• Question: what have you learnt from the research you have done and how do you think it will affect science in the future ?

    Asked by chloe123karate to Ed, Katie, Sam, Steve, Vera on 16 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by mrblack97, abi999, rrooo12, francesca777, karlygal99, hannahpattinson127.
    • Photo: Katie Marriott

      Katie Marriott answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I have learnt that research can go in a very different direction! My area of research has also allowed me to get a better knowledge of things such as looking for life elsewhere in the planet and how space missions (like the ones to Mars) are opporated.

      My research will hopefully answer the questions a lot of you have been asking like how evolution and life began. Hopefully it will allow us to understand our biology more as well.

    • Photo: Steven Daly

      Steven Daly answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I have learnt a lot about how everything is always more complicated than it first appears. My supervisor asked me to look at what he called a simple molecule so we could try to make sure our experiments worked as we expected, and it took almost 2 years to work out exactly what was going on.

      I hope that my area of science will continue to provide answers to the questions we give it. It could explain the origins of life, provide evidence that life is likely on other planets, and help us understand chemistry that goes on in space.

    • Photo: Vera Weisbecker

      Vera Weisbecker answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I have also learned that things seem simple to start with but to actually find the answer to a question is often terribly tricky. In terms of facts, I’ve learned a lot about marsupial mammals (like kangaroos, wombats, koalas, opossums). They have a crazy way of being born – all marsupial babies, even the huge kangaroos, are between rice-grain and jelly bean size at birth and then need to climb into mum’s pouch!. This makes a big difference to the many sizes and shapes they come in compared to other mammals. For example, if you have to climb to make it to the pouch right after being born, you simply can’t survive with wings or hooves as forelimbs. That seems to be the reason why no bat-like or horse-like marsupial mammals ever evolved. For the future, I hope that my work will remind people that development is really important for understanding how evolution happened.

    • Photo: Ed Morrison

      Ed Morrison answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I have learned that it is rea lly fun and informative to use technology to answer scientific questions about beauty. For example, I use computer software to change how faces look, and this tells us what people prefer in partners. This sort of technology will be used more and more in the future to help us understand how the mind works.

    • Photo: Sam Tazzyman

      Sam Tazzyman answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I have learnt a lot because I am still quite new to biology! In terms of my research, I have discovered, for example, that the reason some poison frogs in some islands in Panama are all different colours could be because the females are very choosy about which male they mate with! This could affect science in the future because the same mechanism could have lots of other effects, for example in butterfly colours, and in making species split apart.

Comments