It is notoriously difficult to get into medical school, so I’m going to list a few resources that I found incredibly useful to prepare me for the interviews, applications and A levels. Further down the page you will find a link to my A level Biology notes that I’m selling, and a friend’s Physics, Maths, […]
With up to 24,000 new species being identified every year, a lot of new names need to be created. Sometimes they are given a Latin name that translates into a defining feature, sometimes it’s named after where it was found, and sometimes they are named after famous people. Here are a few weird ones I […]
In our lecture today we were introduced to a new concept called Quorum Sensing. It is essentially one way that bacteria can communicate with each other to manage huge populations. This is incredibly useful for bacteria as only when they are in large enough numbers can they do fancy things such as form biofilms, swarm, […]
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-48991071 I recently read an inspiring article on BBC news about a man who completely turned his life around and became a doctor. He started off as a young boy with no aspirations, hanging around with the wrong group of people, seeing his friend getting stabbed. Then, through an unfortunate accident and visit to hospital […]
Why do metal objects smell when you touch them? It turns out that this is an illusion – metal does not smell. Instead, it is the breakdown of oils in your skin that occurs after touching iron, creating the distinctive metallic smell. A good explanation is provided by LiveScience: https://www.livescience.com/4233-coins-smell.html Scientists have sniffed out the […]
Light vs Pigment White is the presence of all colors, as shown by spinning a colour wheel. However, if you mix together lots of paints together, you end up with a dark brown that gets closer to black every time you add another color. The conclusions drawn from these experiments is that white […]
Okay, not quite. But scientists at MIT have found a way to use the polymer found in nappies, polyacrylate, to create objects that shrink when dehydrated. This newly developed process called implosion fabrication allows objects to be quickly and inexpensively shrunk to the nanoscale. It has the potential to revolutionise a multitude of fields, from medicine to […]
Everyone who has ever cooked an egg knows that when you apply heat, egg white solidifies and changes consistency. If you have studied biology, you may know that this is due to the chemical changes that occur to the proteins of the egg white – they are denatured, converting them to a white solid substance. […]
This October, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the 2018 Nobel Prizes. This years’ prizes in particular show how much of an impact basic science can have on medicine – investigating the how and why can give us insights into treatments. Click the link below to read the full story: What you need to […]
Recently, scientists at Cambridge developed a method to grow mini placentas in the lab, but why should we care? Disorders in pregnancy is incredibly common worldwide, encompassing pre-eclampsia, stillbirth, and growth restriction babies (see below). In various labs all over the world, research is being undertaken to discover exactly why this happens, with the hope […]
From Medical Daily: https://www.medicaldaily.com/why-your-skin-doesnt-leak-all-your-blood-and-guts-406737 Scientists Have Figured Out Why Human Skin Doesn’t Leak BEC CREW 22 JAN 2018 Our skin might give us grief sometimes, but one thing we can always depend on it to do is not start indiscriminately leaking blood and sweat everywhere – despite the fact that we’re shedding roughly 500 million cells every 24 […]
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Sean Mooney
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