Christine McCaffery is Working with a Vet

I am still seeing very interesting procedures. Today I saw a rare operation an a dog. The dog was ill from many stones in his bladder. The vet made in incision in his stomach and sliced the bladder before picking out the stones with a tweezers. The stones were huge and the bladder was tiny. The nurse said that this kind of operation hasn't been seen in around 2 years so it was rare for the dog to have the stones. I have learned loads about animals and x-rays and ultrasounds. I love all the things that they give me to do which includes feeding the animals and clearing their cages. They always give me chocolates when my work is done!

Rory's Work Experience

Rory  Smith did his work experience with Richard Boyd Barrett of People before Profit. Here he is pictured beside Richard in his Dáil office and in the other photo is listening to Mick Wallace (in pink) making his budgetary submission in an otherwise empty chamber to the minister for finance, Michael Noonan.

Part of Rory's  report:

"It was all very interesting and I got to see it all first hand. I learned a lot about politics. Even though I'm working with the socialist party, (based partly on what I saw yesterday) I'll probably vote for Sinn Féin when I'm older. Today I did more filing and photocopying before lunch except this time I was photocopying leaflets to give out at the teachers' protest. After lunch, I went to two protests. The first was protesting against the mistreatment of Sudanese asylum seekers by the government. The second was the aforementioned teachers' protest demanding equal pay for equal work where I gave out leaflets inviting people to come to a speech Richard Boyd Barrett was giving later. There was thousands of people there. Nobody seemed too interested in the leaflets to be honest. I think my employer is being fair to me. The filing can get tedious, but I don't mind it too much."

On Tuesday, we had professor Mani Ramaswami visit the class and tell us about his work in neuroscience and how he uses power-point in his lectures and seminars. His advice was invaluable with regards to being as succinct and clear as possible when making a power-point presentation. If you do it properly, even neuroscience can be made a little easier! He works with a wide range of collaborators particularly with NCBS, a research campus in Bangalore, India. That's all for now.

Rory & Maya

Morality Project Day 2

The Morality Project continues with group work.

Day 1 Moral Questions

This morning we started with the question 'Why be Moral?'
We did some brain exercises and looked at left brain/right brain activity (see short movie clip below)
We are going to grapple with some serious moral dilemmas and present our findings on Friday.

"Why be Moral" Project Overview

TY Stand up to Academic Rigour

Professor Charles J. Dorman,  Head of the School of Genetics and Microbiology at TCD came to JSS on Friday 12th October at the culmination of the Science project. The photo, below includes some students, Dr Telford, Dr Ní Bhriain and Professor Dorman. He joined the panel and subjected each of the five disease presentations to rigorous academic scrutiny, after which he said our students stood up as well as many of his undergraduates. Indeed Professor Dorman said that ours were clearer in their presentation of the facts than many of his own students. 

It was great to have so many parents present to witness the event.

Dr. Telford asks for a vote of thanks for Dr. Ní Bhriain and Prof. Dorman

Today we went to the magic materials exhibition at the science gallery. We saw how nanotechnology has been used to create lots of materials with interesting properties that give them unique practical applications (such as bullet-proof vests made of spider silk). Here are two pictures from the exhibition. The top picture is transition year students playing with silly putty, which is a non-Newtonian fluid (which means it does not abide by Isaac Newton's laws of physics). The bottom picture is an interactive art piece designed to give the person sitting in it an idea of what it's like to be a caterpillar in a cocoon. Yeah, I don't get it either.
See you next time,
Rory