main or only function of the gardens.

To tackle this problem, an education strategy was written in which we analysed the visitor profile. We wanted to identify who our visitors are and what we could do to enhance the quality of their visit. The visitor profile covers quite a varied cross-section of the population covering both formal and informal education. Within the formal education sector, we have primary and secondary level school groups and botany, pharmacy, horticulture and teacher training students at third level. Among the groups under 'informal education' or 'public education' we would have family groups, gardening societies, gardening holidays, senior citizens, and women's associations. By developing effective education programmes and being aware of the needs of the different visitor groups it is hoped to increase visitor numbers and improve the quality of the visit for all. There are no admission charges at the gate so we do not have exact visitor numbers. It is estimated however, that we have approximately 125,000 visitors every year. To double this figure, we feel would not be unduly intrusive. The groups that we would be interested in targeting initially would be in the formal education bracket.

Formal Education
Addressing the needs of the schools is one of our main concerns. The schools programme has been developing over the past three years. Many schools are now aware of the existence of an education officer at the gardens. Some teachers are at a loss as to what is the best way to use the Gardens as an educational tool and they welcome the intervention of the Education Officer. The presence of summer schools for teachers has enhanced the profile of the gardens and heightened their awareness of the educational potential of the gardens. The range of themes and topics which can be explored are endless in the ever-changing natural environment of a Botanic Garden. I have listed some of the topics that we are working with at present.
The themes explored are:

• The wonderful diversity of the plant kingdom
• The uses of plants in everyday life
• Native trees
• Seasonal changes in trees
• Conservation of rare and endangered plants
• Plants that eat animals

Topics covered:

• Plant adaptations
• Economic plants
• Pollination
• Camouflage in plants
• Parallel Evolution
• Seed dispersal
• Tree measurement - height, width, age of a tree.

Programmes with similar themes are offered to both primary and secondary schools. Certain amendments are made and obviously more detail is included for older groups. To develop and implement a successful education programme, a site specific for education needs to be provided. Basically we need a messy room where water can be spilt and plants can be potted and experiments can be carried out. Hopefully a space will be created in the next phase of building works planned for the Gardens.

Promoting Conservation
"All the major international strategies for biodiversity conservation and sustainable living (Caring for the Earth, Global Biodiversity strategy, Convention on Biological Diversity, Agenda 21), have emphasised the importance of education in the fight to stop biodiversity loss. Botanic gardens have an important role to play in implementing these strategies " (Education Guidelines BGCI).

The National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin promotes conservation in the following ways:

1. Ex situ by actually displaying and giving a home to plants which are endangered in the wild both native and internationally. e.g. threatened plants such as the Killarney fern, Trichomanes speciosum, and Encephalartos woodi, a rare south African cycad no longer found in the wild.

2. Being involved in the genetic pooling of endangered species e.g. the conifer conservation programme.

3. By displaying a native plant collection, this highlights the significance of certain plants that may have been dismissed by the uninitiated previously, as "just a weed".

4. By highlighting the problems associated with habitat destruction

At present it is only through live interpretation that conservation issues are addressed. For people who would like to know more about these issues and for students researching projects, a more formalised approach, in the form of interpretative panels and handouts will be implemented. Equally the ethos of a Botanic Garden is to highlight and promote the issues of Agenda 21 and to implement these strategies.

Informal education
A public lecture series has commenced in the new lecture theatre and is being very well attended by members of the public. We also hold family days with treasure trails, art workshops and drying workshops for children.

Interpretation
"Interpretation is essential. Without it a botanic garden can seem little more than an attractive park. Signs, pictures, posters, displays, exhibitions, maps all help to provide the vital link between the work and mission of a garden and its visitors" (Education Guidelines BGCI).

Live interpretation -We depend largely on live interpretation, i.e. interaction with the education officer through guided tours.

Plant labels and information labels -Every plant is labelled in the correct botanical fashion. As Latin is often an unfamiliar language, we are hoping to add the vernacular name of the plant where applicable. In the native conservation area the plants are all labelled in Latin, Irish and English. Information labels providing information on various habitats are on display in this area also.

Audio visual presentation. We have a film of the gardens available for viewing in the lecture theatre. This is of interest to many visitors who do not want a guided tour, yet do not want to miss out on the highlights of the garden through lack of advance information. The film also presents the work and purpose of the Gardens in terms of Conservation, Education and research.

Panels. There are some interpretative panels on display in the new Education Centre, further themes will be developed throughout the grounds.

Printed material Leaflets, short guides, books worksheets, etc.

With the ongoing development of the education dept. and further restoration work of the Palm house it is hoped that the National Botanic Gardens will continue to be a special place for people both locally and nationally.

Hidden Marriages and Phantom Pregnancies: The Plant Kingdoms

Matthew Jebb, National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin

Taxonomy is one of the oldest professions. Hunter-gatherers would have been the first people to distinguish animals from plants; the former ran away and needed hunting, while the latter were literally rooted to the spot and merely needed gathering. This division of living things reflects the means whereby they obtain their nutrition. Plants can obtain the energy for synthesising the proteins, oils and carbohydrates that make up their bodies from sunlight. This remarkable ability to photosynthesise is due to the presence of the molecule chlorophyll.

In plants the chlorophyll is confined to small sub-cellular organelles called chloroplasts. It was discovered in the 1960s that these organelles also contained their own strands of DNA. This DNA is organised in the same way as a bacterial genome, and led to the remarkable idea that chloroplasts are in fact evolved from once free-living photosynthetic bacteria. Photosynthetic bacteria (Cyanobacteria or Blue-green algae) are still common, and are found in a wide variety of habitats. The earliest fossils of photosynthetic bacteria date from 3,500 million years ago.

When you look at seaweeds in a rock pool it is apparent that these algae fall into three groups by their colour, namely: brown green and red seaweed. Although in physical appearance they all appear to have much the same level of organisation they do in fact have very different evolutionary histories. It was long known that their storage products and chlorophyll types differed, but it has only recently been shown from studies of DNA sequences that the date at which they split into the three colour lineages goes back some 1,000 million years. More surprising still is the notion that all land plants (from mosses to giant Sequoias) are derived from the green algae alone. Thus there are in fact three distinct Plant Kingdoms, a brown, green and red kingdom.

When botanists first began to divide the plant kingdom into recognisable parts they separated the spore producing plants from seed plants. In fact in Shakespeare's day fern-seeds were considered invisible! Animal reproduction could be understood because either within an egg or a mother's body could be seen an embryonic animal that would gradually develop after birth into a fully grown adult. In seed plants a similar embryonic state could be seen inside the seed. Thus it was assumed that sexual reproduction had presumably occurred to initiate the formation of the embryo in the seed. With spore plants (Algae, Mosses, Liverworts and Ferns) on the other hand it was not clear where or how sexual reproduction had occurred. Because of this, these plants were classified as having 'Hidden Marriage' or Cryptogamy. Flowering plants on the other hand were classified as Phanerogams because they had 'Obvious marriage'.

In 1849 the German botanist Wilhelm Hofmeister published a remarkable work in which he accurately illustrated the entire process of reproduction in mosses, ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms. The quality of his drawings were amazing for the time, and have been referred to as "Magnificent beyond all that has been achieved before or since in descriptive botany" a claim probably still true today. He found that in all these plant groups the organism displayed a return, twice repeated, to the single cell as the starting point in each case of a new phase of development. For this double life-cycle he coined the term Alternation of Generations. It was only later shown that the number of chromosomes was halved at one of these single celled phases, when the spore was produced, and brought back to its full complement when the gametes fused at fertilisation. Thus Hofmeister was able to show that there existed an intimate relationship, differing only in degree, from mosses, through ferns, horsetails and gymnosperms to angiosperms. The discovery that spore plants and seed plants, which had once seemed so distinct, merely differed in the degree to which these two generations displayed themselves was a monumental discovery. For the first time it was clear that all plants formed a genetic continuum in developmental plan. This discovery was of profound importance in setting the scene for Darwin's publication on his theory of Evolution just eight years later.

A moss plant has just one set of chromosomes. At its apex in spring it produces single-celled gametes. The female gametes, or egg-cells, are contained in minute flasks while the male gametes are flagellated, and swim through water droplets that collect on the moss plant apex. When a male gamete fuses with an egg cell a double set of chromosomes is generated. This single cell now develops parasitically on top of the moss plant to form a slender stalk with a swollen capsule at its end (this is equivalent to the oak tree). This capsule produces single-celled spores by meiotic divisions that halve the number of chromosomes. When released, these spores are borne on wind currents to new habitats where they germinate and grow into a new moss plant.

A pine tree has two sets of chromosomes. It develops female cones in which a meiotic division produces a spore, which grows into an embryo-sac, a multi-cellular organism with just one set of chromosomes (this is equivalent to the moss plant). Within the embryo-sac some nuclei are contained in minute flask-like chambers and are egg-cells. The tree also develops male cones in which meiotic divisions produce spores, which grow into 3-celled pollen grains (again this is equivalent to a moss plant). These pollen grains are released and carried by wind currents to the female cones, where a pollen-tube grows from the pollen grain. One of the nuclei in the pollen grain is a male gamete and when fully grown, this gamete is released from the pollen tube and fuses with an egg-cell. When the male gamete fuses with the egg cell a double set of chromosomes is generated. This single-cell now grows into an embryonic pine tree, with root and seedling leaves and a terminal bud. When the seed finally germinates growth of this embryo is resumed, and the seedling eventually turns into a fully-grown tree. Thus these two plants show essentially the same cycle of generations, only differing in the degree to which they are expressed.

The Ginkgo is a gymnosperm (lit. 'Naked Seed') and not an angiosperm (lit. 'Hidden seeds'). This is because it does not form a flower but merely has a cone. Why should this be important? Angiosperms differ from gymnosperms in another more important reproductive character, namely that the seed is produced after fertilisation, whilst a gymnosperm seed is produced before fertilisation. When a Ginkgo sheds its seeds in autumn many may not be fertilised, even though they have been pollinated. This is because the male gamete is present inside the seed, but has still not been released so that it can fuse with the egg-cell. Likewise Pine cones are pollinated in their first spring, but the release of the male-gamete, and its fusion with the egg-cell, doesn't occur until the second spring. The pollen plant thus lives for a whole year inside the developing seed of the Pine tree before releasing the male gamete. But this can lead to a waste of resources, because all gymnosperms are prone to Phantom pregnancies. The seeds are grown whether or not pollination has occurred. Thus every seed in a pine cone will develop whether or not it has been pollinated, and as a result the un-pollinated seeds have a big store of food but no embryo growing within them.

Angiosperms have evolved the remarkable ability to only grow a seed if they have been pollinated and successfully fertilised. This is achieved by a process of double-fertilisation. The embryo-sac of angiosperms is tiny, with just 8 cells. Just before the male-gamete enters the embryo-sac it divides into two equal cells by mitosis. One of these fuses with the egg cell to make the embryo, while the second fuses with two other nuclei to make the endosperm - the food supply in the seed for the developing embryo. Thus only when an embryo is present does a seed grow. We can see this on any flowering plant where some flowers fall without developing fruits.

Why do land plants have this rather bizarre alternation of generations? The answer is in another question: How would an oak tree send its male gamete to another oak tree 200 metres away? The answer is it encloses it in a small capsule - the pollen grain. This grain's sole function is to carry the gamete to the stigma of a female flower and grow a pollen tube down to the embryo-sac and release the male gamete right next door to the female gamete. Without this 'gamete-carrier' land plants could never have left the sea.

All seaweeds reproduce by spores. Green seaweeds universally exhibit the alternation of generations, as do many red types but very few brown types. In fact many brown seaweeds, such as the typical wracks (Fucus sp.) of our Irish coastline, reproduce in the same way as animals. In spring they release egg-cells and sperm into the water, and these fuse to create zygotes that attach themselves to rocks and grow into new adult plants. Mosses and ferns are somewhat restricted by their gametes. Their male gametes are released into water droplets and must swim to the egg-cells. Thus both mosses and ferns are plants of wet habitats. Many can complete this vital part of the life cycle in a wet season, but for others it means they must live in shady habitats or adjacent to water bodies. Like amphibians they must return to water to breed. As with the evolution of the reptilian or bird-egg or internal gestation of the mammalian foetus, conquest of the land requires an ability to isolate gametes from the environment. The embryo-sac, as exemplified by the seed that develops from it, represents the plant kingdom's answer to reproduction on dry land.

So, give new respect to green seaweeds, they are the mother of all land-plants, and perhaps feel a touch of sorrow that brown seaweeds and red seaweeds never made it out of the water. If they ever do so in the future, they will find that being a land-plant is a very crowded environment, quite unlike that into which the first green plants would have launched themselves 400 million years ago.

Can Biotechnology and Organic Farming be Friends?

Con O'Rourke, Teagasc

Teagasc is involved both in organic farming and in biotechnology - in the former via research at Johnstown Castle and teaching in Athenry College, and in the latter mainly via research on dairy foods and animal production. Biotechnology in Teagasc has received a major boost with the recent additional £25million government funding.

As a component of biotechnology, genetically-modified (GM) plants currently include 13 major crops grown on 35million hectares worldwide, 40 foods and 60% of soy/maize-based processed foods. Most such crops are insect, disease or herbicide resistant but some also include quality attributes such as reduced alkaloids in potato and higher solids and increased shelf-life in tomato. Of particular relevance to the Third World is the development of vitamin-A enriched rice and orally-administered human vaccines produced from staple foods.

A more science-aware public is required to evaluate the benefits-versus-risks of GM plants. Unfortunately, the fewer second-level students taking chemistry and physics at higher level means that the agenda may increasingly beset by fear, ignorance and tabloid journalism rather than by scientifically-verifiable facts.

Areas where the interests of biotechnology and organic farming can (or should) complement each other include environmental protection and nutrient recycling (e.g. slurry digesters, 'superbugs' to biodegrade plastic wastes), animal welfare (e.g. diagnostic kits to measure stress), GM crops requiring no or much-reduced pesticides, and tissue culture and embryo rescue in both plants and animals to conserve and propagate rare varieties or breeds.

Microbiological safety (e.g. Salmonella, Listeria, E. coli, BSE) is by far the most important food-related public health issue. Chemical residues in food are continuously monitored and rarely exceed safe limits. Most heavy metal-based pesticides (e.g. copper, mercury) are being, or already have been, withdrawn from agriculture. More environmentally-sensitive practices, such as BIFS, IPM and VRT ('Biologically Integrated Farming Systems', 'Integrated Pest Management' and 'Variable Rate Technology', respectively), are gradually closing the gap between conventional and organic farming.

Recent Developments at Armagh Planetarium

Tom Mason Armagh Planetarium

Space exploration is of perennial interest to the public but the Earth Science part of the Planetarium building was a little spare when I first arrived in mid-1996, probably because of astronomers interests in observing distant objects using electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum. Thus, they are remote sensing experts par excellence. This means that the astronomical perception of Earth is of a planet best observed from a distance. The Earth Science display area reflected this perception by being filled with satellite images from LANDSATS and SPOTS and even some old Russian images.

Nowadays, the satellite images are fewer, we still show some, for they are sheer poetry in their own right, but now we have more bits and pieces for the children and adults to handle, e.g. fossils and dinosaurs, eggshells and puppets, living iguanas and trilobites, corals and shells in a sandy beach with big Cretaceous ammonites. Dig your own dinosaur in our sandpit, and look at the replicas of the Berlin Archaeopteryx and other flying animals' fossils. Earth scientists are trained to handle the merchandise, to lick and taste or rocks and minerals, to scrape and blow clean our fossils. This accords well with our mammalian heritage as social, tactile animals. To support my thesis I refer you to babies mouthing and slathering their toys, their food, and their immediate environment. All parents know how close children are to puppies. Pups want to mouth and chew everything. Kids want to touch and test. They often remind me of mediaeval traders biting their coins, differentiating base from noble metals. I firmly believe that we must let our young visitors have a touching experience, as that is how they hard wire their memories for future reference. We learn by doing.

We have set up a new OUTREACH project to take the battle into the schools. Schoolchildren are insatiable for knowledge. Some are delinquents. If you are into OUTREACH that is a hazard of the game. Part of your on-the-job-training must be to learn how to put them down, but not literally. However, if the truth were told, I am often sorely tempted. A prerequisite for this type of work is a sense of humour. In addition to the OUTREACH visits to schools, we are also promoting INREACH where the kids come to us for an enhanced visit. We used to let them wander around, their teachers spending their visit in our coffee shop. It is vital that this does not happen, and the teachers must accompany their classes for the duration of the visit. Under the ancient regime, the children swiftly became bored. Now that we talk to them, and show them the telescopes, fossils, and other bric-a-brac they are less easily diverted.

So you can see that the Planetarium is worth a visit as a kid, to see and touch, we actively encourage it. And to go away convinced that the heavens are indeed splendid, but for the Earthbound, there is plenty to keep you occupied. Imagination allows us to travel the past as well as explore the future in space. You must communicate your enthusiasm and sense of awe, and at all costs keep your sense of humour!

The Callan Museum

On 23 November 2000, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, was guest of honour at the opening of the Callan Museum at NUI Maynooth. The Rev. Prof. Nicholas Callan (1799-1864) is often called the Faraday of Ireland for his researches on electricity and magnetism and the museum at Maynooth has an impressive collection of his laboratory equipment

The museum received funding of £100,000 and raised matching funding to create a modern facility. The museum is open typically from May to September on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2 p.m. - 4 p.m. and on Sunday, 2 p.m. - 6 p.m. The curator is Dr Niall McKeith and the museum website is http://www.may.ie/museum/.

Congratulations

We congratulate Ann Scroope of Scroope Design (http://www.scroope.com) for receiving a Gulbenkian award for her work on the astronomical museum at Ireland's Historic Science Centre in Birr.

Best wishes

As we go to press we learn that Carol Power is relinquishing her position in the RDS and is taking up a new post at Dublin City University. Carol has been Honorary Secretary of iSCAN since its inception and has carried out her duties with great efficiency and good humour. We thank her for all she has done for iSCAN and we wish her happiness and success in her new job.

Good news from W5 in Belfast

whowhatwherewhenwhy - W5 staff are now in the building. We took possession on the 18th December, just in time to unpack and have a Christmas house warming!

The exhibits are looking great and we are on target to open at the end of March. Well, lets be bold and say we will be open on 30th March. We are running a web competition with our adventure heroes Team W5, so please enter and win a place at the preview! Our website is www.W5online.co.uk

Staff numbers are growing and everyone is working away. The Demonstrators seem to be having the most fun, and I enjoy their reading material with books on Baking Soda and Magic Maths!

Plan your Easter visit to W5. We look forward to seeing you!

Sally Montgomery

Book Review

The Heritage of Ireland: natural, man-made and cultural heritage, its conservation, interpretation, business and administration, edited by Colin Rynne, Neil Buttimer, Helen Guerin (Collins Press, 715pp; iep25 pbk.).

This big, ambitious book takes a broad interpretation of our heritage - everything from music and Gaelic games, to works of civil engineering. It is aimed at those studying heritage management (Colin Rynne manages UCC's course on the subject) or those already working in the heritage sector. iSCAN members will no doubt find much of the content useful, but anyone who has to organise even a small exhibition, or erect a plaque or information board would also find it helpful.

The multi-disciplinary approach the editors have taken is particularly welcome, and hopefully it will foster some much-needed cross-sectoral work. How often does one visit a site noted for its natural history, to be told about its flora and fauna but not the local geology, for example, and moreover find no mention of the wonderful railway viaduct nearby, nor the old mines in the hillside above.

Anyway, back to the book in hand, which opens with accounts by an impressive line-up of expert contributors on no fewer than various 27 'heritages'. Thus Dr Ron Cox from the centre for civil engineering heritage (based at TCD's faculty of engineering), writes a short essay on our engineering heritage; Gordon Herries Davies contributes one on scientific heritage; and UCD botanist Grace O'Donovan outlines our natural heritage, including the six national parks. (Others include Irish Times sportswriter Tom Humphries on gaelic games.)

The next section - on conservation, interpretation and 'museology' - features essays on, for example, the issues raised when planning an exhibition on the Great Famine, the development of folk museums (such as Bunratty and the Ulster Folk & Transport museum), and the process of interpretation (by Ann Scroope, responsible for the science museum at Birr Castle). The final section covers aspects on business and administration.

While not aimed at the general reader, the book nonetheless has much of general interest. And if you are new to 'museology' you will, after reading this book, visit museums and heritage sites with a fresh and more knowledgeable eye.

Mary Mulvihill

HARNEY REVEALS MUSEUM PLAN

The Irish Times, Wednesday, September 13, 2000. From Conor O'Clery, in Beijing

The Tanaiste, Ms Harney, is to ask the Government for formal approval to build a science and technology museum in Dublin, with branches in Cork and Galway, it was learned last night. The Irish Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (ICSTI) has already endorsed a report recommending the project, drawn up by a working group from the enterprise, science and technology board Forfás.

The project has not been fully costed but it is estimated it could involve capital expenditure of from £5 to £20 million. It is envisaged that it would be an interactive museum in which children and other visitors could interact with exhibits, and with interchangeable sections which could be exchanged with museums abroad.

News of the museum proposal emerged after Ms Harney told the Vice-Mayor of Shanghai, Ms Zuo Huanchen, of her idea. Ms Harney had been praising Shanghai's science and technology museum. She said: "One of my ambitions is to establish a science and technology museum in Dublin. I have established a working group in Ireland to look at this."

Officials at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment travelling with the Tanaiste later confirmed to The Irish Times that planning for the project was at an advanced stage. The working group was set up by Forfas after it was asked by ICSTI to prepare a report on the project. The report was completed recently and endorsed by ICSTI.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is now preparing a memo to the Government seeking formal approval for the concept, an official said. If approved, the intention is to set up an expert group - made up of international and Irish personnel - to recommend on format, content and location. The official said it had also been suggested there shouldn't be just one museum in the greater Dublin area, but sections in Cork and Galway. Because of the expenditure involved, Cabinet approval would be necessary.

Ms Harney said she became enthusiastic about such a project after visiting the science and technology museum in Tel Aviv last year. "The reasoning behind such projects is that Ireland has got to stay at the forefront in the area of science and technology," an official said. "It's very important that we interest kids in science, and take science in secondary schools.

"The Government is introducing science to the primary school curriculum next year or the year after. If students don't take science at second-level they won't take it at university level. It's all part of an effort to raise the awareness of science and technology."

In an exchange of views about relations between Ireland and Shanghai, Ms Zuo made a point of inviting Irish arts and artists to visit Shanghai, Asia's fastest growing and most dynamic city. Ms Harney is on a tour of China taking in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Basic Principles of Modern Scientific Museology

(reprinted from the ECSITE Newsletter, by kind permission)

Jorge Wagensberg, director of the Science Museum of Fundació 'la Caixa', Barcelona, has derived thirteen working hypotheses from the successes and failures of twenty years of 'museum making' in Barcelona. The Museum is in the throes of an expansion programme. If all goes well, in 2003 a new museum will open with an area five times greater than at present. What were previously tacit working hypotheses have become, for the new project, explicit museological principles: "Here they are in case they are of use to anyone," invites Wagensberg.

1. A Science Centre (SC) is a space devoted to arousing, in the visitor, stimuli towards scientific knowledge and method (which is achieved with its exhibitions), and to fostering scientific opinion in the visitor (which is achieved with the credibility and prestige that its exhibitions lend to all other activities in the museum. talks: debates, seminars, conferences, etc).

Teaching, training, informing, protecting the heritage, popularising, are other missions of the SC, but none is a priority. The priority is to create a difference between before and after the visit that will change the visitors' attitude to all activities related to science: travelling, going to a bookshop, asking questions in class, selecting TV channels, and many, many other activities. The museum offers more questions than answers. One way to measure the effects of a museum visit is to note how many questions visitors have on leaving in comparison with how many they had on entering.

Moreover, fostering public scientific opinion is a requirement of our democratic system. Science is the form of knowledge that impinges most on a citizen's life. Now, in a democracy all votes are of equal value. Therefore, the distance between scientist and citizen is a nuclear contradiction of modern democracy, a contradiction to be solved. There is a new fact: scientists no longer want to be alone. Science centres, another relatively new reality, may help them meet the citizen.

2. The audience of SC exhibitions is universal, without level, or any other characteristic. There are no 'other kinds' of visitor at a SC. This is because the exhibitions are based on emotions, not on prior knowledge. However, other SC activities may have special purposes and do indeed target people of a particular level, interest or skill.

A museum has the obligation to know its audience and to concern itself with the gaps in their knowledge.

3. The priority museological and museographical element is Reality, that is, the real object or the real phenomenon. Text, voice, image, game, simulation, setting or computer model are priority elements in other media such as publications, TV, cinema, theme park, classes, lectures, theatre... but in museography they are only complementary elements. An exhibition should never be based on such accessories: an exhibition of accessories of reality may be many things, but not an exhibition.

A good exhibition is never replaceable by a book, a film or a lecture. A good exhibition creates a thirst for books, films, lectures. A good exhibition changes the visitor. A good Science Museum is, above all, an instrument of social change.

4. The museographical elements are used, first and foremost, to stimulate three types of interactivity with the visitor: Manual or provocative emotion interactivity (Hands On) Mental or intelligible emotion interactivity (Minds On) Cultural or cultural emotion interactivity (Hearts On)

The third is highly recommendable, the first is very appropriate, and the second simply indispensable. Interactivity means conversation. To experiment is to converse with nature. To think is to converse with oneself. A good corner in a museum also triggers conversation between visitors.

Genuine manual interactivity gives a chance for such conversation: nature's response (with no intermediaries) suggests a new manipulation, a provocation of nature, another question for the visitor to choose and decide. The visitor slips under the skin of the scientist. Pressing a button to set off a pre-programmed process is only a caricature.

Mental interactivity means practicing the intelligibility of science, distinguishing the essential from the accessory, seeing what there is in common between the apparently different (the difference is always obvious, what there is in common is worth investigating). Mental interactivity is to move away from a museum experiment, and to associate ideas with everyday life, with other cases that may share the same essence. The joy of recognising these convergences is the basis of the emotion experienced at a science museum. A good science museum is a concentration of guaranteed intelligible emotions. A good science museum arouses emotions about the intelligibility of the world. It is, we might say, the method of the intelligible emotion.

Science is universal, but the real cases, in which science is manifested, are particular. Cultural interactivity gives priority to the collective identities of the museum environment. This precludes clone museums and provides the owners of such a culture with cultural emotions and the foreigner with a valuable point of view.

5. The best stimuli to make the citizen follow the scientist are inspired by the same stimuli that make the scientist do science.

In fact science is already quite exciting and fun; there is no need to use the incentive of other kinds of spectacle. (In general the converse is true). The museologist must 'drag from' scientists their true stimuli (which of course they never confess in their publications).

6. The best method for imagining, designing and producing museographical installations in a SC is the scientific method itself (based on the principles of objectivity, intelligibility and dialectic).

The idea is that scientific museology should be scientific - as objective, as intelligible, a dialectical as possible. The systematic critique of everything exhibited must not be forgotten. Humour helps to cut down both the current truth and its eventual criticism to size. Not only must the results of science be shown but also the method used to obtain them. The image of science as able to do everything and never making mistakes prevails in the community. In fact, the opposite happens: there is no reason why science should be successful with any imaginable project and, if science advances, it is precisely thanks to its mistakes, which are more the rule than the exception. This will help the visitor to evaluate.

7. The content of a SC may be any piece of reality from Quarks to Shakespeare, provided that the stimuli and method of exhibition are scientific. Priority will always be given to the real object or phenomenon, for understanding of which the appropriate scientific disciplines are then used, because 'nature is not responsible for the curricula of schools and universities.'

Everything can be looked at with a scientific eye, but, unlike other forms of transmission of knowledge (like a book), an exhibition does not necessarily have to cover a subject or issue intensively or extensively. A museum does not need to have everything. The reality available in each case rules.

8. The SC is a collective space (although it can be enjoyed individually). This defines a hierarchy of values in the museographical space with respect to the number of visitors who can access it simultaneously: