This is a TED talk by Hillel Cooperman about LEGO and how it’s not just for kids. I find it eerily similar to my childhood in the sense that Alex (my brother) and I were definitely lego rich. I think it was a ploy to make both of us engineers (my father being a civil engineer). It worked for one kid.
I wish I had some of those old photos to show here, but I think we must have around 2 cubic meters all, of course, excellently sorted. I wonder what kind of fighting will go down when it comes time to claim it out of our parents’ basement.
I’m working on the cover illustration for a journal, which is good because it is forcing me to whip out the old pencil and paper. This is the preliminary sketch, not super high quality (but not bad for a phone photo). The plan is to colour it later today so we can get the issue out this week. I haven’t decided if I’m going to colour it on the computer or, heaven forbid, watercolour. Only time will tell.
For almost as long as I’ve had the scanning electron micrograph (SEM) images, I’ve wanted to get one printed on canvas really big to show off in my house. This dream was somewhat squashed by the reality of just how much it costs to get an image printed on canvas and stretched onto a frame (upwards of 200$ for the size I wanted). And so, for a year and a half, I went micrograph-less. It was a hard time. With only my periodic shower curtain and rhinovirus soap dispenser to show off my true geekiness to all who visited me.
Not surprisingly, it was science that presented me with an alternative. While attending a poster session at a conference a couple weeks ago, Mike and I noticed that one of the posters was printed on vinyl and not paper. Turns out that Kinkos had a promotion on that made printing on vinyl only 6$/square foot. Slowly, the gears in my head started churning. Surely vinyl could be stretched over a frame much the same way canvas is, and was I not currently in possession of staple gun? I then decided that I would get one of my micrographs printed on vinyl and then stretch it myself.
So I took my image, enlarged it to 48″x30″ (4 feet by 2/5 feet) and took it to Kinkos to get printed. I then went to the local art supply store and bought the pieces for a frame in 44 and 26 inch pieces. It was about 70$ for the print (taxes in) and 15$ for the frame. I then brought it home and with a handy dandy tutorial, began to assemble the whole thing. Besides the fact that I had to use the mechanical staple gun again and ran out of staple halfway through, it wasn’t too bad. Turns out stapling pine is a lot easier than MDF with a thick layer of foam, but it still hurt my hands.
It turned out great and you can’t even tell that it is printed on vinyl and not canvas when you look at it. And now I get to sleep with an image of a retina above my head (you can even see the rods and cones).
This is an illustration I did a while ago, but I never got around to scanning it until now (my morning off). It’s the bones and some of the muscles of the hand. Hands are one of my favourite anatomical things, there’s just so much complexity in such a small space.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Ouu, two in a day, you can tell I’m avoiding studying
Ibuprofen (Advil)
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.
