So it turns out that it’s quite obvious when an exam is drawing near since the frequency of my posting shoots up dramatically (I’m an efficient procrastinator). I figure this sort of kind of counts as studying though, since it does involve what I’m supposed to be studying: genetics, embryology, and reproduction.
Except it’s in cake form, which makes it so, so much better.
(Yes, I do love Cake Wrecks, I think it is one of my favourite blogs out there)
I’ve always had a guilty pleasure for tattoos (at least ones that are well done) and when I came across the Science Tattoo Emporium I was like a little kid in a candy shop. There’s just something inherently awesome about people getting their research passions (or otherwise) tattooed on themselves! I especially like the couple I’ve seen that are representations of Cajal’s* drawings of neurons.
*Cajal is one of my all time heros since he was both an amazing artist and a renowned scientist. Not to mention that he studied neurons, which I am particularly found of.
My little tattoo does have a speck of science in it though, a little Fibonacci spiral in the middle of it. Maybe I’ll post a photo later.
That’s what I’ve been doing, running around. Mostly in the literal sense, but I suppose a little in the figurative sense as well (2 days to go until my final exam of the year!) Two weekends ago I ran my first 10km race of the year, with a less-than-stellar time. Not that it was a bad time, just not what I was aiming for. And then this weekend past I participated in a relay! Not just any relay but a 24 hour outdoor relay consisting of 17 legs and my team ran it with only 13 people (this is what happens when all 17 people on the team also happen to have an exam less than a week after, it’s like people think that studying is important or something crazy like that…) So 4 guys ran double legs, which normally might not be that bad except that there were parts of this race that were literally running up mountains (and running back down) and that the whole thing was done on very very very little sleep. I ran my leg at 0:37 (that’s not a typo, I didn’t mean to write 10:37, it was past midnight). 15.78km of “easy rolling hills” (which turns out is about as flat as any part of this race gets).
You might be thinking, “oh, that doesn’t look too bad, looks kind of flat.” but see that mountain in the distance? That’s where that leg of the race went up, let’s just say the car was having difficulties.
Mike suggested that I enter a t-shirt design contest for the upcoming useR conference. I’ve been looking around for inspiration, and I must say, I’m sad that I wasn’t the one to come up with this graphic:
Source: Phil Gyford via Revolutions
I’m doing some more illustration for Sharing in Health, which is great because it forces me to get off my butt and do some art. This one is of placenta previa, a condition in which the placenta develops either over or dangerously close to the cervix. Being, in very very simple terms, a giant sac of blood, this isn’t the best place for the placenta since it’s kind of where the baby needs to go. The danger is that when a woman with placenta previa goes to delivery, the placenta gets all mucked up and she can bleed out. It’s one of the most common causes of maternal death in the world. The good news is that placenta previa can be detected by ultrasound and then a C-section can be preformed, preventing all this nasty bleeding business.
The illustration shows the normal location of a placenta, along with placenta previa and two not-quite-placenta-previa situations that should still be noted.
I saw this over on Gizmodo and thought it was ingenious! It’s the Kug, as in kettle+mug. Two students designed it to address the fact that people with severe arthritis in their hands have a hard time lifting a kettle full of water.
Of course, I think the general idea is that this just seems like a smart idea regardless, since in the morning I am always boiling water in a kettle and then pouring it into my travel mug before I head to class.
Unfortunatley, my iMac is still on the fritz, otherwise I would post the design I’m working on for next year’s orientation week t-shirts.
Something that no one ever wants to see when they need to restart their mac.
Thankfully, I somehow managed to get it restarted, something about resetting the VRAM a bunch of times. How this resolved the problem, I’m not sure, but I took the time I had to back up all of my photos and art work. Hopefully my computer is alright, since I’m not sure what crashed my computer. Fingers crossed that it doesn’t happen again.
In an unrelated note, training for my leg of the Cabot trail relay is going well. It’s 15.5 km, not a marathon by any stretch, but the longest I’ve ever run in one go. Plus my leg of the relay is at 5AM, adding to my hardcoreness.
Ouu, two in a day, you can tell I’m avoiding studying
What it is: analgesic (pain killer), anti-inflammatory, antipyretic (lowers fever)
Indications: Pain, inflammation, fever
Administration: Oral
Mechanism of action: Ibuprofen is a non-selective COX inhibitor, meaning that it blocks both COX-1 and COX-2. By blocking COX (any immature thoughts there?), ibuprofen blocks prostaglandin (particularly PGE2) production. PGE2 causes a lot of the nasty side effects associated with injury like pain and inflammation because it brings in all of the inflammatory cells and can make pain neurons fire even more. As a side note, COX-1 is floating around the body most of the time anyways, particularly in the gut, while COX-2 is thought to only be around when there’s inflammation. This is why people who take ibuprofen or aspirin for a long time end up getting ulcers (the body needs the COX-1 in the stomach) and why scientists thought it would be an excellent idea to make selective COX-2 inhibitors like celecoxib (Celebrex). While COX-2 inhibitors don’t cause as many gastrointestinal problems, they’ve been shown to have a bunch of other nasty side effects such as cardiotoxicity (this is why Vioxx no longer exists).
Interactions: Not a whole lot, but people with kidney disease might watch out for ibuprofen
Adverse effects: GI ulcers
I might need some ibuprofen now since Wii boxing kicked my butt last night and now my shoulders are sore.
Drug #3 (so I didn’t do one yesterday, oops) and yes, I chose this one because of its silly name too.
What it is: small molecule (aren’t they all?) antineoplastic
Indications: Cancer
Administration: Oral, intravenously
Mechanism of action: This small molecule inhibits the tyrosine kinase receptor domain of the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor. Without EGF, there’s not a whole lot of signaling to grow, so the idea is that the cancer is stunted.
Interactions: Other lovely CYP3A4 enzyme substrates.
Adverse effects: All the nasty antineoplastic side effects. The tolerated “nasty effects” for cancer drugs are actually much higher than most, just because the disease will likely be deadly, so they figure you can put up with more discomfort than if you were taking a med for your headache.
Every year the 2nd year class puts out a handy-dandy “DON’T PANIC” guide for the incoming class. This year I was asked to do the cover and decided to go with something way different from the previous year (which was a ominous looking stethoscope). I thought, of course, that the most important thing is to have DON’T PANIC written in large, friendly letters. And you can’t getting larger or friendlier (or Britishier) than good old Gill Sans.
I’ll post the actual cover later though, once all of the changes have been made. I doubt that it will really give anything away to the next year’s class (except maybe Mike) but I’d rather wait until the writers of the book tell me what changes I need to make and how I really can’t spell and should mostly just avoid putting text in any of my designs.
So for now here is one of the 4 icons I made for the cover. This one is for “money issues” as in lines of credit and just how crazy in debt we will all be in 4 years.
