Physiological Society

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Read the full report

The Sleep Zone was a themed zone supported by The Physiological Society and featured six scientists:

• Yousef Alqurashi is a doctoral student researching sleep and treating patients with sleep problems
• Rachel Sharman, the winner of this zone, is at the University of Oxford looking at sleep medicine interventions in adolescent sleep and digital therapy for insomnia
• Petrina Lau, from MRC Harwell, researches sleep and how it relates to disease conditions
• Michael Ambler is trying to understand why animals hibernate to see if it would be possible for humans
• Jason Ellis is a professor of sleep science and is trying to understand what happens in a person’s brain when they are sleeping
• Emma Gale is currently a postgraduate student in sleep medicine at the University of Oxford

Extra resources
In the Sleep Zone we asked scientists to answer an extra question – ‘What’s the most important thing about sleep?’ – on the interview section of their profiles. Featured on all student profiles was a list of ‘Tips for a good night’s sleep’ and a ‘What type of sleeper are you?’ quiz, where students could find out their sleep chronotype.

We also gave teachers a link to some extra teaching resources provided by Hayley Moulding, sleep researcher and PhD Student at the MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Cardiff University. These resources included a Sleep Diary, the above mentioned chronotype questionnaire, activities for younger students and links to NHS advice on sleep and tiredness. Continue reading →

Read the full report The Sports Science Zone was a themed zone funded by The Physiological Society, and included four scientists and three professional athletes.  Laura-Anne, the winner of the zone, researches how our muscles work in order to help people faster and stronger, Katy studies the body temperature of athletes with a spinal cord injury to help keep them cool during exercise, Helen is working on ways to stop athletes getting sick before a competition and Dan is a former Paralympian who is now a lecturer in exercise physiology. We recruited three athletes to take part in the zone. Stephanie is a Paralympic swimmer who won five medals in Rio 2016, Emilia is currently training for sprint canoeing hoping to make the team for Tokyo 2020 and Andrew is an Olympic swimmer who also competed in Rio 2016.

READ THE FULL REPORT The Ageing Zone was funded by the Physiological Society, of which Peter and Siana were members. The scientists involved were working in a range of areas related to ageing processes including the effect of exercise on ageing, what happens to the immune system, dementia, the physical fitness of over 65s and studying how mice age. The Zone was focused on its theme and was very busy in ASK, where over 1000 questions were submitted and over 400 approved. Students asked questions about many aspects of ageing, the research of the scientists, and about science as a career. This zone saw lots of discussion in the comments of ASK, and the final two scientists, Sara and Richard, engaged strongly throughout. Richard gave more answers (283) than any other scientist in November’s zones.