Biophysics: Day #3

Today have been a really great day, even if I didn't study that much biophysics I've got a lot of other things done.
Since the Latin test is tomorrow I've mainly studied the Latin vocabulary and the declension table. The grammar patterns are pretty much stuck in my head from the first revision for the first test which saved me a lot of trouble this time.

Biophysics are progressing thou, today I spent some time to repeat yesterday's material covering Thermodynamics and Electrical Phenomena. There's still a lot left but I'm slicing it down into pieces and in that way I can easily see how I progress.
I'll post some nice videos for basic understanding in X-ray and MRI theory and once again, check out Kahn Academy for Thermodynamics and Electricity - he is simply amazing.

The weather today was so nice, almost early spring, and I could leave my jacket at home. I took a stroll up and down the streets next to the apartment in search for a printer. I've been needing one for a long time now and today I felt the urge to get it. That didn't happen, all I ended up with in the end were a new set of colour and sketch pencils, new folders and blank papers.
I know what kind of printer I want to buy, the problem is just to find it without going to the outskirts of Prague where I guess all the shopping malls are located.
That reminds me of the fact that I need to go to both Ikea and to a place that sell vacuum cleaners and washing machines, but I'll deal with that after the exams.

So, videos below, enjoy.

Putting it Mildly Quote

"...If you will devote a little time to studying the staggering photographs taken by the Hubble telescope, you will be scrutinizing things that are far more awesome and mysterious and beautiful - and more chaotic and overwhelming and forbidding - than any creation or "end of days" story.

If you read Hawking on the "event horizon," that theoretical lip of the "black hole" over which one could in theory plunge and see the past and the future (except that one would, regrettably and by definition, not have enough "time"), I shall be surprised if you can still go on gaping at Moses and his unimpressive "burning bush."
If you examine the beauty and symmetry of the double helix, and then go on to have your own genome sequence fully analyzed, you will be at once impressed that such a near-perfect phenomenon is at the core of your being, and reassured (I hope) that you have so much in common with other tribes of the human species - "race" having gone, along with "creation" into the ashcan - and further fascinated to learn how much you are a part of the animal kingdom as well.
 
Now at last you can be properly humble in the face of your maker, which turns out not to be a "who," but a process of mutation with rather more random elements than our vanity might wish. This is more than enough mystery and marvel for any mammal to be getting along with: the most educated person in the world now has to admit - I shall not say confess - that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more..."

- Quote from Christopher Hitchen's Putting it Mildly: Part 3

Birthday Dinner at Lemon Leaf

The red curry was really spicy, but Christian didn't give up... 




















Thank you all for a really great night, and most importantly: Congratulations to Suresh

Biophysics: Day #2

The title isn't really correct since yesterday was more about Latin.
The final Latin test is held on Wednesday and if one pass it's automatically going to reward in a credit and with that, the subject is out of the way for this semester.
I got some biophysics done after all, a bit of reading in the morning before my friends came over and as well in the late afternoon before, and after, the gym.
We had a co-revision in my room and I went through the first two declensions and did some exercises from the book.
The rules and the grammar tables are easy to learn and the major problem is to learn the vocabulary. Easy you might think, it's just memorizing, and yes it is indeed although that takes time and as I've been stated numerous times before time is of great value these days.

Today I'll try a different approach on biophysics because I'm honestly keeping myself from freaking out - it's only 6 days left now and it feels like the things I read wont stick to my head at all which is really frustrating.

I'd just like to add, and this is a great deal off topic, that making sushi and listening to Christopher Hitchen's book "God is not Great" is a really nice and relaxing thing to do.
My sushi turned out to be amazing (even though it was vegetarian and 40% of the sushi was missing - aka the salmon) and Hitchens can also amaze me in many different ways and I think that I'll quote him later in my 5 minute break from biophysics. Another great thing that amaze me and inspire me lately is to make Skype-calls to Finland.

For those who think in a scientific way, like myself, and that isn't very familiar with Hitchens, Russell, Sagan and let's put Dawkin's in the name drop as well, should really "googl'em up".
If it turns out that you are, or after googling them become, familiar with them and it happens to be the very case that they do not amuse you in any way and are in fact not sharing your opinions at all then just drop it and leave it be - I'm not about to start any discussion, not just yet that is.

8:30 and it's time to get some revision done before the anatomy lecture.

Biophysics: Day #1

I woke up at 8 and started my studies at 9 while eating breakfast. It get a bit messy sometimes with all the papers, the laptop and the salami slapping the keyboards, but it's worth it since eating and studying is a rather nice combination. Or studying while eating, either way you want to put it.

I began with the part that I'm already familiar with just to get my brain in the right mood:
Phase states, Gibbs Law, Analytical and Colloidal Dispersion Systems, Henry´s Law, Properties of Water, Diffusion, Fick´s laws, Viscosity and Viscous Flow, Stokes Law, Surface tension, Biophysics of Blood Circulation, Laplace Law and last but not least Poiseuille-Hagen Equation.
This is just one chapter out of eight so if I calculated the days correctly I should be able to cover it all properly at least once.

The different sources I use is a review and summary of the exam question which helps a lot. Sorting out information in the course booklet takes time and that is something I do not have enough of.
Youtube is another underrated source of knowledge and especially one guy there called Salman Khan (link: Khan Academy) is doing a fantastic work publishing over thousands of free lectures in different subjects.

I'm happy that the exchange of knowledge between the students here is great. Martin, who already have faced the ordeals of physics and have been teaching it before set up a small gathering and held a lecture on the fundamentals of physics.
It was a great improvisation and it really sorted out a lot of blurry stuff and prepared all of us for the more complicated subjects.

I can also say that since Facebook pretty much tracking everything we do, nothing bad about that, I believe most of you guys visiting my pages already know that I found my self completely lost in a box of 'certain' wonderful feelings during the last month. My head is so far up in the clouds sometimes that I forget time and space. I have a lot to look forward to and by getting reminded of that everyday is sort of a love/hate thing that just build up these amazing feelings.
I could go on like this for hours but it's now 9:31 and I'm one minute late.

Photos below from the study session at Martin's, and for those of you that still wait for the photos from the dinner at Lemon Leaf have to be patient, they will be posted but I believe you can imagine the work that must be done during exam periods.
Enjoy!

Quick note on Biophysics

So, yesterday I finished off the remaining school work before the biophysics boot-camp week.
My exam is scheduled at the 24th and I realized that it will be a bit too soon. There's no good dates to reschedule too so I guess I'll have to give it my best shot.
The worst thing that can happen is that I don't manage to cover it all and fail, which means a rescheduled date for a retake. We have three attempts so it shouldn't be impossible.

So from now on I'll try to prove that it is possible to break down the biophysics course in one week. Note that I have orientated myself in the syllabus during the holiday and that I spent yesterday going over one chapter.
Any hints or sources on the material is appreciated.
And with that said, wish me the best of luck - I'll need it.

The game is on...

Dense Regular Skeletal Connective Muscle?!

Histology is finally over, or at least so I hope - it all depends on how my slide test went.
I feel good about it, but as I recently discovered, feeling good about something is usually a bad thing.
We got two random slides each and was supposed to identify the tissue(s) within the sample as well as label them in a short description.
The first look at my first slide puzzled me. It saw for sure a lot of parallel fibres but also a lot of nuclei. My first thought was dense regular connective tissue from a tendon sample but it still had too many nuclei around the fibres from what I was used to see in this type of sample. So perhaps it's striated muscle? but there was no striation visible what so ever.
I wrote down a quick description and moved on to the next slide which was easier. The description didn't take too long and I could go back to the first slide again.
It really bugs me because I still don't know whether I choose the right answer or not.
Especially these two types can be really hard to distinguish since it looked like an awful mutation between these three pictures:


From left: Skeletal Muscle (1), Dense Regular Conn. Tiss. (2 & 3)

As you can see there's many similarities and it's going to be a long and curious wait for the answers next week.
Below I put up some nice mobile shots from our histology slide practice as well as a photo from today's anatomy lecture.

Today should be a day off, but I doubt that'll be possible since biophysics and Latin exams are just around the corner...

"You tried to make amends"

New music video release by Tides of Man, and I like it a lot :D