Join your host (me, Tabby Barton) and three lucky (unlucky) contestants (random audience members) as we wade through Iron Age and Roman religion and symbology. What is a wheel? What counts as a wheel? WHY...is this about wheels?

My diorama is titled:

Tug-of-War for Tomorrow: HR's Role in the Sustainability Struggle.

Please click on the picture and zoom in to see all the details.

Any questions/feedback welcome victoria.nightingale@open.ac.uk

In forums, strong learning grows..

Guide them, we must. Hmm

[I did have help with this so just posted here for fun]

shapes the path of knowledge flow.

Silence moves the words"

The pink background is for my daughter. A classmate once told her that if you like pink you won't be much good at maths - and since then I make it a point to have something pink in all my maths drawings!

Haiku:

Resilience blooms slow,
Frustration meets quiet hope,
Progress lights the path.

The steps in the image illustrate the uphill journey of the parents in transition, as well as my journey as a doctoral researcher (autistic woman living with mixed anxiety and depression).

I developed this Haiku from the tags in my research blog. (Caution: the blog contains material which some people may find distressing to read.)

I created this illustration and short poem to capture what my PhD journey feels like right now. My research sits in a kind of backpack I carry with me always. It is shaped by disruption of my research ideas, government policy shifts and the stories of the people I hope to represent.

Inside are the essentials; boots for the labour of work-based learning, a compass pointing toward social mobility, a notebook for the life-history stories I'll be gathering and a lens shaped by theory and lived experience.

Being at the start of my PhD, at the moment, my research is not something written, but it's carried, it's being collected and re-stitched/designed as I go.

My research so far demonstrates that a droplet on such a fibre will move, and spread, more slowly than an identical droplet on a flat, otherwise identical substrate.

But there's more! If microfluidics (my subject area) is applied maths, then watercolour painting is applied applied maths. The painting above demonstrates the following principles:

1. Pigment, i.e. inert particles in a suspension of water and binding medium, will flow from more wet areas to less wet areas.

2. When the paper is pre-wetted, the pigment particles flow slowly and drift within the wet area; so long as there isn't enough water to create puddles (in which case gravity becomes an issue), they won't run onto the dry areas of paper.

3. Brushes - i.e. collections of roughly cylindrical fibres - hold differing quantities of paint depending on their size and shape. For the background, I used a "mop" - c. 1.2cm diameter and 2.5cm long. The importance of fibre length on paint capacity has been known to artists a lot longer than it has mathematicians: fine, long brushes have been known as "riggers" for their use in painting the ropes in ships' rigging for centuries.

4. The surface I've used - 100% cotton, cold-pressed paper - affects the paint's behaviour. Cotton is more absorbent than cellulose, and the cold-press surface is rough to the touch. This allows the pigment particles to settle in the dips and grooves, and gives the lovely textured effect seen in the background.

The other 2 photos demonstrate the effects of point 5, substrate chemistry and topology. The first is on similar (100% cotton, cold-pressed) paper to my main image; the second is on hot pressed (smooth), cellulose paper. In each case, the dots on the left were done on a pre-wetted surface, and those on the right on dry. The top, larger, dots were painted to be the size maintained by the dry ones; the lower dots were from touching the tip of the brush to the paper once.

Suppose that we said yes to a single moment, then we have not only said yes to ourselves, but to the whole of existence. For nothing stands alone, either in ourselves or in things; and if our soul did but once vibrate and resound with a chord of happiness, then all of eternity was necessary to bring forth this one occurrence—and in this single moment when we said yes, all of eternity was embraced, redeemed, justified and affirmed.

(Nietzsche, The Will to Power: Selections from the Notebooks of the 1880s)

Join me to make your own (origami) ‘research support animal’ and remember that you don't have to do it all alone. :)

Liz Danner

STEM, 3^rd Year

I am looking at the highly precise imaging detectors that will be on-board the Roman space telescope, investigating the impact of radiation damage and spurious noise sources, to inform and improve the data yield.

(We can neither confirm or deny rumours that the song was performed live in blonde wigs at Create Your Research Day as tragically, we made sure that no recordings were made.)

Lichen Virgin (with apologies to Madonna)

(Fungus)

I made it through the wilderness

Somehow I made it through

Couldn’t photosynthesise until I found you

(Algae)

I was beat

Incomplete

I’d been had, I was green and blue

But you made me feel

Yeah, you made me feel

Shiny and new (Hoo)

(Both)

Lichen virgin

Sharing a special rhizine

Lichen virgin

Symbiosis

Yours and mine

(Algae)

Gonna give you algal love, boy

My fear is fading fast

Let’s convert some C02

With my chloroplasts

(Fungi) You’re so fine

And you’re mine (mycelium!)

Make me strong …yeah you take my mould

(Algae)

Oh you shelter me

Yeah, you shelter me

When it’s dark and cold

(Both)

Lichen virgin, hey!

Sharing a special rhizine

Like a virgin

Poikilohydric

For all time

Whoa..

Whoa.. ah

Whoa..

(Fungi)

You’re so fine

And you’re mine ( Algae: mycelium!)

Make  me strong with your mould

(Algae)

Oh you shelter me

Yeah, you shelter me

When it’s dark and cold

(Both)

You’re  so fine

And you’re mine

I’ll be yours

‘Til the end of time

‘cause you made me feel

Yeah, you made me feel

Symbiotic inside

(Both)

Lichen virgin, Hey!

Sharing a special rhizine

Lichen virgin

Poikilohydric

For all time

Lichen virgin, oh oh…

Lichen virgin

Feels so good inside

Cos we’re algae

And we’re fungi

Making lichen

Oh..oh..oh

Oh oh oh