Hi guys,
It has been months since I last updated, which I'm going to chalk up to stress of exams etc.
This is just a quick post to let you all know where I am/what I'm up to.
I finished my exams in June, having studied for them as hard as I honestly believe I could have. After that there was nothing to do except wait.
I also went on a school trip abroad (again!) totally self funded, to the Malay area of Borneo. It was an amazing experience and one which I will treasure forever. My favourite part was the timewe spent in a Field Centre on the Kinabatangan river called Danau Girang. This field centre is what made this trip so much more interesting than some of the others.
Danau Girang is run by Cardiff University, and as a result has a mix of undergrad and post grad students, all of whom are undertaking projects of their own. As a result we got to tag along and actually see the practical side to biology - some groups got to watch blood being taken from a monitor lizard, and we all got to have a go at doing blood smears to screen for parasites.
It was this practical side of the science, this combination of doing new things in an exotic location whcih made the whole trip such a fantastic experience.
Then I came home and about a week later, made the trip down to school to pick up my results. Unfortunately for me, I hadn't made the grade to get into Leicester University for Medicine. This was a real blow, as I had been really looking forward to going.
My initial plans had been to get a deferred place at University for Medicine and go on a gap year in the meantime. Now, all my plans had to change. I thought for a bit, phoned up a couple of universities and decided to go through clearing.
For anyone going through clearing themselves, as annoying as they might be, family members are invaluable at this time; finding suitable courses, the information that the interviewer needs, and just being someone to rely on.
I collected as many places as I could, and then sat on my offers to decide. Again, family was useful here for an alternative perspective - while the final choice is and should be yours, they might think of pro's and cons which hadn't occurred to you.
My final choice ended up being Biomedical Sciences and Anatomy at Aberdeen University. I have since had freshers week (SO much fun), joined some societies (again, loads of fun), and actually begun my courses! I'm currently looking into transferring to Medicine at the end of this year, because I still really want to be a doctor, but at the moment I'm happy with where I am. My only regret was that I was unable to go on a gap year, and I let down one of my friends in the process.
Onto more interesting things: smart phones are everywhere. Whether you prefer Android or Apple, they're really common, and most modern ones have good coverage from satellites, and good cameras, can download apps etc.
Which is why they're currently being used as diagnostic tools. You read that right. You can, with a small additional lens and a downloadable app, use an iPhone or Android device to perform eye exams. In the more economically developed countries, this isn't such a big deal - you head along to a clinic and they have a big powerful camera that can take detailed photos of the back of your eye and say what's wrong and everything is hunky dory.
However, in third world countries with poor access to healthcare this is a little harder - the equipment is expensive and bulky and you'd probably have to travel a fair old way to get seen. With a smart phone and attachment, the doctors would come out to visit you and check out what's wrong with you. They can even take photos with a geotag so that in two weeks time, a doctor who's actually going to do the operation can find the patient, regardless of whether they have an addressfor their house or not.
I'm constantly amazed by how technology which is originally for a specific use can be adapted and changed to be useful for a whole host of other things. I think that developments like these are going to be the way forwards in helping to treat people who were previously too remote and couldn't be reached.
Source
http://bit.ly/1a2pBve
http://bit.ly/154PNIv
Thursday, 3 October 2013
Saturday, 27 April 2013
Early detection
Hi all,
I know I haven't put up anything since just after Christmas, but I'm hoping that this will get me out of that rut. Since January, most of what I've been doing has been school related - I had mocks, then shortly after mock exams revision started, so school has (and will continue to, for another couple of months) taken over my life.
However, what I just saw was so amazing I felt compelled to write about it.
It's all to do with this article here. Basically, its a new method of early detection. The body is scanned with similar techniques to MRI, but with several resonant frequencies at the same time. This elicits a "song". This song tells researchers whether the tissue is healthy or diseased. However, and this is the bit that cannot be done by traditional MRI scans, it can also tell you the severity of the disease, as well as which disease it is. With a regular MRI, you would simply get a bright area on the scan which would have to be interpreted by a radiologist. With this technique, the analysis would be done by machine, using an algorithm similar to the one used for facial recognition.
As far as techniques go this one has amazing practicalities because it has the potential to be over in minutes and could well become part of an annual checkup, catching serious diseases like cancers, multiple sclerosis, heart disease etc earlier than would have before, and preventative measures can be taken.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/19/4122518/magnetic-resonance-fingerprinting-explanation-disease-detection-research http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mri http://cwru-daily.com/news/new-mri-method-fingerprints-tissues-and-diseases-leading-to-earlier-quicker-diagnoses/
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Catch up
General catch up – I’ve just finished (hopefully the last)
of my Mandarin speaking and writing controlled assessments, so now I can totally
focus on my January exams.
One thing that has been in the news a lot recently is Kate
and William’s pregnancy. On the 4th of December she was admitted to
hospital with acute morning sickness. Acute morning sickness is also known as
hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) and it is a severe disease. It’s is characterised by prolonged and severe
nausea and vomiting, weight loss, a raised level of ketones in the blood and dizziness
and fatigue. It’s uncommon, but does affect 1 in 200. It can have complications
as people suffering from it struggle to keep food or drink down, and as a
result severe weight loss can result in a low birth rate, but the main danger
is dehydration. Kate was discharged on the 6th of December.
Something I found fascinating recently was this case here. This
is the story of Emma who had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.
Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is an aggressive cancer of the
white blood cells. This requires immediate attention and intense medical care. This
is caused by the uncontrolled production of blast cells, which are immature white
blood cells. This flooding of your body system results in imbalances – the individual
affected experiences tiredness (caused by a lack of oxygen carrying red blood
cells), unusual and frequent bleeding (caused by a lack of platelets which stop
bleeding), and a lowered immune defence (caused by a lack of mature white blood
cells to fight infection).
Around 8% of all people diagnosed with leukaemia are
diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, with the majority being diagnosed
between two and five years old.
Emma was cured by fairly unorthodox and experimental
methods. What happened was that she was injected with killer T-cells (yes, that
is their real name), modified to attack only Emma’s B-cells (the cancerous
ones). They had been modified to only target these cells using…. Wait for it….
HIV.
Yeah, that one made me sit down as well. HIV aka Human
Immuno-deficiency Virus is a disease caught by the exchange of bodily fluids. The
virus attacks the immune system and weakens your ability to fight infections
and disease. 3.1 million people die every year from AIDS (the advanced and
fatal form of HIV), so you can see how this might shock someone.
I can’t pretend to understand the mechanisms used here but
as far as I can tell it goes like this:
HIV/AIDS can fool the
immune system into not attacking it.
The T cells need to have the genetic information for “seek
and destroy B-cells” built into them
HIV is a method of invading the T-cells and implanting this
genetic information
The strain of HIV is an inactive one so the patient does not
have to choose between AIDS and leukaemia – they don’t end up with HIV. In
fact, although it is early days, they seem to end up either improved, or, with
their cancers in remission.
If anyone can clarify this for me, please, comment below.
This kind of fascinating and ground breaking research is
exactly why I want to get into medicine. It’s an amazing career and it is so,
so stupendously interesting and mind blowing. I cannot begin to imagine what an
impact this has had on the little girl’s life, and the application for this
kind of research is just too cool for words.
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