My blogging experience

At the beginning, when we started writing on blogspot, I did not like it, I suppose because I wasn't used to it and never tried it before. Now I think I've changed my mind, while writing my blogs I realized that I was enjoying it, of course like I said not in my very first blog but after that I started to feel that it is fun. Blogging is a good way to express yourself and know more about other people.

What about my writing skills? Well I always been a person who can understand english better than talk or write it, because I have read more english than talk or write it. So doing blogs keeps the balance between read and writing skills. Actually I think that my writing skills has been improved because I have to constantly look for new words or translate the ones I know in spanish. Even though I have to use the translator constantly I made a considerable progress.

I would like to include some kind of "book club" where we write our own histories like a novel, it must be assessed by the teacher of course and then we could tell the tales in front of our classmates. I think it would be fun and enriching. Maybe it could be done on the blogspot platform.

I would like to write more about scientific stuff, it is fun to me and gives feedback about the career itself

From the invisible to the visible world and back...

Gold Nanoparticles in Chemotherapy

This technique is used to cancer treatments using colloidal gold, a colloidal suspension of submicrometre-size nanoparticles of gold in fluids, like water. It could also be use for arthritis treatment as well. 

Colloidal gold can be use to target tumors and provide detection using SERS (Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy), this means the technique may detect single molecules involved in the tumor growth. To specifically target tumors cells the gold particles bond an antibody against, for example, epidermal growth factor receptors, then, this antibody bonds the growth factor receptors making gold particles accumulate in tumors due to the leakiness of tumor vasculature. The acumulation of gold particles can be used as contrast agents for enhanced imaging in a optical tomography system using short pulse lasers for skin cancer detection (or another one).

Therefore gold particles have the potential to join numerous therapeutic functions by targeting specific tumors cells, tissues and organs.

Although this technique is relatively new and promising, there some topics to worry about, like toxic precursors, toxicity in vivo and in vitro and the drug delivery system.

I wanted to share this technique because is an amazing tool against the cancer and could provide better strategies to shrink or destroy tumors cells, besides as it provides specific target, the normal tissue may not be harm, affected or deteriorated because of the chemotherapy which means that the patient, in the worse of cases, could last for more years and have a better life during the treatment or why not? Defeat the cancer!

The most enjoyable subject thus far

The most enjoyable subject so far is chemical laboratory techniques alongside with general chemistry, I think both of them are complementary to each other although in slightly manner. Laboratory techniques is a practical subjects where we learn how to manipulate lab equipment and the basis of chemist procedures. Also in this subject we have some theoretical class, of course, before mess with the lab, you have to know how it works and how deal with lab equipment.

Basic used techniques like destilation, filtration, volume and density measurements are some few thing that we do in this subject and all of them are under supervision of our teachers.

This subject is the most related to laboratory job than other subjects we have in the career so far and that's why I like it because it will be very useful along of the career and also entertaining.

Some of the lab equipments that we have to use are: Beakers, graduated cylinder, erlenmeyer flask, Bunsen burner, volumetric flasks, buret, electronic balance, test tubes. I personally like to use the buret to make titulations, a technique where you can use an acid and a base and you neutralized them to calculate the concentration from any of them

Person or expert you admire

There are no many persons I admire or persons that I really estimate as I could make some kind of list of "people I admire definitely". But there is a person about I read his biographyand and I really liked it, his name is Craig Venter. Venter is an biotechnologist, biochemist and geneticist known for being one of the first to sequence the human genome and the first to transfect a cell with synthetic genome, this last achievement is the one I admire because of its advanced and hard science implications although I actually read his book "A decoded life" about the human genome code but I check out about the synthetic genome.

Venter was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. In is youth, he did not take his edutacion seriously, preffering to spend his time on the water in boats or surfing. Although he was against the Vietnam War, Venter was drafted and enlisted in the United States Navy where he worked in the intensive-care ward of a field hospital. Being confronted with wounded, maimed, and dying people every day instilled in him a desire to study medicine (although he later switched to biomedical research).

Venter Began his college education at University of California, San Diego, where he studied under biochemist Natah O. Kaplan. He received a Bachelor of science in biochemistry in 1972 and PhD in physiology and pharmacology in 1975, both on the same University

A photograp you like

Well, I have to admit that I never been a fan of taking photographaps but I remember one day, when I was very bored, I took  a new camera from my brother's desk and started take photos of anything just to do something. Before I realized it, I took photographies from my cats and this is what came up:

Oh, something came up, when i was looking for this photo i also found another photographies that I took, now I'm realizing how exited I was by the way.

I like the right side photo, I think its li the perspective of how the earth would see us from the inside out or maybe, the perspective of how ants would see the world

About Books and Films

I have always liked watch movies, since my family, in my opinion are addicted to movies so they introduced me to the world of movies and by the way, the world of books, my mom really likes to read. I still remember when my family gathered every sundays to watch movies after midday, we enjoyed films like Forrest Gump, Up, Toy Story, The lord of the rings, Titanic, Life is beatiful and so on through more entertaining movies.

I think I don't have favourites movies, there are many movies that I like so much by equally but I can name a few ones: Fight Club, Her, PK, Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind, The blind side

I believe that television series might be mentioned on this topic like Breaking Bad, Doctor House, Lost, three television series that I enjoyed it every season and I might watch them all again

What about books? Well, since I was a child I liked to read, I read the Harry Potter saga and Tolkien's book like The lord of the rings and The hobbit. Now, I'm reading a book called The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, a mystery novel and a postmodern fiction. Its quite interesting, I really enjoying it.