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Asked by beckyr to Emma, Jen, Joseph, Michael, Mona on 16 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by elliemariepearson, bradk004, imsoclever, andrewburdett, rosem001, shabaz, liam1997, galaxy1997, emily124.
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Michael Taggart answered on 13 Jun 2011:
I think to be curious, questioning and explorative are endeavours that should, within a scientific context, be encouraged at every opportunity. Studying science informs you about questions you are confronted with, and decisions to be taken, in just about every aspect of life. So, participating in science (academically or vocationally – think Springwatch) generally adds to the number of better-informed folk. That’s often underestimated.
In a strictly academic sense, my research work has two main aims. One purpose is to try and understand how our arteries shunt blood around our bodies to keep us healthy. The second one is to undertsand how the contractions of a pregnant women’s womb is regulated during labour. When each of these things go wrong, which happens often, people become very ill, maybe even die. If we continue to find out why things are the way they are then we’ll be better postioned to also find out why they don’t work as they should in disease conditions and then treat them.
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Mona Gharaie answered on 14 Jun 2011:
This is a very good question, I try to find a practical solution which can be applicable to real industry. In my work, I try to reduce CO2 emissions down to the targeted value which is set by the government, so it helps for the cleaner environmet.
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Emma Bennett answered on 15 Jun 2011:
Most of the work that I’m doing is related to food security issues – trying to make sure that all people have access to enough nutritious food to keep them healthy. As you probably already know food security is a big problem with millions of people attempting to survive on very small amounts of food. Check out this world map which has changed the country sizes to represent the number of undernourished people in each area, hence it looks a little weird when you first view it.
http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=178
Unfortunately the problem of food security is only going to get worse as the world population increases so we’ll need to produce more food using the same land area and other issues such as climate change and a lack of clean water will only make the situation worse.
This is where scientists like me are trying to come to the rescue to look at ways that we can produce more food from the same amount of land. Since science is very slow process though the research I’m doing now might not have any obvious benefits for a very long time.
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Jen Gupta answered on 16 Jun 2011:
This is always a really tough one for me because I guess my work doesn’t directly help us. I think it’s important for us to be curious about the world that we live in and the universe beyond the Earth. In my opinion be curious about everything around us is part of what makes us human. The galaxies that I study have really extreme physics going on in them – more so than the LHC particle physics accelerator at CERN so I guess one day in the future it might be important to understand this physics but maybe not right now.
Astronomy has helped us in a lot of indirect ways though. CCD chips that you get in digital cameras were originally developed for telescopes, wifi internet was invented at an observatory in Australia. A lot of technology that makes its way into every day life originally comes from scientists – the internet was invented at CERN! If you want to know more about how astronomy can have an impact on us, I would recommend you look at this booklet that the Royal Astronomical Society made http://www.ras.org.uk/publications/other-publications/1868-new-view-universe
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