• Question: Have you ever found something out that is groundbreaking?

    Asked by Daniel to Melanie, David, Luna, Mark, Probash on 22 Mar 2011 in Categories: . This question was also asked by infernoduck.
    • Photo: Melanie Stefan

      Melanie Stefan answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Although some of my research results have been quite interesting for my specific field, I don’t think I have yet found out something truly groundbreaking.

      I do think, however, that the methods I use are groundbreaking: Computer modelling in biology is a rather new field, and only in the past few years have people begun to think about how to construct models that can be shared with other scientists, and tested both against experimental results and other computational models. As we get better at building models and testing them, we will be able to find out more and more really interesting things about the brain.

    • Photo: David Pyle

      David Pyle answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      It’s all relative, but, yes, I have found out a few things which have changed the way that people think about volcanoes. When I was doing my PhD, I discovered the simple mathematical formula that describes how thick the ash deposits will be at any particular distance from volcanoes. This has been quite useful, as it makes it easy to calculate how much material has been erupted in an eruption; and it also makes it easy to make forecasts of what might happen in the future. I didn’t plan to find this out when I started; I just needed to solve the problem in order to move on to the next one.

      For me the excitement of science is that you never really know what is just round the corner – and how your next discovery (which is often by chance) will change the way that you look at problems!

    • Photo: Luna Munoz

      Luna Munoz answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      In the grand scheme of things, it may not be groundbreaking. However, I have discovered some interesting things about children and their parents, which won me the Neville Butler Memorial Prize (with an invitation to the House of Commons, which was super-cool!). Prior studies looked at children who are uncaring and cold toward other people and what their parents were doing. They found that what parents did really did not make a difference to the hurtful behaviour that the small minority of children who were cold and uncaring did. The problem was that they never tried to do a study that asked parents how they were with their children and then followed up to see the effect on children later in time. I did do this. Also, I asked children about their behaviour and followed up to see the effect on their parents a year later.

      I found that children affect their parents. Children who are cold and uncaring have parents who stop trying to manage their child’s activities – they don’t check up on them as much. Also, parents gave up on their children even more when the child was engaging in antisocial behaviour and showed no remorse over their behaviour. Of course, parents giving up on a child that needs help is important to know about.

    • Photo: Mark Vesey

      Mark Vesey answered on 22 Mar 2011:

      Unfortunately not 🙁

    • Photo: Probash Chowdhury

      Probash Chowdhury answered on 22 Mar 2011:

      I haven’t no, but I’m not at the cutting edge of science. The safety testing I do is probably more follow up than cutting edge; development rather than research.

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