March 2009 Archives

Video games good for your eyes

Isn't that the opposite of what your mother always said? A study published in Nature Neuroscience found that playing action video games improved contrast sensitivity. Players were able to better discern very small changes in shades of grey as a result of playing games "where they had to be constantly ready to react to unpredictable events, and where visual information had to be responded to instantly in very precise physical ways.

Reacting and targeting seem to be important and the groups compared played either Unreal Tournament 2004 and Call of Duty 2 or The Sims. The changes to vision were long lasting, and this type of game may also help both eyes work better together.

I love this. Violent video games are good for you.

Links:

BBC article
NHS Choices article
Nature Neuroscience abstract. (Subscription required for full article).

Next phase

I finished my low mileage transition month with my last run today. I was worried that I was getting a little too comfortable with these easy weeks, given that some of my training weeks have been as tough as hell and for some reason I've scheduled worse ones in the near future. Also, when you smash a target that you thought was really tough sometimes your motivation dips (bizarrely), as you feel like you don't need to do it again. Do you really need to break that PB? I recognise this behaviour in myself, and try to change it by reviewing my short, medium and long-term goals and toughening them up. I like to aim for the impossible. If it's merely challenging I needn't work so hard, but if it's nearly impossible I have to give it my best. If I've worked as hard as I can and I still fail, that's OK. The goal remains and I can try again. I will be cutting my target times significantly.

I really want to run tomorrow but it's not in the schedule. That's a good sign.

New shoes

I've said it before, but is there anything better than new shoes? Annabel got her first pair of proper walking shoes (and I got new running shoes).

When your mileage goes up you really start getting through shoes. I need to buy another couple of pairs too.

Trooper

Jack bought me a badge for my birthday. Watch out for it in meetings.

Spiderman to the rescue

BBC News report that a fireman dressed up as Spiderman to coax an eight-year-old boy from a third-floor window ledge.

Not only is that in itself awesome, but the fireman keeps the costume in his locker.

Read the article - bbc.co.uk.

Boys win yet again

The boys have won the third embryology lecture quiz in a row, Jo Bishop tells me. That's a fantastic run, but will the girls deal the killer blow in the next one? There are two lectures & two quizzes to go.

Boys win again

The boys won the quiz at the end of the embryology of the endocrine system lecture, and by quite a large margin. The score is now 5:2 to the girls, with (I think) 3 to play.

Week 127 - the structures inside the kidney

Hey! I hadn't taught for a while so it was good to start again, in hopefully a helpfully interactive way as we all looked at sliced and whole kidneys.

In the session we talked about the cortex and the medulla, pointing out that while the cortex is outermost it also surrounds medullary (or renal) pyramids so there are renal columns (cortex) between pyramids through which blood vessels pass. We tried to relate the functional histology of the kidney that you saw in Paul Griffiths' session to the gross anatomy that we had in the lab. We talked about the glomerulus, the proximal convoluted and distal convoluted tubules in the cortex and mentioned the loops of Henle and the collecting ducts in the medullary pyramids. Urine, we supposed, must collect at the apex of each medullary pyramid, and here we found spaces called minor calyces.

The minor calyces join up and drain into larger spaces called major calyces, and these in turn drain into the renal pelvis from which the ureter begins. Remember this separation of "blood" parts and "urine" parts of the kidney when you look at the embryological development of this organ.

We talked about autonomic innervation and the routes that sympathetic nerves might take to get to the kidneys (sympathetic trunk, splanchnic nerves, prevertebral ganglia). While sympathetic innervation will cause vasoconstriction here, so reducing urine output we reminded ourselves that most of kidney function is controlled hormonally.

The blood supply to the kidneys is clear, but we paid attention to the level at which the renal arteries pass to the kidneys (remember the superior mesenteric artery here) and looked at the relationship between the renal arteries and veins (the left renal vein lies anterior to the aorta). We made sure that we could differentiate between a ureter and a blood vessel at the hilum of a kidney specimen.

More information:

Wikipedia has a labelled diagram of the internal parts of the kidney: link.
A study in 1986 by Gattone et al. attempted to trace the innervation of the kidney: link.
The National Kidney Foundation (USA) has lots of patient-friendly kidney info: link.

Goals

This was a screenshot of my Mac's desktop last week. The desktop's wallpaper's numbers are my half-marathon goal (time & distance). I found it useful to remind myself of what I was aiming for when getting into a fatigued, JFT mode whenever I cleared my display. I smashed that number (and I thought I was setting my sights high!) and I might put a new one up there next month. What number this time? 1:20?

Yes, you can see all sorts of crap living on my deskytop too. How voyeuristic.

'iTunes university' better than the real thing

Jess Griffiths, our Learning Technologist pointed out an interesting publication suggesting that students do better using podcasts than learning from lectures. It's an unexpected result from my position as both a lecturer and a podcaster and very interesting.

The researchers set a lecture for a group of students purely for testing this, with half of the students getting the lecture and the other half getting the podcast plus printed handouts. I'd argue that the podcast was merely a recording of the lecture alongside pictures of the slides rather than a standalone podcast. "Students who downloaded the podcast averaged a C (71 out of 100) on the test - substantially better than those who attended the lecture, who on average mustered only a D (62).

"But that difference vanished among students who watched the podcast but did not take notes.Students who listened to the podcast one or more times and took notes had an average score of 77."

Can I skip giving my lecture this afternoon then, please? I recorded it last year already. I guess we'd all miss out on the post-lecture quiz though, which the boys again really need to win this afternoon.

Read more about this study on the New Scientist website.

Dexter James DeWreede

Rhiannon Fish/DeWreede gave birth to a baby boy yesterday! The second year students will remember Rhi from anatomy teaching last year & of course you all know Rhi through our podcasts.

Dexter James DeWreede was born at 2pm by caesarian section and weighed 9lb 8oz! There seems to be a trend in big babies amongst my friends. Both are well & Rhi is hoping the stiches are neat. I may have a photo soon, but the next podcast (10 things you must know about pelvic anatomy) may be a little late.

The Oath

I noticed that Welsh and English versions of "The Doctor's Oath" had gone up in the School of Medicine's foyer today.

Boys win a quiz

I hear the boys finally won an embryology quiz after Jo Bishop's urinary system lecture.

Thats 5:1 to the girls, with 4 left to play! I'll be teaching you the embryology of endocrine organs on Monday afternoon so get prepared.

Llanelli Half-Marathon Race Report

I ran my first half-marathon race on Sunday, at Llanelli. Here are my mile splits:

Mile 1: 6:14
Mile 2: 6:43
Mile 3: 6:37
Miles 4 & 5: 13:04 (missed the mile marker, about 6:32 min/miles)
Mile 6: 6:01
Mile 7: 6:06
Mile 8: 6:02
Mile 9: 6:17
Mile 10: 6:22
Mile 11: 6:32
Mile 12: 6:30
Mile 13: 6:32
Last little bit: 0:35

It was a very windy and wet day, and the weatherman said we were due 25mph winds blowing from the west with 35mph gusts. This meant that the first few miles went out into a tough head wind and from the start I was keen to get into the back of a strong, fast pack. When we hit the first marker and everyone's watches beeped you could sense the, "oh crap, too fast" from us all as we saw our first split. The next couple of miles were much more sensible, but the group got smaller as those uncomfortable with the pace dropped out the back, and my old bike racing skills kept me watching gaps and staying on heels. We rotated around, sharing the wind out, but we got thinner and thinner until we were spread out in pairs or singles.

Yee!

Yee!, originally uploaded by samwebster.

Happy running!

Flying

I ran a short 8.4km tempo run today that included a 5km stretch of about 6:20 min/mile pace. Well, that was the plan. The distance is a bit weird because of the landmarks I use, but it's enough for me to measure my pace on. The aim was to remind me how bad I'll feel if I start Sunday's race at too fast a pace (it's a touch faster than my planned race pace) and to give the legs a bit of speed and effort.

My movement was feeling a little awkward, not heavy, but not fluid. After checking Google Earth it appears that I ran the 5km in 19:30, which means I was running at around 6:15 min/mile pace, but at an effort (or RPE) that felt comfortably uncomfortable. Crikey. I'm definitely ready, but unfortunately the weather looks like it'll be very bad. Westerly winds of over 20mph are predicted with stronger gusts.

No matter, I've got at least 2 other half-marathons planned for the summer and even if I'm not peaking as effectively as this week I may still be faster.

From runner to runner? (Part 1)

My sporting history looks like it has come full circle. But I expect it to disappear off again in a new direction.

At school I played the usual sports, and had good speed playing rugby and whatnot. But the other boys got bigger and I didn't, and my ball handling/kicking skills were never up to much (unlike my younger brother). So I guess I fell towards running, and probably with very little training ran a bit of cross country and a bit of middle distance track. I did okay but had no guidance that I remember, and I often wonder what would have happened if someone had directed me and helped me structure some training. So running never really got going for me and by the time I went to sixth form college I was becoming very interested in bicycles.

My parents were a great help in giving me my first really nice road bike, some of the components of which I still have today and have been used on recent bikes. I got a Saturday job at Williams Cycles (their website isn't much better than the cringeworthy local cinema ads of the time when I worked there) when I was 16, which helped pay for many shiny bits and got me involved with mountain biking thanks to the great guys that I worked with at the time.

I raced in some mountain bike races and did rather well as a junior, finishing fourth in my first race if I remember correctly. But when I began road racing I never looked back and raced almost every weekend through the season. A friend introduced me to the Severn Valley Cycle Racing Club (they don't seem to have a website) and I learned about training to race probably from the club, books and from my A-level studies in biology and chemistry. I found a focus, and must have started to pile on the mileage pretty quickly. I still have my training logs stored somewhere and I should dig them out to compare with what I do today. I remember racing on each of the four days of the Easter weekend holiday one year. That's me and Garry Jones in the photo above in the red and green kit and dark glasses. The photo's from the May Hill Road Race, I think.

In my final year as a junior I earned enough points through good race finishes (including a win) to get my second category license and entered my first senior cycling year confidently with much race experience, good legs and many stories. This was also a gap year for me between my A-levels and my anatomy degree, and I worked part time in an NHS laboratory. That meant that I had plenty of time for training, and this was probably my downfall.

(I'll continue this when I next get a chance & will hopefully dig out some more old photos).

Chocolate Milk as a Post-Exercise Recovery Aid

Going back to the milk, protein, latte notes of an earlier post, here's a study looking at the effectiveness of chocolate milk in recovery. What a lovely idea.

The study used 9, highly trained cyclists, depleted their glycogen stores and compared the abilities of chocolate milk, Gatorade and Endurox R4 (a carboydrate recovery drink) to help the cyclists recover to exercise to exhaustion. The chocolate milk won, with the cyclists on chocolate milk able to pedal for longer than cyclists using the other drinks.

Cool.

Karp et al., Chocolate Milk as a Post-Exercise Recovery Aid. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 2006, 16, 78-91 (pdf)

Riding with my shadow

Multisport athletes are very lucky. I'm getting very tired of running, both mentally and physically. That's as it should be as I'm reaching high levels of fatigue in the weeks before a race, and my legs feel like they're in top condition (aerobically anyway, but there is some imbalance and tightness). The last two weeks have included 60km of running each week, which is a lot for me and is part of more than 15 hours of weekly training. I feel like I'm right on the edge of overdoing it. So add together fatigue, pre-race stress and inadequate sleep and you get what Jack calls a "crabby daddy". He actually doesn't mean it like that, instead just linking the words "Crabby Patty" (Spongebob Squarepants) and Daddy but he's pretty accurate.

I'm loving the bike however, and thinking about how to significantly drop my swim times, so I'm not only concerned with running. This morning's bike was an easy 50km with a tough hill (but I love those, seriously) and a tootle around next Sunday's run race course. The weather is gorgeous today, and I only needed a long sleeve jersey. The headwind out was light and my legs are strong, and the run course looks great if there's not a strong wind blowing come race day. This all brings much happiness to my brain, and completely changes my emotions. See, isn't triathlon good for you?

I'm trying to drag Jack out on his bike this afternoon but he's happy drawing. But Jack, it's sunny outside!