Physics + Medicine = The Bends

About a fortnight ago I was in the unusual position of teaching human biology to medical physicists and physics to medical students. Interestingly, during this overlapping week a disease came up in both tutes, a physics based medical condition.

Rain becomes a drizzle

Oh how I'd love to write up a blog post right now.

Instead I can barely see over the pile of 1st year undergraduate reports on Photosynthesis and next to that pile is another pile of worksheets on agarose gel electrophoresis. I also have thesis corrections and a thousand other little things to do. Oh, and from where I'm sitting I can see that I might even need to mow the lawn before it rains. So while I want to blog it just 'aint going to happen today.

Even though today is 'out' I have some really cool posts in the pipeline so we will see what I can organise for next week.

For now its back to my cup of tea to read attempts by first year students to convince me that photosynthesis occurs in the mitochondria and provides the cell with an unending supply of boiled candies...

I'm more disappointed at my inability to blog than this puppy (Credit: honzasterba)

RSPCA Million Paws Walk recap

Yesterday (15/5) was the Royal Society for Protection against Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) major annual fundraising drive, a walk in the park called the Million Paws Walk. The idea is that people can register as individuals or as teams and by registering they raise a little money. Each individual registrant and team can also raise money for themselves to complete the walk.

Zombies Pt 2 (or how I distracted my students)

Last week I mentioned how my students sidetracked me in a tute regarding introductions to the origins of life and in particular the acronym HOMR standing for Homeostasis, Organisation, Metabolism and Replication by initiating a discussion of whether or not zombies technically were alive. Well, the following week they had a test that occupied half the allocated tutorial time so instead of letting them out early I extended the discussion to real world zombies.