• Question: What is the most interesting thing you have learnt in your work?

    Asked by snowdona to Alastair, Emma, Hywel, Keith, Vicki on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Alastair Sloan

      Alastair Sloan answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Great question

      The most interesting thing I have learned is that no matter what you think will happen or how clear your hypothesis is, some results will always surprise you so never, ever, expect a result

    • Photo: Vicki Stevenson

      Vicki Stevenson answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      wow – that’s a good question! I’ve learned so much in my work that it’s hard to pinpoint just one thing, but I think the most important thing I’ve learned is that technology will only work if people want it too. No amount of technology can make up for a person who is determined to do things their own way!

    • Photo: Keith Brain

      Keith Brain answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      The most interesting discovery relates to how drugs that act like nicotine, which are being used for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, work. We made the new discovery that nicotine-like drugs caused spikes in the calcium concentration in the nerve terminal, and we went on to find at that these spikes of calcium came from stores of calcium locked away inside the nerves. Such spikes had never been seen before in nerves. We think that by triggering these calcium spikes we can rescue the function of failing nerves, and hence boost nerve function. We’ll see, but it looks promising.

      If you check out my “Me and my work” page from the profile you’ll see a link from the word “video”. Here you can see a Youtube-based video of one such recording.

      Disclaimer: I confess that I’ve copy-pasted from another question … but, at least this bit is original 😉

    • Photo: Hywel Vaughan

      Hywel Vaughan answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Oo, that’s a tough one snowdona – there are so many!
      In general, it would have to be not to take things for granted. It is very easy to just assume there is a correct answer, and because you make that assumption, you follow it and eventually come up with something that fits what you imagined… because you wanted it to. If you start actually trying to think outside the box though, you start finding there are many other possiblities that could be much, much better.
      Too general?
      Well, with facts, the most interesting thing that I have learnt is that the human blinking response tends to be around 1/4 of a second, and in that time our car (at top speed) will travel 111 metres…

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