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Today we're talking to Dr. Felicity Rose about her work on tissue engineering. Her work uses tissue engineering to generate models for studying diseases, such as asthma.

Felicity works with her team to build ‘living' models of the human asthmatic lung (and healthy tissue for comparison) that can be used to understand this disease and test new drugs. Mouse embryonic stem cells

To do this you need two things, a scaffold and something to fill it. Usually scaffolds can be built from a variety of things such as collagen or synthetic polymers (such as used in Nottingham).

As to what they fill them with, the simple answer is stem cells!

There are different types of stem cells, adult, embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells. No I don't know what they are either, which is why we'll be asking Felicity about them!

However, Felicity doesn't just work with stem cells, but also looks at mucosal tissue work and bone healing.

Algal Bloom 1

The Science Show is back! After being taken over by the University of Nottingham's Student Union Elections last week (it's a bit like the Oscars, but the red carpet is stickier, the drinks taste more dubious, and instead of Sir Elton John's after-party, everyone goes to Ocean) we have returned, and apparently we're more colourful than ever. (Just look at some of these pictures!)

Today we're talking to Suzanne Mcgowan from the geography department here at the University of Nottingham about her research into paleolimnology.

Paleo-what I hear you say?

Paleolimnology. It's the history of freshwater lakes, and it helps us determine how our landscape was formed. It also helps solve problems such as that caused by blue-green algae during algal blooms. Lake Windermere saw a large algal bloom which caused a lot of problems to the surrounding life, as often they can be dangerous, even though they look rather spectacular (see our pictures).

We all do our bit towards preserving our environment, whether that be recycling your bottles from last night’s house party, splashing out on local produce during the weekly shop, or getting the train home instead of driving.

But what impact do you think all the paper you use for notes has on the environment? Or your shampoo? Have you dared to think what bleach would do if it was allowed to leak into sensitive ecosystems?

Martyn Poliakoff

Our guest today is a pioneer in an area called Green Chemistry. Professor Martyn Poliakoff is also a youtube super star from the periodic table of videos, but his research focuses on developing methods for industry that involve as little hazard to the environment as possible. This includes replacing more harmful solvents with pressurised carbon dioxide.

So have your questions ready to text in this Monday evening, and tune in to challenge the way you think about your world…

This week in Student Science we play with fire, literally..

We played with methane in our Student Science video and Martyn brought in a model of the chemical structure which is also a dog toy!

Martyn and his dog toy!

Today we are talking to Dr Nick Mount from the geography department at the University of Nottingham.

Geography. It's not just colouring in.

Brahmaputra River

Seriously though, his research is currently saving lives all around the word. His research is split into two major parts, both related to natural hazards. The first piece of work we'll be talking about is modelling the Brahmaputra river (known as Jamuna in Bangladesh). It is important to model this so that farmers can have better idea of what silt will be deposited during flooding and thus what crops will survive that season. Currently farmers are influenced by the government and economic factors too, which is dangerous, as planting the wrong crop can lead to failed harvest.

Ok, so we know Nick helps farmers with their livelihoods.

Now, part two.

Mount St Helen's.

Mount St. Helens

This week we're talking about Gravity! Travelling from the basics with Newton and his apples onto more complicated stuff with Einstein and black holes, gravitational lensing and even how you can measure the acceleration due to gravity in Student Science!

Sir Isaac Newton
In the 17th Century Sir Isaac Newton published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, laying the foundations for most of classical mechanics, the sort of thing taught at GCSE and A-level these days…

He also described gravity as a force that attracts things that have mass, supposedly it all started when he was watching an apple fall from a tree but whether that is true or not he did come up with the three laws of motion and he described universal gravitation.

One of his most famous formulas is:

where F is the force, G is the gravitational constant, m1 and m2 are masses and r is the distance between the two masses. Frazer Pearce tells us a little more about G:

This formula was used for many years and helped explain the orbits of the planets around the Sun and can even calculate your weight on the moon!