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Chair Pose
4 Comments on Chair Pose
He kicks my legs apart, positioning my ankles at the binding sites of the spreader bar. I talk about my previous Dom as he straps me in the cuffs.
"Old, childless bachelor, sitting on all that money, and still he insisted on sending me this cheap crap. The clips on the cuffs are already broken, see?"
"I see it," he answers as he ties the bar to the chair's back legs.
With my ankles locked in place, he sets about tying the bar to the chair legs before drawing the rope between the legs and under to bind my wrists at the far edge of the seat.
I go on with my complaining, slipping into memory. "He told me to set up wish lists for any kinky toys I wanted. I only picked out things on Etsy, but he ignored it all and sent me whatever Amazon garbage he wanted me to use. Then he made me perform with it on cam for him. I did as he ordered, but it never felt right."
Mister clucks his tongue as he listens, my voice a little muffled now with my head flipped upside down, my face pinned between the chair back and my upstretched arm. He doesn't share the disdain that I hold for the first Dominant to train me— I think he feels bad for the guy, imagining himself in the place of the resented ex. "Pity for him he never figured you out."
"His loss, right, Mister? I'm not that difficult, am I? You understand me. You know how to work me."
"Figuring you out," he answers, tugging at the knots around each wrist to check for tightness, "is no mean feat."
He steps back, surveying his work. If I tip my neck as far as it will reach and dig my chin into my shoulder I can see him, holding his jaw as he appraises my form, bound and spread and ready to be used however he desires. Exploring the limits of my range of motion in this pose, I arch an invitation through my back. He steps up behind me, too close now for me to see. I drop my head and study the hem of his boxers around the edge of the chair back.
His touch lands abruptly, storming the most delicate part of me.
"Wait! I'm not wet yet!"
"You are," he says, squelching a finger against the pucker of my opening to make his point. "Hear it?"
I do. It's loud, a pot of mac n' cheese just at the thickening point. He swipes the wet fingertip across my thigh to drive the point home.
"But it doesn't feel wet, Mister…" I whine. "I'm not ready yet, I need…"
He cuts across me, teasing, pretending to be stern. "What makes you think anybody plans to use your pussy now?"
He steps away from me again and, this time, I close my eyes, not wanting to see. What will come will come, and when it does I will take it, whatever it is.
"Besides," he continues, his voice reaching me from the corner of the room where his play-equipment bag lies open on the floor, "we know how to get you wetter, don't we?"
We do. He speaks of fear, of pain. These peculiar limbic stimuli that drench me for reasons that I still don't understand.
"Don't we, Bunny?" he asks again, this time in a growl. Before I can answer, one rough finger shoves inside me to the hilt. My whole body starts at the shock of it, and I cry out. That was not supposed to feel good. Forceful opening: a punishment for my failure to answer the first time.
"We do, Sir."
With a slurp, he pulls the finger out, wiping it this time across my lower back.
"Now then," he says, and the next moment I feel his breath on my cheek as he bends to press his face to mine. "What's your safeword?"
I gulp, but do not hesitate to answer. "May Day."
"That's right," he says, pulling away, and all I hear after is the rush of the cane as it slices, ruthless, through the air.
Did this story leave you wanting more? If I've got your curiosity, be sure to let me know in the comments, like and subscribe. Cheers!
Tags BDSM, bondage, D/s, Dom/sub, erotica, fetish, kink, kinky, punishment, sadomasochism, sex
The Walk to Water (Part 2)
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CONTENT WARNING: Sexually explicit, 18+. All characters are consenting adults.
For the next few miles, Arley persists in her efforts while XianSheng persists in his stoic non-attention to her work. He's fully hard now but silent as ever, the hand at her neck moving in a constant rhythm. With the radio off, the rush of tires on road consumes her awareness. She slips into a state like meditation, her bobbing neck, her tugging lips, all of it falling away until there is only breathing. Arley's sense of her own being collapses until she is nothing but a nose, two lungs, and subservient desire.
Then the hand at her neck departs. Takes the wheel. She doesn't falter. The rhythm of his gentle touch is in her now, and she barely notices its subtraction. That is, until his left hand leaves the wheel, takes her by the nose, and squeezes.
Robbed of her steadying breath, Arley begins to gasp around her XianSheng's cock. As she struggles to inhale, he releases her nose and takes her instead by the back of the head, shoving her down until he fills her throat, stoppering her breath. Then he returns to her nose, sealing it from the air.
With only one free hand he isn't strong enough to hold her down by force and keep her nose pinched at the same time. But Arley is a good girl. She knows what he wants and, though his right hand isn't there to trap her, she pretends. She holds her head still, flexing her shoulders as if she were struggling against him. Seconds tick. The panic sensation sets in, but still she holds. Her next breath will be his to allow, whenever he so chooses.
And XianSheng is merciful. Just as Arley's eyeballs start to pop, he lets go.
Air rushes into her chest in a gigantic heave. But before she has a chance to exhale, he is pulling her back down by the nose. Sealed shut again, this time with her lungs at full expansion, Arley's vision swims. The air grows stale inside her and her blood bubbles with excess carbon.
Arley got herself into this. And he won't let her out of it easily. Her mandate, now, is to trust him enough to continue to obey the direction of his hands. She must trust that he knows where her limits lie. That he will draw her to the edge and still protect her, relenting exactly at the line between challenging and dangerous.
It goes on, and he never makes a sound. Arley grows woozier with every passing round. The intervals of holding shorten, the reprieves of open nose and throat grow longer, but still, her desperation mounts, as does her determination to prevail.
Traffic slows to a near-stop once the highway is behind them. The brutal hand leaves her nose and doesn't return. Arley hovers, gasping for breath with his foreskin resting between her open lips. Then fingers arrive at the front of her throat and push her up, away from his lap.
"Enough. Sit up."
She obeys, shrinking back into her seat. Coldness in his voice plunges her into meek embarrassment. Both of his hands are back on the wheel now, his pants still open. She watches him wilt as her normal pace of breathing gradually returns.
Trying to relax, Arley takes in the change in the landscape. The congestion of the city at peak morning commute has given way to tree-lined streets, the rows of townhouses to the left of her boasting wide green swaths of lawn. She remembers just how much she's been looking forward to spending this day outside the city. Absently, she brings a hand to the front of her neck, massaging it as she registers her relief at having her mouth and throat to herself again.
Then XianSheng speaks.
"Did I tell you to suck my cock? Or did you just take it for yourself like a greedy little whore?" His eyes focus straight ahead as he speaks, just as they have throughout her half-hour ordeal.
"No, Sir, you didn't," she stammers. "Yes, Sir. I did. I…"
He holds up a hand, silencing her apology.
"You know better. I think you choose to misbehave because you want to be punished."
With those words, he spares a glance in her direction. His look is soft with affection, and her brain is soft with oxygen depletion. For a moment, she's in love with him.
Then he reaches behind her seat and pulls out a one-liter water bottle, full to the top. He drops it on her thighs as he makes the turn onto Valley Green, forest now surrounding them on all sides.
"You have one minute. Drink it all."
Tags BDSM, erotica, fetish, kink, omorashi, Philadelphia, power exchange, sex, throat fuck, Wissahickon
Arley is outside waiting when XianSheng pulls up for her.
She has dressed carefully, the day's activities and XianSheng's tastes on her mind. Her shorts are shorter than will be comfortable once the day heats up and the sweat of climbing makes thighs grab at each other. It's a sacrifice she makes not just willingly, but gladly. The continual rub, rub, rub of flesh on flesh, spanning the hours of the climb, will introduce an element of pain beyond the soreness of muscle, closer to her center than the blister that may form at the back of an ankle.
She'd go for a tee-shirt for any other day out on the trail, but she'd rather not test XianSheng's benevolence. He's already allowing her to wear flat shoes– a first, but non-negotiable today. They have plans for today that they don't want to miss out on, sitting in the ER waiting on care for an ankle sprain. Hiking boots, he'd agreed, were a necessity. "But you'll make up for it elsewhere, won't you, little girl?" he'd asked, more of a warning than a question, and she'd agreed without hesitation.
So there she stands, the sun already growing hot at its low angle, in shorts that more resemble a pair of denim panties and a lace-trimmed camisole, her freckled shoulders and the tops of her tits coated in two layers of sunblock. Waiting, with her ID crammed into her tiny back pocket and two full canteens of water, one in each hand.
He pulls up and she slides in, the fabric seats, the dusty buildup in the center console familiar. He drives a Toyota even though he could afford something flashier. But XianSheng is not given to flash. He moves unassuming, and for good reason. There is a wife back home, a woman he loves too much to expose her to the darkest ruminations of his need. There are two children who are no longer children, but are nevertheless at home and will expect their father around six o'clock for dinner. In all his years of creeping at the corners of the nearby city, of adding a day onto the back end of every business trip, he has never let them down.
Arley slides a hand over XianSheng's knee as she leans over for a kiss.
"Good morning," she murmurs into his neck in a voice still full of sleepy gravel. "Thanks for coming to get me." She settles back into her seat as he shifts into gear and pulls off from the curb. He's quiet today, she notices, returning her greetings with a stiffness that she's never felt from him before. Their dates usually begin with him pulling her against him the moment the hotel room door closes behind her, his kisses hungry, his cock already standing firm to greet her. Maybe it's the absence of those walls that normally contain them. It's been a year, true, but this is their first time venturing together out into the open world. She looks over at his lap and confirms that, no, he isn't hard. Today is going to be different, in more ways than one.
The man has a name, surely. But the fake name that he gave her was gaudy and Western, a poor fit. She couldn't call him "Hugh" and keep her face straight. Instead, she's used the honorific since before they spoke out loud to one another, the deference of it ushering them both into the first toe-dips of what would grow into a clear dynamic, a power exchange. It was perfect, crystal clear over text, but in person she pronounces it so poorly that half the time it translates to "rope" or "braided cord". Not inappropriate, considering. If her butchering the Mandarin bothers him he shows no sign, indulging her with a smile as he corrects her, explaining again that he is not the rope and would she please present her wrists so that he may remind her of the difference?
Arley knows the man beside her in ways that are invisible to everyone else who knows him, his desires a dance that she rehearses, countless images of his secrets tucked away in her PC. But in this one way, she is even more of a stranger to him than are his lab mates, his overseas collaborators, fellow members of his HOA. Arley will never know his name.
She doesn't mind it, the contortions of their strange intimacy. She knows him as he is to her. Her master. Her teacher. Her XianSheng, and that's enough.
The pair roll through the last of the narrow one-ways of her Bella Vista neighborhood, having exchanged little more than the perfunctory greetings. He runs a redlight, his hands spasming on the wheel as he realizes his mistake. She castigates herself silently and quickly as a voice from her childhood slips into her head, brothers and their teenage friends with stupid jokes about Asian men and driving. She shakes her head a little to clear the thought, and he looks over.
"How many bottles so far?" he asks.
She blinks, plunging suddenly back into the jitters of the morning's preparations. His question cues her attention towards the lower of her belly, the seatbelt pressing against the little bulge beginning to swell above her hips.
"Two," she answers, turning to look into his face and meeting his resolute ear instead.
What hovers between them today that causes her to feel awkward? They have been seeing one another nearly a year, sporadic dates interspersed with heavy bouts of late night texting. They have spent full days together while he is ostensibly at work but is actually in a day-use hotel room two towns over, and they have never run out of conversation. She listens about the parents who are dead and the sisters left behind, the inner workings of mechanical parts he has designed, the taciturn son who was twelve when he took apart the family computer, and he listens to her feminist screeds in between telling her that she's a pretty little slut, and will be good for her XianSheng, won't she?
But today the thirty-minute drive looms ahead of them, and Arley begins to feel sweat sliding between her thighs that has nothing to do with the warm morning. She wants today to be perfect. Like a fantasy, not some stilted litany of forbidden acts. She is suddenly desperate for something to fill her mouth besides talk, so she reaches over and unzips him. Both his hands remain on the wheel as she works hers through his fly and under the waistband of the cotton shorts below, freeing his soft cock for her mouth to take as she bends over him.
He is utterly silent, eyes committed to the road ahead as he merges on I-95 and accelerates to exactly five miles per hour above the speed limit. His is not the silence of a held-back moan. He is concentrating on the drive, hardening slowly in her mouth, unyielding to the distraction of her working him with her cheeks and tongue. XianSheng is a careful man (his mind forever running through potentialities and how he might explain them to his wife), and road head might not be his thing, but he does not stop her. The submission of the act, at least, must satisfy him, her quiet, determined ministrations to his pleasure. He allows one hand to leave the wheel and brings it to the back of her neck, where he twists gently at the fine strands of strawberry-blonde.
Check back for more of Arley and Xiansheng's illicit adventure in the days to come! 😘
Tags ddlg, desperation, Dom/sub, erotica, fetish, kink, omorashi, panties, power exchange, sex, wet, wetting
The Walk to Water (teaser)
4 Comments on The Walk to Water (teaser)
So there she stands, the sun already growing hot at its low angle, in shorts that more resemble a pair of denim panties and a lace-trimmed camisole, her freckled shoulders and the tops of her tits coated in two layers of sunblock.
Tags ddlg, Dom/sub, erotica, fetish, kink, omorashi, panties, power exchange, sex, sugar baby, sugar daddy, wet, wetting


Parking. In the city. When you got there late. And did not have a plan.
Produce from the grocery store that you plan to make taste good enough that your children will want to eat it, but instead it just goes bad in the crisper drawer.
Friday Five-O: "Do I Need a Copy Editor?.."
I know, times are tough. The time you spend on your writing is already costing you billable hours at your day job, and you don't want to "throw good money after bad," as one of my great-uncles used to say.
Friday Five-O: Kill all your darlings. Kill! Kill!
I know Grub Street, as well as probably all good writers, prizes Faulkner's words, "In writing, you must kill all your darlings." What if I'm not always ready to bring my knife to the page? How can I learn to objectively edit my work?
Friday Five-O: How can I maintain my momentum as a writer?
How can I maintain my momentum as a writer while juggling bustling social plans, a house full of family, and my job?
Glad you called. I've been thinking the same thing: How the HELL am I going to write my book, coach a bunch of ungrateful teenagers softball, keep up the integrity of my work as an independent editor, father kid #2, be a husband, do the shopping and my own laundry because beloved wife draws the line at my work-out clothes...you get the picture.
Friday Five-O: Am I a "Writer"?
Can you call yourself a "writer" if you have not been published? I have not been published and feel like a liar when I introduce myself as a "writer" at parties, even though I spend the majority of my time banging away at my keyboard.
Can I call you "Chris"? I'm just saying, since we're not sure whether I can call you a "writer"?


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The Orange Peels: Sun Moon [Album Review]
Kevin Poindexter | September 3, 2015 May 17, 2013 | Review Archive, Reviews
The Orange Peels
Sun Moon
Minty Fresh Records [2013]
Fire Note Says: Sun Moon will sneak up on you and set its hooks deep in you brain.
Album Review: The Orange Peels are back with their 5th album, and no surprise, it is chock full of indie power pop goodness that is going to put a smile on our face. The Orange Peels have often fallen more on the pop side of the power pop spectrum, but with Sun Moon, the band mixes in a bit more power, and the results are quite pleasing and instantly noticeable. The guitars buzz a little louder, the drums kick a little harder, and the vocals pack a bit more emotional punch. Overall the album lays on a thick Big Star/Posies vibe that is always going to score highly for me if it's done well, and for the most part it is!
Highlights are everywhere on this record, but I primarily want to focus on three songs, because I feel like they show off all of the different sides of the band. "Bicentennial Bridge" starts off with a gentle acoustic guitar, before the big drums kick in and take it up a notch. Lead vocalist Allen Clapp's voice really soars on this one, yet retains a rougher edge than it does on other tracks. It's a raw and emotive performance. "Grey Holiday" is a toe tapping pop number, it's a very bubblegummy track, highly addictive, sugary, and probably will cause diabetes in those prone to it, but it's worth it. This is pop at its finest. This would have been an AM radio hit in the early 70s. The guitars are straight out of the Badfinger playbook, Beatle inspired and instantly familiar, but not so much so that you can put your finger on any one particular song. But the most impressive song on the album is the last song, "Yonder" it's very British sounding, and at over 7 minutes it really has room to stretch out and grow. Clapp's vocal performance on this one reminds me of Freddie Mercury, and the song sounds as big as those classic Queen epics that this song was probably inspired by. I also hear some similarities to Gay Dad on this song, which is another band that is going to perk my ears up if you sound anything like them.
This album gets better the more times you listen to it, and it gets stronger as you get deeper into the record. It really doesn't start to hit its stride until the third track. The first two songs are fairly straightforward numbers, not bad, but nothing special, but the album really starts to soar when you get to "Bicentennial Bridge" at track three. All in all, Sun Moon is a really good album, and one that you should check out. Let it grow on you, the hooks take a bit to sink in, but once they do, they set themselves deep in your brain.
Key Tracks: "Bicentennial Bridge", "Yonder", "Grey Holiday"
Artists With Similar Fire: The Posies, Big Star, Apples in Stereo
The Orange Peels Website
The Orange Peels Facebook
Minty Fresh Records
-Reviewed by Kevin Poindexter
Kevin Poindexter
Kevin has spent the past six years as a partner in an independent record label in addition to his duties at The Fire Note. Kevin prefers cd and digital to vinyl by a fairly wide margin and has begun the process of giving his vinyl away (not the valuable ones or the gbv related ones though so don't ask).
Latest posts by Kevin Poindexter (see all)
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Tags 4 Headphones, Minty Fresh Records, Poindexter, Release Date: 5/14/13, The Orange Peels
The Features: The Features [Album Review]
The National: Trouble Will Find Me [Album Review]
1 thought on "The Orange Peels: Sun Moon [Album Review]"
Simon Workman
Nice review, I'll have to check these guys out!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Science Podcasts & Science Radio Shows
Science Centre Showoff
Live on location at the Cambridge Science Centre: Atmospheric chemistry, human papilloma viruses, jet engines and DIY rubber-band fridges...
Presented by Chris Smith, Dave Ansell, Ginny Smith.
Rubber_bands.jpg
CC-BY-SA - Bill Ebbesen
Live on location at the Cambridge Science Centre, Chris Smith, Dave Ansell, Ginny Smith and guests Rod Jones, an atmospheric chemist, Margaret Stanley, an HPV cancer researcher, and Caroline Goddard, jet engine metallurgist, pit their wits against the assembled public. Plus Dave and Ginny make crisp packet fireworks, prove you can't be heard screaming in space and make an elastic-band-powered fridge...
02:51 - Science Centre: Gravity Defying Mug
Dave Ansell explains how to scare your friends by dropping a mug with seemingly nothing to stop it!
PlayFull TranscriptDownload
Science Centre: Gravity Defying Mug
with Dave Ansell, Ginny Smith, The Naked Scientists
Dave - So, I've got a lovely little demo here. I have a mug on a piece of string and on the other end of the piece of string is a little nut, of the metallic variety. So in fact, it's a M8 nut. The fact I know that from just looking at it, is slightly worrying.
We're just going to run the string over the top of a mug and undo the knot in it otherwise, it's going to go horribly wrong....
Chris - So basically Dave, you've tied a mug, a china mug onto a lump of string and you got a little nut on the end of that 1-meter long bit of strong and a biro. You put the string over the biro.
Dave - The string is run over the biro. So, at the moment, I'm holding on to the nut. So, that's holding up the mug. And now, I'm going to let go of the nut.
Chris - It might go smash.
Dave - Okay, so 3, 2, 1...
Chris - Now, for the benefit of people that aren't actually able to see this because they're on the radio, Ginny, tell all.
Ginny - So, the mug looked like it was going to fall. Obviously, once Dave let go of the string, gravity was pulling it down and it fell quite a long way, but stopped about a foot from the floor. If we look closely, we can see what happened is that the nut has swung and wrapped itself around the biro several times and that's holding it in place. Why has that happened?
Dave - So, as the nut starts to fall, it starts to spin around the biro and as the string gets shorter and shorter, and shorter, it's a bit like climbing to the middle of a roundabout. As you climb to the middle of a roundabout, the roundabout gets faster and faster, and faster. So, the string spins around and round, faster and faster, and faster, until it's going fast enough to wrap around enough times that it doesn't fall out on the floor and smash.
Ginny - Probably not one to try with your mom's best china.
05:07 - A Pollution Tester for Your Pocket
Atmospheric Chemist Rod Jones explains how he's developed a pollution detector which fits in your pocket...
A Pollution Tester for Your Pocket
with Professor Rod Jones, University of Cambridge
Professor Rod Jones is a Professor of Atmospheric Physics in the Chemistry Department at Cambridge University. He explained explained how he's developed a pollution detector which fits in your pocket to Chris Smith and an audience at the Cambridge Science Centre...
Rod - Well, I do lots of different things, all the way from looking at the ozone layer, through to looking at climate change. But tonight, what I've brought along is one of the very small sensors that we make so that we can actually look at air pollution and try to understand how air pollution itself works and then we try and build slightly more sophisticated gizmos which allow us to monitor what a person walking the streets might be exposed to.
So, inside this box which the people can see here, those on radio, it's about 20cmx8cmx2cm it's got one nice green button which is the GO button and inside it, there is a mobile phone. I'm going to hand it out in a minute and what this does, it's also got a navigation system inside so that we can know where it is. We have three different gases being measured, somebody can put this in their pocket. We know where they are, we know what they're exposed to.
Chris - How do you know where they are?
Rod - Well, because we've got what's called a GPS aerial inside it, which is what you need in your car satnav to help you navigate. And so, inside here, there's a mobile phone. We have a satnav effectively, and we have some chemical sensors. So, we can actually monitor every second or so, what a person is being exposed to, and then we can relate that back to what we know is causing pollution in the town. We can also relate it back to somebody getting more asthmatic or wheezy as they go through a more polluted area. So, we're trying to conduct experiments which are linking those two.
Chris - Why is this better than what we have already?
Rod - It's better because you'd have a real problem in putting conventional instruments into your pocket. They weigh about 60kg and they're about the size of this table.
Chris - So, how have you managed to make it so small?
Rod - Well, we've taken sensors which are traditionally used in alarm systems and we've just made them better, and about a thousand times more sensitive. We can now make them about a thousand times smaller, which is what you can see here, what the audience can see here. Because we can make them really small, we can now make them much more portable and we can just give them to people to carry around.
Chris - What can you detect with it?
Rod - Well, these little chappies can just detect gases like carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides. We've got other ones which can do other gases as well, but nitrogen oxide is particularly well-known or thought to be associated with health impacts. So, that's one gas that we can go for.
Chris - Let's take some questions. Get your hands up in the air if you'd like to ask anything. Let's start down here at the front. Who are you sir?
Mujal - I'm Mujal. I live in Cambridge. I just wanted to ask, what is air pollution and how do you measure it?
Rod - Well, air pollution that we're worried about is probably nitrogen oxides which come from cars. It's probably particles that come from cars and buses particularly. A lot of it is linked to transport, but those are the principal gases that you'd expect us to link to air pollution and those are the ones which are monitored by the national networks.
Chris - Who's next? What's your name sir?
Elliott - Elliott. How long does it take to make one?
Rod - Gosh! Well, to design and build one from first principles, it takes a few years. But once you know how to do it, it probably takes a few minutes.
Chris - So, there's hope for you yet, Elliott. You can do it with Lego perhaps. Yes, madam.
Ailish - Hi, my name is Ailish. I live here in Cambridge. I was just wondering you mentioned putting the device in your pocket. How accurate a test would that be compared to breathing in harmful chemicals?
Rod - That's a very good question. Of course, if you put it in your inside pocket, not very accurate. So, what we're actually doing and I've not brought them along this evening is make much smaller versions of these which effectively, you can put on your lapel much closer to where you breathe in. So, we're trying to get closer and as we build these things smaller and smaller, we can put them in much more sensible places.
Chris - Can I just ask a quick question, Rod? What happens if you put it in your trouser pocket and you've had beans?
Rod - Well, we don't measure methane.
Chris - But isn't that quite an important greenhouse gas?
Rod - It is an important greenhouse gas and in fact, I don't know whether you're trying to lead me into another area, but we've got other sensors just like this which are designed to measure greenhouse gases so that we can for example work out how much CO2 Cambridge is emitting. Not methane yet, but we could go that far, but I'll keep that for another story I think.
Chris - What's your name?
Laura - Laura.
Chris - Hello, Laura.
Laura - Once we've created pollution, can we get rid of it?
Rod - Gosh! That's another very good question. Well, it gradually decays in the atmosphere. Even when it rains, we get rid of a lot of pollution, but some pollution takes quite a few months to get rid of. So, there's a natural process of getting rid of it, but if you're emitting it locally then you can easily get very high concentrations even though you're losing it gradually. It's like filling a bath.
Chris - What's the amount of time that carbon dioxide, once it comes out of the exhaust pipe of a car or whatever for instance stays in the atmosphere once we've released it? How long is it around for causing a greenhouse effect?
Rod - Well, of course, carbon dioxide isn't a pollutant - an air quality pollutant - in the way that we were talking about a couple of minutes ago. But once it comes out of your tail pipe, it's probably in the atmosphere for 100 or 200 years.
Chris - So, anything we emit now, we've potentially got to deal with for 100 or 200 years. We got to live with their consequences for that long.
Rod - Yes, I think that's absolutely right.
Carlo - Good evening. My name is Carlo and I would like to know when we walk in the street, are children more exposed to pollution than adults are because maybe adults are taller or does it make no difference?
Rod - We're looking at that and the effect doesn't seem that great. Of course, if you park your buggy at the exhaust of a bus, you're in trouble. But actually, what's really important quite often is which side of the street you walk on. And so, one of the things we're leading towards doing is developing a phone app to tell you which side of the street you want to walk on if you want to take a low pollution route. So, that's good question.
Chris - That could mean that everyone takes that route and then they walk really slowly because they're all stuck behind the slowest person in the world who is inevitably going to be on that same pavement. Then you get more exposure because you got to breath the air for longer.
Rod - Well, that's probably true so maybe we should...
Chris - You have to factor that into the app. One more question here.
Errol - Hi, Errol. How many data points do you actually need to get a good map of a town? So, how many people carrying it for how long to give you a really good sort of map of pollution across say, a city centre?
Rod - We've been trying for years to get that number and we haven't got there yet. Every time we can make a measurement with more sensors, we see more detail. So, we're trying to unpick that problem at the moment.
12:17 - Science Centre: Crisp Packet Fireworks
Ginny Smith and Dave Ansell put crisp packets in a microwave - what will the result be?
Science Centre: Crisp Packet Fireworks
Ginny - There seems to be a lot of rubbish on this table. Have you just been eating,
crisps? And what's with these plates? I don't think I'd want to eat my dinner off that.
Dave - Well, also on this table, I have a microwave.
Ginny - Yeah, I thought that was just for your dinner as well.
Dave - I get quite peckish, so this is understandable. So, the rubbish we have is a crisp packet and crisp packets are quite beautiful things. They're shiny on the inside and they kind of plasticky on the outside. What we have here is a microwave oven. Now, the way a microwave oven cooks is by essentially causing electric currents to flow backwards and forwards inside the food. Food isn't a very good conductor, so it doesn't get very hot. However, the shiny aluminium inside a crisp packet conducts electricity really quite well. Aluminium is almost as good a conductor as copper.
Ginny - Now, I've always been told not to put anything with metal on it in the microwave.
Dave - This might explain why. Probably, a crisp packet is the one thing that with permission isn't too bad in a microwave. But anything else with metal is a really, really bad idea. So, I'm going to open the microwave and I'm going to put the crisp packet into the back of the microwave. Hopefully, that should be standing up.
Ginny - Okay, so we've now got a crisp packet in a microwave and we probably want to put the house lights down around now so that people can see what's going on, and then you're going to turn on the microwave?
Dave - So I'll turn on the microwave, this should cause lots and lots of electric currents to flow inside the crisp packet and that might make it a bit warm.
Ginny - So, we got what looked like a whole load of sparks going out from inside the crisp packet. If there was just a current flowing through there, why did we get sparks?
Dave - So, first thing, I'm going to very, very carefully go in and because it could be very hot and take the crisp packet out.
Ginny - Okay, that doesn't look like it would be much use for holding, crisps anymore. It's all scrunched up. It's kind of melted into one blob. It doesn't look very appealing.
Dave - So, it has shrivelled up in the same way as if you put a crisp packet on a fire, it gets hot and it shrinks, and shrivels up. As it's doing that, it kind of bends and you get big electric currents flowing through it and all of a sudden, you can get bits getting close to each other. There's kind of a shortcut the electricity can take through the air and it jumps through the air and produces sparks. As it shrinks, the bubbles get close to each other. You get sparks and you get these rather exciting noises which I'm sure you heard.
Ginny - So, it's a little bit like lightning except it's jumping a much smaller distance than lightning does.
Dave - Exactly, right, yes.
Chris - Ginny and Dave, thank you very much. Anyone got any questions? We have one down the front here. What's your name, madam?
Joti - Hi. I'm Joti. I live in Cambridge. You can put food in the microwave on aluminium foil and it's absolutely fine. It heats up. So, how does that happen?
Dave - I think aluminium will get hot in a microwave if the microwaves can get to it, it will get hot. But if it can't shrink because with the crisp packet it was shrinking and you get the small gaps where the electricity can jump as sparks, you don't necessarily get sparking. You do get sparking off things like gold rims on plates because then you get a little break in the gold rim and then you get sparking across that. I wouldn't necessarily say it was a good idea in general, but I can quite believe that it works.
Ginny - So, you only really get sparks when you've got something that can conduct the electricity, but then a point where it can't conduct it anymore and it has to jump through the air. So, because the crisp packets have a sort of plasticky coating, that can't conduct the electricity anymore. So then, when the electricity reaches that point, it has to jump and that's why you get the sparks.
Chris - We have a question down the front here. What's your name?
Nathan - Nathan.
Chris - Hello, Nathan. What can we do for you?
Nathan - I was just wondering if you would be able to do that again.
Ginny - Dave is just going to set it up again. We're going to put the crisp packet back in the microwave and turn the house lights down, and then we'll set it going. There we go.
Chris - Okay, next question. Yes, sir, down the front here in the black t-shirt. What's your name?
Ashley - Ashley.
Chris - Hello, Ashley. What would you like to know?
Ashley - What will happen if you tried to cook food in a crisp packet like that?
Ginny - Well, as you saw, the crisp packet kind of shrivelled up and melted. So, I think what you would find is you'd have bits of melted crisp packet stuck to your food. It will probably also burn in places.
Dave - And hot plastic doesn't taste good, I've found from experience so I wouldn't recommend it.
Ginny - No, I don't think it will be the best way to cook your dinner.
Chris - Okay, there's one more question here. This gentleman just in the second row here. What's your name?
Aaron - Aaron.
Chris - Hello, Aaron.
Aaron - So, if it takes electricity 10,000 volts to jump a centimetre, how many volts were in that crisp packet when it's sparking?
Dave - There was certainly - there will have been thousands of volts. The electricity kind of sloshs backwards and forwards through the crisp packet. And as it does that when it kind of slams into one end, you get very, very high voltages.
Chris - Just over here, yes, sir.
Fergal - My name is Fergal. I know hot plastic doesn't taste good, but is there any health risk associated with cooking food in plastic dishes in a microwave?
Chris - Ready meals.
Ginny - So, yeah. I think the answer is that they do do tests on things like that. So, I think anything where your food sold in a plastic thing that says you can put it in a microwave, they would've tested that and they would've shown that the chemicals weren't going to harm you. If it's something that's not microwave safe then if it melts then you actually end up ingesting more of that plastic because it's melted into your food. That's probably not going to do you much good.
Dave - There are some plastics which when you get them hot, do give off bad chemicals but they would deliberately pick them not to use in food packaging. The really nasty thing about the hot plastic when it starts to burn, you get lots of nasty chemicals and hopefully, you're not burning your food too badly when you're cooking a ready meal.
19:17 - Developing the HPV Vaccine
Virologist Margaret Stanley explains how they developed the HPV vaccine to lower the rates of cervical cancers...
Developing the HPV Vaccine
with Margaret Stanley, University of Cambridge
Virologist Margaret Stanley explained her work developing the HPV vaccine, aimed at lowering the rates of cervical cancers to Chris Smith and an audience at the Cambridge Science Centre..
Margaret - Well, I work on viruses called papillomaviruses. They're incredibly interesting because they only live in the epithelium that covers your body like the skin and the interior of your mouth and the interior of the reproductive tract, and your back passage. Most of the time, these viruses do no harm. In fact, if you ever see - an effective one it's likely to be a wart. But they're a huge family and like all families, they have black sheep.
The black sheep of this big family cause cancer. The cancers they cause, the big one is cancer of the cervix in women. Now, that is a huge problem in the world. It's the second commonest cancer in women worldwide. In Sub-Saharan Africa, it's the commonest cancer in women. So, we're talking about a really serious disease. Now, it's not just the cervix. In men and women, it causes cancer of the anus which is the back passage. It causes cancer of the tonsil and it also causes cancer in women in the vagina and vulva. So, we're talking about something really important. In fact, 5% of all cancers are caused by these viruses to one in particular...
Chris - How does it cause cancer in those places?
Margaret - Well, that's a very interesting question. First of all, the virus doesn't intend to cause cancer. Cancer for a virus is a dead end because viruses exist to make more viruses and that means they have to reproduce. Now, when viruses cause cancer, they are no longer able to reproduce in the cell, so it's a bad news for the virus.
It's because these viruses, particularly this 116, carries two genes which are really important for the virus to reproduce. But if those genes are expressed in the wrong place in the epithelium because epithelium we're talking about looks like a brick wall. Normally, these two genes in the virus are made in the upper parts of the bricks. But in the cancers, they're made right in the bottom and that's absolutely the wrong place because that's where the cells are dividing. These genes distort the way cells divide and that's...
Chris - So, the virus puts those genes into the cells and makes the cells grow more than they should.
Margaret - Grow more than they should and not only that. It stops them distributing their DNA and their chromosomes properly. So, they end up with abnormal numbers of chromosomes and they end up able to accumulate more and more errors. That's how cancers develop.
Chris - So, how did you turn the virus into a vaccine that could prevent those diseases? How did you do that?
Margaret - Well, what you have to do is prevent infection with the virus. We can't act on the cancer, but what you can do is prevent women and men being infected by this virus by giving them a strong immune response. And so, what you do, this is what's been so interesting is we make shells of the virus particle. A virus looks like an egg. It's got a shell and what you do when you make the vaccine is, you make the shell, but you don't have the interior, you don't have the DNA. This shell, to the body's immune system, is exactly like the real virus and it makes antibodies to the proteins in the virus shell.
The big technical advance was being able to make these shells we call them virus-like particles. They're incredibly effective. They generate really strong defence responses and we know that these vaccines work. We know they work because the vaccines are now being laid out in certainly the industrialised world. In Australia in particular where they've been vaccinating since 2007, we can already see the decline in infection with the virus and we can see the decline in the pre-cancers caused by these viruses. So, it's a triumph.
Chris - Let's take some questions. First one over here...
Julian - My name is Julian.
Chris - Hello, Julian.
Julian - You were talking about vaccination and we have a policy in this country to offer vaccination to teenage girls for human papillomavirus. Do you think we should extend that to teenage boys as well?
Margaret - Yes. You're talking to the converted. The policy of giving it to girls was developed because at the time when all these policies were being generated, focusing on cervical cancer was the focus. But now, in the time that's elapsed, we've got a lot more information. So, we know how much male cancer there is. Basically, if you leave 50% of your population unprotected, then you've always got a great big pool of susceptibles. So, it's a much more sensible policy to immunize everybody. Then you don't have to worry how long the protection's going to last because everybody's protected.
Chris - Yes, madam.
Joti - My name is Joti and I'm from Cambridgeshire. Is there any selective population who is more susceptible to the viruses?
Margaret - No, that's another thing. If you went out and took a million women, we know that probably 800,000 of them would get infected, just because that's the way that virus transmits. But we don't know why some people are susceptible and can't get rid of it. It's not to do with ethnicity. It's not to do with behaviour. ..
Jodi - Haplotype?
Margaret - Haplotype, no. We do not have a handle on what the immunogenetics are, what is it about an individual and their ability to defend themselves against this virus.
Chris - Why is it Margaret that you catch it, but then you don't get the cancer for years?
Margaret - Because you get rid of it. Most of it, you get rid of. But also, you're looking in those people who develop the cancers, you're looking at chance events. You're looking at the probability of a molecular accident. Now, you can do the statistics - how often do mutations occur? So these are chance events and that's why it takes time.
Chris - Yes, sir.
Alex - Hi. My name is Alex. I'm from Cambridge. I have two very quick questions for you. The first is, you said we're all exposed to these viruses and yet, we need a vaccine to make an immune response so why is that? And secondly, you also said that we couldn't make a vaccine against the cancer. Why can't we make a vaccine against the cancer since the cancer would also have these viral particles in it?
Margaret - First question, I forgot it.
Chris - If we can make an immune response to the vaccine, why can't you just use your own immune response to boot virus out?
Margaret - Okay. This is a virus that only lives in the skin. Because of that, it is not very well exposed to the immune system. Now, you have to get into the circulation to the lymph nodes to generate a good immune response. And so, actually, in natural infections, you don't make a good immune response to this virus. Even though it's a pretty lousy immune response, still most people actually manage to get rid of it. The real issue for whether you're going to get cancer or not is whether you're one of those individuals who cannot clear this virus, cannot get their immune system to really deal with it. And I don't know who these people are, which is why you immunise everybody to give them a strong immune response because when you are immunised, you put your vaccine into the muscle. So, you go way beyond the skin and that way, you get straight into the lymph nodes to where the body really generates its defences.
Chris - Just very briefly Margaret, the second question which is, we can vaccinate against the virus. Why can't we just vaccinate against the cancer?
Margaret - Because cancers as they develop have evasion strategies which evade the immune response, which deregulate the immune response. So, it's a bit like turning a huge tanker around, trying to generate an immune response against the cancer that's going to be effective because that cancer has spent 15, 20 years, avoiding the immune response in the host.
Chris - It's become quite well practised We've got time probably just for one more question, young lady just down here.
Grace - Hi. My name is Grace and I just wondered why some people get cancer and others don't.
Margaret - If I knew that question, I'd be on the plane to Stockholm for the Nobel Prize. Some people are susceptible to these virus infections. Cancer is not one disease. It's a word that describes many diseases which occur in particular sites. So, I'm talking about cancer in the cervix and I know what causes that cancer which is a virus. But if I was talking about cancer in the breast, I don't know what causes cancer in the breast. I don't know why some women get it and others don't. Each cancer has its own profile, has its own risks, and these are different to a cancer in a different site. So, I can't answer your question properly.
29:58 - Science Centre: Bell Jar
What happens in a vacuum? We remove the air from a bell jar to see if you can scream in space...
Science Centre: Bell Jar
What happens in a vacuum? Dave and Ginny remove the air from a bell jar to see if you can scream in space...
Ginny - Okay, next to the microwave, you've got another quite interesting contraption. What I can see is what looks like a sort of old fashioned alarm type bell inside a Perspex tube, why are we looking at this?
Dave - So basically, I have a sealed Perspex tube and inside of it there's a bell and if I press the button, to make the bell ring, you can hear the bell really quite well. You can also see the little fan in there, blowing air around. You can see there's some air moving inside. So, what I'm going to do now is a really, really classic experiment. What I've got this tube attached to is something called a vacuum pump. It's a bit like a really, really hardcore vacuum cleaner. A normal vacuum cleaner can take out about 10% of the air from something. This will do about 99% if you give it long enough. So, if you listen to the bell at the moment, it's quite noisy and I will slowly pump the air out.
Ginny - So, that's quite noisy as well.
Dave - Yeah, vacuum pumps aren't the quietest of devices. What you can hear when I'm talking to you is that when I'm talking, I make the air in front of my mouth vibrate. And so, the air moves backwards and forwards, and the air in front of that bashes into the air in front of that which bashes the air in front of that. And eventually, unless you're listening to me on a radio when the loud speaker in the radio makes the air vibrate. So the air bashes and bashes, and bashes until it gets to your ear, and that makes your ear vibrate, and you can hear me talking. So, what we're doing here is we're slowly taking the air out of the tube. So, the bell should hardly be able to make the air move to start with and then the air is so thin that it shouldn't be able to - any vibrations in that are going to have hardly any effect on the rest of the world and hopefully, it should be quite quiet.
Ginny - What I can see is that where the little fan was blowing some bits of tin foil around, they don't look like they're moving anymore. So, have you turned the fan off?
Dave - If you look carefully, the fan is still running. So, what I've done instead of doing that is I've taken the air away. So now, if we try ringing the bell, it's almost entirely quiet.
Ginny - Yeah, you can sort of hear that something is going on, but it's definitely not the kind of bell noise you could hear before.
Dave - And you can see the clapper moving, but it's very, very quiet. If I let the air back in again which take a while...
Ginny - If I press the bell while you're letting the air back in, we should be able to hear it starting to get louder. Can you all hear that?
Chris - So Dave, answer the age-old question, could someone hear you scream in space?
Dave - That depends, if you're actually out in space then there's no air there, so no. But if you're in a space station then yes, because there's air.
Chris - Dave and Ginny, thank you very much. Who's got some questions? We have one just here. This person, what's your name?
Laura - When you practice at home, does anything ever go seriously wrong?
Chris - Come on Dave, now it's time to be honest.
Dave - I've broken lots of things. I haven't killed myself yet which is always a good thing. I haven't badly injured myself. So, I think that's pretty good.
Chris - There's question over the back here.
Paul - Hi. My name is Paul. I come from Hardwick. When you're talking about vacuums, they keep telling is that space is vacuum but they keep talking about solar winds. How can there be wind in space in a vacuum?
Dave - You can never get a perfect vacuum and there's always a few particles left. If you go into deep, deep space, there might be only one or two in every cubic metre whereas in a normal air, there's hundreds and hundreds of billions, if not, more than that. And so, the vacuum in space is very, very good, better than anything you could get without really, really, expensive kit. You're talking millions of quid on Earth. But it doesn't mean there aren't still some particles there and the sun does throw off some little hydrogen nuclei and they get thrown out at incredibly high speed. And so, there's a little bit there.
Chris - I think the speed of it is about a million miles per hour that it goes extremely fast.
Dave - It's really scarily fast, but there's not very much of it so it doesn't do too much damage of moving things around very much.
Chris - It's also responsible for the aurora when it strikes the magnetosphere around the Earth.
Dave - It gets deflected by the Earth's magnetic field and then piles into the north and south poles, and gives lots of energy...
Chris - Makes Norway a lot of money out of its tourist trait, very nice. There's another question over here.
Fergal - This is Fergal again. I'm wondering how does the speed of sound depend on the air pressure, so, as you travel out into space and you were to do an experiment?
Dave - Interestingly, it hardly changes at all because the speed of sound is to do with the ratio between the density and the kind of springiness. And as you reduce the pressure, you reduce the density but you also reduce springiness, and that cancels out. What it does depend on is temperature. The lower the temperature, the lower the sound because you kind of reduce the springiness without reducing the density; at high temperature goes very fast, at low temperature it goes very slow. Which is the reason why if you fly up where the jet planes fly, it's about minus 30 degrees centigrade at which point the speed of sound is about 600 miles an hour not 700.
Chris - Does that affect when you would get a sonic boom then? So, higher up in the atmosphere, you'd go slower to break the sound barrier.
Dave - Yes, it is easy to break the sound barrier when you're higher up. You don't have to go nearly as fast.
Chris - Fantastic! Any other questions for Dave and Ginny. One in the front, another one.
Paul - It's me again, Paul. We just heard that Voyager left the solar system. How? What's making it move for all these years?
Dave - Okay, so essentially, Voyager had a big rocket on it and it was going really, really fast. It kind of did some cunning manoeuvres going around the different planets, especially Jupiter which gave it extra kick. Basically, it's just going so fast that it has enough energy to keep on going forever. It'll keep on going straight out the solar system and go. So, if you shoot something out of a gun fast enough, it won't come down.
36:11 - What Metals Make A Jet Engine?
Material Scientist, Caroline Goddard, explains how new alloys are made and how you select metals for different tasks...
What Metals Make A Jet Engine?
with Caroline Goddard, University of Cambridge
Material Scientist, Caroline Goddard, explained to Chris Smith and an audience at the Cambridge Science Centre, how new alloys are made and how you select metals for different tasks...
Caroline - I work on developing alloys which is when you mix a couple of metals together, a bit like baking, you mix things together, heat it up, see what happens. So, the reason we do this is because essentially, when it's in its pure state, metal isn't that good. You need to add something else to it that's got some good properties that you also like to it to make it much better. For example, steel is made up of iron and carbon. The carbon is what makes it strong and more brittle.
Chris - So, what is the difference between iron and steel? If I looked down a microscope, they're both iron, right? But it's just the trace element carbon that's there. Why does it make a difference?
Caroline - So, the carbon sits in the spaces between the iron atoms which stops the atoms from moving around which makes it much, much stronger.
Chris - Why is it then that a piece of iron, if I just put it out on the street will go rusty, but stainless steel doesn't?
Caroline - Stainless steel includes another element which is really, really environmentally resistant, which is chromium because chromium reacts with the oxygen and creates this layer of oxide on the surface which prevents it from corroding. So, if you put some chromium into your steel then you'll get this layer on the surface which prevents it from rusting.
Chris - Tell us about the jet engines because I'm dying to know what you do with those. How does one work? Just a simple starter for 10 points.
Caroline - So, a jet engine works by, air goes in through the front and is compressed as it moves through the engine. It's compressed really, really small and then at that point, it gets really hot. You inject some fuel into it and ignite it, and the air expands very quickly, and goes out back of the jet engine which creates some thrust. This expulsion of air creates enough power to turn the turbines in the engine which turns a huge fan at the front which you've probably all seen when you fly off in your holidays which sucks in a huge more amount of air which flings it back, which makes the plane go forwards.
Chris - Brilliant! Suck, squeeze, bang, blow! I think that's what Rolls Royce say how an engine works. So, what are you doing to make these things better? They work pretty well, I've just taken a very long flight, and I think there were Rolls Royce engines on the plane because you can tell because they paint those little spirals on the nose cones and they also go clockwise. Interesting fact I learned about Rolls Royce aero - you can tell a Rolls Royce engine because they go clockwise. All the other engines go the other way. But why are these not good enough? What can we do to make them better?
Caroline - To make an engine go fast, it has to be very efficient at burning fuel and to make it more efficient, you need to make it go at higher temperatures. So, in order to do that, you need to develop a material that can reach higher temperatures.
Chris - So, how hot is it inside the jet engine then?
Caroline - It depends on where in the jet engine. At the front, it's relatively low, perhaps 300 degrees, something like that. When you get to the combustor and the turbine at the back of the engine, you're reaching 800, or even higher degrees. So, it's very, very hot. So, what happens is, the engineers design an engine that can tolerate all of these temperatures and they come to the material scientists and said, "We need a material that can reach this temperature."
Chris - "So, this is what we want to do. Go and make the material that can do it." And no material like that exists yet.
Caroline - Exactly, so then they get lots of PhD students like myself to go around and make lots of materials that will reach this temperature and then the engineers will come back to us and say that they want it to go even higher. So, we have to go back to the drawing board again.
Chris - So, there's the challenge - how do we actually make materials better? Over to you. What would you like to know? Yes, sir. What's your name?
Errol - Hi, it's Errol again. It can't be trial and error. You must start with some base materials with some obviously, standard sort of functionality. How do you decide which ones to put together to come up with the problem you're trying to solve?
Caroline - So, choosing your base metal gives most of the properties. So, if you use iron then most of your properties are very steel-like. If you use titanium, you'll have a very lightweight material, that's strong for its weight. So, you choose a base metal based on that. High temperatures, in the turbines, we use nickel as our base. And then you put chromium in to make it environmentally resistant and then put some other elements in that will make it stronger or make it better at resisting vibrations. But the proportions, it's not guess work.
Chris - So, it's guess work, yeah.
Caroline - We do have informed guess work.
Chris - It's called trial and error. Thank you, great question. We've got another question here. What's your name?
Olivia - My name is Olivia. I'm just wondering, can you separate an alloy?
Caroline - Can you separate an alloy?
Chris - So, you mean Olivia, can you get the other things that have been added, mixed in? Can you get them out again?
Olivia - Yes.
Caroline - I don't know. I don't think you can.
Chris - Because when I was going to South Africa and I met this bloke, this is the kind of thing you meet in an airplane. I met this guy as we flew into the airport in South Africa and he said, just looking out the window, "Ah! They've got another airplane for me." I said, "What do you mean?" And, he said, "Well, they line up all the airplanes over there because I recycle airplanes." And they line it all up on the runway and then he'd sort of literally takes them to pieces. He said, "We can't re-use the aluminium in the shell of the airplane because it's got stuff added to it. You can't turn that into another airplane because no one will guarantee the composition of the alloy and if you mix that up with other metals, you don't know that it's got a purity that you can rely on. And so, it may have characteristics that you can't predict. With something like an airplane, it's a bit too dangerous. So, I think it's really tricky, but Dave, what do you think?
Dave - Basically, to separate something you need to have properties which are different. So, if you have an alloy with something with quite a low melting point or a very high melting point, or very high boiling point, you can heat it up until the low boiling point one boils off and you'd get slowly a more and more concentrated solution of one of them and other one kind of boils off. But if you've got two metals which are very, very similar, it gets very, very nasty. I don't know if you've heard of the rare Earth metals, things like neodymium. They're actually not very rare. The problem is, that when you find them, they're mixed all up together and splitting them apart is incredibly difficult. You can do it, but it's very, very difficult and messy chemistry.
Ginny - Could you do it if you actually went down to the molecular level because I remember there was that video that was made recently where people were actually moving individual molecules around. They made a little video of a guy playing with a ball. So, if you went down to the molecular level, could you just tweak out the carbons?
Chris - So Caroline, how many atoms are there?
Caroline - I guess in theory, you could do that, but it would take a very long time.
Chris - There's a question at the back.
Jamie - Hi. I'm Jamie from Cambridge. I was wondering if you could explain how turbine blades operate at temperatures above their melting point. Is that correct?
Chris - Maybe we should just explain the context to the question, how do these turbine blades operate above their melting point because the reality is in these engines, the stream of gas going by is hotter than the metal melts at, isn't it?
Caroline - Yes.
Chris - So, you think I've got an engine running here which has got stuff going on inside it, hotter than the engine components actually melt at. Sounds a bit worrying, but the engines stay up there. How do they deal with that?
Caroline - So, it's a combination of two things. The first is, we coat the blades in a ceramic which has a much higher melting temperature and it conducts heat through it very slowly, so it doesn't reach the metal. And the second reason which sort of - they work together is that we blow cooling air through the blades themselves which works with the coatings to stop that.
Chris - There's one more question here. What's your name?
Freya - Hi. My name is Freya. I have two questions. I was wondering how many parts would be in a common jet engine and my second question is, how many metals would be in a common jet engine?
Chris - Pretty simple there Caroline. So, how many bits to an engine? How many different metals?
Caroline - Bit's - a lot.
Chris - Is that an SI unit then?
Caroline - Yes. So, with the jet engine, you've got the disks and the blades and the shaft which do the main amount of work. But then you've also got the casings and they all have to have sensors on them. So, there's lots of electronics all over them, so there's lots and lots of parts. For different metals, well, in a jet engine, you'll have steels, titanium and nickel based alloys. They are the main three, but within those alloys, you'll have a lot of other elements. In some cases, up to 13 different elements that you've thrown in there.
Chris - Thirteen in one alloy? And do you know exactly what composition of all those different elements there is?
Caroline - Yeah.
Chris - It's amazing. No wonder it's so expensive.
46:12 - Science Centre: Rubber Band Fridge
How can you make a tiny fridge using an elastic band?
Science Centre: Rubber Band Fridge
How can you make a tiny fridge using an elastic band? Ginny Smith and Dave Ansell find out...
Ginny - Okay, if everyone looks under their chair, you should find a rubber band. So, we're going to need your help for this one and we're all going to have a go at this experiment together. Our panel I think has a rubber band, each of them? Good. So Dave, what do you need us to do with these rubber bands.
Dave - So, these are perfectly normal rubber bands. Hopefully, you've all found them and what we've going to be doing is looking at the temperature of the rubber band. Now, about the most sensitive part of your body for measuring temperature is your lips. So, what I want you to do is touch the rubber band to your lips and get an idea of what sort of temperature it's really like.
Ginny - Now, we're mainly doing this to make you look silly.
Dave - Everyone with rubber band moustaches, it looks wonderful from up here I can say. And then what I want you to do, if you stretch the rubber band slowly, you'll find the point where it starts to get quite stiff. Can you feel that? Okay, so what I want you to do is let it unstretch. Now, feel the temperature on your lip. Take it off then quickly stretch it to the point at which it gets stiff and then feel it again. And then leave it out and let it unstretch and feel it again and if you feel any difference.
Ginny - So, if we go over to our panel, you guys are having a go at this? So, can you feel anything different?
Rod - It feels warmer when you stretch it.
Ginny - Brilliant! Is that what everyone else is finding?
Crowd - Yes.
Chris - There are some pretty weird looking people here.
Ginny - Yeah, I think...
Chris - Elastic band moustaches.
Ginny - It's a good look. So, all we've done is stretched a rubber band and it's got warmer. Why?
Dave - So, that kind of make sense. As you stretch it, you're putting a load of energy into it and that energy must be going somewhere and in the case of the rubber band, it's going into warming up the rubber band. So, the rubber band has got warmer as you stretch it. Rubber is actually quite a strange material. It doesn't behave like a normal material. If you stretch a piece of steel or any other alloy, you kind of stretch bonds in the molecules and you kind of store energy. But rubber is different. Rubber is made up of great big long molecules. It's a bit like this piece of rope. When you stretch it, you're not stretching the bonds. What you're doing is just straightening out the molecules. Now, did you notice what happened when you let it shrink again?
Ginny - So, everyone is saying it got colder when they released it and then felt it again.
Dave - That's right because when rubber unstretches, what basically happens is that you've pulled out your rubber molecule and made it nice and long and straight, and then you let heat, so all the molecules inside are bouncing around because they're hot. Everything is jiggling. As it jiggles, it kind of jiggles around and gets more zigzaggy and get more wriggly. And so, it gets shorter.
Ginny - So, what Dave has got here is he's got a piece of rope which is pretending to be the molecules inside the elastic band and when he wiggles them about. Of course, the rope sort of makes waves, goes all snaky and then the length of it get shorter because it's moving around more, and that's what's happening inside the rubber band.
Dave - That's right and as the molecules bash into it, they lose a little bit of energy and they get colder. So, as the rubber band pulls against your fingers in order to shrink, the molecules lose some energy. They're actually losing it to your fingers if you pull in and it gets colder and you can actually feel that on your lips. You have effectively made a very, very small, very inefficient fridge.
Ginny - So, when you're hot and probably not at the moment because it seems to be absolutely freezing outside, but if we ever have a summer again, you just need a few rubber bands and you can cool down with no problem.
Dave - I'd like to see the machine.
Chris - Thanks, Dave and Ginny. So, any questions about elastic band physics? One just here.
Freya - Doesn't the rubber band have the temperature of the room temperature or is it its own temperature?
Dave - So, if you leave a rubber band for a long time, it will get the room temperature. And actually, that's kind of why it works as a fridge. If you stretch it, it gets hotter and if you leave it for a while, it'll get back to the room temperature because the heat will leave it because it's hotter than the rest of the world. Then as you unstretch it, it kind of itself gets colder. And so, it cools down a bit and then again, if you leave it for a long time, it'll warm up. So, if you leave it for long enough, it will get to the room temperature.
Chris - One just here.
Grace - Hi. My name is Grace and I've wondered what makes a magnet magnetic.
Ginny - So, magnets have little poles inside them. They have little elements that have to line up to make them magnetic. So, if you've ever wanted to make a magnet, you can do it by using another magnet to rub along a piece of iron or something like that. What that does is it lines up all these little poles inside them and if they're all pointing in the same direction, you get a magnet. You have to be really careful with magnets because you can demagnetise them if you jumble all those poles up again. So if you drop a magnet hard enough, it'll jumble them all up and then it won't be a magnet anymore. And also, if you heat it up. So, like we were just talking about, when you heat things up, everything inside it gets really excited and jumbles around. So, if you put a magnet in a flame, you can demagnetise it as well.
Dave - If you get to really fundamental things as to why anything is magnetic, magnetism is kind of effects of electric current. If you get an electric current flowing, you get a magnet. So, if you put a wire around and round and round, you get an electromagnet and you can put current through an electromagnet. Actually, in a magnet, on average, you have more electrons going around the atoms in one direction than the other direction. So actually, even permanent magnets are little electromagnets and yes, they become magnetic.
Chris - There's a question at the back here.
Lily - I'm Lily and you said when you stretch the rubber band, you made an inefficient fridge. So, how does a fridge really work?
Dave - Okay, so a fridge sort of does something similar by using gas. So, if you squash a gas - I don't know if you've ever pumped up a bicycle tire very, very quickly. The end of your bicycle pump gets quite warm. So, if you squash a gas, the gas gets hotter. So, what's happening at the back of your fridge is, there's a pump which squashes the gas then it gets hotter. It then has that long wiggly tube at the back which loses that heat. You then set the squashed gas which is at room temperature, goes inside the fridge and is let to expand. If you expand a gas, it cools down again. So, if you've ever used an aerosol can for long time, it starts getting really, really cold. So you let the gas expand inside of your the fridge, then it gets cooler, sucks energy and heat out of your food, then get cycled back around to the pump and get squashed then the heat is lost. It goes round and round, and round and the fridge gets colder and colder.
Chris - Fridge in three easy steps. Last question down the front. You've got a question for us? What's your name?
Jacob - Jacob.
Chris - What would you like to know, Jacob?
Jacob - I want to know if we snap a rubber band, would it still do the same things?
Ginny - Yes. So, if you snap a rubber band, all that's happening is that those molecules there have pulled apart, but if you used a different area of it, it would still work. Probably, it wouldn't work so well if you used it right at the end because there's not much to stretch there. But yeah, it should still work.
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Marvel's Agents of SHIELD accelerates the incoming threat when aliens place the Lighthouse under siege forcing the team to fight back with limited resources.
There are less than a handful of episodes left this season -possibly of the entire series- and there's still so much ground to cover. The Earth still needs to be either saved or destroyed, an alien invasion needs to be thwarted and answers have to be delivered on whether Coulson lives or dies.
This episode picks up from last week with the fallout of Elena's actions. Killing Ruby was a complex decision for her as there were a lot of things motivating it. Elena tries to justify it by pointing out that taking it upon herself to end Ruby's life might be the thing that allows the world to be saved but all everyone else sees is an action driven by revenge. I suspect the truth is somewhat in between but what this does is create some internal unrest at a crucial point in the season. At the point where everyone really needs to be on the same page and working towards a common goal this action divides them and creates a situation where they are at less than their best.
Mack is the worst affected by Elena's actions and threatens to walk away from their relationship because she has crossed the line as far as he's concerned. Henry Simmons' delivery of the line "that's not what we do" encapsulates the disappointment and disgust he feels. Elena accuses him of looking at her differently after her issue and reiterates her desire to alter the future by any mean's necessary. Her conversation with her future self has stuck with her and made her feel like it's her responsibility to alter the future. This mindset means that her focus is entirely on the big picture making no sacrifice too small or any action too extreme because she believes that it's in service of the greater good. It's a position that can be understood even if it's not something to agree with and it causes a rift between her and Mack because this dispassionate way of thinking is counter to everything he stands for.
Arguments like this are a good reminder that these larger than life events are populated by people who have to weather them. Mack has always been the grounded member of the team who struggles to handle the larger scale comic book elements that the show often plays with. The writers have done a great job keeping this conflict grounded on the characters and how they react to the situation they are presented with. It says a lot about how well they have been developed when the potential end of Mack and Elena's relationship almost seems more significant than the end of the world; if not more significant then it is definitely more immediate.
Thankfully Coulson is back in charge because he is able to put a stop to the internal bickering that is going on. Even Daisy is distracted by her feelings about Elena's actions to the point that she is unable to focus on the task at hand. Coulson is able to stop the discussion and bring them back on task at least for the moment. He does so when he remembers the device that was used to escape Hale's facility being a way to sneak into a base on lockdown.
The resulting situation is like something straight out of Alien with dark claustrophobic corridors, an unseen threat and the constant sense of dread hanging over the events of the episode. The aliens themselves look menacing enough and have the near invincible threat advantage going for them. Having the team separated by the lockdown protocol adds to the tension as they can't rely on strength in numbers against a threat that can easily divide and conquer.
A lot of time is spent preparing for the alien attack which makes it all the more tense because it's unclear when it will come and what direction they will attack from. All of the characters are on edge and the situation seems more hopeless the longer it goes on. As always the team react bravely and prepare for the onslaught as best they can but it's clear that the odds are against them and that survival is an unlikely prospect especially with Daisy unable to protect them due to being away on her own mission.
Fitz and Simmons are forced to break their pledge to never leave each other's side because their skills are needed in different locations but there's some reassurance to be gained from the fact that they still believe that they are invincible on some level. The latest theory is that a successful change in the timeline would render Deke erased from existence. There's a brief and frantic discussion about the multiverse theory vs. the single timeline idea with Deke firmly on the side of the multiverse because that means he survives no matter what choices are made. Fitz suggests that his role is akin to a canary down a mine as to him success means that he disappears but failure has him remain. Ultimately Deke is motivated by fear of non-existence. He really enjoys being in a world with sunlight and other pleasures that he has never experienced so is motivated to save the world in a way that lets him remain. As yet there are no answers on how time travel really works so the stakes are as real as they ever were.
The aliens themselves are a great antagonist with some really cool features. Their localised EMP creating darkness that allows them to move around unnoticed as they slowly close in on the team is really effective and the claws are an easily visceral addition that makes them a really significant threat with the potential to create a large body count. The fact that they only manage to kill characters that were -as far as I can tell- only introduced in this episode lessens the threat value somewhat as the show fails to make their presence meaningful by having them do any real damage to the team.
Their presence does allow for a surprising plot development. A crazed Talbot struggling with his programming stumbles onto the infusion chamber and decides that it's the key to solving the problem so he cranks it up and infuses himself with 100% of the Gravitonium -or 92% of it considering Ruby got 8% of it- giving himself gravity based powers. This clarifies Robin's drawing of a man with small people inside of him as presumably Talbot has absorbed the consciousness of both Dr. Franklin Hall and Ian Quinn along with the Gravitonium.
I enjoyed this twist even though it seems to disprove my theories about part of the finale being a fight between two Gravitons with the team in the middle and the Earth at stake. Talbot's a reasonable choice to become Graviton given that he is looking for redemption, struggling to collect his thoughts and had no purpose before this. The effort put into establishing the threat represented by the aliens really pays off with the reveal of Talbot as Graviton as it allows the audience to see just how powerful Talbot has become and the threat he now represents considering his mental state isn't exactly all that stable at this point.
For those keeping track this adds another candidate to destroy the world. Ruby has been removed from consideration now that she's dead and it now looks unlikely that Daisy will be the one responsible because there's no Gravitonium left to give her abilities an Apocalyptic upgrade so this really just leaves Talbot unless Franklin Hall and/or Ian Quinn can somehow appear once again. I suspect what will happen now is that his mental state will deteriorate further with the H.Y.D.R.A. programming as well as the voices of Franklin Hall and Ian Quinn further confusing him to the point that his powers become uncontrollable. We saw how powerful Ruby was with only 8% of the Gravitonium in her system so Talbot with 92% of it likely has more than enough power to crack the Earth apart. At this point Talbot is still an ally of the team shown by him using his abilities to save them but there's still time for that to go the other way. No matter what the finale will still be the final -hopefully not- Earth shattering confrontation between the team and whatever is responsible for the end of the world. It's exciting and building nicely.
Daisy's solo mission is the most underwhelming part of the episode mostly because there isn't much to it. It felt like a forced attempt to remove her from the lockdown situation due to how useful her powers would be. She does reconnect with Tony aka Candyman who gives her the last remaining Centipede Serum from way back in season 1 because it might be the key to saving Coulson. There are a few problems with this idea even though it stands a better than average chance of working. Coulson made it very clear that he has made his peace with the fact that his days are numbered and doesn't want to go through the emotional horror of being resurrected once again so I can't see him being willing to accept the known side effects that are known to be connected to this serum. There is a crucial element of it missing that Tony couldn't find but Daisy recognises it and goes to dig up her mother's grave which is just twisted on all sorts of levels but also makes sense given her ability to heal and the final ingredient being some sort of healing component. This shows that Daisy is willing to cross all sorts of ethical lines in order to save Coulson as well as cause herself lots of emotional distress by dealing with unearthing her own mother's body. How this will play out is unknown but my expectation is that Coulson will not be happy with what she has decided to do.
This episode also brings an unexpected and really subtle reference to Avengers: Infinity War when Tony mentions something that his happening in New York. I have no idea if the events of that film will impact this show in any way though they probably should. To say more would be a spoiler and it's still too soon to discuss that film in any detail but you can find my spoiler free review here and a spoiler free hot take podcast here.
Another strong episode in a season that goes from strength to strength. The alien threat is appropriately menacing and helps to build tension effectively across the episode. Having the team separated by an unexpected lockdown protocol adds to the tension and the ability to create darkness everywhere they go builds the horror element nicely. Deke's desire to survive and his hope that the multiverse theory is the correct one as it means that the timeline can be changed and he gets to stay on an Earth with sunlight and other pleasures. Fitz suggests that changing the timeline might result in him being erased if there's a single timeline. There are no answers as yet so it's unclear if the actions of the characters are heading for something inevitable or if things can be altered. The reaction to Elena's actions in the previous episode create some fascinating internal conflicts within the team. Elena and Mack's contribution to the episode is the most compelling as he is disgusted by her actions and ready to walk away from the relationship. Her perspective is more or less confined to the bigger picture and she is willing to do what it takes to change the timeline but this is against everything that Mack stands for so there is a noticeable rift between them that grounds the larger than life plotting with something more Human.
Talbot becoming Graviton is a nice surprise and makes sense in the context of his personal issues. It adds another candidate to the list of potential world killers and certainly creates an interesting angle to be explored with Talbot's fragile mental state and the issues that having the warring consciousnesses of Franklin Hall and Ian Quinn inside his already unstable mind can create. For now he seems to be on the side of the team as shown by him dispatching the aliens in a way that cleverly shows how powerful he is but there's plenty of scope for this to change. Daisy's contribution to the episode was underwhelming as there wasn't much to it but the re-emergence of the Centipede Serum and the potential issues this will create between her and Coulson are fascinating to contemplate as Coulson has made it abundantly clear that he has accepted that his days are numbered. Having her dig up her mother's grave is a brutal step for her and I look forward to seeing that emotional upheaval that creates.


22apr1:00 pmIredell Interagency Collaborative4th Monday of each month - 1:00-2:00 p.m.
4th Monday of each month – 1:00-2:00 p.m.
The Community Collaborative serves as the body supporting Child and Family Teams and the development of their local System of Care. Partners, the local Department of Social Services, juvenile justice staff, and other behavioral health provider agencies work together, along with families and family support organizations, to assist individuals receiving services through the public behavioral healthcare system.
If you are interested in learning more about this group or attending a meeting, please contact Stephanie Funderburk, System of Care Child Liaison, at sfunderburk@partnersbhm.org or 704-301-1281.


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Overnight Health Care: Experts fear July 4 weekend will exacerbate coronavirus spread | Texas Gov. Abbott will require masks in most of the state | Fauci warns: 'We are not going in the right direction'
By Nathaniel Weixel, Jessie Hellmann and Peter Sullivan - 07/02/20 05:53 PM EDT
Welcome to Thursday's Overnight Health Care.
You won't see a newsletter from us tomorrow because of the Fourth of July holiday, but we'll be back on Monday.
There are more than 2.7 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S., including 128,000 deaths. Experts worry the fourth of July weekend will worsen the epidemic, as millions of people gather across the country to celebrate the nation's independence. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) finally issued a mask mandate and Florida has once again hit a record-high in single day case increases.
Let's start with the crowds...
Experts fear July 4 weekend will exacerbate coronavirus spread
Experts worry that the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. will worsen after the Fourth of July weekend, when millions of people gather across the country during one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
Memorial Day weekend — when people flocked to beaches, pools, parties, restaurants and bars after a weeks-long lockdown — helped spur many of the outbreaks the U.S. is seeing across parts of the country.
But now the stakes are even higher.
The U.S. is reporting record-high daily case counts, driven largely by outbreaks in the South and West. Several states are experiencing more severe outbreaks than they saw two months ago.
"I am very concerned, especially given this coming weekend, that the same types of spikes, the same types of surges could be seen not just in the places that are currently experiencing surges, but in places that have already experienced surges, and in ones that haven't yet," said Joshua Barocas, assistant professor of medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine.
Context: The state of the outbreak is worse now than it was around Memorial Day, in terms of the number of cases. The U.S. is averaging 40,000 new cases a day (and surpassed 50,000 Wednesday) and many more states have more severe outbreaks than they saw two months ago. Experts are urging people to continue practicing social distancing, or wearing a mask when that is not possible, and holding any events or gatherings outdoors in small groups.
A major reversal from the Texas governor as coronavirus spreads: He will now require masks
Better late than never.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has issued an order making it mandatory for all Texans to wear a face covering of some kind while out in public as the state faces a surge in coronavirus cases.
The governor's office said the order applied to all counties in Texas with 20 or more confirmed cases of COVID-19, saying the move was necessary with other efforts to curb the spread of the disease.
"Due to recent substantial increases in COVID-19 positive cases, and increases in the COVID-19 positivity rate and hospitalizations resulting from COVID-19, further measures are needed to achieve the least restrictive means for reducing the growing spread of COVID-19, and to avoid a need for more extreme measures," Abbott said in his executive order issued Thursday afternoon.
Flashback: Abbott had previously clashed with local officials who wanted to impose mandatory face mask orders. It is a sign of how bad the situation is getting there that Abbott is now taking action on masks himself.
Related: A Trump administration official says the US is no longer 'flattening the curve' of the pandemic.
"We are not flattening the curve right now. The curve is still going up," Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, said during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing.
Anthony Fauci Anthony FauciThese Senate seats are up for election in 2022 A year into Biden's presidency, we're only burying more overdose victims Let's stop saying 'breakthrough cases' — it isn't helping MORE offered a similar warning: 'We are not going in the right direction'
Fauci has been sounding the alarm this week, as the coronavirus continues to spread unabated across much of the country. A day after the country confirmed more than 50,000 new cases of coronavirus in a single 24-hour period, Fauci said younger people are now accounting for a much greater share of the pandemic.
"I think it's pretty obvious, Howard, that we are not going in the right direction," Fauci said in an interview with Howard Bauchner, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "We need to realize that if we do not adhere to the guidelines as we're trying to open, and I don't mean officially, I mean the citizenry, the people that are out there, we're going to be in some serious difficulty."
Flashback: Earlier this week, Fauci told senators in a hearing that he wouldn't be surprised if the country reached 100,000 new cases a day. We're more than halfway there.
Read more from Fauci's interview here
Florida records over 10K COVID-19 cases, highest single-day increase
Florida recorded 10,109 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, the highest single-day increase for the state.
There are now more than 169,000 confirmed cases in Florida. An additional 68 deaths were reported Wednesday, bringing the total number of COVID-19 fatalities to 3,718.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Ron DeSantisTrans rights under attack: The persecution should stop now Florida first lady Casey DeSantis completes chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer Trump by the numbers: 2024 isn't simple MORE (R) has taken some steps to try to slow the spread of the virus, including closing bars and some beaches. While he has not issued a statewide mask mandate, several localities require the use of masks in public.
Trial of Moderna Covid-19 vaccine delayed, investigators say, but July start still possible (Stat News)
After months of being silenced, CDC is easing back into public view (Yahoo News)
In the Covid-19 economy, you can have a kid or a job. You can't have both. (New York Times)
Fever checks can't catch all COVID-19 cases. Smell tests might help (STAT)
On record-breaking day, Mike Pence Michael (Mike) Richard PenceGiuliani led fake electors plot: CNN The Hill's 12:30 Report: Dems look to repackage BBB into salvageable bill Pence to deliver keynote at fundraising banquet for South Carolina-based pregnancy center MORE says Florida in a 'much better place' in coronavirus fight (Tampa Bay Times)
Young people in Alabama are throwing coronavirus parties with a payout when one gets infected, official says (CNN)
Galveston beaches to close for July 4th weekend amid sharp rise in COVID-19 cases (Houston Chronicle)
Oregon State Police don't wear coronavirus masks while patronizing coffee shop, despite governor's order (Oregon Live)
Op-eds in The Hill
The solution to COVID-19 spread was right in front of our eyes
Applying the lessons of Ebola to the COVID-19 pandemic
Updated: July 3 at 7:58 a.m.
Tags Anthony Fauci Ron DeSantis Mike Pence


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P.E.I. whistleblowers sue former premier, officials after privacy breach
CHARLOTTETOWN – Three whistleblowers whose private information was leaked from Prince Edward Island's government to the Liberal Party are suing a former premier and other top officials for a total of $1.3 million in damages for the economic and emotional toll on their lives.
The lawsuit says that after the three women came forward at a 2011 news conference with allegations of bribery and fraud in the province's business immigration program, personal information designed to damage their claims was deliberately given out to the media by top Liberals.
A statement of claim, which has not been proven in court, filed in the Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island by Susan Holmes, Cora Plourd Nicholson and Svetlana Tenetko, describes the action as a "conspiracy."
The lawsuit names former premier Robert Ghiz, former innovation minister Allan Campbell, former deputy minister of economic development Michael Mayne, and former Liberal party spokesman Spencer Campbell as defendants.
Asked to comment, Ghiz said he has "no comment as the matter is before the courts." Spencer Campbell, Allan Campbell and Mayne were not immediately available for comment.
John Kingman Phillips, a Toronto-based lawyer who was one of the lawyers who represented Omar Khadr in civil litigation, said his clients were badly mistreated.
"The privacy violation is beyond egregious. … it demands a response," he said in an interview.
A report by the province's privacy commissioner – completed six years after the women's initial complaint – found the province had breached the women's privacy rights, though it couldn't specifically say how the leak occurred.
The statement of claim says personal information was printed out on Sept. 15, 2011, in the innovation minister's office as the province was just weeks away from an Oct. 3 provincial election.
It also says the defendants were involved with "organizing a press release … that included defamatory statement about the plaintiffs in order to undermine their standing and the strength of their allegations against the government."
Ghiz denounced their allegations before going on to win the election.
One of the released files revealed Nicholson's affiliation with the Tories years earlier, as well as confidential details of a human rights complaint she'd launched for job discrimination on the basis of her political affiliation.
Emailed records of the two other employees were also shared with the media.
The women had come forward to discuss the province's provincial nominee immigration program, alleging applications that didn't meet criteria were approved and that bribes were provided for fast-tracked applications. Holmes also sent the allegations of fraud to federal officials at Citizenship and Immigration.
The RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency later started investigations but decided not to proceed with any charges.
The women allege in their lawsuit that the defendants had devised "a strategy … to undermine the plaintiffs' credibility by portraying them as liars, 'crazy,' or partisan towards the Prince Edward Island Conservative Party."
They also claim the intent was to "send a message to other individuals involved with the program that whistleblowers would be punished."
The immigration program was suspended in 2011 after the federal government determined it was permitting immigrants to provide investment but didn't have sufficient actual involvement in the businesses – as many of the PNP immigrants moved on to other parts of the country.
A more recent incarnation of the program was also shut down recently, as the majority of applicants simply didn't start a business or created short-lived enterprises before moving on to other parts of Canada or remaining abroad.
The statement of claim says the women had provided their personal information to the Crown agency Island Investment Development Inc. on the understanding it would be kept private and not distributed, and the province was "negligent" in allowing the information out.
It also alleges that the women's charter rights to freedom of expression and the right to "life, liberty and security of person" were violated by the defendants' actions.
The action says the plaintiffs' actions harmed their mental health, left them humiliated and isolated, caused them to lose income and have difficulty finding work, diminished the value of their homes and resulted in medical and prescription drug expenses.
After the release of the privacy commissioner's report last year, Liberal Premier Wade MacLauchlan promised to follow the privacy commissioners' recommendations to improve education in government on privacy rules, and create clear rules requiring an internal investigation if a privacy breach occurs.
However, Holmes said he declined to meet with her and discuss what had occurred personally, leading her to start seeking legal counsel for her lawsuit.
Former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell accused of sexual assault: British newspaper
Won't name 2 MLAs accused of inappropriate behaviour because of privacy: premier
Manitoba 'pausing' relationship with former B.C. premier after allegations
Nova Scotia Health Authority investigating possible privacy breach
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