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After the good news about the house, now I have been offered a place at the University of Sydney in the Bachelor of Medical Science. They take 200 people per year so it is pretty good going. Now I have to find someone to go and enrol for me on Tuesday afternoon otherwise the offer will lapse! Any volunteers?

Here are the papers I’m going to be doing this year in my part-time studies. I’m hoping I can cross credit what I’ve done so that I only need to do maths and physics. The maths ones sound crazy, in fact I can’t understand the descriptions at all!

MATH1001 – Differential Calculus
This unit of study looks at complex numbers, functions of a single variable, limits and continuity, vector functions and functions of two variables. Differential calculus is extended to functions of two variables. Taylor’s theorem as a higher order mean value theorem.

MATH1002 – Linear Algebra
This unit of study introduces vectors and vector algebra, linear algebra including solutions of linear systems, matrices, determinants, eigenvalues and eigenvectors.

MATH1003 – Integral Calculus and Modelling
This unit of study first develops the idea of the definite integral from Riemann sums, leading to the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. Various forms of integration are considered, such as integration by parts.The second part is an introduction to the use of first and second order differential equations to model a variety of scientific phenomena.

PHYS1002 – Physics 1 (Fundamentals)
This unit of study is designed for students who have not studied Physics previously or scored below 65 in HSC Physics. The lecture series contains modules on the language of physics, mechanics, and oscillations and waves.

PHYS1004 – Physics 1 (Environmental & Life Science)
This unit of study has been designed specifically for students interested in further study in environmental and life sciences. The lecture series contains modules on the topics of properties of matter, electromagnetism, and radiation and its interactions with matter.

David Sinclair, an Australian scientist now at Harvard University, reckons he has found a new medical treatment… for aging! Controversial but very interesting. In this video he explains the discovery. There’s a good article about him and his work here.

Don’t rush out and start drinking red wine though; you would need to drink 1500 bottles of wine PER DAY to receive the equivalent dosage as these mice!

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The Yangtze River dolphin is no more – the first cetacean to disappear as a result of human activity.

After a fruitless search lasting six weeks, scientists failed to find a single Yangtze river dolphin, also known as the Baiji, in its natural habitat in China. They will now propose that the dolphin be formally reclassified this autumn as “possibly extinct” and say there is no longer any hope of resurrecting the species using a captive breeding programme.

Source

I have just enrolled in the following two papers for next semester:

BMSC 241 – Heredity and Gene Expression
An introduction to the structure and behaviour of chromosomes, genes, DNA; and to the processes of heredity and the mechanisms by which genetic information is transmitted and expressed in humans and other animals. Some discussion of the genetics of plants and micro-organisms is included. Introduction to DNA technologies.

BMSC 243 – Physiology and Pharmacology
Included in this course will be the study of the functioning and roles of the central and peripheral nervous and hormonal systems in control of cardiovascular and respiratory activity, digestion and absorption, metabolic responses to different environmental and energy demands; sensory systems; muscle physiology, etc. The emphasis is on mammalian physiology with particular reference to human functions. The elements of pharmacology are introduced in the context of modulation of normal function.

My dream of becoming Dana Scully is moving closer… pass me the red hair dye….

This is the sort of video us biomedical nerds get off on.

So cool…. (shuts mouth)

By giving ordinary adult mice a drug – a synthetic designed to mimic fat – Salk Institute scientist Dr. Ronald M. Evans is now able to chemically switch on PPAR-d, the master regulator that controls the ability of cells to burn fat. Even when the mice are not active, turning on the chemical switch activates the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise. The resulting shift in energy balance (calories in, calories burned) makes the mice resistant to weight gain on a high fat diet.

Full article

Some very interesting science stories have appeared over the last couple of days and here are my favourites!

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality
Physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that gives the uneasy consequence that reality does not exist when we are not observing it. more

Practical Holographic Video
Researchers have designed a cheap and small holography system that will work with PCs and gaming consoles. more

Daily pill to beat genetic diseases
The same drug could be given to patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis and haemophilia. more

The future is female
We have had the industrial age, we have had the information economy. But now for something different: “the care economy”. more

Making Gasoline from Carbon Dioxide
Chemists have shown that it is possible to use solar energy, paired with the right catalyst, to convert carbon dioxide into a raw material for making a wide range of products, including plastics and gasoline. more

Major Discovery: New Planet Could Harbor Water and Life
An Earth-like planet spotted outside our solar system is the first found that could support liquid water and harbor life, scientists announced today. more

Exciting medical news today that researchers have found a possible drug to counteract the cognitive difficulties caused by Down Syndrome.

Researchers gave low doses of a human drug to mice bred to mimic the learning and memory problems in people with Down syndrome. After as little as two weeks, the impaired mice performed as well as normal ones in learning tests, and the improvement lasted for up to two months after treatment ended. more

Of course, mice are not people, and clinical trials are still a couple of years off. Still, it’s a bit of a bombshell to the DS community as I don’t think anyone had any thoughts of a pharmaceutical product that could “cure” DS. Great to see that those little DS mice are having such great benefits already.

And you can Adopt-A-Mouse to further support research into the causes and treatments of Down Syndrome.

I’ll be following this research with great interest!

I was excited to read today that Stephen Hawking thinks we should colonize other planets. I am behind this 100%!! I’ve always thought that should be the prime goal of our society, because up until that goal is reached, we have all our eggs in one BASKET and that is never clever. Once we have a few colonies, our species should be pretty safe from annihilation. Forget these low tech space shuttles and the like, we need to be pouring cash into faster-than-light travel or at least nearly-as-fast-as-light travel.

The amount of money spent on this kind of endeavour is very sad. Take the US defense budget and spend it on space travel and nanotechnology and solar energy research; we could work our way out of this hole we’re in. Science is our only hope.

Let’s get off this rock and become the interstellar empire we are destined to!!

A lovely simulation of the Earth getting destroyed by a meteorite.