A job, the research for a cure

Did you know that the blue scorpion venom has properties that can fight against cancer? This is one of the millions of chemical substances that we can extract from animals to help people using them in the treatment of a lot of different diseases.

I always feel quite interested in animals, especially in all kinds of insects, arachnids, and arthropods so I would like to investigate about the thousands of unknown substances at the present that we can get from them and see the characteristics of the active principles involved to study their effects in response to different diseases.

To expand my opportunities in the investigation I would like to get a PhD in Pharmacy in this same university or in another country like USA or England and then study Entomology to be pretty qualified in the field. This job, by the way, forces me to travel to a lot of different countries to study endemic species from all the continents, so in part, I could work outside traveling and taking samples of this animal substances and then in laboratories analyze them, i don't know but sounds pretty interesting and exciting to me.

I always feel that work with animals has a deep ethical discussion, but assuming that my work is centered on a special kind of animals like insects... maybe it's not a big problem. That's because there are 10'000 millions of bugs by square kilometer, imagine that they are a plague! lucky me haha.

And to be truth, if I could work in something so cool for me, I don't know if the payment would be a problem because I don't mind about it, actually, the research for the cure of a disease is a really huge work so maybe I could work for a scientific institution collaborating with them, I'm not so sure... but certainly I'm not made to be a businessman but a scientist;)

Hobbies: Bugs, sax and carnivorous plants

Tell me to what you pay attention and i will tell you who you are.

-José Ortega y Gasset.

For some people are totally disgusting, but when i was a kid I used to play a lot with all kind of insects like woodlice, dragon-flies, caterpillars and my favourite ones: the ants. I spent the whole day just watching them, learning how they worked in a "society", i always admire their altruism, helping each other when they were injured, amazing creatures are the ants.

Well, i started listening to Jazz when i was like 10 or 11 years old, i had this neighbour who had a band, and he used to play the bass, one of my favourites instruments together with saxophone and piano. When i heard the music, he put on the radio: i was listening Coltrane for the first time, and i just travelled to a peaceful place, it left me speechless, and it was indescribable. So, then, when i was 15, my family bought me an alto saxophone, it was hard to learn, but it truly worth it.

If you want to play the sax, you must learn how to control your breathing with your mouth in a correct position with the tongue bellow the entrance and play the keys at the same time with your two hands, it was totally different from flute, but it really helps to know how to play it, after all they are wind instruments.

And recently i start to gardening, a friend gave me some carnivorous plant seeds and i planned to have a lot of them, then buy an artificial anthill to have an ant civilization and make them live with the plants, so they can establish a symbiotic relationship, pretty cool to me! i will feel like the kid i was once... just admiring their altruism.

The fascinating human brain

"Cogito ergo sum: i think, therefore i exist"-Descartes.

 
It's philosophical, but this is what makes our brain different than the other species, we know that we're existing, most of them, can't even recognize themselves in front of a mirror. It's the most complex organ in our body, the result of thousands of years of evolution and is all what you are as a person, everything that you feel through you senses, it's you: your human brain. The brain is the central organ of the nervous system, receptor, processor and response generator of all the information that we perceive. The human brain is divided in two hemispheres communicated through the corpus callosum, the left one is related to reasoning, communication and mathematical and scientific abilities, while the right one is related to creativity, imagination and artistic and music sense, and each hemisphere has the control of the hand in the other side, so when you write with you left hand you are using your right hemisphere.

Each hemisphere is divided in four lobes: in the frontal we can find the Broca's area, is where all the words you say come from, also, in this area is where your personality is contained. The parietal lobe is where all your moves come from, yes, the motor-response area. The temporal lobe is where is located your sense of audition and balance. Finally, in the occipital lobe is where your brain capture images from your eyes to process them so you can see them. It's amazing the things that an organ of 1300g can do, with millions of nerves cells doing the synapsis constantly, but, I’ve always think about the dark part of it: psychiatric diseases, the power of our brain over us is infinite, schizophrenia, depression, psychosis or psychopathy... it makes me wonder how do you know you're mad? Maybe it's nothing real, maybe it's your brain making all the work for you, I don't know, and just in case I don't want to know.

The Best Holiday

It was on 2015, me and a group of four friends went to La Serena in summer vacations, it was the first time that we go out all together in a trip for a whole week. We stayed in the house of one of my friend's aunt, I remembered it was a really comfortable place, with two big bedrooms to rest with a giant TV where we played some videogames in Jorge's PlayStation some nights after hanging out for the whole day.

We planned this trip for months, so we had a lot of money to spend on everything we wanted, we went out to the beach in Coquimbo, I remembered me, Felipe and Jorge swimming in the sea joking around about how Allison and Marissel just wet their feet (cowards!), then we usually played Cariocas lying in the sand, gambling with "dares" for the losers, very creative and prankish dares. And after the swim the hungry was intense: the best "Pastel de Choclo" I ever taste was in a restaurant there in La Serena, actually, we ate a lot, especially in the afternoons, well, I have a superpower, you know, I can eat everything and don't get fat... lucky me, sadly not them:(

We spent a lot of time walking around and taking photographs on the lighthouse  (i have one of Jorge kissing a starfish, iug) and sitting in the sand just to drink a couple of beers talking about everything with a beautiful view of the sunset in front of us, I think that kind of moments are priceless and unforgettable.

But the most fun parts were the nights, hanging around all together, walking by the sea or sitting around a campfire, having fun, laughing and relaxing, it feels like another world, far away from the stressful Santiago... the last day, while we're getting back to our home i remembered me watching the photos that we take, thinking about the great vacations of that summer, hoping to get back there someday to eat another yummy Pastel de Choclo.

A Country You Would Like to Visit

"Il dolce far niente" or "the sweetness of doing nothing" is a sentence very used in the boot shaped country, and is definitely one of my favourites... here in Chile everybody is so hurry and everything is for yesterday, so people have a lot of stress, while in Italy people knows how to take a break, and rest, and sleep, and doing absolutely nothing... and that sound pretty good for me.

Italy is located in the old continent, and have the most beautiful scenes of the world, specially the South, in cities like Sicily, where i heard people is very kind, although, if i had the money, i would visit The Floating City: Venice, a place without traffic (yesss!) and with a system of channels to peacefully  navigate around the city.

Italy is also known by the art, is one of the most artistic countries, famous paintings of the Renaissance to admire, a unique and amazing architecture that includes the Coliseum in Rome or the beautiful Milan Cathedral, and of course that i can't forget the music, Opera is a beautiful music genre that i usually enjoy and that can be easily find it in here.

Italians use a lot of body language and it's fun to know that some movements or hand gestures can be easily understand by everybody in there and the Italian is beautiful language, actually i know a few words... but certainly if i stay in there for living a couple of years i have to learn how to speak it properly... anyway, i think i'll have the time to visit it, i can't wait to eat a Spaghetti dish al dente or a giant Pizza, meanwhile, sadly i have to study so i'm going to leave the "Il doce far niente" for the future.

My Blogging Experience

I remembered the first time we had to do a blog in English III, i was not too enthusiastic, especially because of the "mental block", i don't know, it's so stressful, sometimes it's hard to me have to write about something just because i have to do it. I really hate that.

However, i realized that when i started to write a blog (after the mental-block thing), the ideas only appear, and it's fun, every time we have to write about something (the most of times) it's about an interesting topic, so after a while i don't even care about the wordcount... and although it sounds a bit silly, i got to know myself better, it's weird, because some ideas just pop up, and after writing, i assimilated them.

There's no doubt that i learned a lot of new words, so my vocabulary increased considerably. And of course, now i feel more prepared to write anything in English. Also, it's a way to get out of the chemistry, physics, maths... it's just different and I’m able to enjoy it.

Sometimes i just read some blogs only for curiosity and there are some cool and fun blogs, and i like the way some people write, it's a whole new world for me. And some future topics, i don't mind if i must write about some other countries that i find interesting or about the fears that people have, i really hate clowns for example, so... there's a fun topic.

Whatever, it was fun, more than i expected it, and, oh, achievement unblocked: i was able to overcome my mental block without even a cigarette.

From the invisible to the visible world...

"What is essential, is invisible to the eye."

I recently read in the news about a group of pharmacists and other professionals of the health area who invented a new treatment based on nanoemulsions of a derivative of Tumeric: the curcumin. This treatment can inhibit the reappearance of cancerous cells and is apparently very effective on animals.

Nanoemultions are basically a kind of heterogeneous mix: powder of a selected product or "active ingredient" round by a lipid monolayer with other immiscible liquid that contains it. This "emulsion" is encapsulated in nanostructures and it could be administered by many ways, the process to make simple nanoemultions is energy efficient, but the trouble is that industries generally use a high amount of energy to make the process the most effective possible.

His applications are essential in the pharmaceutical industries, it allows to reduce the size of any material to nano-size (50-200 nm.) and protect, carry and deliver antimicrobials, antioxidants, drugs, pharmacological nutrients and many other substances, so they are common in the Pharmacy career.

It's really interesting the wide use that nanoemultions have, not only in the oncological treatment, but in food and cosmetic industries too, and the recent discover, shows to everyone the importance and utility of this method.

And if the essential is invisible to the eye, just bring your microscope!