Here are the collected the tweets I did during the week.
On Tuesday I was at a conference in London, I tweeted some pre prepared with images from tweetdeck and then added some comments specific to the conference - on Wednesday I worked with students, and met with a PhD student and a collaborator to talk about a paper on using ultrasonic tweezers to create composite materials with incorporated cells for nerve repair. Thursday was smilarly busy, Friday I was teaching for three hours and then continuous in meetings until 4:30 after which not uch was left of me.
The drawings & doodles were specifically done for these tweets; mostly the evening before tweeting in order to get some feedback from the group on accuracy (some mistakes slipped through). I created them on a large iPad Pro using the apple pencil and "just like paper" cover (I like it better less slippery than the glass) in an App called ProCreate. I prefer paper in general, but this flow is much faster and can be easily corrected.
Here are the tweets in sequence..:
Hi - I am @morenorse, work @UofGlasgow as part of @UofGIMCSB and split my time between the trinity of academic work: research, teaching and administration. Today I attend a conference all day...Outside work I like cooking and baking (mostly bread) - going on walks and otherwise spending time with family & the wee dog (Teo) - whittling, cycling, drawing and reading (no problem to while the time away...) [find the dog teaser]
Administration means to organise teaching about Tissue & Cell engineering and to help run the 4th year Molecular Cell Biology Honours programme @UofGSoLS. I help organise exams, look after students & enact rules.
I teach 3rd and 4th year undergraduate students some cell biology- how to use microscopes, bioethics, aspects of Tissue Engineerig and about DNA nanotechnology - here an image of the microscopy lab where students look at #mitochondria
Research almost always happens with the help of collaborators - other biologists, plastic surgeons, chemists, physicists and engineers e.g. @SuzEThomson @BrianOSmith1967 @ManuelMime @mrpaulreynolds 2/2 ps the group two years ago...
Now off for breakfast and conference - where experts in the field meet and talk about their research on #biomaterials and their applications - one 45 and 13 25 minute long talks - I’ll see that I tweet a #sketchnote or two - but it’s busy - happy to answer any Q[find the dog 2]
Hobby and work ‘collide’ at the drawings as I like to take #sketchnotes during talks - these are done in most cases live and sometimes coloured in. I put some of them on a blog to widen access and advertise the Seminars of @theglasgowcemi and @UofGIMCSB
Today & yesterday I spent listening to talks about Biomaterials, Bone repair, 3D printing - drawing while listening; Here is one talk about developing 3D printing on moving(!) hands or mice by Zhije Zhu from the University Missouri
The days were spent listening & talking science in the coffee breaks really nice ‘meeting’ i has the chance to meet scientists I did not know as well as spending time with colleagues; just returned to the airport - and now waiting for the flight home
Re drawing ... I loved drawing as a kid - then I lost trust in me - comes along my kid & wants entertainment - me draw him cars, locomotives (a lot of them) then outlines for him to fill in & then I came across RSA Animate...
So I started looking -by google- and found that there is a whole very nice COMMUNITY of people who do this - accessible via @SketchnoteArmy - they have come together and organised two annual meetings with sketchnote enthusiasts from all over the world #ISC18LX @Sketchnote_Camp
I had always taken notes during talks - but this was another level of sophistication & by the looks of it FUN... so I slowly started drawing the talks, copying diagrams I thought important, sketching pathways .. & then my boss told me he like them... sooo...
Morning is over and I'll spend a bit here ... so I thought I tell you a bit on the research aspect of my work ... why nerve repair - maybe best if I tell you a wee story:
Just in case it happens to you - don't pull out the knife - it is in the way of you bleeding & you may do more damage if you do so - dial for emergency (FREE on all carriers!) 999 in the UK!
Not much tweeting today as I spent most of the day in discussions with a new postdoctoral fellow, with PhD students, with a potential new colleague and with collaborators on nerve repair
... once the initial inflammation and tissue upset (swelling, red, hurting, ...) has died down you are asked for an assessment of function...
... WHAT - there I a loss of function? Ah - but our nerve in the hand was cut that means there is no longer a backward/forward of information/instruction - the cable analogy is wrong, it is more ALL antenna cables in a high-rise have been cut - now on to the repair bit.
so if the nerve is cut - who and how is it going to repair? For that we have to find where the cells are in the body - so a bit of human anatomy ... the bigger nerves of the body and brain with spinal cord plus a section of spinal cord with nerve popping out...
...now where are the cells in there? Along the nerves eg in your arm you find millions of supporting, but no nerve cell bodies - they are ALL in the spinal cord (motor neurons) or next to it (sensory neurons)
..ah but one more on nerve repair - what happens at the single nerve cell level after a cut? If everything works - they signal (DAMAGE) to the cell body & that switches to repair mode and start creating a pathfinder extension that is called a growth cone - they may also just die.
..ah but one more on nerve repair - what happens at the single nerve cell level after a cut? If everything works - they signal (DAMAGE) to the cell body & that switches to repair mode and start creating a pathfinder extension that is called a growth cone - they may also just die.
...in the part of the nerve away from the cell body the axon degrades and gets eaten by immune cells - the growth cone tries to find a way forward - meanwhile Schwann cells, that support the axon, change into repair mode, align into strings of cells and help guide the axon along
... the first nerve sutures were done 400 years ago; with the development of microsurgery the outcomes became better (a lot) but still only 10% of injured will recover full functionality, if operated on by the best and using the very best practice - improve this should - but how?
A short summary (very incomplete) of some of the problems that arise during nerve repair - if you go deeper into details you can keep digging, get a PhD, become a parent and get a job at a University, see the kid grow, themselves become a parent and still digging never know it all.
... examples of our work @theglasgowcemi - materials, conduits, cells, growth factors & drugs to support nerve repair as well, as using the new high resolution 7T MRI @uofglasgow to identify changes in the nerves after injury - next up how we do (some) of it...
Ok a general outline how we actually finance the work, from the SHEFCE, University and Institute I get my own salary, an office and a place to do the work in, an empty laboratory with benches and chairs - anything else needed cells, enzymes, buffers, media, antibodies, other chemicals, microscopes, computers, devices and larger kit that is needed to keep the cells alive has to be financed through outside funding
f you are interested two years ago I did a @pintofscience talk on nerve repair - there are some details and bits about how the talk came about in this post
I bake bread using sourdough, that we keep in the fridge and feed the day before we use it leaving it out at room temperature - food is a sludge of flour/water 1:1 - I make large 1.5 Kg loafs so need 400ml sourdough plus some to retain the culture.
After one hour knead the dough briefly, then leave to rise in a bowl or we have a special form - that we lay out with backing paper (can be reused) - over night at room temperature (that'd be 15C in Glasgow).
Baking is in an oven pre-heated to 220C add a bowl with water at the bottom
brush with water after about 15minutes it takes between 35 and 45 minutes, sometimes longer, depending on the day and your affinity to darkness...
OK that's it for me, I would like to thank all those that worked with me, currently Suzanne, Thomas, Bilal, Helen, Marie, Gillian, Nutterporn, Robert, Ricky and the collaborators - I collected all the tweets here: https://bio-mat-sketches-mor.blogspot.com/2018/11/mathis-tweeted-progress.html … if you wanted to follow me @morenorse Best Mathis
... the first nerve sutures were done 400 years ago; with the development of microsurgery the outcomes became better (a lot) but still only 10% of injured will recover full functionality, if operated on by the best and using the very best practice - improve this should - but how?
So a visual summary of a PhD project on nerve repair - @SuzEThomson worked on developing a cell laden micro structured conduit
f you are interested two years ago I did a @pintofscience talk on nerve repair - there are some details and bits about how the talk came about in this post
I bake bread using sourdough, that we keep in the fridge and feed the day before we use it leaving it out at room temperature - food is a sludge of flour/water 1:1 - I make large 1.5 Kg loafs so need 400ml sourdough plus some to retain the culture.
150g rye, 650g strong bread-flour, 20g salt, (if you like a spoon-full of carraway and fennel seeds) 400ml water mixed with 400ml starter mix.
After one hour knead the dough briefly, then leave to rise in a bowl or we have a special form - that we lay out with backing paper (can be reused) - over night at room temperature (that'd be 15C in Glasgow).
Baking is in an oven pre-heated to 220C add a bowl with water at the bottom
brush with water after about 15minutes it takes between 35 and 45 minutes, sometimes longer, depending on the day and your affinity to darkness...
Sunday morning stroll with Theo...
OK that's it for me, I would like to thank all those that worked with me, currently Suzanne, Thomas, Bilal, Helen, Marie, Gillian, Nutterporn, Robert, Ricky and the collaborators - I collected all the tweets here: https://bio-mat-sketches-mor.blogspot.com/2018/11/mathis-tweeted-progress.html … if you wanted to follow me @morenorse Best Mathis