• Question: Why do you wane find out why does compounds help our skin ? Who you wane know what people know about the world ? Why do you do cancer reasearch ? Why do you love science some much what made you to become scientist ? Why do you like tropical forest ?

    Asked by mag1 to Sarah, Murray, Diana, Caspar, Alan on 21 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Diana Drennan

      Diana Drennan answered on 18 Mar 2011:

      I want to find out how compounds help our skin because it’s interesting. There is so much going on in our skin, and so many ways to mess it up. For instance, old skin and sun-exposed skin (like on your fore-arm) have similar problems. There is a protein that is “turned on” more in old and sun-exposed skin that if we “turn it off” it makes the skin act more like young skin. So, if we find a compound that will turn off the protein, that’s going to be good to put in a product. Of course, it has to be safe, and formulate well, and inexpensive, and “green” to make…

      I also want to find out which compounds would be best to put in our products because it would help my company put something on the market that would help people and ultimately make money for the company. If the company makes money, I stay employed !!

    • Photo: Alan Winfield

      Alan Winfield answered on 18 Mar 2011:

      This looks like five different questions – one for each of us. The first question is for Diana and the third for Sarah.The final question must be for Murray (although I like tropical forests too!). Of the other two questions one, I’m sorry to say I don’t understand (the 2nd in your list). So I’ll answer the other one – I started my career as an engineer and that’s because, as a boy, I really really wanted to know how things worked – especially electrical things like radio and TV. (There weren’t any personal computers then.) More recently, in the past 20 years, I’ve become less an engineer and more a scientist. But actually nothing has changed. I still want to know how things work! But the difference is that now I want to know things like what intelligence is, and how it works. And I build robots to try and help me to understand questions like that.

    • Photo: Murray Collins

      Murray Collins answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      Hi

      I love tropical forests since there are so many different species living there. Maybe half of the species on earth live in forests. They are also very very important in climate change, because cutting them down releases so much carbon dioxide, which contributes to climate change.

      See you 🙂

    • Photo: Sarah Thomas

      Sarah Thomas answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      Haha! Lots of questions – good effort!

      Why do you do cancer research?
      Well when I was studying for my degree in chemistry somebody I was close to died from cancer very suddenly. And I decided I wanted to do something useful with my life and help people in some way, so I decided to go into cancer research.

      Why do I love science?
      There’s no boundaries with science. Scientists are always doing things which are seemingly impossible, like splitting the electron, discovering new planets and galaxies, curing incurable diseases, making new elements! And the other reason that I love it is because science has an impact on our everyday lives in ways we don’t even realise… Who do you think makes your tooth paste, your shampoo, your washing up liquid?! Simple things that we take for granted are down to science.

      What made you become a scientist?
      I just enjoyed science at school. And I think when you are making choices about what subjects to take and what career you want to do, you should just go with your heart. Do what makes you happy!

    • Photo: Caspar Addyman

      Caspar Addyman answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      That’s one question each then 😉

      I think you will find the answers to these questions dotted around the rest of the site. But to answer the bit about my research which is developmental psychology (or what might be called learning about learning). I think it it is important to try and find out how our minds work and how we come to know and believe the things that we do. THere are lots of things that we believe because they are seem so easy to us but are actually very, very difficult skills.

      For example, learning to speak your first language was easy but then why is learning a second language so hard? And if recognising objects and faces is so easy why has taken computer scientists 50 years of research and they still can’t get computer vision to work as well as human visual recognition?

Comments

  • Photo: Diana

    Diana commented on :

    What I love about science is that it’s logical, there are “rules” that make sense and when we figure out the rules we can use them to figure out other things. There is a lot we know, and a lot we don’t know, so there’s always something else to figure out. I get a real kick out of it when I figure something out. It’s like getting to do puzzles all day, but the puzzles are real life. Plus, it’s interesting. There are so many times I’ll read about something and go “huh – that’s really cool”.