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Asked by anon-291895 on 22 Apr 2021.
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Rosie Goodburn answered on 22 Apr 2021:
The best thing I’ve studied is my current PhD project! We working on ways we can use a new machine called an MR-Linac that combines MRI with Radiotherapy. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is a way of making pictures of internal organs like your lungs and liver using a super-strong magnet. And Radiotherapy is a way of treating cancer using radiation to kill cancer cells and leave the healthy parts unaffected.
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By combining them, the idea is to see tumours and nearby organs more clearly when we’re treating patients so we can improve the chances of curing the cancer and reducing side effects.
It was really difficult to combine both of these machines into one: It’s a new technology and a lot of technical challenges are still being figured out today. I am working on the MRI side that allows us to see the organs really well so we can be more sure radiation is sent to the right places.
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In normal Radiotherapy, scientists calculate where the radiation will go in the body with 3D X-ray images that show the bones very well. It’s important to see the bones for these calculations. MRI images look different from X-ray images: You can see organs better in MRI scans, but you can’t see bones very well. My job is to make fake versions of the 3D X-rays from the MRI scans so we can calculate where the radiation is going to end up right before we treat patients with Radiotherapy.
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Ed Peake answered on 22 Apr 2021:
I really loved Quantum Mechanics at University – it just blew my mind. Some of the concepts are completely mad – like Schrodinger cat. How can something be alive and dead!? I think I once got my head around something known as the EPR paradox – but now I’m not sure I can even understand how it works 🙂
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Ross Low answered on 23 Apr 2021:
I love learning about strange organisms (not just parasites). There are so many living things that we know absolutely nothing about! We can basically throw away the rule book for what we think we know about biology when it comes to these guys.
For example, there are some cells that look like they don’t have the basics needed to survive, but they seem happy and alive all the same!
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Karrie Liu answered on 24 Apr 2021:
“How to collect the data in the lab” was the best thing that i learn from university. The reason is if we dont have all the information, missing data means we will not able to get the right picture.
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Kip Heath answered on 26 Apr 2021:
I once went to a course and the first thing I learned was how to peel off a post it note and keep it straight (the trick is to slowly peel it sideways, not upwards).
The things I’ve enjoyed the most have not been what I expected!
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Lucile Crete answered on 26 Apr 2021:
The best thing I’ve studied, so far, was a Neanderthal skeleton that had been found by a land owner very close to Lascaux Cave (a prehistoric painted cave in France). I was just a student, so my study was not very detailed, but I felt really privileged to get to see and work on the remains of someone who lived so long ago (about 80 thousand years ago), from a species so similar to our, modern humans (Homo sapiens). I am still amazed that we are able to learn so much about species that have disappeared thousands of years ago!
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Steve Briddon answered on 27 Apr 2021:
I was only a small part of a project, but one of the best things I’ve looked at was how one of the receptors I’m interested in helped white blood cells called neutrophils capture bacteria. Neutrophils defend our body against invaders like bacteria but chasing after them and eating them. They are one of the fastest moving cells in the body. We used neutrophils from human blood and watched them capture glow-in-the-dark bacteria. One of the amazing things we saw was the neutrophils send out fishing lines to latch on to bacteria, then pull them into their cell bodies to eat them! It was amazing to watch down the microscope. They also set traps (like nets) to capture them!
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Michael Capeness answered on 28 Apr 2021:
When I first started in a lab I worked on the flagella of bacteria, which are the tails that bacteria use to swim. The proteins that the flagellum is made of and how it all works together is really fascinating, like a small engine for the cell and it’s capable of propelling a bacterium 160 x it’s body length in 1 sec. That’s the equivalent of me moving 280 metres in 1 sec.
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