A = Ian Williams B = Michael Bourne C = Jim McEIwaine D = Pascal Harper who is a member of a team doing research on a cancer drug helps athletes sharpen their skills to get closer to ideal performance finds his job rewarding because it has never been done before build models of their research objects used to work on site at a sewage works obtained PhDs before they turned to their respective research keeps his research projects secret in order to have an advantage over competitors believes his job is a perfect combination of work and pleasure 1. ______ 2. ______ 3. ______ 4. ______ 5. ______ 6. ______ 7. ______ 8. ______ 9. ______ 10. ______ A Ian Williams Zulu warriors used it as a poison to make their spears more deadly, and it is a substance that has been traded for its healing properties for over 2000 years. Now, this organic molecule derived from the bark of the African bush willow tree is being tested as a cancer drug. Unlike conventional drug treatments, which can destroy healthy as well as cancerous cells, the molecule combretastatin restricts blood flow, but only targets blood vessels formed inside tumours, effectively starving them. Ian Williams is part of a team at the University of Sheffield uncovering why and how it acts in this way. "Once we isolate the ’how’ of a drug’s action we can apply that knowledge to similar compounds and develop further cancer treatments," he says. Ian is in the second year of his PhD at Sheffield. He spends most of his time in the lab, assessing the drug’s impact on colon carcinoma cells, Ian’s PhD is funded by Cancer Research UK. "Later in my PhD I’ll be presenting my work in charity shops, explaining how their work relates to mine. It’s really important as it’s the public who directly fund my work." Ian hopes his work will yield useful results, but as with all research nothing is certain. For Ian, that’s what makes the research both daunting and exciting. B Michael Bourne As a biomechanist and performance analyst at the English Institute of Sport, Michael helps athletes get closer to the ideal performance. Biomechanics uses the laws of physics and principles of engineering to describe the human body as it moves. Michael studies video and sensory data using tools such as a "force platform", which is a complex set of scales measuring the forces an athlete generates as they make a movement such as a jump. He can then use this information to help athletes hone their technique. Another part of Michael’s job is studying his athletes’ opponents. This year he is helping the British judo team prepare for the 2008 Olympics by sizing up the strengths, weaknesses and fight style of every potential competitor. This will be the first database of its kind, he says, and biomechanists will soon have the same depth of data for all sports. Because standards in sports are continually rising, biomechanical know-how can mean the difference between winning or losing. "We keep a lot of our projects secret -- it only takes the seed of an idea to send our competitors down the right path, then we lose the advantage." C Jim McEIwaine Studying how an avalanche hurtles down the mountainside is no easy task, especially if you are trying to create a precise mathematical model like researcher Jim McEIwaine. "It is easy to do badly, and currently impossible to do very accurately," Jim says. "The fascinating thing for me is that sometimes these complications disappear and simple models can be reasonably good." Jim turned to avalanche research following a PhD in quantum mechanics. As a keen climber and skier, it has proved a great opportunity to combine work and pleasure, he says. Now he divides his time between sitting with pencil and paper writing equations at the University of Cambridge and several months every winter at the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos. There, he helps perform small-scale experiments dropping snow down chutes and larger experiments at a specially equipped test site. These can involve blasting out large avalanche by dropping bombs from a helicopter. Jim has first-hand experience of being at the wrong end of an avalanche. On one climbing trip to Himalayas when he was younger, he was buried up to his neck and a friend had to dig him free. But that hasn’t stopped him pursuing a career with the two things he loves most -- maths and the mountains. D Pascal Harper When Pascal Harper says that to do his job you need to be prepared to get your hands dirty, he means it. Pascal learned this lesson the hard way, when early in his career he undid the fastening on a sludge pump, thinking it was turned off, to be greeted by a jet of high-pressure raw sewage. Today, Pascal is more white lab coat than hard hat and overalls. He works as a waste-water process engineer for a small company called Water Innovate, which develops new technologies for the waste-water industry. The majority of his time is spent developing software that models and simulates the odours from sewage works. Pascal started out as an engineer for Anglican Water on their graduate training scheme. He undertook two placements while he was there: the first on site, monitoring the removal of phosphorus from waste, and the second in the lab building computer models of biological processes taking place in the waste. But you don’t need to be an engineer to get into the industry, Pascal stresses. "They were looking for people from all scientific disciplines, not just engineering." Pascal did an undergraduate degree in chemistry, before going on to do a master’s and a PhD.