• Question: are you testing enything now

    Asked by aabidi to Emma, Jimmy, Janet, Niall, Simon on 9 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Janet Daly

      Janet Daly answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      At the moment, I’m looking at whether being overweight means that donkeys don’t respond so well to vaccination against equine influenza…it used to be thought that fat tissue was just a storage depot, but recently, scientists have realised that fat cells produce chemical messengers (called adipokines) that can affect the body – the more fat cells, the more adipokines are produced and this could cause the body to respond less well to vaccination or infection. Donkeys are already prone to get very sick if they catch ‘flu and they have tendency to get fat.

    • Photo: Niall Crawford

      Niall Crawford answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      Yes, I’m testing tree frogs performance on rough surfaces. I want to see if frogs can either stick better or worse if the surface they are sticking to is smooth or rough. Things like sticky tape don’t stick well on a rough surface, so it would be cool if we could see if frogs manage to still stick despite the bumps on the surfaces.

    • Photo: Emma Ashley

      Emma Ashley answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      The hospital lab never stops and people work through the night to make sure the blood results are available for patients in the hospital, especially those who come into A&E. During the day, we mainly get samples from GPs.

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