Early assignments, Learning Journals, and prompts, have been posted entirely on this home page. Later material has been posted under the right sections, and the LJ4 is found on Arik’s blog. Please have a look on this page, or at the other sections, if something is missing in a section, or it might be under “Older posts” found at the very bottom of this page – I have tried to organize the material logically. All the best!
For the second midterm, I was very well prepared. This was my last and 8th midterm, and in a course I have found very interesting and enjoyable, so I at least wanted to do better than I did in my last midterm, which was a very realistic goal to me.
It took quite some time to read the paper the first time. The number of experiments surprised me at first, and I did not see the reason for including all the experiments in the figures. Went I started making notes about the individual experiments, and read the paper more carefully, I saw a clear connection and a chronological presentation of data. My notes were very detailed and organized in a way so I quickly could look up my own interpretations of the data during the midterm. That I had picked up from the questions to the practice midterm available, which were asking primarily for interpretations by the student, and not interpretations written by the authors in the paper.
I was happy to learn that I prepared well for this midterm. I wanted to write answers to all the questions and I knew from the previous midterm that I should spend my time carefully. I was able to write detailed answers to all the questions, except one. When I received the result, I was happily surprised that I exceeded my goal for this midterm. This was not entirely unexpected since we had been working a lot with interpretation in class, and I had come up with some good suggestions and conclusions, so I knew I was on the right track.
Before I did midterm one, I did the practice midterm/previous midterm available, and I was surprised to learn how pressured on time I was – I do not think I finished more than 50% before the 45 minutes ran out of the practice midterm. I also had a hard time to interpret the questions asked in the practice midterm. Therefore, I knew I had to hurry during the actual midterm, which helped me a lot.
I was able to give good/decent answers to all the questions, except I did not have time to come up with a model in the very last part of the midterm. Therefore, I was happy when this part was announced to be reattempted later in class. I did lose some marks due to lack of detail, and I definitely could have described my experiment more thoroughly. However, I was able to show that I knew and could apply the basic concepts, ideas and approaches we had learned so far, and my interpretation of the loopin-results went very well besides lack of time on the final question. I followed the suggestion on how to analyze the results, and it really helped.
I did use a lot of time on figuring out what exactly was asked in the questions, and I later learned that in general, the mark-numbers listed after each question is a good indicator of how detailed the answer should be. Overall, it went much better than the practice midterm I used in preparation to this first midterm, so I was satisfied with the result though I knew I could have done better.
I have recently come across something very interesting, a series of podcasts called Radiolab. Radiolab is a show that believes scientific knowledge should be accessible to everyone, which is strongly agree on. Therefore, their podcasts take up some pretty heave scientific topics and are told in an everyday language with a lot of humor. Two podcasts I have really enjoyed is one about the CRISPR system, and one about genetically engineered mosquitoes used to prevent new infections of Dengue fever in a small Brazilian village.
I believe such programs are extremely useful to provide knowledge about new scientific discoveries to the large publicity, and provoke ethical debates on how this knowledge should be used, if used at all. One thing I believe could counteract the application of gene technology in the future, is the very different opinions among scientists and the public. If more people had more knowledge about progress in research, I think it could start a general and healthy debate on some very important topics, such as the use of GMO in the food industry and whether parents should get their children vaccinate or not.
Here is the link: http://www.radiolab.org/
This is a TED Talk about how scientific experiments can be manipulated in order to create “scientific evidence” that only benefits a pre-determined outcome. Examples of how control groups and test groups are designed to brand specific test-drugs to make them look better, and more effective, by pharmaceutical companies are discussed. Negative trails also have a habit of going “missing”, more often in projects founded by the industry, or hidden by e.g. the use of statistics. Further, some trial data are withheld from doctors and patients by pharmaceutical companies which only enables the doctor to trust a treatment based on what is not withheld: the data that perfectly illustrates the drug as the company wants it to be, and not how it actually is.
I have found this TED Talk to be extremely thought provoking, and it should be watched by anyone who is considering during research in medical companies. Here is the link:
