Google Boldly Goes...

Forgive me for the dreadful title?

It's the 46th anniversary of the original Star Trek series! The first regular episode was 'The Man Trap' shown on Thursday September 8th 1966 at 8:30 - so guess what I'll be watching this evening... well probably the Paralympics actually, but maybe Star Trek in tiny bursts  during the advert breaks.

Google have celebrated with a commemorative Doodle:

Screenshot from Google

It incorporates lots of nods to iconic scenes to keep fans happy, and it's fun. Here's an interview with the guy who designed it: http://www.startrek.com/article/celebrating-46-years-with-a-google-doodle.

This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVpCUZ2c4qc shows all of the little animations - it's much more fun to try them out for yourself though! If it's not the 8th anymore then you can find it here http://www.google.com/doodles/finder/2012/All%20doodles.

*spoilers alert*

Hats off to Google: they've thought of everything! We are treated to tribbles falling out of an overhead locker, the Gorn fight, the bridge console will cycle through sound effects including the communicator chirrup, they've even reproduced the soft-focus-close-up-shots-of-attractive-female-characters thing for if you click on Lieutenant Uhura at the beginning! (admittedly the latter was a completely unnecessary quirk in filming the series, but since it was there, it's here).

Poor redshirt 'e' gets hit by Kirk's stick bouncing off the Gorn and splattered by the makeshift cannon, but he does manage to survive the 'episode', so he can't complain.

I only wish that 'Google' was seven letters so that there could have been a Scotty letter...

Medical School

So I got my grades and I'm off to medical school this month :D - my excitement matched only by my nervousness. Now that I'm back from holiday it all feels very imminent and a bit surreal. I'm sure I'll get used to the idea once I get there though.

National Transplant Week

So last week was National Transplant Week.

I think I can say with some certainty that this is an awareness and donor numbers-boosting thing rather than the only week in 2012 when organ transplants are done in the Britain.

Three people die every day waiting for a transplant in the UK. You can join the organ donor register here. It's really easy and will take 5 minutes. Or you could spend one second ticking a box when applying for a driving licence. One of the slogans on posters at the moment runs 'if you believe in organ donation, prove it', which is shockingly apt. (Figures from here) 96% of people when asked say that they believe organ donation is the right thing to do, and how many have joined the register? 33%.

It is important to register and to make sure that your family and friends are aware of your intentions so that they will be carried out. Relatives are statistically much more likely to agree to a donation if the potential donor was on the register.

(Infographics from the NHSBT website.)

An interesting fact from the NHSBT (NHS Blood and Transplant) website: the oldest donor and recipient of a cornea were both 104.

The NHS Organ Donor Registry, incidentally, was established in 1994, which means it's younger than me and it's done more good in that time than I'm likely to in my entire life.

Long time, no blog update

But look: I drew you flowers.

I plead insanity - or more specifically A2 exams and going to Wales. The trouble is, one feels obliged to end one's absence with a particularly deep and meaningful/entertaining post, so one ends up waiting to return until one has found such a topic. Or giving up and posting anyway.

Things that have happened:

- I was attacked by a chicken

- I discovered lemon and ginger tea, and Welsh cakes - delicious!

- Exams are over (huzzah!)

- And Murray lost the tennis...

I've got a few ideas for posts waiting, so updates should be a bit more regular from now on.

Avengers!

I'm going to come clean here - I have, in fact, been to see this film multiple times since it came out. You'll have to trust me that that is testament to how awesome it is, rather than how desperate I am for excuses to avoid revision.


It is actually more awesome than Kirk thinks he is:

...and that's a pretty high level of awesome.


It was funny, it had snarky banter, it had (pseudo?)science, it had a 'blue stick of destiny', it had LOKI, and a character who, as we learnt in Iron Man 2 actually speaks Latin!!! It basically had everything, including a lack of excessive romance (I'll take banter over romance any day). It was hugely entertaining and I wholeheartedly recommend it - although you might want to watch Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Captain America and Thor before you see it, for character background. 


If you are also now in Avengers-withdrawal - here are some hilarious and cute comics of the characters (this artist is amazing, she also does the Broship of the Ring, X-Men stuff, Harry Potter stuff, Sherlock stuff... I may be a little in love).  

Physics is also Worth Funding

(Sorry about the delay - life happened.)

I'm not sure what happened to it in the budget, but beforehand the UK government put something in the region of £70 million a year into CERN and, according to my physics teacher, someone did a survey and found that 30% of people think this is a good use of taxpayers' money.

When I first heard this, I thought 'that seems like quite a lot of money being spent on something which is not terrifically useful', but I have now realised two things: for a government it's not that much, and it is useful. I'll explain my u-turn (with the caveat that other people definitely know more about this stuff than me).

Firstly, if we don't put any money into shared facilities like this, then we're going to fall behind areas of research like particle physics and astronomy, which often need pretty massive bits of equipment to test/observe things.

Huzzah! A particle accelerator!

Unless you're Tony Stark and can just build one at home one afternoon. See here for how much he may have had to bend reality to do this.

You have seen Iron Man 2, right?

These areas are some of the most 'wow!', and so important in encouraging children to take an interest in science.

Like Gru in Despicable Me, but hopefully without the career as a supervillain.

Also particle physics has all sorts of medical applications - cancer therapy, diagnostics, biomedical research into the structure of proteins - and makes itself useful in lots of other ways too.

Finally, you can't direct the course of scientific progress. Sure you can choose which research areas to fund, but you can't force breakthroughs to be made, or predict the applications for new discoveries. The most groundbreaking inferences are often serendipitous, so no area should be considered unworthy of investigation.

Physics is Cute

When I say I take physics A level, people's reactions tend to range from 'why?' to 'you poor thing!'. They probably assume physics = hard maths. Maths is often involved (and sometimes makes me want to disembowel myself with a spoon), but the physics department also get away with the most ridiculously fun stuff by claiming it's educational.

Exhibit A: Visits to theme parks. It was just the once, but still. We had a day out of school so that we could ride on roller-coasters and 'experience' the gravitational energy changing to kinetic energy for our coursework. The chemistry equivalent is dripping things into test tubes under exam conditions. No contest.

Exhibit B: The Particle Zoo.

Aww

Ninja!

Our physics department owns most of a full set of these plushies. They do have explanatory tags and are used as a teaching tool - but mainly they're incredibly awesome and cute. And the strange quarks have three eyes and the charm quarks have roses!

So much!

In all seriousness, the actual physics is pretty awesome too, especially particle physics and astrophysics: the mindbogglingly small and the mindbogglingly big. I defy anyone to look at images of nebulae and tell me they're not beautiful. The sad thing is that although I have seen the Enterprise mentioned in an old textbook, that was to say that using antimatter-matter annihilations to power the ship probably wouldn't work...

This Modern Age We Live In...

We normally get our food delivered and the bags are helpfully labelled according to whether the supermarket reckons it goes in the cupboard/fridge/freezer - in case you were going to freeze your cereal, or something (although who are they to stop you if you wanted to - people of the world, rise up! MISFILE YOUR GROCERIES!). I assume that this is not because it is thought most people would otherwise be left standing in the middle of their kitchens, paralysed by indecision, but either to show that they care, or to stop people suing them. But it still seems rather a waste of time and energy.


I am feeling particularly patronised by these bags today because I took the delivery this evening and there was - horror of horrors! - an unmarked bag! This was, the deliveryman spontaneously explained, because this ice cream had initially not been in stock and so was added at the last minute. However, he also felt the need to assure me that although it was in a substitution bag, it still went in the freezer. 

Why? Just why?

I didn't know whether to be more amused or annoyed, so I settled for a politely neutral expression and a nod. And then decided to blog about it.

Limpets: Best. Thing. Ever.

Another awesome thing is best friends who link to you on their blogs (a warm welcome if you’ve popped over from Sex and Drugs and Doctor Who), thereby forcing you to stop revising and post something. So anyway, limpets.

I went on a biology field trip a year or so ago to the Welsh coast, and what I gained from this trip was an appreciation of the brilliance of limpets. That probably wasn’t the main educational goal, but ‘tevs.

To convince any doubters, here are three reasons why they are so fantastic:  

•       They MOVE AROUND AT NIGHT!!!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nycudpbwTI I accept that most people will not find this as tremendously exciting as I do – but you agree it’s awesome, right?

•       Some species are homing – they always find their way back to exactly the same spot. So if you had fairly non-urgent messages to carry across short distances…

•       The giant limpet’s shell can grow up to 20cm long! O.O That is a big limpet.

Photos-of-limpets-from-a-google-image-search!

The limpets are coming!

Pretty!

Limpet... wants a hug?

Oh, and if you don’t want to see something slightly scary, then don’t search for images of limpet teeth from a SEM. You have been warned.

Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests: The Medical School Versions #2

This is a sister post to my UKCAT one and is an introduction to/some advice for taking the BMAT. The BioMedical Aptitude Test is used by a few universities in the UK (Cambridge, ICL, Oxford, and UCL  for medicine at the time of writing) as an admissions test to help differentiate between high achieving applicants and show potential for higher education. Basically, it's another hurdle.

Preparing For The BMAT

You will probably be able to take the BMAT at your school and this year it will be on the 7th of November. You will need to register (make sure you do) and pay an entry fee.

The BMAT has 3 sections:

-  Aptitude and Skills (tests problem solving, reasoning, data interpretation etc. multiple choice)

- Scientific Knowledge and Applications (ability to apply knowledge from maths and science (up to Key Stage 4 level), multiple choice)

- Writing Task (select, develop and organise ideas and communicate effectively in writing; one essay from a choice of four titles)

Your raw mark in converted to a score out of 9 for each of the first two sections (to one decimal place). The average candidate is supposed to score 5.0, the best candidates 6.0 and exceptional candidates above 7.0. For the third section, you get a score 0-5 for 'quality of content' and a letter score E-A for 'quality of written English'.

As with the UKCAT, preparation by practicing the question styles is important. For the BMAT, however, there definitely is material to revise (section 2). The material is meant to be up to KS4, but that does not make the questions easy, or GCSE level, the important aspect here is applying knowledge. A further point is that the some of the stuff may not have been on the syllabus of the exam board you took your science and maths GCSEs with. I mainly used 'How To Master The BMAT' to prepare. It was helpful because, as well as having lots of practice questions, it also had a very condensed revision guide to all the science and maths in it, so you could quickly refresh your memory and check if you had missed anything vital at GCSE. Practice papers are also available from the BMAT website. There is a '400 Questions' book (equivalent to the UKCAT I mentioned in my other post), and although I didn't use it, I expect it would be useful (I had a slightly random selection of books based on what my local bookshop had).

Cuteness break - the world's smallest species of chameleon:

The BMAT is a paper exam so it would probably be useful to practice writing the essays under timed conditions. Also: you only get one side of A4 for the essay. That's right - there's a line limit, and no planning space. This is to encourage you to be concise and organised with your thoughts, not a challenge to write illegibly small. Be aware that you have more than enough time to fill this paper, so take the time to make sure that you're filling it with something good. Part of the score for the essay comes from 'quality of written English', so make sure that your spelling and grammar won't let you down!

There are bound to be courses promising to boost your score. I stuck to books and practice papers, so I don't know how useful these are, but it's probably worth getting an independent opinion on them before signing up.

Being Strategic With Your Score

'Aha!' You cry. 'but I won't know my score before applying, you fool, Erin!' And you're right, so if you use 3 of your 4 medicine UCAS choices for BMAT universities then you're taking quite a gamble that your score will be good. I've got a friend who did this, applying to London schools and Oxford,  and it worked for her. If you're confident (hopefully based on having done a few practice papers) and you want to, then do it, but be aware that it is a risk, and if you have a bad day you could blow all your chances of getting an offer at once. The stuff about checking how they use your score still applies (and it can differ between individual Oxbridge colleges as well as between universities), e.g. some may not look at your essay, so if essay-writing isn't a strong point it may not matter, whereas some will discuss your essay at interview. Some also use BMAT cut-offs. 

And Finally...

Prepare well, but most importantly relax so that you can do your best in the exam. If you're reading this because you're taking it, rather than for nostalgia, then good luck! (:

Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests: The Medical School Versions #1

A Silly Introduction

It's too bad that Hermione decided not to be a Healer and we never got to find out what the wizarding equivalent of the UKCAT and BMAT are - then I could have made an actually relevant reference to Harry Potter for my title. Even Snape is disappoint:

Anyways, UKCAT and BMAT. If you want to study medicine in the UK, you will have to take at least one of these if you want much choice in which medical schools you apply to. I'm not going to list which universities do /don't use them, because you'll want the most up-to-date information so you need to go onto the universities own websites, but I am going to dish out a bit of advice as someone who's been there and come out the other side. This was meant to be one post, but to stop it being ridiculously long, I'll start with the UKCAT and put the BMAT one up later next.

Preparing For The UKCAT

Firstly register (and pay the entry fee) in time - you can register for the UKCAT from the 1st May. You don't need to do it then, but be sure to leave plenty of time, because if all the testing appointments get booked and you haven't got one then you won't be able to take it for that application cycle (i.e. year). When booking, remember you can only take the test once each cycle, so you want to give yourself plenty of time to prepare. I took mine during the Summer holidays so I had plenty of free time to both to prepare and to consider my options in light of my result (see next section).

According to the UKCAT website it cannot be revised for. Admittedly you can't learn facts to regurgitate for it, but you definitely can (and should) prepare! It has 4 sections:

- Verbal Reasoning

- Quantitative Reasoning (i.e. maths)

- Abstract Reasoning

- Decision Analysis

Each of these will give you a score scaled to a mark out of 900, and the average candidate is supposed to get 600. There used to be a 'non-cognitive analysis' section, (which was supposed to assess you character and suitability to a career in medicine/dentistry), which you might find mentioned in older books, but your test won't include it. The key here is being able to answer as many of the questions correctly and within the time as possible. This is extremely unlikely to be all of them. If there's a particular section you're weak at, then you can make up for it with the others, as it is your overall average score that counts.

The book I found most helpful for this was 'Get Into Medical School 600 UKCAT Practice Questions' because really you just need to do lots of practice questions and get used to the style and find techniques to help you answer very quickly. A quick warning about this book - I found the actual test (particularly the maths section) quite a lot easier than a lot of the questions in here. However, the questions you get are picked at random from a large database for each section, so you could get all the hard ones. If you've got friends who are also applying then you could always club together to buy books, maximising the number of practice questions available to you all.

There are specimen papers available on the UKCAT website, which have the advantage of being computer-based, like the real test, so they  get you used to using an onscreen calculator. Your testing centre will probably also provide you with a whiteboard (and pen XD!), so get used to writing you workings out neatly (so that you don't need to waste time wiping your board while you're in a timed section), but don't worry, you will be allowed to jot things down!

There are preparation courses available (at a cost). I didn't use any personally (and did well) and I feel that the main benefit would be additional practice which you can get much more cheaply from books or free from the UKCAT website. However, since I didn't use any I can't really comment on how useful I would have found them.

Also, don't let you preparation demoralise you. I was really struggling to get up to the 600 (average) UKCAT mark on the practice tests I did, but did much better on the day.  

Time for a cute kitteh break:

Being Strategic With Your Score

For the UKCAT you know your score before you send off you UCAS form. This means that it would be very stupid indeed to apply to somewhere which uses a particular cut-off, knowing that your score is below it. You have not spent a huge amount of time perfecting you application for some admissions tutor to take one look at your UKCAT score and throw your form away.

However, most medical schools will look at your score in context and you can generally find out from their websites how much weight they give it. So if you have a weak UKCAT, but strong A Level predictions, a good Personal Statement and reference and you interview well, then you probably still have a good shot at most of the UKCAT schools, but pick from ones that don't put a huge emphasis on your score. Likewise, if your score was very high and you know that another area of your application isn't, then use you score to your advantage.

Obviously you should be applying to medical schools that you like and would want to go to, rather than just the ones you think will be easiest to get into, but remember to be realistic. You do have 4 choices to put on the UCAS form, so although this is only 4 and you shouldn't throw any away, it is still 4 and you can spread your bets.

And Finally...

Good luck! And remember to relax on the day! Getting a bad score isn't the end of the world and won't mean that you can't become a doctor, there are medical schools that don't use it at all, don't use it much, or use the BMAT instead.

Also, silver lining here: it caused me to write this blog post which led to Word learning Snape's name.

Why do I have a blog?

Is it so that I can angst in a self-referential manner about my unhelpful procrastination skills? No! Is it because I am a sheep? Maybe. And if I had a question I could follow with 'yes!' then this would be a fairly pointless, but refreshingly brief post.

Perhaps I wanted to be able to share my ranting with the world, or I hoped that the idea of random denizens of the Internet being able to read anything I wrote about revision would fill me with a sense of obligation to actually do some.

Actually the real reason I have a blog is probably twofold:

- My search for new sources of displacement activity has led me to start following other people's blogs and I started to feel left out.

- After helping my friend come up with potential names for her blog 'that would make a great name for a blog!' became the new 'that would make a great name for a band!' and I came across the phrase 'Elemental Tea', so...

As to where the name came from - all credit to Alexander Pope, ladies and gentlemen. Lines 61-2, Canto 1 of the Rape of the Lock:

Soft yielding minds to Water glide away,

And sip, with Nymphs, their elemental Tea.

And in the 18th century, 'tea' rhymed with 'away'! :D (I'd say that this is epic, but that would be a rather dreadful pun, since the poem is a mock epic...)

Hello, world

Nice to meet you (:

(Or nice to think you may be spending a minute of your life reading something I wrote anyway.) I'm Erin - just about an adult, but pretty far from being grown up.

I'm quite geeky, excitable (consider yourself duly warned for exclamation mark and capitals abuse) and may be too lazy to update this regularly. I expect I'll be blogging about medical school (fingers crossed I get there), ranting about fandom and adding to the wealth of pointless Internet in my own special way.

Things I like: Biology, Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series (cue incoherent gesticulation as I fail to convey the awesome), Tolkien (ditto),  Pratchett (there's a pattern here), Star Trek (TOS), Wodehouse, Doctor Who (especially 3, 10 and 11), Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, the Edge Chronicles, waistcoats, pocket watches, 5ml beakers, moustaches, the history of medicine and lots lots lots more. I am very attached to all of them, so either I have a really big heart or a very short attention span...

Things I don't like: GLORFINDEL WASN'T IN THE LORD OF THE RINGS FILMS  D: and the real world's pretty messed up too.

I can't promise not to sound pretentious sometimes (read: most of the time), but it will probably be because I like excuses to use long words  rather than because I'm incredibly stuck up. Though that might be the same thing.

TTFN - and that's not at all pretentious, since I got it from Tigger in one of the Winnie the Pooh films, right?