• Question: Hello, Plaese could you simplify your role as a scientist so i could understand it better?

    Asked by haadiyahjhetam to Emma, Jen, Joseph, Michael, Mona on 16 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by emilybrockwell, rebeccaayres00001, hannahbrown1, liam1997, georgia14, bradk004, costb001, kammy, sirajmaz, beauclayton, omcnuggetsv, younl002, kirstysargeant.
    • Photo: Michael Taggart

      Michael Taggart answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hello guys, sorry if we got too complicated. It doesn’t mean we’re geeks, honest. I work in a university as a scienctist and it means that I do two things really. The first thing is I teach students about the bits of science I know most about – in my case this is something called physiology which is the study of how the cells in the body work. You can read more about what a physiologist scientist does at the following website http://www.physoc.org/site/cms/contentviewarticle.asp?article=991 The second thing I do, which takes up most of my time, is to direct research experiments in my lab. Here I have some students studying for a qualification called a PhD (some of my zone buddies are doing this) and I have some more experienced people who already have this qualification. They all do experiments to find out how a particular muscle type contracts and relaxes in the body. This muscle is called smooth muscle and it is found in every hollow organ in the body – so really, smooth muscle controls how blood passes through arteries, how food passes through your stomach, how air comes in and out of your lungs etc. We want to find out how these smooth muscle cells work because when they don’t people can get horrible diseases that we find difficult to treat properly like high blood pressure, heart disease, asthma….. When we’ve done enough experiments to tell us something new we then try to write a document about them and submit it to a journal (a bit like a magazine for scientists) for publiction. If they like it, then it gets published and everyone out there can see what we have found and decide for themselves if it is useful or not. To do these experiments costs money (for the salary of the lab members, the equipment in the lab, the chemicals to make up the experiments) and so scientists also have to write to people outside of the university to ask for money to support the projects. Usually this would mean asking the government or a big charity (maybe you’ve heard of the British Heart Foundation or Cancer Research – they help support these kinds of projects).

    • Photo: Mona Gharaie

      Mona Gharaie answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      CO2 emission is one of the main contributors for global warming. I as a scientist try to find a practical solution to reduce CO2 emission.

    • Photo: Jen Gupta

      Jen Gupta answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      OK so there are a couple of ways I could answer this:

      I am a PhD student which means that I have already finished one degree at university and now I’m spending 3-4 years doing original research (stuff that hasn’t been done before). At the end of my 3-4 years I have to write all my research up in a massive report that’s called a thesis. I then have what’s called a viva which is an oral exam where two senior astronomers will question me about everything that I’ve done and I have to defend my work. Once that’s over and I pass I can call myself a doctor!

      My research is looking at galaxies that are different to normal galaxies because they are emitting more energy than if you added up the energy coming from all of the stars in that galaxy. This means that there has to be something else emitting this energy. All galaxies have a really big black hole at their centres but in these special galaxies, we think the black hole is “active” and is pulling all the gas and dust around it into it – this causes loads of energy to be emitted. We still don’t quite know the physics of how all of this happens so my research is trying to understand a bit of this.

      I do this by looking at these galaxies with telescopes that are sensitive to different types of “light” like radio waves and x-rays. What we see as light is actually a very small part of what’s called the electromagnetic spectrum. A good way to think about this is that if you take a photo of yourself, you can see that you have a head, 2 arms, 2 legs, skin, fingers, eyes etc. But you can’t see what’s underneath all of that. To know that you can take an x-ray which then shows your bones. If you want to know how warm your body is you can use an infrared camera, like night vision goggles. In this way you build up a full picture of the human body. I do the same with galaxies!

      I hope that makes sense – please comment if you want to know more 😀

    • Photo: Emma Bennett

      Emma Bennett answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Sorry that it all seems a bit confusing. As well as being a scientist I’m also still a student which means that my role is to complete a project that my boss came up with ( students are the lowest of the low in the scientific pecking order). I applied to do this project just like you would a job but there is some flexibility to go off on a few tangents and look at the things that really interest me as well. So after three years I have to produce a big book of my work (a thesis) which I’ll get examined to show much do I know about my field and if I pass this then I get to become a Dr!!! So in some ways my role is really to survive the next few years until I can call myself a Dr (hopefully). Therefore I spend most of my time trying to answer the questions set out in the original project and looking into different ways of doing this. This means that most of my time is spent in a lab and doing practical work to get enough data to write up.

      If you would like to know more about the project then let me know.

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