I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Disease Zone. It has scientists studying the causes and processes of illness . Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
I have done lots of interesting things in my work. Some of my favourite things happened in a previous job where I worked sometimes in an emergency room and sometimes while I was collecting samples for pathology tests I would have to help the doctors and nurses. One thig that will always sty with me is having to hold a clamp on an artery in a mans leg that had been bought in after a car accident while the doctor got him stable because I was the only person with a spare pair of hands!
On a science side of things one of the strangest things I have had to test is cow eye fluid! I’m not sure why, but the vet bought the sample in and asked us to test it for potassium and sodium levels.
Other interesting things I sometimes do at work is assist the doctor doing bone marrow biopsies. The doctor uses a very large needle to bore into the hip bone and draw out a sample of the bone marrow from the centre of the bone. Its my job as an assistant to make slides while he is doing it to make sure the sample he is getting is a good one
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While I was doing my Ph.D. in USA, I used fresh pig kidneys to purify an enzyme. I used only small portion of the whole kidney called ‘Medulla’ and rest of the kidney was to throw away. My friend from Taiwan was very happy to take the kidneys to make delicacy. And I found out the delicacy she was making was the same dish we ate in Chinese restaurant in Korea.
One day, I got curious about how to make the dish with kidney she was taking home and she was kind enough to share the recipe with me. I put all the ingredients in the recipe and cookd the kidney. Guess what?
It worked for my friend but not for me. I threw away the freshly cooked, hard-worked delicacy-supposed-to-be into trash can. It smelt very bad! I must have washed the kidneys very well but I failed to do so. However, I lost appetite in that delicacy and never tried again. My friend was always happy to take the kidneys home and served the family very happy.
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The most interesting thing I’ve done during uni was a real autopsy. It lasted for several days. With a small group of students we all got one body to dissect (people donating their body to science after death). I know it sounds gross and sorry if I ruin your appetite, but it was fascinating to see what a real body looks like on the inside! And most of the ‘bodies’ we had in the room had died from a disease, so we could see how this disease had affected the organ and caused someone to die.
In the lab, the most interesting thing was when I discovered how the diet pill helped to burn more fat. We have tissue in our body called brown fat. It’s often found near your shoulders and neck. This tissue burns fat to help you stay warm and when you have too much fat in your body. So some people who can stay in cold water for a long time, have a lot of this brown fat that helps their body to stay warm.
So……what I found recently is that our white fat, the fat around your belly that normally only stores your extra fat, can be changed into brown fat! The diet pill we work on goes to the brain, and the brain then tells your white fat that it needs to change into brown fat and burn fat. Brilliant!
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