S205: Starting - Oh no!!

So with the end in sight for my current courses, and the exams to prepare for, thoughts turn to next years study. For the first time, the S205 chemistry starts in September and runs to June, rather than the more normal Jan to Sept. So I've been thinking about this for a while, my chemistry is weak, and it would be nice to get more familiar with this stuff so I can understand molecular biology better, so after some vacillation, I decide to sign up. I expect the books will arrive some time in Sept, and hopefully the first TMA will be after my exams.

So I sign up on a Thursday, and come the following Monday morning there is a large box on my front door step! Already? - You haven't given me time to hide!!

Unpacking the box is a mixture of excitement and fear. There seems an awful lot in this first package, have I really done the right thing? Lets see - what do you get?

• A DVD called Molecular Science - Physical Methods
• A DVD called Molecular Science - Periodic Table
  
• A DVD called The molecular World - Pack 1
• A set of bookmarks for the first 3 books
• Book 1-2 (both in the same volume), A prologue to the course, and Introducing the Molecular World
  
• Book 3 - The Molecular World - The Third Dimension
  
• Book 4 - Metals and Chemical Groups
  
• A calendar for the course
• A course guide
• A course index
• A course glossary
• A data book full of weights, measures and so on
• A leaflet about transferable skills
• A molecular model kit (looks like fun!)
  
• A document describing how to make molecular models
• A document describing how organic chemicals are named
• A royal society of chemistry guide to Getting the message across
  
• A ring binder (with no pocket for insert!)
• A ring binder insert?
• A set of 4 TMA submission forms
• A guide to the videos
• An online applications CD-ROM

Wow! That does look a little on the scary side! The good news is the first TMA is in November, so I will have time to do my exams first before tackling that, so that's good. Well it will have to stay mostly on ice for now, as I have to finish these current courses (well OK I might have a little peek and really scare myself).

Next S205

S282: Book 2, Chapter 5, 6 and 7

In these chapters we get deep into cosmology, and I find it quite heavy going at times. There are the various models of the universe, based on FRW parameters. From these and some other stuff various things are calculated theoretically. This includes the echoes of the big bang, whether space is curved, how fast the universe is expanding and if it is decelerating or not.

Some of this stuff is ok, some is a bit mind blowing. Lots of calculations that you are lead through to predict things like the proportion of hydrogen to helium predicted by the big bang theories.

Then in chapter 7 it considers attempts to measure the Hubble constant, the Hubble Time, the deceleration parameter, the cosmological constant, and the various density parameters.

My head hurts!

Next S282 Prev S282

SXR376: Summer school Day 7

The last day dawns - and there are now labs. There is only the presentation to do, and it has been worked on hard, and is foremost in our minds!
We finish up the writing and last minute adjustments in the lab, and it is a work of art I have to say. Dave has put a lot of work into the formatting, but we're all a little nervous.

The fats people go first, and there is a usual mix. Some people are good, so people not so good - and some just go on too long! Then the plants people did there bit, and overan a little so there were no questions as we needed lunch. Mark remarks over lunch that he was wondering if his presentation was too short, but then decided there is no such thing as a too short presentation at this sort of event - and that is very true!

After lunch it was our turn. Again we had some good and bad bits, but the presentation did look good. By the time it got to my bit we were running behind schedule, so I spead through my slides mentioning only a few salient points.

We wrapped up, and the week was done. We got our attendance slips, collected our luggage, said our goodbyes and left. Suddenly we were back in the real world - how weird!

Prev SXR376

SXR376: Summer school day 6

Its the last but one day, and the last day that we can complete our experiments.
We start by getting the tray out of the fridge and washing off antibodies, before adding more. Its quite a time consuming job to go through the procedure to get everything stuck to everything else - although of course we can't see any of this happening and are just hoping its going to come out well when we look at it under the microscope!

Anyway, when it is finally washed and incubated in all the different solutions, we have to extract the cell coated cover slips from the wells we've been using. This is no mean feat, with them being almost invisible and fearsomely difficult to get out of these wells.

Then they are mounted on the slide and we take them over to the microscope to see what we've got. Has the two days spent washing and dousing these cells with various chemicals been worth while or not. At least there is a clear brown hue on the ones we want - the positive controls and the ones dosed with the ligand. They look rather similar though by eye!
Time to have a look.


Positive control, negative control, and experimental data.
Its difficult to say if the experiment worked, and it takes a while with the tutors to understand what we are actually seeing. Anyway, we have some data for the presentation at least.

The rest of the afternoon we spend on the presentation and doing some practising in the lecture theatre. The time for tea, and no tutorials tonight. there is a disco, but I decide with a few others to give it a miss, and we have a good time in the bar going over the weeks events! Now its just the final presentation to finish and then present and we're done!

Next SXR376 Prev SXR376

SXR376: Summer school day 5

Well - as today dawns we start a new set of stuff. We've now finished all the core activities, and we need to go on and look at the further experiment set. In this there are a number of topics which you can pick, although they want all areas to be cover by someone. We elect to do an experiment involving immuno-cytochemistry. This is basically about attaching antibodies to the surface of cells using some amplification to get them to show up.

There are quite a few steps, but each of them after the first few take an hour or more to wait for the incubations. So by lunch time we discover that we didn't have enough time in the rest of the day to finish the procedure, so the tray was put in the fridge and left while we did some graphs and stuff. We also took a few other readings and prepared some slides for the upcoming talk.

There was a tutorial after tea on presenting a talk, and then on dividing up the talk. After that we went to a tutorial on the ECA itself, so we'd know what to write up.

Next SXR376 Prev SXR376

SXR376: Summer school day 4

Day 4 dawns, and it looks initially like a bit of a rest day. We are to run PCR machines and then look at DNA tracks in gels. These are apparently much easier than the SDS-PAGE gels to get right, and the initial stuff goes well. There is some really tricky diluting, we have to pipette one micro-litre of DNA - which is almost impossible to see if you have anything at all in the pipette!

While the mixture we make up is in the PCR machine, we poured out the agarose gels to let them set. These are quite easy to do, the liquid is at 60C and you pour it smoothly, move any bubbles that appear to the side out of the way, and then leave it to set. As it has a flourescing agent in it - it has to set in the dark so it doesn't bleach.

After lunch, we came back and loaded up the gels with DNA to see what we'd got. After running them for a while, we took a look at them in the UV viewer, and we had only very faint bands. In fact they were practically useless. So we decided to rerun the procedure and see what we could do. We ran out of time, but luckily the demonstrater was able to finish it off and the results were good this time - very clear.

After tea - another tutorial. We swapped partners and had to prepare a quick talk on a given topic to do with the procedures we had used. We did a quick poster on paper and then had to present it to the group. This was clearly practice for the main symposium on Friday. After that there was a quick chat about the ECA we will have to do, and then a review of the data we had collected, followed by the further experiments.

Next SXR376 Prev SXR376