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Sawston Research Unit (SRU)

Our school now has Specialist Science College status and a new science building within which to create the ideal environment for learning. Part of the schools mission is to become a centre of excellence in science and try to push the boundaries of what is generally expected of school science departments. To this end we have thrown down a challenge to some of our year 10 students to produce a piece of original scientific research which will stand up to the scrutiny of peer review in a mainstream science journal. If we can achieve this we will be one of the first schools in the UK to do this.

To put this all into perspective, normally submission of original research to science journals is rare for even University students to achieve, let alone 15 year old school pupils. If we do succeed in this we will have set the bar at a new height which will lay down the gauntlet to not only other schools but also to future pupils in our own school daring them to pick it up and carry on the ‘tradition’ of excellence expected of them. Therefore, 2010 sees the formation of the Sawston Research Unit (SRU).

We invited pupils in the school to help us with this science study by acting as volunteers to have the skin of their arm assessed non-invasively using diagnostic ultrasound.

The aim of the study is to find out some information about the structure of skin and how it changes as we get older. There is quite a lot of data about adult skin but surprisingly little about skin in children. We want to measure skin thickness and density in normal children aged 11-16.

The study will give useful information about changes in normal skin during development which can then be used by other scientists and clinicians to help understand what happens in various skin diseases.

Volunteers were asked to roll up their sleeve to allow access to their arm. A small amount of water-based ultrasound gel was placed on their arm and an ultrasound probe was then placed on the gel. This allowed us to get an ultrasound scan of the skin of the arm. Measurements of the skin were then taken from the scans.

We hope that our results will help in the understanding of many skin diseases. To this end we intend to submit the results for publication in a science journal.

Current Position of the Project

We have now reached the stage where we have all the scans we need; 10 male and 10 female scans from each year group. The next stage involves data crunching. To this end the work is going to be split between the year 10 researchers as shown below.

We will be having a training session to show the research team how to use the image analysis software which will allow assessment of the ultrasound images.

Another area which will have to be addressed is writing up the research. The way we are going to do this is based on a similar system used by Newspapers. Dr Young will be the Editor and the research team will be the Reporters. The Editor will give small manageable assignments to the reporters and they will carry them out, bring the results back and will then be shown how to assemble them all together into a paper format.

Dr Young