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Asked by cRz AK47 to Tora, David, Daniel on 7 Nov 2014.
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Tora Smulders-Srinivasan answered on 7 Nov 2014:
I am working on a project looking at possible treatments for Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s disease can affect the brains of people when they get older.
I have some chemical compounds made by some of my colleagues that I’m testing on my models of Parkinson’s disease to see the compounds help.
My Parkinson’s disease model flies don’t climb very well at all, because of the effects of Parkinson’s disease on their brains. I’m hoping treating them with these compounds will help them climb better — so I’m giving the flies the compounds and then testing them to see if they climb better than the untreated Parkinson’s flies!
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Daniel Parsons answered on 7 Nov 2014:
I am working on a big project on the Mekong River (see http://www.stelar-s2s.org for all the details). We are trying to work out how much sediment (sand and mud mostly) is carried by the river to the sea each year. This is really important to know and understand because where most big rivers meet the sea there is a delta plain, this is a large and fertile area of land, where lots of food is grown. Deltas are home to billions of people, but there is a big problem in that deltas naturally slowly sink into the sea and also sea-levels are rising. The single most important thing to prevent deltas sinking below the sea is how much sediment the rivers deliver to the coast. However, we humans and building big dams on the largest rivers to generate hydro-power – these dams trap sediment behind them and starve the deltas of the mud and sand needed to stop them sinking into the sea. So it is vital that we understand how much sediment is presently delivered to deltas and try to understand how much is needed as we balance the needs to generate electricity from hydro-power against the needs to sustain the deltas where so many people live and so much food is grown.
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