How to fool the police with raspberry jam and a dog
A talk given by a forensic pathologist was definitely one of my favourites. He told us a story about a case he had been called to…
'So the police had attended a scene after a man was found collapsed and dead in a block of flats. They had found a suspicious red pool stain on the pavement in an alley about 300 meters from the house followed by a blood trail all of the way to the body…It seemed obvious to the police what had happened until the body was examined, when it became evident that there were no injuries and the man had actually died of a massive heart attack. So what was the cause of the pool and the drops of blood up to the body?! Well basically, what had happened was that the man had been shopping and bought some raspberry jam. When his chest began to hurt, he had dropped his shopping and the glass had smashed on the floor leaving a stain. Later a man had been walking his dog and the dog had stepped on the glass and cut its paw. The dog walker had then gone to find the source of the dropped shopping and had taken his dog up to the flat and found the man there. So the stain was in fact jam, and the drops were blood, but weren't human.'
I thought this was great and was the epiphany of the phrase 'things aren't always what they seem!'
X-linked carriers of chronic granulomatous disease
This is a sex linked genetic disorder which affects the phagocytes. They are able to detect and isolate irregularities in the body such as parasites, but are unable to inject the chemicals into them to kill them. The treatment for this disorder is prophylactic antibiotics to try to prevent illness from developing and becoming serious due to the defect in the immune system. Because the disorder is x-linked, women are not classed as sufferers but instead are classed as carriers. Until recently, carriers did not receive the same treatment as sufferers until Dr Alex Battersby conducted some research and discovered that often women suffer the same (if not worse) symptoms as men who are classed as sufferers. She explained that this is due to the fact that obviously women have two X chromosomes; one from their mother and one from their father and usually only one has the gene for CGD. Because in the cells of women only one X chromosome is activated, and because the process is random in each individual cell, carriers experience varying levels of symptoms. I wasn't aware that this was the case and found this particularly interesting. It's odd to think that despite the fact that two women have the same gene in the same frequency they could suffer different levels of symptoms.
Medical physics and games consoles
I must admit that I'm not a huge fan of physics, so I wasn't overly excited for this lecture but it ended up being one of my favourites. This was probably the most interactive lecture but the content was so interesting. They conducted a few experiments at the front of the lecture theatre. They started by showing us how you could display a ECG using two buckets of water and a wire connected to an amp. So they grabbed one of their colleagues and hooked them up to the bucket and sure enough, the standard squiggly lines appeared on the screen. But then, the more interesting part was when they altered the frequency of the receiver to measure the electrical impulses in the muscles as opposed to in the heart. They had the man place his arm into the water and a few small lines came up onto the screen. They asked him to tense his arms and the lines on the screen became more frequent and had larger amplitudes. Another experiment they conducted involved an Xbox 1. This game console uses infrared to identify the shapes in front of the console so that gamers are able to use their bodies to control the game. The physicists used this to show us how these waves can display an image in 3D which could not usually been seen by the naked eye. They used a video camera to show the little white dots which covered the person standing in front of the camera in real time as they moved around. They used a programme to take a 'picture' using the infrared to create a 3D image of the man. This was pretty cool but I wasn't really sure how it could be used in medicine, until they started to talk about scoliosis. This is a condition which affects the curvature of the spine and used to require regular X-rays to monitor. With the knowledge that X-rays are dangerous to patients when they are overexposed to that kind of radiation, doctors were reluctant to continue to monitor the condition in this way and agreed that it was necessary to find an alternative. The medical physicists then came to the rescue when they realised that this technology could be used! I think it's crazy that this technology can be put to use in so many ways other than just for gaming.
I would definitely recommend mini med school to anyone looking to study medicine in the North East or anyone who has an interest in the sciences.
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