• Question: What have you been doing recently as scientists??

    Asked by stakernathan to David, Rebecca, Simon, Verity, Wei on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by lyd123.
    • Photo: Rebecca Handley

      Rebecca Handley answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Today I spent ALOT of time in the lab. I was growing bacteria in a big bottle of liquid. Then spinning them really fast in a centrifuge – a machine that turns 14000 times a minute. Then I froze then in a really cold freezer to use tomorrow – where I’ll be doing an experiment to look at the bacterias DNA.

    • Photo: David Armstrong

      David Armstrong answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      This morning I was starting to write a paper on some of my results so I was reading some papers on some work other people have done in a similar area. This gave me some good ideas on how I want to present my results.

      Recently we have had some problems with one of our pieces of equipment (a nanoindenter) so I spent this afternoon running some tests to find out why it wasn’t working. Then I sent this data to an engineer who is helping us fix it.

      Tomorrow I am using a microscope to look at one of my students samples with him, to understand what has happened in his tests. is looking at fracture in a new tungsten alloy and we want to know what is causing them to break. I also have two tutorials to teach on Wednesday so I will be doing some preparation for them.

    • Photo: Wei Xun

      Wei Xun answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      I am also working on a project on the health effects of air pollution in European cities. So I spend a lot of time trying to get my collaborators who are all experts in this topic,to agree how we’ll conduct the study, what’s the best way to use the data we have, and most importantly, who will do which work! I’m very lucky they are all lovely and very helpful.

      Otherwise I’m also working on the link between B-vitamins and high blood pressure.

    • Photo: Verity Nye

      Verity Nye answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      On Monday I travelled to British Antarctic Survey to talk to another researcher about my vent snails. We spent a day and a half taking images and measurements of the different specimens (the shell and the soft bits inside the shell) and now I’m using that information to write a description of them and to determine what family and genus they belong to. I’m also making preparations for our research cruise in July, describing a new species of amphipod and preparing a report and presentation.

Comments