Catch me if you can

I have only a few minutes break from the lab but as I am in the med school and have already bagsied a computer and therefore prevented a medic from studying something that is probably irrelevant I figured I should do something vaguely productive. And that thing is... tell you about my current obsession with pigeons.
I cannot get enough of them.
Now I realise that most people are not fans of the humble woodpigeon. I myself was known to refer to them as sky rats until, well until last week, but all that has changed now.
I blame spending all my day underground without seeing the sky but as soon as I emerge from the hospital and walk through the cancer corridor, also known as the entrance to the hospital where despite massive metre high letters painted on the floor suggesting that this is a NO SMOKING AREA, Men in drips, women in wheelchairs, babies in prams and gaggles of nurses all go outside for the fag they have been denied for the past few hours. There is nothing more peculiar than seeing a man in a robe wheeling out his drip so that he can have a cigarette, do the nurses not mind or maybe mention to him that in his condition, leaving to try and entie lung cancer to take up residence in his lung is not the wisest of ideas?
This may sound like I have a bit of a thing against nurses but thats because I sort of do. I am sure some of it is snobbery rubbed off after watching too much of the doctors in House and Grey's anatomy but some of it they brought on themselves.
Recently (well I say recently but it was awhile ago, not much happens to me ok?) I was in the laundry rooms at my halls and there were some nurses loading their laundry. Now normally I don't sit in the laundry room just watching people load their pants into the machine but after some idiot (probably a nurse) had taken to opening an obviously running washing machine and thus stopping my pants from twirling their way to cleandom I had decided to watch my machine like a hawk, well a hawk that had a book for company, and could read.
So while eavesdropping on the nurses I heard them discussing how to wash their uniforms
Nurse 1: Well I think we just put it in with everything else
Nurse 2: No, I'm sure we have to do it on its own
Nurse 1: No thats not it is it? Something about washing it at 60?
Nurse 2: Really?
Nurse 1: Yeah I remember now we have to wash it at 60
Nurse 2: By itself?
Nurse 1: Who knows eh? I'll just put it in with everything else

She then proceeded to wash it at 40 while I sat their wondering whether its wrong to barge up and pull the uniform out of the machine and scream
"KILL THE BACTERIA FOOL" at her. I am sure most of you don't live as thrilling a life as me and so don't learn of the wonders of aseptic technique etc, but if you want to kill most of the bacteria you invariably would come into contact with as a nurse (say MRSA for example) then it makes sense to me at least to suggest washing it at the hottest temperature. I bet those dirty nurses now go and infect someones poor grandparent with all that bacteria.
Grr, how can you have so much training and be so thick?
Okay rant over.
Anyway gtg back to labs, writing this in the med school and so a stray nurse may read this over my shoulder and stab me with a needle.

Oh shit, just realised I completely forgot to talk about pigeons. Next time eh?

Life, the universe and everything (but more specifically- just the future)

This is quite a boring blog as it is a collection of a few of the unlinked and peculiar musings that I have had in the past few days and tried to link into a sort of cohesive mess. But the question I am asking today is…When is the future going to happen? I have a bit of a passion for sci-fi, always have and blame my Dad for passing down the sci-fi books of his youth and a latent geek gene. If asked the question “would you rather travel the entire world for 2 years or go into space for 20 minutes?” I would definitely choose the space option. Can you imagine not being on the planet? It blows my mind and I have hopes of developing some sort of pop group and earning enough money that I can afford to train and go into space (a la Lance from N*Sync- On a small aside what is it with old pop groups and inappropriate spelling/punctuation? 5ive, N*Sync, P!nk, B*witched. It makes the word look like it was offensive and have been bleeped out. It upsets me. Anyway back to the point) but this is unlikely due to my non-existent singing abilities. I realise that there probably aren’t aliens out there that we could communicate with/ever meet but I really really really hope there are. I think I would be excellent in a meeting aliens scenario.I am really good at not blinking much and breathing very shallowly in case the movements of my eyes and occasional nostril flareage worried them. Did you know that on some of the deep space probes NASA have launched they have included plaques with details about what mankind(a word I truly love, it makes me feel all warm and patriotic about being human as it is only included in the best speeches.) looks like, where Earth is and some other sciencey stuff? They have also chosen some music and poems to include on there. I know this blog is really highlighting the nerdy side of my nature that I try so hard to keep undercover but I just think that is unbelievably cool. Imagine aliens finding the probe millions of years from now and galaxies away and listening to music we’ve listened to. The mind boggles. Well mine does and if yours doesn’t you probably have a shit imagination.(this is a copy of one of the plaques- the thing actually sounds more glamorous than it looks as it turns out...)

Anyway I went to see the new Star Trek film this weekend. It. Was. AWESOME. Best film I have seen in ages. Includes all the things I require from a film. End of the world scenarios, fancy future technology (a subject I will return to soon), cocky fly by the seat of their pants action hero types and lots of explosions and a bit of flirting and romance thrown in for good measure. All in all, excellent stuff that I think anyone would enjoy. By the end of it though I became a little despondent after I realised that I will probably never live to see all the exciting things the future is supposed to offer us. For example:

-Jet packs (that work)

-Hover crafts (that work by some mystical power and not just air)

-Time machines (Either Dolorian based or of the H.G.Wells variety)

-Mutants (I long to discover I have latent amazing abilities. Telekinesis would be my favourite. I think it may unveil itself in a near death experience but I am too much of a hypochondriac and actually slightly sensible person to try and test the theroy)

-Simulation room type things, where nothing is real but it looks it.

-Regular space travel (Think of all the traveling to Uranus puns that would be possible)

-Food that starts off small and is magically made bigger (Like in Back to the Future)

-Proper 3D TV or computer screens (but the new Sony motion thingy screen thing is sort of like this an makes everything look sort of 3D and basically amazing)

It disappoints me that if any of this happens it probably won’t be in our lifetimes and if it does happen we will be too old to enjoy it.

I will mention one amazing future type thing that I learnt about in lectures a year or so ago that we may see or at least hear of. Scientists have taken out the genes from spiders that give the instructions for how to make the proteins that their web is made from and put them inside goats. The goats make these proteins inside their milk and they can then be filtered out and put together. This web protein stuff is ridiculously strong. Some of it made into a rope the thickness of a thumb would be enough to hold the weight of a jumbo jet. It’s stronger than Kevlar and could be used to make awesome body armour type stuff or the hulls of boats etc as its really light. Or maybe spiderman could wear it.

Basically all the future scientific developments are going to be mind-blowing and I wish that I could be around hundreds of years from now to see them. But in good news, an important NASA bloke reckons that we will contact aliens in 25 years (or at least pick up transmissions of their radio shows) So maybe if I get down to the gym and eat a bit healthier I can still be sprightly enough for a Hitchhikers’ guide to the Galaxy type adventure.

I will keep my towel at the ready.

Etiquette

After some thought on the matter I have decided that traditional British behaviour and the minding of your p’s and q’s can actually be more of a hindrance than a help.

Case in point, an incident involving windy weather and knickers.

Yesterday after finishing my laundry I was carrying all my clean clothes and towels in a basket across the car park back to my block. The weather was pretty windy and in a rather massive lapse of judgement I had neglected to do the sensible thing and put my heavy towels on top of my lighter weight garments. A big gust of wind caught a pair of freshly laundered and largish pants (I mention the size as I think the surface area may have helped contribute to their flight capabilities) and they flew out of the basket a few feet away from me. I was so impressed with the fact that they had managed to fly that I didn’t immediately grab for them. Instead I kind of stood there looking at them.

Which is when I noticed that a fresher had just left his block and was also standing looking at my pants.

He looked at me.

I looked at my pants.

He looked at my pants.

We looked at each other.

(By this point I looked like a burnt tomato- blushing is one of the natural talents I seem to have been gifted with)

It was at this point I realised that one of us was going to have to pick my pants up and I would prefer for that person to be me.

So I awkwardly bent down while holding all my other laundry, scooped up my pants and then said the first thing that popped into my head, “thanks!”

Why on earth would I say thank you? What had he done except look at my pants. He hadn’t laughed so I guess I could be grateful for that but at the time I hadn’t thought about it in the depth that I have at this point?

I have decided that for too long I have been trained into saying please and thankyou and now revert to those as responses as a default in times of stress. Not knowing the etiquette for pants retrieval in front of a stranger I chose thankyou as the ideal comment for that situation.

It’s not just situations like this that confuse me etiquette wise. If you a door open for someone and say after you, and then they say “no, after you”, who is supposed to go at this point? I never know, and this leads to both parties standing looking awkwardly at each other until you both choose to go at the same time, bump into each other, at which point I say “thanks!” and hurry off with a face that’s beyond red. Infrared you might say.

I think that some sort of announcement should be made that says if someone holds the door for you, you just say thanks and go through it. Don’t try and steal the good-person-who-cares-enough-to-hold-doors-for-others glory. I got their first. Deal with it.

What is more annoying are people breaking other social conventions that I consider completely necessary:

1. If you are listening to an ipod in an enclosed space, if you can’t hear the noise of the local environment, then every other poor person is having to listen to your music. Not all are blessed with the impeccable taste in music I possess and so should not inflict their music on others.
2. Do NOT play music out of your phone. I plan on either writing a very angry letter or maybe just sending the black spot to the idiot at the phone manufacturers who came up with that feature. Most people who choose to play their music loudly on the bus are listening to complete shite and should be aware of this. If I was at home I would kindly tell them to shut up. As I am in Nottingham I keep quiet and fume silently. No one likes to get shot.
3. If someone steps to one side for you, say when a path is too narrow, or in shops where the aisles are stupidly thin (a genius and yet evil ploy I think Topshop employs to ensure that only really really skinny people can get into the shop and thus wear their clothes and make the brand look fabulous) they did not do it because they just had a sudden urge to stop and do absolutely nothing, they did it so that you could walk past. So say thankyou. It’s not difficult, some of us even do it by accident.

Actually thinking about this, maybe saying thanks as a default is a good thing. Because regardless of how much of an utter plonker you look, at least you are always impeccably polite. In a special way.

So I guess that’s some helpful advice for how to live your life. If you want more then always remember, do not boil soup. Not because it ruins the taste but because when you invariably spill it on yourself it burns quite badly. I also heard, from an old friend who is now a homoeopathist, (and I believe anything said by anyone remotely medical- a side effect of being a hypochondriac) that you should use luke warm water rather than cold water to soothe a burn.

Question for the day: Where did the saying “luke warm” come from? Who was luke? My religious understanding is hampered by the fact that I don’t really believe in it but was he a disciple? Of medium warm opinions? Who made some sort of famous spicy dish he put his name to? Answers on a postcard please.

A topical science lesson

I was trying to determine if I had anything interesting or relevant to talk about in this blog and I chose swine flu for a few reasons.

a)I read up on it every day as

b) I do like the risk of a good old fashioned plague/apocalypse

c)it is a chance to teach you some basic bits and pieces of the sciencey stuff I love so much (apologies if you find it terribly and insultingly dumbed down or way above your head, I have been immersed in it all for too long and can’t remember what’s common understanding and what’s not.)

Stats on swine flu

As of today the WHO (World Health Organisation)reports that 985 people have been infected with influenza A(H1N1). This is the technical term for the disease the media has dubbed “swine flu”

590 of those infected have been in Mexico. In total 20 countries have shown infection and in the UK the number of those infected is 27. Today, the only reported deaths from the infection are in Mexico and a baby in America.

More about ‘Flu

Seasonal influenza is the term for the type of flu that we normally get in the winter months. During the winter when we stay inside more the close proximity, lack of fresh circulating air and dampness help the virus survive outside of the body for longer, and this means that more people get infected. Worldwide seasonal ‘flu causes 3-5million cases of severe illness each year and kills around 250-500,000 people.

Every year projections are made about the type of ‘flu viruses that are believed to be the most prevalent in both the northern and southern hemispheres and vaccines are made that protect against a few of those strains for each. The vaccines are given to those at the most risk of death, in particular:

-the elderly-whose immune systems are no longer as strong as they used to be,

-babies-who do not have properly developed immune systems and

-asthmatics-as influenza infects the respiratory system (i.e. lungs)

How does a vaccine work?

The hands represent the antibodies. The fingerprints on each hand are very subtly different and unique.

The Influenza virus particle is unique in the same way, but instead of fingerprints it has neuraminidase (N) and hemagglutanin (H) proteins on the surface. In Swine flu (H1N1) an antibody with fingerprints that perfectly match the surface of virus particle is needed if the two are to bind. It must be a perfect match and for this reason antibodies against one virus do not protect against another in most cases. When the antibody is bound the portion that we are imagining like a wrist acts as a flag. Other immune cells come and use the flag as a target and destroy the infected cell to which the antibody is bound. The immune system sacrifices the infected cell for the greater good. Virus particles that are in our systems but have not infected cells yet can also be bound by antibodies which neutralise them and stop them from infecting cells. So by a process of neutralisation and by targeting the immune cells to kill infected cells, antibodies help fight an infection. In our blood we do not have lots of the same type of antibody circulating unless we have had an infection. In the same way that the number of people in the army is increased during a war, the number of antibodies only increase in response to invasion by a virus. If an antibody recognises something it tells the body to increase its numbers. This way the body produces a select team perfect for fighting this infection. A vaccine uses either an inactivated virus (killed so that its contents are missing or dead- like a corpse it looks like it did while alive but cant do any of the same things) or just the neuraminidase or hemagglutanin proteins to trick the immune system into thinking it is infected with that specific virus. This makes it increase the amount of antibodies specific for the virus, a process which takes about 7 days. If the person is then infected with the virus they already have the antibodies and so do not have to spend around a week being infected while they wait for their immune system to catch up; they are already protected.

What is a ‘flu pandemic?

‘flu viruses do not only infect humans. Influenza A can also infect domestic animals like pigs, horses, chickens, ducks and also some wild birds. As we talked about the H and the N particles on the surface of flu virions are the bits that make each flu virus unique. Once we have seen a flu virus we are protected against it as we recognise its H and N particles.

In some instances birds or pigs have been shown to become infected with more than one type of ‘flu viruses. The H and N particles of the different viruses can get mixed up and produce a new type of virus that the immune system now doesn’t recognise e.g. H5N1 (bird flu) or H1N1 (swine flu). As this virus appears completely new on the outside out bodies do not recognise it and as such we have no immunity. This can lead to each individual who comes into contact with it getting infected and if it passes well from human-human a pandemic can occur.(a pandemic is a worldwide epidemic)

Swine flu so far has not shown that it passes very easily from human-human. This is why we haven’t seen millions of cases. In 1918 spanish flu (another type of H1N1 virus distinct from this type) was shown to pass very well from human to human and ended up killing an estimated 50 million people worldwide. More than the first world war had killed. There have been two other major pandemics since then, Asian flu in 1957 and Hong Kong flu in 1968.

Swine flu so far doesn’t appear to be as savage as either those strains or bird flu. People in this country are already recovering and it has been described as being more like “seasonal flu” which, although can be deadly, is something more like the infections we normally see.

Swine flu vaccine

The WHO reckons it will take around 6 months to get a vaccine properly developed. When it is produced they think they can ensure 1-2 billion doses are made each year. 90% of the global capacity for making the vaccine is in Europe and North America (although this doesn’t mean we’d get to keep it all).

The vaccine would most likely be given to the at risk groups although who that is as yet is currently hard to determine. Another problem is that the virus might mutate to a more dangerous form that the vaccine doesn’t protect against. If this happens we still have antiviral drugs which can help. These are like the virus version of antibiotics (which kill bacteria). The UK is the most prepared country in the world for bird flu and have lots of Tamiflu stockpiled. Lucky for us Tamiflu can also be used to treat swine flu. Good eh?

How to avoid getting swine flu

The WHO suggests avoiding those who look feverish or ill. This is common sense and is probably best applied all the time.

If you know someone has swine flu, again best to treat them like a leper.

The WHO isn’t suggesting restricting travel (but this is probably for political reasons) they do however suggest avoiding people who have swine flu, and as most of the swine flu is in Mexico….well, it’s pretty obvious where I won’t be choosing to go on holiday.

Try not to hang out with pigs too often.

However it is important to note that you CANNOT get swine flu from properly cooked pork or pork products. The price of this meat will probably go down in supermarkets while silly people who do not know this fact avoid the meat all together, so beat the credit crunch and stock up on pig meat.(Do remember to cook it properly, not just to make sure there is definitely no ‘flu but also because no one likes worms)

Wash your hands every few hours, you only need some snotty person to start shaking hands with you and then for you to touch your nose etc to increase your risk of infection.

You could try wearing a face mask but most transmission of ‘flu only occurs when a person is showing symptoms, so unless you are around someone who is infected you just look like an idiot for no good reason.

Throw away tissues and facemasks properly. Flinging them into the face of the nearest baby isn’t really an option.

The WHO also suggests getting plenty of sleep, eating healthily and avoiding things damaging to health (probably alcohol and cigarettes). This is probably all a cunning ruse to make us get healthy.

So, are we all going to die?

Probably not at the moment. Just in case though, avoid people who look ill and stay clean!

(I will keep you updated if this all changes)

The silence of the labs

So, some of my favourite people are currently all over the blog scene and, feeling left out, I have decided to see if there is anything remotely blog worthy about my life.

Currently I am in the final few months of my Masters in Immunology and Allergy. A course with a name that sounds sort of exciting and intensely sciencey and as such always gets a bemused and sort of pitying look from any cool people I happen to mention it to. In the next 3 months I will be spending every week day 9-5 in the labs of the QMC, a hospital in Nottingham so impossibly large that I have restricted my movements to only four different corridors in order to avoid unfortunate getting lost in stairwell incidents of which I will never speak again. In the lab I have to wear a tissue culture lab coat. Now most of the people I know, thankfully, have little day to day experience with lab coats of any sort. The type of lab coat I have to wear is about as all encompassing as you can get. It has a high neck that buttons all the way up, falls below my knees and has elasticated cuffs that are tight even on my rather weak and ineffectual wrists and must be like tourniquets on those blessed with normal sized wrists. Basically it’s sort of horrible and makes me look like Igor from the Frankenstein type movies. On top of this it is about the warmest thing ever worn by humans, I would recommend them to arctic explorers or people whose jobs involve spending a lot of time in those giant fridge rooms. I have to keep it completely buttoned up and wear jeans and sensible trainer like shoes (in case I spill anything on myself which, knowing me, is really rather likely) which means that I basically spend the hours between 9 and 5 in a constant state of humid sticky horribleness with my hair tied back. This is not the glamorous lab life I was hoping for. Having watched far too much CSI (in which science actually looks pretty shiny and cool) I had hopes that I would swan about the lab, lab coat carefree and unbuttoned, flapping in the invisible breeze that Tyra Banks believes so hard in with fabulous hair swooshing around like a shampoo ad. I also dreamt of some sort of earth-shatteringly spectacular shoe situation, such as the YSL cage boots which are like Eiffel tower’s for the feet and simply beautiful, all set in night club like lighting to some fast and intense music that shows time moving so fast one barely notices it moving.

This is not the case.

Aside from the sweaty unpleasantness of the attire the lab is also almost completely silent. It’s not that the other people working in there aren’t nice, everyone is very friendly and helpful, just in a sort of silent way. We had the radio on, once, for about an hour, and that was amazing, but apart from that its just silence followed by more silence.

I do not do well with only me in my head to talk to. My mother and previous housemates will all attest to the fact that if left alone in silence for too long I will demonstrate with impressive accuracy exactly what the phrase “bouncing off the walls” should look like. When talking becomes an option I can’t help but talk non-stop so fast that the words sort of blur intonelongsentencewithsquealsandleapingandoccasionalburstsofveryloudlaughter. It’s not a good thing. Luckily my coursemate Mohit is in the same lab so I can speak to him every now and then but, as we are both being very careful not to spray blood everywhere, (in the experiments, I haven’t gone so insane that violence has occurred. Yet.) long stretches of time go by with NO.WORDS. Recently it reached the point where upon looking into the microscope at cells that had been separated out from my blood I excitedly squealed “Hello MEEEE!”. This was met with confused stares. As the whole confused stare happens a lot to me I don’t usually let it bother me but the rest of the lab also accompanied it with a sort of “shame on you for your excitement, we are real scientists and refrain from enthusiastic outbursts” look. I felt suitably chastised and so now keep all potentially inappropriate noises to myself. Containing all thoughts in my head between the hours of 9-5 (I know I keep mentioning 9-5 but I’ve been a student for 4 years now and this kind of schedule is alien to me) is likely to lead to a sort of temporary insanity and so, despite the fact that this blog is glaringly action free and therefore rather dull, I thought it best that someone out there be aware of the reasons for the change in my mental state. If something untoward (a word I love as it is often used in older Jane Austeny type literature as a way of glossing over murder, rape and molestation in a terribly British way) does happen, please make sure I am removed from the lab and allowed to attempt to recover before someone tries to have me committed.

(I have just noticed that I sort of implied I may molest someone if left in the lab for too long. This is very unlikely to happen. I may nakedly lunge at someone but molestation isn’t my style.)