Random post 1

Wil:

Pharmacy Council of New Zealand Code of Ethics

Principle 1: Autonomy

1.3 Medicines and therapies not prescribed by another provider

Where the patient is seeking to purchase, from the pharmacist or from other personnel for whom he or she has responsibility, any medicine, complementary therapy, herbal remedy or other healthcare product not prescribed by another healthcare provider, the pharmacist must ensure that the patient is provided with credible, understandable information about its safe and effective use, expected outcomes of therapy within the limitations of available information, what to do if side effects occur, storage and disposal requirements, and any significant risk of therapy or insufficiency of evidence about efficacy of the therapy, to allow the patient to make an informed choice.

--

Hazaa!

Cardiac Output

Megs:

If most of your cardiac output goes into your kidney

doesn't that make the phrase "I'll carry your words/voice/face in my heart" seem kind of weird?

Ha.

That's just great! Legs on yer face.

Megs:

HA I found this incredibly funny.

So I was poking around on Wikipedia to do some background reading for Medsci203 (freaking love this paper!), and I looked up Toll-like receptors. Toll-like receptors are a class of protein that help out in the innate immune system that bind to foreign molecules, to activate responses when it's needed.

Anyway, Toll-like receptors have a wishy washy name (imagine if someone was called Mary-like or Sophie-like, or Loubie-loo-like) because they are really similar to what's coded by the Toll gene, which is found in Drosophila (flies).

And the Toll gene was called the Toll gene, because when the scientists were mucking about with this gene, the larvae that were made with the whacked gene looked really weird.

And when the scientists found this out they were so excited they started shouting in German. Alright, they probably spoke German in the first place but they started shouting all the same - "Das ist ja toll!" - which means "That's just great!"

And that is why, as is implied on Wikipedia, the Toll gene is called the Toll gene. So really it's called the Great gene, because it's just great. And fly-babies look strange when it's mutated.

Here's the link!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_%28gene%29

Now I couldn't find any pictures with weird looking fly babies (which probably all look like rice anyway), so instead of that, here is a picture of a fly with legs on its face where its antennae should be (the one on the right).



Edit** - this picture is totally-like unrelated to Toll-like receptors, I just thought it was cool. :D

Hinga dinga dingum

Megs:

This is just another note before the holidays once again slip away into memory (again, where'd they go? Honestly.)

Here are some fun things that were achieved. You know most of this, but one day I won't because I'll get Alzhiemer's or schizophrenia, or something, so I'm putting this down:

-Signed on with Trademe and bought things; namely the book Touched With Fire that we studied poetry out of in English at high school, because I've missed reading what was in them, and also won a bid at 6pm today for Memoirs of a Geisha (the novel, not the movie) because reading it did something to my head that just enabled me to ramble on paper better and a bit more creatively. Exciting times, yes.

-Watched the entire series of Death Note from start to finish. Turns out I had watched most of the second season, I just thought I hadn't because nothing happens for a good fraction of it and partly also because I didn't remember listening through the intro-music very often; but that was only because I very much dislike the screamo at the beginning. But that aside, it's about as good as anime gets.

-(Probably) drove parents crazy by playing the same bars on piano over and over. I practised more on the thing than I did viola over these two weeks. Need to practise the latter.

-went to anatomy museum to look at dead things

-finally figured out algorithm for last pattern on Rubik's cube which was annoying me because I couldn't solve it, but yay for that now

-got new clothes despite needing to get rid of clothes

-did a crap job of studying

-then realised this weekend that am turning into a bit of a social recluse, but what can you do. Yay, bussing starts again tomorrow.

Would like:
New hobbies
More money to pay for new hobbies
A holiday

Go Shawty

It's yer Birthday!
Do you know, the first time I heard that song by 50c I thought he was saying "It's Shiver day". Yes, yes, I was 12, leave me alone.

Happy Birthday Wil!
I hope you have lots of cake and chips that you make your flatmates retrieve for you. :D

<3

Know what's cornier? Your cornea

Megs:

That's actually a very good idea!

I think I've been spinning in the opposite direction since last year ended. I've basically been coming home and flopping on the couch reading a novel or playing with my sister's NDS. And then watching Spongebob. And then finding some other reason to not study. Which is such a bad thing to do! These are high school habits that I've reverted to! (Looking back, it's no wonder I did so shoddily in Level 3 Calculus.)

But it's only because the papers haven't been insanely intense. The "jump up" from last year has just been a little step up. It's making me lazy!

Part I of BOptom goes like this:

• OPTOM171A Visual Science: Structure and Function of the eye. Really as the long name suggests. Just going looking at different parts of the eye in great detail, like the cornier cornea, sclera, eyelid, lens, etc etc etc. It's kind of bizarre how much time one can spend learning about a part of your body that's so puny that you could lose it if you put a pin on it (ha!!! Yay puns!). Today we looked at the Aqueous Humour. There was no humour involved at all (sorry!). I guess I like the content, it's just that the lectures are really tedious.

• OPTOM161 Optics of Lenses and Lens Systems. This is the physicsy paper! It's been really really straightforward so far. I guess I've always found Light and Waves of physics more enjoyable than any other part for some reason. Possibly because ray pathways are easy to visualise, and also the maths involved is very simple. This paper takes me back to Form 3 Science concepts, and Form 5 Physics equations. Snell's Law anyone?
  

Ha it's kind of funny how these papers are OPTOM1xx. When Renee and I were wandering around Grafton we went into an elevator full of third year Optom students who looked at us and said, "Oh... First years." I was quick to reply, "Actually we're Part II!" And then they said, "No, you're Part I. We're Part II. You guys are still first years to us!" Ha. I felt like a noob.

But yes, they were indeed Part II students. It was a very humbling experience. :P

• MEDSCI203 Mechanisms of Disease.Not like Medsci142 last year; this paper's been looking at microscopic ways we cope with pathogens. It's really all about how cells and bacteria fight each other, with all these rules and stuff. It's a bit like Lord of the Rings.
  

• STATS101G Statistics. Super easy; the concepts are all just common sense and all of the questions in the tests and exam will be multi-choice questions. Today we looked at Normal Distributions. We don't even have to calculate the areas under the graph like we did in Form 6, apparently Excel does all that for us.
  

So yes, that is a summary of what I'm doing with my life this semester. It's nowhere near as hardout as yours. I'm turning into a slacker.

AYO isn't much of a big commitment, especially right now. The programme's been divided into different pieces and I'm only playing in one of them. So it's about 45 minutes of rehearsing every week. Concert tomorrow at the town hall.

The animals are probably good. Haven't been out to the backyard in a bit. Nobody tidies it and it's such a mess that I'm getting tired of going. I think Leo's bored to be honest. Still loves his towels. We're not leaving food for him overnight because he craps everywhere inside at night, so now he gets dinner at lunchtime so he does his business outside in the afternoon.

Rah.

Linctuses and aromatics

Wil:

Greetings from the land of Otago!

Wow. Yes, I haven't posted in a very long time. I've been a very busy pharmer. I'm not entirely sure if anyone in the whole course takes studying as seriously as I do. People seem to have difficulty understanding the concept that some people like to study every day. Hmm possibly not to my extent..

Anyway, short recap of my papers and what we are currently studying in them. You should do the same, Megs! :

• PHCY251 (physiology): At the moment we're recapping the nervous system. This whole paper will be recapping everything we did in HUBS191 AND HUBS192 which is why i'm finding this incredibly boring and time consuming. Anterolateral pathway!
  
  
• PHCY231 (biochemistry): I'm rather enjoying biochemistry at the moment! We're covering nitrogen metabolism. I really like how terms like 'oxaloacetate' and 'alpha-ketoglutarate' just roll off the tongue.
  
  
• PHCY254 (physical pharmacy A): Last time we talked about Colligative Properties of solutions (which we talked about earlier :P), and how we're doing studying weak electrolytes. I really do not enjoy weak acids and bases. They always somehow manage to expand this seemingly straightforward and definite topic into something rather convoluted.
  In todays lab we played with various solvents like octan-1-ol. My lab coat still has a lingering smell...
  
  
• PHCY256 (biopharmaceutical chemistry): Don't let its name fool you. It's only really organic chemistry and then some. We finished stereochemistry and are now learning about acid-base chemistry. People sure like to come up with some crazy theories about very little things that we can't see... >.>
  
  
• PHCY263 (principles of pharmacy practice): Our group presentation is coming along nicely. We have to present a scientific paper about a psychology study done with children. It shows how people (in general) adapt their speech style depending on their conversational partner. For example, a male might speak to another male in one way, but differently to a female. It also covers how females tend to converse in order to maintain relationships, using language features such as compliments and mitigated questions. Boys, however, use speech to assert dominance. They tend to use more threats, insults, expressions of opinion, and direct commands.
  In lectures, we're just getting talks about "good communicatoin", being active listeners and learning to shape well-rounded questions to optimise response information. It's rather boring really. Who doesn't know how to communicate properly when required?
  Ooh, in our next Dispensing lab we get to make a linctus. A linctus is also known as 'cough syrup'. The active ingredient will be codeine phosphate!
  

Yup, so that's me.

It is getting very cold here. You can definitely tell that the wind coming up as been by the Antarctic. The air gets real chilled down and on your walk to lecture your face goes numb.
Note to self: Don't live so far away next year...

I really hope your 'good luck' points go up within the next few days. It would suck if your streak of "bad luck" continued. As I said, it's probably just a transient glitch in the cosmos. Maybe mercury is in retrograde...

How is AYO going? I could never be committed to something so big like that while at uni. Again, maybe it has something to do with the amount of study I do... *priorities*

How is your rabbit? How is he enjoying roaming the jungle that is your backyard everyday? How is your mysterious little fish pond that you have out back?

I really should get to bed now and stop with this frivelocity. I'm going to be too tired again tomorrow. I have 5 lectures in a row again and they're all in different places. Going to be doing a bit of running.

I'll chat with you later!


Mission Complete!