But, on balance, I always felt that there was something sunny about American faith in innovation.

BBC: Change America can believe in

She added: "I would never have become involved in something like this but the lives of my children were in danger and I felt I had to protect them".

BBC: Bali drugs: Death sentence for Briton Lindsay Sandiford

"I had known about other scientists using magnetic fluids to separate oil but it had never worked out practically and that was something I felt I could do something about, " says co-researcher Markus Zahn.

CNN: Cleaning up oil spills with magnets and nanotechnology

"For me to be playing for my country and on top of it to be playing to achieve what my father had hoped for but had not accomplished in his Olympic experience, I just felt like I was playing for something larger than just me, " said the American, now 42.

CNN: Golden moments: Agassi and Graf relive Olympic glory

But explaining my reasoning to Sara meant confronting the mortality of her lung cancer, something that I felt ill prepared to do.

NEWYORKER: Letting Go

When I walked into bat I still felt that if things went our way we could pull off something special but they didn't and it became quite dark - we could hardly see anything.

BBC: Russel Arnold's column

But as of now, I've never been offered anything which excited me or something that I felt would be challenging enough for me to do.

CNN: Interview with Abhishek Bachchan