• Question: What is the latest discovery you have dicovered?

    Asked by galaxyh14 to Rika, Alex, Jools, Matt on 22 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by faieq190298.
    • Photo: Julie Greensmith

      Julie Greensmith answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      A person’s rate of change of heart rate is a strong indicator of fear for inexperienced motorbike passengers. I put wearable bio sensing monitors on some people on motorbikes. I just did the data analysis today and have shown statistical evidence that its not the increase in heart rate which says you’re afraid but how much the heart rate changes over time which is important.

    • Photo: Chandrika Nair

      Chandrika Nair answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Hmmm… My most recent discovery relates to how the bacteria I work on (Pseudomonas aeruginosa) make cyanide.

      I’m almost done perfecting a method for finding out which genes are important for cyanide production (basically, you knock genes from the bacteria one at a time and then see what happens -you end up with a library of mutant bacteria all differing by a single gene).

      A few surprising genes that came out of my screen were ones related to motility and flagella (the rotating tails bacteria use to propel themselves in liquid environments).

      So it seems that bacteria that lose the ability to move around produce more cyanide… Not sure what it all means just yet but it could be interesting.

    • Photo: Matthew Dickinson

      Matthew Dickinson answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      During my research, I have found to date that common belief to how the piston rings move during the running-in process is true, it is thought the ring will rotate round the piston groove all the time. I have taken a look and this thought and found that it is not true the rings move under different conditions under low RPM round in offset oscillations however in high rpm equal oscillations.

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