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Asked by 44h1d to Chris, Eva, Michael, Paddy, Philip, Chris, Eva, Michael, Paddy, Philip on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by iscientist, paulswarbrick1234, tiggy, bexstar, jay123, adunbar.
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Michael Wharmby answered on 15 Jun 2011:
I’m working on solids to separate gases from one another. This is important for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture or for making clean hydrogen for hydrogen powered vehicles, both of which will help to protect the environment.
The materials I make work by holding onto some molecules more strongly than others. For CO2, the CO2 gets trapped in the material and we recover it later and then store it underground where it can’t harm the environment. For hydrogen, all other gases stick in the material better and the hydrogen passes straight through without other gases. We can then bottle and sell this clean hydrogen (though I’m no salesman so perhaps I wouldn’t do that bit…!).
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Paddy Brock answered on 15 Jun 2011:
I work on the endangered Galapagos sea lion (http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/41668/0) and try to understand what’s causing its population decline and how we might be able to stop it form going extinct. As a species it’s affected by fluctuations in the climate (called El Nin(y)o) but also by diseases from pet dogs. If we can prevent diseases from dpreading from pe dogs to sea lions, we may be able to prevent the Galapagos sea lion from going extinct. This would help keep ecosystems healthy in the Pacific and on the Galapagos islands.
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Chris Jordan answered on 15 Jun 2011:
The astronomy that I work is testing really fundamental ideas. Maybe we’ll discover antigravity, or aliens, or whether you can do space travel through black holes. All of these things are VERY unlikely though. With this sort of stuff, it’s the spinoffs, that can benefit people – stuff we invent to help us with our experiments turns out to be useful for other things. Scientists invented the internet because they wanted to push some data around between computers … look where it’s gone now!
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Eva Bachmair answered on 15 Jun 2011:
There are two things in life everyone has to do: breathing and eating. Well we breath pretty much the same air but our diet and the things we eat can be quite different between people.
I do my research with fatty acids; there are different typs of fatty acids out there, good and not so good ones for your health. When I look at the fatty acids and how they influence the function of the platelets I hope that this will help people to decide how they can eat healthy to stay healthy. -
Philip Denniff answered on 15 Jun 2011:
At present nobody knows how much medicine should be given to children, it is assumed that they are mini adults. The dose is worked out based on weight, a child weighs half as much as an adult so they are given half a pill. I am working on a method of sampling blood from sick children and babies from a finger prick rather that sticking a needle in the arm. I collect a drop of blood onto filter paper and dry it. Hence the name dried blood spots. I then extract the drug from the blood spot and measure how much drug is present. Knowing when the medicine was taken I calculate if they are taking either too much or too little.
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