Category: Uncategorized

Asia, you’re always on my mind.

Master of Public Health

It absolutely surprises me to realise that no matter where I go, I take a piece of its experience with me, even if I may unconsciously do so. Let me explain, but before that, let me set the backdrop.

Public Health, particularly Global Health, is such a dynamic, interdisciplinary field that by the time Friday comes around, my brain is low on fuel after having interconnected all the concepts from economics, health policy, global governance and innovative entrepreneurship. I love it, of course – life is no fun without pushing your horizons and challenging yourself to learn outside your comfort zone. But my way of re-fueling on the weekend is by getting my mates together and indulging in the culinary delights that London has to offer.

This time, feeling the home blues for Asian cuisine (more particularly read…Asian bistro with South East Asian flavours), I landed up at Busaba Eathai. Plus, they were giving 50% off your total bill in the month of January if you paid via their mobile app (so much for marketing and business boosting through technology platforms…). I’ve noticed a trend in preference (or we’re becoming more adventurous on the culinary front I may add) for Asian flavours in our palate in multicultural cities outside the South East Asia realm such as Mumbai, New York and London. It is pleasantly refreshing to see Asian flavours coming together with Western influences in creative, hip restaurants wherever I go. It cures the home blues, for sure. And needless to say, Busaba Eathai did not disappoint. For the price you pay, their food is impressive, and the ambience even more so. They sway from the usual, boring restaurant table set-up with massive, wooden tables and benches with no de-markations – eating in a communal setting, and occasionally exchanging conversation with the random people sitting beside you about the meal? Alright, that’s pretty cool. Don’t forget to try the calamari in your starters (love how they put raw, green peppercorns for that authentic flavour), and the Massaman Curry if you want to sway from the usual Green/Red Thai Curry or the Pad Thai!

The point of this post, however, was that although a trip to Busaba was intended to cure my Asian food cravings, I returned with a realisation of how much of my experiences in Southeast Asia are unconsciously ingrained in me. And also with a warm, fuzzy feeling that had definitely cured the home blues because all I need to do is look around a little harder to find that sense of home. While appreciating the chic, wooden Pan-Asian interiors of the place (love the low-ceiling lanterns!) on my way out, I spotted a gorgeous piece of Asian art – a stone-carved wall piece of what appeared to be a king surrounded by apsaras (angels).

If I could explain to you how within a nanosecond of spotting that, my sense of déjà vu kicked in, I would. Why it was just this piece of art, and not any of the interiors or their spot-on menu, I don’t know. For the past eight years of being in Singapore, all those years of travel to Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam’s many museums has involved spotting this piece of art wherever I go. More so, it is a usual piece of art that adorns walls of most art enthusiasts in that region. Funnily enough, instead of giving me the homesickness blues, the sheer enormity of the déjà vu and suddenness of this onset brought a smile to my face; that little glimpse was enough for a peaceful reminder of my travels, my daily interactions with Southeast Asian culture, and my sense of familiarity for the past eight years. I realised how much of the culture and experiences I had ingrained in my unconscious mind, and a powerful sense of belonging that comes with it. And perhaps it was this inward realisation that I don’t have to look further to know that I hold what I’ve called home for the past eight years, and its sense of familiarity, in my heart, that allowed me to leave the place with a warm, glowing sense of comfort.

P.S. Even the hand soap in the restrooms there smells of the typical Southeast Asian spas; does that lavender-lemongrass aroma ring a bell? Help. Now I need to find one in London.

P.P.S. Don’t miss out on the amazing array of sauces on the tables to enhance the flavours of your dishes…by that I mean, all you need is some of that Sriracha sauce.

Photographer: Prashant Gokool

(Image courtesy: http://prashart.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/IMG_1989.jpg)

 

The Standard Model (of love)

MSCi Physics

Often people will say they don’t understand my blogs, so this one is split into three bits (imitating nature as we shall see) depending on how much physics you care to know.

Bit one: the standard model

The standard model is a theory about our best knowledge of particle physics to date, and it includes a toolkit of particles with which you can build a universe from. Each of these particles has different properties, but there are lots of patterns and links between them (just like the periodic table in chemistry).
There are two types of particles overall- the ones that make up stuff– the matter particles, and the ones that make the stuff do stuff– the ones that carry the forces. I am only talking about the matter ones in this blog 🙂image

All the matter particles are laid out in this snazzy diagram I have drawn– they are hilariously titled p’heart’icles what with Valentine’s Day coming up 😛

Bit two: why the three rows?
The top row of phearticles includes a electron, an up quark and a down quark, which are the things you need to make up all everyday matter like you and me and planets. Until the muon was spotted, everyone thought they were all that the universe was made up of. A particle physicist at the time of the muon’s discovery, I.I. Rabi, was famously meant to have asked of its existence: ‘who ordered that?’

The muon is on row two– it is the same as the electron but is just heavier. Everyone was baffled about why the universe had come up with this heavier version of the electron– especially as it didn’t seem to be using it.
After this discovery, all the other particles were eventually filled in on rows two and three. Each one on row two is a heavier version of the particles above it, and row three particles are the same again, but heavier still. Queerer and queerer.

When I first heard about this feature of the standard model, I thought ‘oh yeah well obviously there are going to be loads more generations of still heavier particles, but our particle accelerators can’t access energies high enough to create them yet’.
(Coz E= mc^2 and all that so you need higher energies to get more massive particles.)
This seems reasonable. Who is to say there isn’t another fourth, even heavier electron type thing lurking out there?

Bit three: I am to say there are only three generations 🙂

The proof for this comes from a simple experiment, but before that we have to consider the little neutrino phearticles. These are not like the other particles of the three generations, because there is not a big increase in mass between the rows. Until recently neutrinos were thought to have no mass at all, but it was then discovered that they change type as they are flying along– a phenomenon that means they must have a small mass difference i.e. they can’t all have zero mass!

Because the masses are so tiny, and neutrinos hardly react with anything at all, their masses haven’t been measured exactly, and it isn’t even known if they follow the same pattern as the other generations– getting heavier as they go down the rows.

However, because they have such small masses, it would be fair to assume that another fourth of fifth generation of matter particles would also contain a very light neutrino. This means we should be procuring neutrinos of any extra generations in particles accelerators all the time– E= mc^2 again.

An example of a reaction that should produce them is when two electrons collide and produce a Z boson (which is a type of force particle that I said we would be ignoring). This Z phearticle can decay into any of the other matter particles, including the three neutrinos. If there was a fourth generation, it would be reasonably expected to decay to this generation’s neutrino as well. However you can measure a lot of these reactions and measure the amount of times it decays to each of the different particles. As neutrinos don’t really react with anything, they are usually ‘seen’ by looking at the amount of missing energy. The amount of missing energy that is seen in millions and millions of these decays is exactly equal to the amount of energy needed to produce three generations of neutrinos. Hence, we have only three generations of particles.

I still find that weird… Why three generations? It turns out with less than three some crucial aspects of the strong force wouldn’t work out, but why not ten generations or fifteen? 😛

I can’t answer that just yet, so instead I leave you with some more cute phearticles…

image

Cooking with Iz

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

If you know me at all well, then you will know that I’m unapologetic in my love of food. There are a lot of student stereotypes that I do fall into (nap time = all the time, forgets to do laundry until  only option is to wear pyjamas in public, stays up too late, leaves assignments until last moment) but one that I don’t like is the ‘students can’t cook’ stereotype. I love to cook. The way I see it, I have to eat, I have to take time out of my day to eat and if I’m going to spend fairly large chunks of my day preparing and eating food then I want that food to be delicious. It’s also amazing the effect that decent food can have on your mood. This Tuesday, for example, I had to go back to the lab for a couple of hours in the afternoon because my practical ran longer than I thought it would, which would normally make me feel kind of depressed (no one really wants to spend 4.5 hours dissecting impossibly tiny flowers under a microscope) BUT on this occasion I had chilli crab noodles from the Farmers’ Market for lunch that were so out of this world delicious, nothing could get me down afterwards. I thoroughly reject the notion that student food consists of pot noodles, beans on toast and tomato pasta and I thought it would be cool to show you what I cooked this weekend.

I started the weekend by going grocery shopping, as I was planning to do a couple of bulk meals over the weekend to eat during the week. I already had a few portions of curry in the freezer but the thought of only eating rice all week

My grocery haul - this will last me about a fortnight and cost £16.18
My grocery haul – this will last me about a fortnight. The Sainsburys component cost £16.18

was a bit sad so I planned to make a casserole and a pasta bake in addition. I’m lucky enough to live on a busy, vibrant shopping street with a thriving fruit market 6 days a week and a big Sainsburys. I buy most of my groceries in Sainsburys and then get fruit and veg on the market. I cannot tell you how much of a lifesaver it is to have the market right outside my front door! This week I bought 4 mangos, 4 avocados, a cucumber, a giant bag of cherry tomatoes, some kale (impulse buy – I’ve never cooked it before but it looked so fresh and green and lovely that I had to buy it) and a pomegranate for £5.50. I looked all this up on the Sainsburys website and this week I’ve saved just over £4 by buying from the market instead of the shops. Top tip: if you have a market near you, make good use of it!

The kale - someone told me that cooking in boiling water for a couple of minutes and then frying off in butter is good for kale. Gonna try this soon!
The kale – someone told me that cooking in boiling water for a couple of minutes and then frying off in butter is good for kale. Gonna try this soon!

So the total cost of groceries for the next 1.5-2 weeks is £21.68, which is not a lot and does include meat! I know the weekly cost of living is a worry to a lot of students coming to university for the first time but as long as you shop carefully, you don’t have to spend a bomb on food every week!

The first meal I made this weekend was sausage casserole and mash. Casserole or stew is a great freezer meal because you just have to put everything in a pot and leave it and it’s easy to do a big load in one go. I made mine with sausages, lardons and butterbeans but you can use chicken or just use veg, like butternut squash, carrots or sweet potatoes. A rough estimate of the price per portion of the casserole that I made is about £1.45 per serving which I think is not too bad for a meaty dish. Cutting the meat and just using veggies would obviously make that cheaper. So that was delicious and the remaining three portions will be going in to the freezer to eat over the next fortnight!

The sausage casserole in all it's glory (ok it looks kind of bad in this lighting but I promise it tasted great)
The sausage casserole in all it’s glory (ok it looks kind of bad in this lighting but I promise it tasted great)

The second bulk meal is tomato pasta bake. Pasta bake is also very versatile – I put mushrooms and green pepper in mine but you could add chicken, bacon, mince or different kinds of veg to switch things up. The key to keeping it moist in the oven is plenty of cheeze on top! I had mozarella on mine and it was delicious!

Tomato and mozarella pasta bake!
Tomato and mozarella pasta bake!

It’s also a good way to use up veg to make a cheap meal that you can eat a couple of times throughout the week. An estimate of the price per portion of this recipe is about £1.20. Delicious, filled with vegetables and cheeeap.

So that’s dinners sorted for at least the next fortnight. I am not really a bread person so I tend to take couscous or salad for lunch. I would really reccommend investing in a lunchbox and making lunch at home rather than buying it at uni. Depending on what you get at uni, you’re spending maybe £2-3 a day whereas you can cut that considerably by making lunch at home.

I hope you have enjoyed this cooking adventure with me! My friends mock me for always posting pictures of food on Instagram, so I enjoyed having a legitimate reason for taking so many photos over the weekend. Shop savvy my friends, and prove the student cooking naysayers wrong!

A break from London (with science!) part 4 – splish splashing around

Victoria Burton profile

Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet Doctoral Training Programme (PhD)

For the final day of the Natural History Museum postgraduate field trip we were off to look for aquatic invertebrates and algae, first in some freshwater and later at the coast. The first stop of the day was at the Corfe River where we had a great view of the ruins of Corfe Castle, an 11th Century fortification built by William the Conqueror (and popular destination for my childhood holidays).

Corfe Castle, Dorset
Corfe Castle

Eileen and Polly demonstrated the technique of kick-sampling, where you hold a net under the water and kick the sediment for a set amount of time, this dislodges animals living on the river bed and they are then collected in the net. This method is used to test the health of freshwaters, as each animal collected is identified, counted and assigned a score based on how sensitive they are to water pollution.

Eileen and Polly prepare to demonstrate kick-sampling in the Corfe River
Eileen and Polly prepare to demonstrate kick-sampling

Despite being the middle of winter there were still plenty of animals living in the river, including snails, freshwater-shrimp (actually a type of amphipod, more closely related to woodlice than the shrimp people eat) assorted insect larvae and we even a Bullhead fish (Cottus gobio).

A Bullhead (Cottus gobio) found in the Corfe River
A Bullhead (Cottus gobio) from the Corfe River
Snails and caddis fly larvae from the Corfe River
Snails and cased caddisfly larvae from the Corfe River

Next it was off to the River Piddle (*snigger*) in Wareham. A larger river but which had unfortunately recently been partly dredged and had most of the vegetation cut back, but we did find plenty of Minnows (Phoxinus phoxinus) and I had a dig around the banks to find some earthworms to identify later.

Sampling for freshwater animals in the River Piddle, Dorset
Sampling in the River Piddle
Minnows (Phoxinus phoxinus) from the River Piddle, Dorset
Minnows from the River Piddle, Dorset

After going back to the Old Malthouse to have lunch (and warm up) plus do a little identification of some of the specimens we brought back from the Corfe and the Piddle wet set of to the coast at Swanage to do some rockpooling.

Rockpooling in Swanage
Rockpooling in Swanage

We found two species of limpets, assorted periwinkles and topshells. There were Beadlet Anemones (Actinia equina) in several colours, you can see one below which had ‘babies’ budding off from it. There were also some tiny Shore Crabs (Carcinus maenas). We also recorded many seaweed species which Eileen helped us identify later back in the lab.

Rockpooling treasures from Swanage
Rockpooling treasures from Swanage
Eileen showing one of the many algae species we found at Swanage
Eileen showing one of the many algae species we found at Swanage
Identifying algae back in the 'lab' at the Old Malthouse
Identifying algae back in the ‘lab’ at the Old Malthouse

 

Internships…

MSCi Physics

Since I want to do science communication, there aren’t that many long-term internships that I am actually interested in, at least not compared to people who want to be various shades of banker. My boyfriend wants to work in insurance though, so I’ve seen two pretty different sides to applications for internships and work experience.

Both have their pros and cons—science communication is a very diverse field so it can be hard to find places that take interns, whereas it is easy to find a list of insurance companies with open summer schemes, but the applications for these are normally completely noxious. (This is probably to put you off applying if you aren’t that interested, which I expect does save them quite a lot of picking through candidates who don’t really care, but even so!)

Internships at Big Scary Companies

I will start with the insurance applications because the same kind of process seems to apply for all big companies, and Alex had his first assessment centre last week, so is further through the process than I am. 🙂

The first stage of the joyous process involves multiple pages of questions like ‘who would be your ideal client?’ and ‘tell me about the most innovative way you’ve learnt something’, as well as endless typing out of your personal details and a huge explicit breakdown of your degree modules and grades.

Once you’re through that section you have a barrage of online tests to deal with—numerical tests, verbal reasoning tests, personality tests. This is despite the fact that you have already negotiated your way through their chunky applications, so you can obviously verbally reason with the best of them, and are doing a maths degree. But of course, an online multiple choice test that takes twenty minutes is surely a much better criteria to judge candidates on than a lifetime of continual assessment in maths.

Even these hurdles only get you through to a phone interview. Alex has done one of these for Allianz already—they require a lot of preparation—researching the insurance industry, as well as the company and going over what you decide your strengths and weaknesses and similar rubbish.

If you get through all that, you finally get called to an assessment centre for a day of more interviews and presentations. Alex had his Allianz assessment centre last week in this awesome hotel just outside of London with towers and a lake and an all-you-can-eat breakfast. I went along with him for moral support and for the breakfast 😛

Anyway, his assessment centre was with seven other people also applying to underwriting, and consisted of a presentation about the company, an hour long interview, and a presentation that he had to prepare about where a new restaurant should open. Apparently everyone there was lovely and went out of their way to make the students feel comfortable. The whole emphasis of the morning seemed to be figuring out if the candidates fitted in personality-wise, which was kind of unexpected as Allianz is such a huge global company! Between the interviews and presentation there was a chance to talk to some people on the graduate scheme, and afterwards there was lunch with the interviewers.

It sounds like a pretty nerve-wracking experience, but it sounds like he got on with everyone and somehow managed to sustain his enthusiasm for an hour long interview at nine o’clock in the morning! Looking back on it though, it was not half as bad as it could have been—it genuinely was a chance for him to ask lots of questions about the company and get an idea of the type of people that he might end up working with. This is a huge benefit of dong internships and work experience before leaving university, because it gives you a chance to rule out what you absolutely don’t want to do.

Science Communication Applications

I am going down a different route, as I mentioned, and am not really applying to these huge companies. I have contacted a lot of people about work experience this year with mixed success—mostly just emailing people to see if I could come in and see what they do/volunteer. This starts off as quite a daunting task, but once you’ve done it a few times it becomes far more routine and less scary.

I’ve not heard back from over half of the emails I sent out, and some others that I have heard back from have been really strange and frustrating, and I have had to give up on them in the end. Yet others have replied once to say ‘yes we would like you to come’ but then never got back to any of my emails about sorting out dates. However, those few emails I have heard back from successfully have got me some really interesting work experience.

I am now in the process of sending out another wave of emails and applications for summer placements. I am going to apply to the Science Museum to help with exhibit planning for a month, to the Wellcome Trust for a longer, two month internship for an editorial placement and the BBC to work on ‘The Sky at Night’. I am also planning on emailing some production companies who produce documentaries and science programs, Imperial’s PR department, Sense About Science, the Royal Institute and Okido (a children’s science and art magazine), for shorter work experience placements that I can fit in around a main internship, if I manage to get one! (Fingers crossed!)

Imperial hosts loads of careers fairs, which are always interesting to browse around (not to mention I got this free pencil case of jelly beans from one today!!)

Jelly beans

They are good places to look for job and work experience ideas, outside of what you might have thought of. Just today I went to a careers fair on the way back from lectures and found this really interesting company called ‘Sparx’ that is trying to use data analysis and scientific methods to determine how best to teach children maths. This company completely interests me, as I am fascinated by evidence-based education (my mum is a teacher and is constantly baffled by seemingly pointless changes in the curriculum based on what seems to be pretty sketchy evidence.)

Moral of the blog…

The word ‘internships’ can strike fear into undergraduate’s hearts, and for some good reasons… The application process can be time consuming and boring, and with so many excellent applicants applying for every place, there are going to be days and days of rejection.

However, if you look at it for what it really is, researching internships is a chance to find and find out more about whatever really interests you and how you can continue to do that. My list of applications above (Wellcome Trust, Science Museum, Sense about Science etc etc) are all institutions that I look up to immensely and would love to have a chance to snoop around, let alone work for. If you aren’t inspired enough to get through the applications, then it is probably better to find out now and think of something else that you really want to do, rather than wait until the end of your degree to freak out!

Good luck to everyone applying (unless it is for insurance or science communication of course) 😉

Finding my solace amongst London’s chaos

Master of Public Health

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What was the first word that came to your mind when you saw the picture above?

Bliss.

That was my word. Now you think I’m crazy, eh? Why on earth would a busy intersection in the middle of chaotic, central London full of impatient drivers waiting to get home after a long day at work scream ‘bliss’ to me?

As crazy as it sounds, its an association of ‘home’ to me; a sense of belonging. As a typical Third Culture Kid, I can’t quite pinpoint a city to call my ‘home’ . But over the years, in my head, I’ve come to identify ‘home’ as a metaphorical place where I find solace amidst constant chaos. Quite obviously then, every buzzing, chaotic metropolitan city becomes one of my ‘homes’ very very quickly.

Yes, I believe that is a defining characteristic of a Third Culture Kid – we find peace in all things crazy. The many moves across the world, culture shock, leaving old friends behind, starting a new life in a new place where you know nobody – its chaotic. But over time, this change is so constant (yes, the paradox) that it gets ingrained and these very same things become exhilarating. I’m looking forward to living in as many cities as I can before I settle down! We’re global nomads after all.

Peace in chaos? Yes, as counterintuitive and paradoxical as it sounds, it is probably the reason why I can’t choose a ‘hometown’ on Facebook’s profile. I’ve come around to identifying with every place I live in that has those chaotic characteristics so familiar to me – yes, even bustling, crowded airports where I’ve spent countless, frantic hours in delayed transit due to the tenth snowstorm of the month or an engine failure, hoping to catch my next flight. After a couple of times, you actually look forward to your routine of rushing through the gates to get your favourite caffeine fix at the airport in some remote part of the world before another long leg of flying. Anyone wanna know where to get delicious Dutch stroopwafels at Frankfurt Airport to munch on during your long-haul flight? Or where the Jamba Juice is at the Jet Blue terminal at JFK Airport? All you need to do is holler right here.

If Facebook let me choose, Singapore Airlines would definitely be one of my top choices for a ‘hometown’. I’ve been more at peace watching back to back movies on their entertainment system on my way to see my family after a crazy semester of college than I have sitting on my couch at home worrying about things due the next day.

Needless to say then, London is very quickly becoming ‘home’. Biting into the perfect macaron at the Food Hall you battled crazy crowds in Harrods to get to, or dodging my way through Oxford Street’s endless tourists on a weekend because my favourite dimsum pitstop happens to be right off the main street – they don’t ruffle any feathers anymore. Anyone tried to walk down Orchard Road on a burning, Sunday afternoon in Singapore without crashing into tourists that stop to admire the endless stretch of shopping malls? And of course, London isn’t home without taking a packed tube every morning, jammed up beside finely dressed people trying to get to work. Don’t forget the traffic snarls at High Street Kensington when it hits 5pm, life isn’t complete without a few angry honks from drivers while impatiently trying to cross the street.

Jokes apart, there really is solace for me in a chaotic city. The hustle and bustle, the people everywhere – its a constant reminder that I’m not the only one stepping out into the unknown in search for that perfect life. Every single individual around me is doing exactly the same, and knowing that is strangely comforting. I’m Natasha in my microcosm of college, work and family, but I’m also just one of the thousands of commuters on the tube to Paddington every morning; a city is the perfect land of opportunities, but also the perfect escape when you need one…And London hasn’t failed to disappoint. I’m building my life as an MPH student here, but I can also be just another tourist when the stress gets to me by stepping off into yet another undiscovered street to marvel at London’s wonders….

Let it snow

Bayan profile

Chemical Engineering

I have to say I am quite disappointed that I haven’t seen a single snowflake thus far; it seems liIMG_2726ke I always miss it. First, the snowstorm at the end of December (I was in Oman enjoying the magnificent warmth and sunlight after many a bleak, grey days) and then, the day after I leave Reading, it snows there. It was my first time outside of London (I really should go out more!!). I was visiting a friend of mine who studies there. It was interesting to experience the differences between London and a large town (my friend insists that Reading is not a city, but on the edge of one). The people there seem to be more relaxed and at ease, unlike Londoners who always look so busy. It is the sort of place where you can actually encounter someone you met a week ago randomly in a store, so you have to be extra cautious. For instance, I don’t really mind if I make a fool out of myself in London once in a while because nobody will remember it and it is very unlikely that I would run into the people who witnessed it. That is not the case in Reading- just a heads up, so you won’t say I didn’t warn you!

Despite it being colder, sadly it did not snow. I was really hopingIMG_2736 I would see real, natural snow not that artificial white fluff you see in the Middle East. Even with the snowstorm that raged over the UK this week, South Kensington had no share. I have given up all hope but today, when I woke up and looked at the window, what do I see? Snow!! Or as meteorologists would put it ‘snow shower’. I shook of the lethargy of sleep, rushed to get dressed and hurried outside. Alas, by the time I left the building it had turned into a ‘rain shower’. At least I saw something!

Last Wednesday was a day marked in everybody’s calendar: it was Refresher’s Fair. Basically it is a ‘take two’ of the Fresher’s Fair, but scheduled so that students-especially Freshers- would have had a go at university life and seen what they actually want to do and what kind of time they can spare. So perhaps we are all a little wiser this time around. It was not like the first Freshers’ Fair with fewer societies and clubs participating but there was certainly enough to keep youIMG_2759 (2) occupied for those two hours. I have signed up for Imperial Plus; a volunteering club that recognises the hours that you put in and gives you a certificate which also runs a few workshops. I was disheartened to learn that some of the volunteers actually picked the poppies at Tower Hill and I was not a part of that. Hopefully, there will be exciting opportunities this year as well.

As a way of celebrating my passing of MATLAB (a computer programming software that made my life imposible for a while)-barely, I might add- my friend and I watched ‘Matilda the Musical’. It was the first musical I have ever watched, even the first theatre I have been to (I REALLY should get out more!!) and it was a surreal experience. It was mesmerising, especially how good the young actors were and the amount of effort and hard work that goes into productions like these is just astounding. And let’s not forget the superb performance of the actor portraying Miss Trunchbull. The whole affair was splendid and I cannot wait to watch another one.IMG_2797

In other news, the Spring Test is fast approaching and I have to confess that I have been procrastinating, so I must get some work done this weekend (yesterday doesn’t count, I needed to close the MATLAB chapter of my life once and for all, although I am certain I will revisit it in the upcoming years but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it).

Unfortunately, this is when I part with you, well at least until the Spring Test is done, because if you don’t get an ‘acceptable’ mark you buy yourself an interview. So less blogging and more studying for now!

 

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Life Outside of Imperial

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

Life has been very busy recently. Once you enter the Imperial bubble it can be quite hard to break out – life becomes an endless cycle of walking to lectures, walking home, studying, sleeping, rinse, repeat. I think it’s very important to burst the bubble once in a while and do non-academic stuff. Yes I know that the library is open 24 hours a day but that is not a good enough reason to spend every waking hour there (not that I have ever done an all nighter but I imagine it’s not that great.) So what do I do when I am not studying worms under a microscope or writing essays in French about whether one can be ‘free’ and still obey the law?

Well this Friday night, Imperial’s Christian Medical Fellowship organised a ceilidh at a local church. For those not in the know, a ceilidh is a Scottish kind of barn dance, so there’s a live band and someone who teaches everyone the dance moves and then calls them out during the dance. It’s a lot of fun but also a lot of hard work and you should definitely expect to be trodden on at some point during the evening. If you’re really lucky (like me) you will also get kicked in the legs and crushed in the middle of a sort of ceilidh mosh pit.

The church looked great!
The church looked great!

We danced all night long and it was super great but I did have to dance with a couple of very tall boys which was awkward since I am not gifted in the height department…

Today I went to a pilates class at Ethos! I did yoga for a bit last year but one of my friends and I decided that we wanted to do somthing that felt more exercise this term, hence the foray in to pilates. I actually really enjoyed it, and if you want to try something new this year, I would definitely reccommend checking out the class schedule at Ethos. There’s all kinds of different stuff, from zumba to body attack (I have not been to body attack and I never plan to, it sounds very painful).

All in all it has been a pretty good weekend after a long and hectic week. It’s easy to forget everything else apart from your degree when you come to Imperial but I encourage you to keep pursuing your passions and to burst the bubble on a regular basis!

A break from London (with science!) part 3 – something’s fishy

Victoria Burton profile

Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet Doctoral Training Programme (PhD)

Two attendees on the Natural History Museum field trip to Dorset were parasitologists, and they brought along some herring and a dogfish for us to dissect and look for parasites. Firstly we inspected ‘our’ fish for external parasites such as fish lice or leeches, but every fish was clean. Next we removed the gills and looked at them under a microscope to see if any parasites were attached. Again, none of the fish contained any parasites, leading to complaints of them ‘being too healthy”(!)

The next stage was to open up the body cavity and remove the organs to look for parasitic worms. I could immediately see that my herring was female, due to the large pair of roe, but at first could not see any parasites in the organs. After looking carefully I eventually found some small, white worms curled up into tight balls, which when removed with forceps into water started to uncurl and wiggle around. I eventually collected around 10 of the worms from the herring, quite a small number, so I was told. These nematode worms were probably the larvae of a nematode belonging to the genus Anisakis, a very common parasite in marine fish and mammals. It is harmless to humans when the fish has been frozen or cooked but can rarely cause an illness called anisakiasis when ingested with uncooked fish. The worms were preserved in alcohol to go of for genetic sequencing, hopefully we will later get some feedback on what they are identified as.

Science & Art

MSCi Physics

Tonight I went to a talk by the Physics department’s artist-in-residence Geraldine Cox. I’d somehow never been to one of her talks or exhibits before, though I had seen some of her paintings around Blackett.

I was actually kind of sceptical about her work at the start of the talk, because although I love poetry and plays and novels and all those kind of English-y ‘arty’ things, I am not really comfortable with ‘art’ in general—paintings and sculptures and such. My knowledge of art amounts to knowing that Monet might have been able to see UV light after he had surgery for his cataracts, and that that might have made his later paintings more blue, and also that Turner did some good sea.

I suppose I thought that her work would probably be kind of not very helpful science communication, because it communicated something that most people find a bit impenetrable (physics) into something that people still find incomprehensible (abstract paintings and stuff).

I am glad I went to the talk because it was clear that she absolutely believed the opposite—that art has the potential to enrich a large audience and interest them in some of the principles of physics, and I must say I am now completely converted to this point of view.

Geraldine Cox is an interesting character—she has a physics degree, and invented this job for herself after coming to the conclusion that she wanted to return to physics as the subject of her work, and she seemed really genuine and intelligent.

The talk started with her introducing how the department seemed to her when she first joined, talking about how the research groups are organised around the huge stairwell we have through the centre of Blackett. This might seem like sort of an obvious overview of the department, but it struck me that I have never been given a run-through of the research groups, let alone where they are situated in the building before, not even on an open day. In physics, everything is so compartmentalised, that it is hard to remember that there is a bigger picture, let alone that it is a poetic one, with floors of people involved in ‘democratising the Sun’s energy’ and chambers colder than outer space.

Her focus on the bigger picture, the applications and philosophical implications of physics, remained an important part of the rest of the talk, which included an overview of some of her work. I had no idea of the range of mediums she used—she showed us two videos she had made, one talking about an experiment on the electric-dipole moment of the electron, and another about clips of Physicist’s scribbled notes taken under a microscope. The first film was a nice juxtaposition of the deeply fundamental reasons the experiment was being done and the persistence of the researchers carrying out what can be very mundane and tricky tasks for year after year.

In addition to short videos, she also created a solar powered cinema and oil paintings about reactions in the sun and Fourier analysis to name just two subjects. She mentioned that art is a good teaching aid for children about science and I think that could absolutely be extended to undergraduate level. We spend so much time within our degrees stuck down by the details, trying to understand one step or struggling with one bit of maths, that the actual visceral implications of what we are studying just kind of wash over our heads as kind of footnotes. Taking that step back and trying to represent what physical theories viscerally mean through something completely different like art has to be a good thing—or else what is the point of struggling through in the first place?

My favourite part of her talk came right at the end with a prose piece that she had written to perform at a conference about light and resonance. It reminded me that even the simplest of scientific facts that we might be ‘familiar’ with are completely astounding when we actually think about them. She spoke about the size of the waves of light and invited us to imagine them and their origins and paths, from the huge radio waves washing over us, to the light of the early universe once scattered ceaselessly and then set free to travel everywhere. It was kind of hypnotic to sit there and imagine if we could see in these different lights: infrared ‘around the size of a needle-point and you can feel it on your skin’, that would reveal to us the friction of water falling on a fountain if we could see it. And light is caused by charges moving around—we all know that, but isn’t that amazing when you think about it? You shake a charge, and out falls the light– it doesn’t need poetic language to make it poetic, it just needs language that we are used to, to reveal to us how our perceptions are so, so limited.

It was really so lovely and immersive, that I will definitely have to try and hear the finished thing, as this was just a sort of rehearsal for the conference.

Anyway, as you can probably tell, I am now completely in love with the work of our artist-in-residence!

Science is full of completely incomprehensible things like the age of the universe. I can tell you that number, I can remember it, I can work things out using it and I can write about it, but have I ever sat down and tried to understand just how achingly, tiringly long ago that was?

‘By discovering the world through science we let in the light.’ That was something Geraldine Cox wrote on the side of her solar powered cinema. I think that is completely true—scientific ideas can be insanely profound and beyond our imagination that it seems vital we spend the time trying to understand this ourselves and communicate this celebration of knowledge to others—in any and every way that we can.

Here is her website if you want to see some of her work for yourself 🙂

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