Making the connection

Some science can seem far removed from our lives, but students in the Netherlands are applying their research in their communities, writes Claire O'Connell

WHAT SPRINGS to mind when you hear the term "science shop"? It may sound like somewhere you go to buy test tubes, but science shops are agencies that link university research students with community-based organisations. So the student gets to develop their research skills in the real world, and the organisation gets to access data they may not otherwise have been able to afford. It builds links between educational institutions and local communities and gives students the satisfaction of watching their work in action.

Among the many projects undertaken, science-shop students have seen their efforts change legislation about noise from wind turbines, protect fish life around hydroelectric plants and benefit social groups such as the elderly and army veterans.

The science shop's unusual-sounding name can be traced back to its origins in the Netherlands, when the concept was cradled in the 1970s, explains Dr Henk Mulder.

"In the mid-1970s our universities were theory-based and there were a lot of young staff and students who wanted more project-based education - to do something of real societal value," says Mulder, who co-ordinates the science shop at the University of Groningen.

"At the same time you could see in society that environmental issues were becoming important. In Utrecht and Amsterdam it started out as a voluntary organisation within the university, where students and staff would sit together and look at areas like soil pollution."

In Dutch the term "science" covers both natural and social sciences, and the remit of science shops soon went beyond even those confines. Today universities have legal, medical and business-oriented outreach schemes too.

"After 1974 there were science shops in all disciplines in all universities and instead of being voluntary they were being paid by universities, so there were hired staff. Today that system continues," says Mulder.

The majority of universities in the Netherlands use the science-shop model as part of their external portfolio, although some choose to focus only on the knowledge transfer route with industry, he adds.

"In the 1990s you had this trend to commercialise science and that was quite a difficult period for us, and now in the 2000s there's a lot of European interest in the model and you can see the same thing happening in Ireland."

However, he argues, there is room for both industry-driven and community-based work.

"All universities should have a well-balanced portfolio and, of course, links with commercial organisations and top-down science communication are still important, but science shops shouldn't lack in this portfolio."

"We have about 0.07 per cent of the university budget, which is not that much, and we reach out to about 3.5 per cent of all the students with a science-shop project during their studies," he says.

So how does it differ, working with community organisations and NGOs? The nature of the research can be quite different, explains Mulder, citing an example where fish were being killed as they passed hydroelectric plants in the Netherlands.

"There was not very good information about how to prevent them dying, and the commercial sector didn't pay any attention," he says.

"So on behalf of one of the river protection NGOs, the science shop in Utrecht did some research. A masters student compared different technical ways of preventing fish from entering the dangerous part of hydroplants.

"She had a very innovative way of looking at it and she looked at different species," he says. "This led to the Dutch government saying to the hydro-electricity producers that if they did not use the best possible way to protect the fish they would not get their tax refund."

Even standard practical classes can be put to good use. Each year, physics students learn how to handle complex data sets. Instead of handing them the numbers, why not let them generate them? That's exactly what they did, measuring background noise in houses where there was a potential noise pollution issue.

"We decided to put an ad in the newspapers one month before the practical period asking if people had noise problems," says Mulder.

"We would send the students out and they could take measurements from railways, roads or whatever. They would come back with a very complicated dataset they would have to correct for frequencies and background noise. So the learning objective was still met and at the same time they would deliver some service to society."

Noise also played a role in another science-shop project, which looked at wind turbines.

"The problem started when the windmills reached 100m in height, because at 100m in the atmosphere at night there's more wind than during the daytime. So these windmills would turn very swiftly at night and would produce a lot of noise and you hear this thumping sound of the windmill very clearly, which is very annoying if you want to sleep.

"The initial reaction of the authorities was 'we are not going to do anything about it'. So we had to do a lot of measurements to prove that these people were hearing noise."

It took six years, but eventually the government authorities woke up to the problem.

"They have changed the calculation model used for legislation, which means that you have to build windmills a little bit further from where people live," he says.

Other projects have included researching the use of ATMs by the elderly; using microcredit to stimulate the economy of Nicaraguan city, San Carlos; and looking at therapies to help peace-keeping soldiers returning home feeling guilt about what they have witnessed.

The ultimate aim of the science shop is a "win-win-win situation", according to Mulder. "We don't charge money, so we have to please the social group, the student and the scientific supervisor.

"It does not cost more. A Master's thesis for one of our clients is just as expensive as a Master's thesis purely based on scientific interest. The other side of the coin is that we cannot always promise that the research will be finished in three months - if there is no money we cannot hire anybody."

Mulder is now in contact with Irish universities to help develop the science-shop model here and, despite the hurdles, he is optimistic. "I have been doing this for 20 years - I still feel very privileged to have this job," he says.