• Question: What makes your project unique and how will it help the world

    Asked by Thomas Hirst to Anna, James, Joe, Leonie, Olivia on 16 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Olivia Lynes

      Olivia Lynes answered on 16 Mar 2015:


      I’m looking into something no-one else is. What’s that the bottom of the nuclear waste ponds, and how do they interact with the ponds and how can we deal with it.

      Nuclear waste is a huge problem, nuclear is a really efficient energy but the waste is hard to get rid of. If we can figure out what to do with the nuclear waste then nuclear energy becomes viable again.

      We are always looking for new energy sources because one day we will run out of gas and coal and petrol.

    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 16 Mar 2015:


      Hi 652dysb48,

      My project is unique because of the methods we are using to study the Antarctic Sea Ice. No one has used the climate model set up I am using and therefore we should get some exciting very new results.

      This work will help the world I hope through improving our understanding of Antarctic sea ice and therefore how it will respond to climate change, which will affect the ice sheets on Antarctica and the amount of sea level rise these ice sheets cause during the next 100 years.

    • Photo: Leonie Oostwoud Wijdenes

      Leonie Oostwoud Wijdenes answered on 16 Mar 2015:


      My current project tries to find out whether movement plans get more variable if there are more movement options available. Multiple movement plans are a potential computational burden for our brain, and a possible reason why some people are more clumsy than others. So far no one has considered the number of movement plan a possible source of movement variability.

      If we understand what makes our movements variable, we can improve the design of tools and control panels and hopefully create training programmes for those who have trouble moving precisely.

    • Photo: Anna Ashton

      Anna Ashton answered on 16 Mar 2015:


      The cool thing about my project is that it’s on something that everyone thinks has already been solved, there’s nothing more to find out about it.

      I’m looking at the pineal gland which has the job of making melatonin, a hormone responsible for things like keeping us asleep at night. End of story. Or perhaps not (at least I don’t think so!).

      I’m looking at vitamin A in the pineal gland, once in the brain it gets converted to a hormone called retinoic acid, which is important for controlling genes in the brain. So I’m hoping it’s also important in the pineal gland and will re-ignite the world of pineal gland research!

    • Photo: Joe Spencer

      Joe Spencer answered on 17 Mar 2015:


      My project looks at nanomaterials that have never existed before i made them, i want to see the properties of these materials, i.e how strong they are, how good at conducting electricity they are etc etc. to eventually make new nanoscale electronic devices that would go into your computers / phones making them much better and faster.
      But also it’s possible i may see things we don’t expect about the nanomaterials which we could use to form the basis for even newer technology, like quantum computation

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