It is only 2 degrees Celsius in London but the sun is shinning 🙂
This one is short and sweet. I had to post this for two reasons, in no particular order;
Reason one, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) fully funded my PhD studies, thank you again.
Reason two, not only is it a funny advert but it is also teaching you something that can save someones life. Literally.
Most of us live in an environment which means heart disease is one of the biggest killers. That means more likely than not, YOU could find yourself in a situation where CPR is required, whether it is a friend, family member or stranger.
Click play and take this OPPORTUNITY to LEARN a SKILL that can change someones life.
oh and this already has a theme song, the Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive, not a bad choice BHF even if i do say so myself lol
Share the post geeks, sharing is caring and all that good stuff, you could be saving someones life.
Last-night, I got on-line and my facebook inbox, twitter DM and e-mail contained messages suggesting I should write a post about this 2 and a half year old baby boy genius by the name of Romanieo and his father.
Some of you may have already seen the video once but I think it is safe to say it deserves to be watched more than once, I mean come on, the boy knows what Protons, Neutrons and Electrons are! He is not even 3 yet! Furthermore, I think he knows more of the periodic table than I do (don’t judge me, I am a geneticist not a chemist or physicist aight! let me see him or his dad tell me anything about DNA sequencing mechanisms lol ).
However, the most amazing thing for me really wasn’t the “genius” of it all but the absolutely beautiful and inspiring dedication to knowledge and love this father had with his child. My favorite part was not when Romanieo answered the correct element to the Nuclear Fission set up but when his father said to him:
“where is your mind? and where is your intuition? Now where is my intuition? That’s right. Now put your intuition with my intuition”And then Romanieo and his father rub heads and noses together. A beautiful moment. I LOVE this video. you MUST click play.
–
I was trying to think of the most deserving song dedication to this, it took me a min but I think I got it
–
Share the post with all the great parents you know and INSPIRE them further. Share in each others greatness, it can only lead to even greater things.
Peace, Love and Health
Ex
PART TWO We=MC^2
Hello All,
Most of you may have read this post before, but I wanted to keep you up-dated on this projects progress for two reasons.
Reason one, I am still in love with this little boy and his family
Reason two, I sent them an e-mail a while back, not expecting a response. I wanted to know if and how they are going to develop the “big idea” they talked about in the posted videos. I did get a response, a heart-warming and very honest response, saying they are working on it and would let me know as soon as they knew themselves.
Many of us have “big ideas” all the time, most of the time they are brilliant. Most of the time, many of us do not follow them up, not purposefully, but life and it’s many responsibilities can make it hard sometimes. I think this story is inspiring.
They have been asked by several parents and grandparents how can they start immediately working with their toddlers using the method they call TEAMMS. This acronym stands for: Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics, Music and Science. It incorporates the best of STEM and expands upon it by adding the critical components of the Arts and Music. They decided to write and publish a book by August. This time frame will give parents some companion teaching tools as they prepare their children for preschool/school. However, they need help in achieving this goal and like many, they have decided to use a Kickstarter campaign.
The kickstarter project is called A little like Einstein: help us give rise to a new generation of Big Thinkers – Polymaths. If you do, you will own a piece of history and be able to say to the world with pride that you helped make it happen. If you think you can help by making a donation click on this link. Click on the link anyway, even if just to see the new video and complete the story. You can also help by re-blogging, tweeting and posting to your social networking media sites.
Thank you for reading and I hope this story is as inspirational to you as it is to me.
I came across this post on the BBC website and wanted to share it with you. Mainly because a lot of the questions I get asked as a friend, Dr and educator come from stories read in the paper, tabloids and magazines.
Someone at the beeb put together a list of 100 interesting and unexpected facts we didn’t know about last year that featured in our daily news reads. Some will make you laugh out loud, others will make you go aaaaaahhh and some are just ridiculous.
OK, they keep changing the time, is it 15 mins or 26 mins? Big difference brain Drs.. work it out maaaaan. Please and Thank you.
3- The world’s atmosphereis worth £4.3 quadrillion, going by the air we breathe in and the price of CO2. More details (Metro)
I mean, they really put a PRICE on the ATMOSPHERE!!! WOW
4- Chimps can outperform eight-year-olds in solving problems. More details
CRAZY!!!
5- The male waterboatman insect sings with its penis. More details
WHAT!!! I mean, why do we need to know that? lol
ok I know I said 5 but this one is a BONUS, just because they quote, Mohamed Ali, Messi and Marodona as examples 🙂
Heart disease isless common among religious people. More details
I am not sure what to say here…but please remember to weigh up the validity of your Science Education source.
Click on the video for some background music and then Click here for the full list and remember to always think it over! What are your top 5? Leave them as a comment, I’m interested to know 🙂
“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet” Stephen Hawking
It is my little sisters birthday today and because I am in that mood I thought I would let you all in on my Stephen Hawking Geek Out. The man is a legend in the Scientific World and I am honored to have met him only three years ago, definitely one of the high-lights of my career so far.
This is, of course, Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist, who was born on 8 January 1942. His life and celebrity are hard to seperate from the astounding story of how he echieved such feats while living with a form of motor neurone disease. He was famously diagnosed aged just 21 and given just a few years to live by doctors. He is still here and going strong. Amazing.
On the 8th of January 2012, Professor Hawking celebrated his 70th birthday. Eminent physicists from around the globe descended on Cambridge to honour one of their own and celebrate the life of the world’s most famous living scientist. The Cambridge cosmologist has worked on the inflation of the early universe and a quantum theory of gravity, and famously suggested that black holes emit radiation and so slowly disappear. A Brief History of Time has sold more than 10m copies worldwide. Click on the link to get your own copy.
To coincide with Professor Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday, the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, in conjunction with Intel, hosted a public symposium entitled ‘The State of the Universe’. Watch the video below, and listen to the man himself speak, it is actually amazing.
–
–
The Professor also had a guest appearance on episodes of The Simpsons and Star Trek in which Data plays poker with Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Genius!
–
–
–
Happy Belated Birthday Professor Hawking, thank you for sharing your light.
This one is short and sweet. It took me a while to get into Family Guy but get into it I eventually did. The show has some moments and skits that literally floor me sometimes.
Here is one I found earlier 🙂
–
–
and while we are at it, i’m gonna share another of my all time favorites
The truth is, I got this Q a while back but kept putting it off because..well..you know but actually it is a valid scientific question. I figured now would be the right time, it is the beginning of the year and new beginnings for some, so here it goes geeks
As SV would say, I know, I know you like the art of sex… Press play for some background music and read on
The answer to your question is a no boner..uhm I mean brainer…(sorry, I just couldn’t resist ha!)
….going to a job interview can be one of most stressful events and sex is one of the most natural ways as humans we can regulate our anxiety levels.
But how can we prove this scientifically?
In one study, using rats, researchers found daily intercourse for two weeks led to cell growth in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that keeps stress levels under control. This paper actually caused quite a stir when it was published (Sex makes your brain grow wooo hooo!!! etc etc absolutely ridiculous tabloids in the papers). Click here for the full article and hardcore science.
I know what you are thinking, E, we are not the same as rats! Right? so I dug a little deeper and came across another study to support the theory;
This research group stated that people who had daily intercourse for two weeks showed lower stress-related blood pressure than those who chose to fool around in other ways or abstain from sex altogether. (Solo sessions didn’t cut it either, I’m just saying!) Click here for the full article and hardcore science
But wait, it gets better 🙂
They also found that the body releases oxytocin (aka the love hormone) during penis-vaginal sex which acts as a natural sedative and can trigger feelings of compassion (everybody say aaaaaaaaahhhhh)
However, before we go lookin’ for love every time those stress signals go off, know that too much sex can also let loose glucocorticoids, molecules the body produces during the stress response. (Less really is more, huh? so don’t go overboard aight!)
DISCLAIMER
Dr E does not take any responsibility for any failures in job interviews, relationships or marriages related to this post.
Firstly, I want to say Happy FIG New Year to you all. Hope you all played safe 🙂
Secondly, I wanted to share with you one of my yearly geek out sessions, by no other than IBM. Towards the end of each year, IBM looks at emerging technologies and market and societal trends that they believe will change our lives.
They put all this information together and predict 5 major changes which always blow me away. Click on this link to find out more and/or check out the video below
Also, check out previous predictions, most are not far off! Let me know what you think, leave a comment and if you liked it share it.
Hah, Ok so first I have to confess that I am a bit off a mozzy (mosquitoe) geek as I have a soft spot for this area of research, for two reasons;
1-My first ever real research project that I designed myself as a undergraduate was on Malaria and mozzy’s
2-Sudan is full of them and has both the species that carry malaria in abundance and they like to bite me, lots, whenever I go home ggggrrrrhhh!
Side note/Trivia: Did you know that mosques (Islamic house of prayer) are called mosques in England instead of Masjid (which is the correct word) because when the English landed in countries which contained Masjid’s and they heard the call to prayer, the soldiers described the sound as the buzzing of mosquitoes, hence the term mosque instead of Masjid.
Anyhoo, back to the topic at hand, due to the above reasons, I am still a member of a number of web journals all about mozzys’ and malaria and it just so happens that only yesterday I read this paper.
Click here if you feel up-to the hard-core science (I hope some of you do 🙂 otherwise play this live ensemble by Seun Kuti feat Manu Dibango whilst I try and break it down.
I always used to say to my dad ” it really is not fair, how come you never get bitten and I always get bitten” and he used to come at me with an African proverb that translates to “My old skin/blood is dry and your young skin/blood is sweet my dear”.LOL
So I looked it up and it turns out he was kinda right. Firstly, I thought a mozzy was just looking for blood, so what does it matter who’s blood it has for dinner, right? I was wrong.
Actually, the mosquito that carries malaria aka Anopheles gambiae, tracks its victims with an acute sense of smell.
Now when I say acute, I really mean it, as the smells they are attracted to come from the billions of tiny bacteria that live on our skin. Skin bacteria gives us all our own “scent” if you will, and we need them as they help convert chemicals on our skin into those that can easily rise into the air.
So here is the answer to your question. We all have different types of bacteria on our skin or different concentrations of a particular type. Therefore, our scent will be different, your scent must be far more attractive than your partners.
Recently, Neils Verhulst et al (2011) discovered that the bacteria on our skin does affect the odds of being bitten by a malarial mosquito and they have even managed to identify which of the different types of skin bacteria are more attractive.This has exciting implications for malaria research.
What can you do?
There are a few things that you can do to make yourself less “attractive” to mozzys
1-We know from past experiments that human sweat becomes more enticing to A.gambiae, therefore a shower before sundown might help.
2-Your diet matters, for example we know that drinking bear can give a attractive odour
3-Cover up as much as possible during the evenings when the mozzy’s come out to play
I thought it would be insightful to share with you some of the things my Doctor friends complain about. They have to put up with some ridiculously funny interactions but jokes aside, it is really helpful to know what not to do. Enjoy the read and share the knowledge geeks.
1- I AM NOT A MIND READER;
If you come in to see me and I ask you what is wrong and how I can help? A long silence or a exuberant sigh is not going to get us anywhere. They didn’t teach me to read minds in medical school, sorry about that.
–
–
2- PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT;
Now that we have gone past the awkward silence or sigh, and you finally find the words to describe what it is you came in for, it would help me, to help you, if you used words and/or descriptions that made sense. It is a weird feeling in my belly just wont do! Really, no diagnosis is going be made on “a weird feeling” what is that?!?!?!?!? Practice at home what you want to say to me before you come in to see me. PLEASE.
–
–
–
3- PAIN;
Most people will ignore something until it becomes painful or too painful to ignore. That’s a given (please don’t) but when I ask you what kind of pain is it and where? You should have given it enough thought to come up with a decent answer. I need words like, SHARP, DULL, ACHING, CONSISTANT, INCREASINGLY PAINFUL, HOW OFTEN etc Please don’t make me play the guessing game, most Dr’s are not very good at it.
4- I AM NOT A THERAPIST;
Ladies (and sometimes Gentleman!) if you are feeling premenstrual or menopausal (“empathetic man period”), why cant you wait until it blows over to come in about that thing you have been ignoring for ages anyway, it’s only a week or so. It’s not my job to have you cry on my shoulder or pat your back, in-fact I am not allowed. That is all.
–
–
5- WIKIPEADIA DR’s;
OK, it’s really great that you did some research but actually I am the trained DR, not wikipeadia. Do you even know what wikipeadia is? Please at the very least look it up with the medical council!
That’s all for now. For obvious reason’s the identity of the Dr will remain anonymous but I will be interviewing more and posting new rants in the near future. Watch this space.
Let me know what you think and share any funny/helpful encounters on your visits to the Doctors.
Alexei Shulgin and Aristarkh Chernyshev – Electroboutique
pop-up at the Science Museum
Artworks created 2011
On display 23 Nov 2011 – 14 Feb 2012
Location: The Bridge, ground floor mezzanine
This is pretty cool peeps. Encouraging participation through what they call ‘Creative Consumption’, the artists generate a dialogue with their audiences through works which respond, reflect and re-version viewers in real time. The artworks use languages of pop culture, media and art histories, framed by a tongue-in-cheek appropriation of the language of corporate marketing speak. What does that mean? have a peak at the pictures below to give you a better idea..
Not only does this look like mad fun, the experience and interaction with the pieces allows you to ponder more serious questions around art production, design aspiration, technological progress, consumerism, media control and corporate social responsibility. Who was it that said learning can’t be fun? PAH
Warning: This exhibition contains flashing and flickering images and contains a high level of visual and sound stimulation. Visualise Janelle Monae’s neon valley street in metropolis or just play the song below and enjoy :-). Find out more here
but actually it is a valid scientific question. I figured now would be the right time, it is the beginning of the year and new beginnings for some, so here it goes geeks
Faith In Geeks 