Understanding Cancer » Teaching Resources

Open University Course on Cancer

Avril — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:38:19 +0000

As I’m on maternity leve I thought I’d post up a link to the competition (!), if you are looking for a course on cancer then you can do one called “Understanding Cancer” through the Open University.

http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/sk123.htm

This is a Level 1 course so you need to have a reasonable level of English [...]

Researchers in Residence 2010

Avril — Wed, 12 May 2010 18:24:46 +0000

Researchers in Residence is a scheme that matches up PhD research students posdocs and schools. The scientist usually spends a week with a school and can lead demonstrations, class discussions, talks about university life etc. I took part in the scheme when I was a student and throughly enjoyed it. They are looking for [...]

Online Cancer Textbooks & Statistics Information

Avril — Wed, 05 May 2010 17:27:41 +0000

So many things to blog about, so little time! I’ve found some good (free) resources for biology teaching. Firstly there is the “Cancer Biology – Open Educational Resource“. It is an online module produced in conjunction with the University of Bath, there is all sorts of good stuff there, online tutorials on apoptosis and [...]

How do you explain fatigue to other people?

Avril — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:54:20 +0000

I have written about cancer fatigue before. Fatigue can affect people with any type of cancer and at any stage of treatment, having said that there is actually very little research and practical support available. Fatigue is tiredness that doesn’t go away with rest and it can be very hard to explain this to [...]

Watch a video showing a neutrophil destroying a germ

Avril — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:18:23 +0000

Everybody has white blood cells inside them, these white blood cells help us fight off infection and keep us healthy. In a drop of blood about this size • you have roughly 6,000 neutrophils. Neutrophils are a type of white blood cell. For more information on this topic see my post “What is a [...]

Scientific Cookies and things…

Avril — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:49:58 +0000

Okay, not a very weighty topic for a cancer blog, but here are some gorgeous looking cookies based on a scientific theme. You can see more examples of sciencey cookies on Ms Humble’s blog – Not so Humble Pie.

If that has whet your appetite for all things geeky then visit “giantmicrobes.com” where you [...]

Amateur Scientists and Open Source Biology

Avril — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:08:32 +0000

This is another geeky post. I’ve come across a couple of links discussing “do-it-yourself research”. As yesterdays post just discussed, modern medical research is extremely expensive, so how on earth could you do it yourself? Some people are trying to make science cheaper and more accessible so anyone can do it.

What’s all this [...]

Wellcome Image Awards 2009

Avril — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:30:52 +0000

Last night the winners of the 2009 Wellcome Image Awards were announced. So what? The Wellcome Trust are the UK’s largest charity and they fund medical research. The also hold an impressive library in London which is open to the public and they maintain a very large database of images.

Every year they select [...]

Science and Evidence Based Medicine Vs Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Avril — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:38:32 +0000

Not the snappiest title I know! I have intended to write a post on science and evidence based medicine for a while but I didn’t know where to start. It’s a huge topic and not one that can be covered in a brief blog post.

As a scientist I have been taught to [...]

New BBC TV Series -”The Cell”

Avril — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:11:50 +0000

I don’t know how I missed this, I don’t watch a lot of TV (and most of what I do watch is Cbeebies, but that’s another story…) The BBC are airing a new, short (3 episode!) series called “The Cell“. It is about the scientific attempt to study the building blocks of life, in [...]

Cancer Course in Aberdeen – Thursday 6th August 2009

Avril — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:00:14 +0000

Normal blogging service resumes. If there are any topics you would like to see covered in the coming weeks, please use the “Contact Us” form to email me.

I want to draw attention to an upcoming course in Aberdeen, this Thursday, the 6th of August 2009. The session is being run by Breast Cancer [...]