Saturday 18 May 2013

Up-goer five PhD description

Someone recently pointed out the Up-Goer Five text editor to me, which only lets you type using the 1,000 top most common words (inspired by this xkcd). The challenge is then to describe your PhD project using just these words. Here's my try:

I study a type of blood cell that helps keep us safe and well, called 'T_cells'. These cells search the body for signs of problems or things that shouldn't be there, and fix them if they find any. They can look for many different kinds of problems; taken as a group, they can look for far more problem signs than almost any other cell type. They feel the face of other cells as they move around the body, each one looking for different signs that something isn't right. I'm working on checking to see what 'T_cells' people have, to see if we can learn why some people get sick more easily than others.