• Question: what was your favirout investagaion

    Asked by anon-252499 to Sofija, Sarah-May, Sameed, rosiehayward, Rosanna, Paula on 4 May 2020.
    • Photo: Paula Koelemeijer

      Paula Koelemeijer answered on 4 May 2020:

      For me, that would be something that is together with other colleagues and spans several disciplines! That way science is a lot more fun!

      The first thing that leaps to mind, is a project we started a few years ago and had to go to the field for in Kenya last year. We are using some of our normal techniques of studying seismic waves and earthquakes to look this time at the seismic signals of elephants! We are specifically interested in whether they may be using seismic waves to communicate and whether we can see what they are doing remotely by recording these seismic signals. If we can for example see that a herd is panicking in our seismic signals, that would inform us about poaching threats!

      The best thing about this was that we had to spent a few weeks in the field, close to the elephants, installing our equipment and observing their behaviour. A great experience!

    • Photo: Sarah-May Gould

      Sarah-May Gould answered on 4 May 2020:

      Different investigations are fun for different reasons 🙂

      One that definitely stands out is one of the lab practicals we did at university, when we were learning about superconductivity. We followed a recipe to make a special material that became superconducting when we cooled it with liquid nitrogen. Once it was superconducting, we made it levitate (float in mid air) above a magnet.

      More recently, I’ve really enjoyed being involved in one of our more complicated research studies at work. This research study was a clinical trial, where we were trying out a new tracer (drug) to see how well it allowed us to image the brains of people with a particular mental health condition. We had to make sure the tracer was injected into the patient at exactly the right time while they were lying inside the scanner, then take blood samples from their arm and measure the blood samples to find out how much of the tracer was in the patient’s blood at different time points. Combining the information we got from blood sampling with the pictures we took of the patients’ brains using the scanner (which produces some pretty cool images) and other diagnostic information about the patients, the team were able to learn more about how well the tracer works which will hopefully help patients in the future.

    • Photo: Rosie Hayward

      Rosie Hayward answered on 26 Jun 2020:

      My favourite investigation is the first one I ever got to take part in. I helped show that light can move things, and not just in the direction the light is travelling but in other directions depending on its polarisation! I got to do some experiment and some theory work, and it was so exciting to be part of a team making a new discovery. This was a summer research project I completed while at university.

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