• Question: What is your latest breakthrough or discovery?

    Asked by anon-253608 on 7 May 2020.
    • Photo: Jacque Cilliers

      Jacque Cilliers answered on 7 May 2020:

      I haven’t made any major breakthroughs recently. A LOT of my experiments don’t work the way I want them to work… which, in a way, IS a breakthrough.
      Failure is horrible. It feels bad, and I feel like I am useless and can’t do anything right. But failure is really important. Failure is what helps us figure out what works and what doesn’t.
      So I guess my breakthrough is… I am learning and growing 😊

    • Photo: Chloe Carter

      Chloe Carter answered on 7 May 2020:

      I have just finnished mapping all of the leaky dam projects in the UK and have started classifying all the designs of dam and my latest discovery is that there are over 106 different designs! This is pretty big as no one has done this before.

    • Photo: Ana Filipa Palmeirim

      Ana Filipa Palmeirim answered on 7 May 2020:

      My last discovery is that as people are removing natural forests and replacing that for some sort of ‘modified habitat’, like a plantation or a pasture or even urban areas, the animals that are able to survive in such changing world are those with more generalist habitat. For example, imagine you have a forest full of mammals, only those that are more flexible using both the forest floor and the trees or only the forest floor, also those eating of every sort of food, and not only fruits for example, are those that can survive. The problem is that does survivor animals then do not have the same ecological roles than the ones that are extinct. For example, some animals are responsible for dispersing the seeds of the trees, if those animals are extinct, it is very difficult for those trees to successful reproduce. So we have to find ways to prevent the extinction of ‘key’ species.

    • Photo: Gareth Mason

      Gareth Mason answered on 7 May 2020: last edited 7 May 2020 1:02 pm

      Confirming that honey buzzards do predate and feed their young the chicks of other species. This has been assumed but last year I caught this behaviour on camera.

      Also that trailcameras can be used effectively to monitor remote grouse leks (breeding displays) in place of multiple very early (3am) surveys with the same/better results, and less disturbance.

      I have also just ‘rediscovered’ some ancient trees that have been hidden for at least 50 years, and can now make sure they are protected and given the space they need to grow more and live for at least another 100 years.

    • Photo: Craig Hendry

      Craig Hendry answered on 7 May 2020:

      I haven’t had many big breakthroughs in my current job but as part of my undergraduate degree project I modelled raindrop erosion on the leading edge of wind turbine blades. This not only demonstrated that in nano seconds the shockwave within a raindrop moves in the direction of the droplet as it impacts the turbine blade, sending multiple small forces each time; but when I went back to university for my masters degree I was told my project and what I discovered was used by students in the following years as a basis for their undergraduate projects.

      Thanks for your question.

    • Photo: Sylvia Soldatou

      Sylvia Soldatou answered on 7 May 2020:

      I disovered new molecules from a red alga (seaweed) that I collected when I was studying in Ireland. Those molecules showed anti-cancer activity when tested in the lab and they have not been isolated before!

    • Photo: Michelle Valkanas

      Michelle Valkanas answered on 7 May 2020:

      I recently discovered that two known bacteria work together to remove iron from water. While we knew they existed, we didn’t know they worked together to clean water!

      Working together is important across all types of life!

    • Photo: Rehemat Bhatia

      Rehemat Bhatia answered on 7 May 2020:

      I discovered that ocean plankton (called foraminifera) may have been affected by a mass ocean acidification event 56 million years ago more than we previously thought, and that different species were affected in different ways.

    • Photo: Becca McGowan

      Becca McGowan answered on 18 May 2020:

      During lockdown i’ve been desk based and working on some previous data. Over the last 20 years, the insect I research has been monitored and counted weekly. I aim to use this data to forecast (almost like a weather forecast) the insect (which is a pest of farmers crops).

      So far I have found a relationship between the emergence of the pest and temperature over the 20 years. The pest seems to emerge at a similar time of year dependent on temperature. I have been able to make some cool graphs so we can see when many insects will be flying.

      Hopefully these findings will be useful for farmers as they will then be able to predict when the pest is going to be present so they can alter the management of their crops around this.

Comments

  • Photo: anon-253608

    anon-253608 commented on :

    Thank you

  • Photo: Shaline

    Shaline commented on :

    With doing research, particularly when experiments don’t always work, I like to remember the following saying: “I succeed in finding out what doesn’t work”. Bearing this is mind, I haven’t made a scientific breakthrough per say, yet through the failed experiments I have found out that some mechanisms of spreading mutant protein might not be occurring in the way originally thought. This I consider a breakthrough. It is also crucial to remind oneself that failed experiments are a way of learning and it is through these that we end up with breakthroughs. They are all very valuable lessons! 🙂

  • Photo: anon-253608

    anon-253608 commented on :

    Wow! That’s very impressive!