Our experiment vlog from Spin Your Thesis! 2018

We're excited to bring you all a treat for the weekend (just when you thought we hadn't brought you enough content)... Our Spin Your Thesis! experiment vlog! This short video documents our experiment journey to the LDC for Spin Your Thesis! 2018. We had so much fun at the LDC and thought it would be …

In a spin from our experiment – Part 3: Return of the Fish

The next day, we were back in the lab and set about preparing everything we could for when the spin would end and we would be collecting the fish,  running our behaviour experiment, and preparing the fish larvae for their return to Bristol for analysis. We took this time to test our cameras for the behaviour test, label …

In a spin from our experiment – Part 2: The Six Gondolas

(This is Part 2 of a tale of two relatively pint-sized folks from the Shire (AKA Bristol, near Gloucestershire) who go on a journey backed by a Fellowship of diverse advisers through unknown and potentially scary territory (i.e. a hypergravity experiment with ESA, the Netherlands, etc.) to complete their experiment and return home. Hence the …

In a spin from our experiment week – Part 1

If you haven't already gathered from our posts on our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, last month we successfully ran our Spin Your Thesis! 2018 experiment (hooray!). Zebrafish larvae were spun in the Large Diameter Centrifuge (LDC) for 48 hours at ESA's ESTEC facility in Noorwijk, the Netherlands, and have now been returned to the Hammond …

Live Lab takeover at We The Curious

Last month, we had the amazing opportunity to collaborate with We The Curious (Bristol's visitor centre for science, art, questions and ideas) for a public engagement event. From 20th-27th August 2018, we took over the Live Lab at We The Curious where thousands of visitors engaged with our activities on display. Our aim was to get the …

Meet our mentor

Today we're putting the spotlight on our ELGRA mentor, Juan Nunez. Juan gained his MEng AeroSpace & Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Seville, and his PhD Biomedicine from the University of Southampton. He has had 3 years in the aerospace industry, and is an Honorary Research Associate at King's College London. His PhD research …

August update: progress and a paper!

Sorry we have been absent from the blog for so long, we have been working hard to write a paper and optimise our experiments ready for campaign week in September! Our project aims to understand how hypergravity affects the development of joints, bones, muscles, cartilage and the immune system in zebrafish, as well as to …

Gravity-Related Experiments Training Workshop 2018

From the 30th January - 2nd February, we were fortunate enough to take part in ESA Academy's Gravity-Related Experiments Training Workshop at ESEC in Redu, Belgium. We had the opportunity to meet the teams from the ESA programmes Spin Your Thesis!, Drop Your Thesis! and Fly Your Thesis! 2018. The workshop had a busy schedule; …