Introduction
Hey, my name is Farah Farzana and I am a
medical student at the University of Manchester. Last year after I completed my
third year, I decided to take a year out of medicine to do a Masters in
Research degree in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. This is known as an intercalated degree, that
many medics opt to do if they have further interests in research or any subject
in general. After completing this
Masters, I will go back to medical school to complete my final remaining two
years and hopefully graduate and become a doctor.
I never imagined or really anticipated
during the first few years of Medicine, that I have any interest in research.
To be honest, I was always scared by the prospect of going into research and
imagined it to be pretty intense and hard. However during my third year I
started becoming more interested in regenerative medicine, especially cell
based therapies and the potential of regenerating tissues. The growing area of
research that focuses of regenerating damaged organs or tissues, so in effect
you are giving them a new life every time they are damaged intrigued me. So I
decided to look into regenerating the structures within our spines known as the
intervertebral discs.
In Depth
What is the intervertebral disc and how does it cause back pain?
The intervertebral discs are structures that make up our spine,
and helps in overall mobility. With progressive age the spine goes through
trauma and increase pressure due to many factors such as obesity, because of
which these discs slowly starts to breakdown gradually. This causes severe pain
and discomfort for suffers and is known to be one of the major causes of back
pain. The pain occurs mainly because the discs are no longer mobile enough to
support our range of movements, such as twisting and turning or even sitting
which puts pressure on our spine. It is estimated
that approximately 60-80% of people will at some point in their lifetime
experience back pain. Despite the condition not being life threatening, it
imposes a huge economic burden on our health care system, as well as being one
of the foremost causes of disability due to chronic pain between the ages of 45
and 65 worldwide. Current treatments are costly and only offers
symptomatic relief for the patients and most treatment available are a
temporary fix to the underlying problem. Therefore research is now focussing on
understanding the disease process itself of why the breakdown of the discs
occurs and what cells are involved in such disease. Identifying the exact cells
involved in the process that leads to breakdown of the discs will allow
researchers to target such cells and stop them from causing the breakdown.
What does my research focus on?
Researchers have discovered that some cells act to maintain the
discs health, which can be also targeted to restore the damaged disc. My research
is looking to find out more about the types of cells present within the
innermost layer of the disc. Some cells within this layer of the disc have the
ability to stimulate rejuvenation of the damaged disc, when given signals.
These findings of how these cells function and what signals they need to
remodel the damaged disc will further guide upcoming research that will look at
developing treatments by manipulating such cells to regenerate the discs. Such
treatments will target the underlying disease itself in order to give patients suffering
from back pain a permanent cure to back pain caused with progressive age. Such
discovery in the future can even lead to developing treatments that can
potentially cure back pain forever and change millions of lives.
Going Further
I made a video on studying medicine and how it is like to be a
medical student, if you would like to have a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LgGrc6182g
This research is a hot topic now and we even managed to somehow
feature on the daily mail a few years back!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1267326/Growing-new-disc-help-relieve-pain.html
Feature on medical news today about future and techniques of
regenerating the spine:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/263496.php
Interested in studying medicine here is a good website to look at:
https://www.bma.org.uk/advice/career/studying-medicine/becoming-a-doctor/introduction
Interested in becoming a scientist? Look
at this website for a step by step explanation:
http://study.com/articles/How_to_Become_a_Biological_Scientist_Education_and_Career_Roadmap.html
A detailed scientific paper explaining disc
degeneration and processes of regeneration:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3008962/
Introduction
My name is Bethany Gill and I am a Master’s student at The
University of Manchester. After completing my A-Levels in 2012 (Psychology,
English, History, Biology, General Studies), I went on to study Psychology at
UoM from 2012-2015. I graduating last year and chose to continue studying,
beginning my Masters at UoM in September 2015. My main interests are clinical
and health psychology, with the focus of my current research being around
treatment preferences for mental health problems. I have always enjoyed
creative writing, and I have recently found a way to combine this with my love
of Psychology.
In Depth
Some smokers have tried everything to help them kick the
habit without success, but psychologists may have found the answer.
Over the past few decades
cigarette smoking rates have declined, due to: higher taxes on tobacco
products, smoking restrictions and mass media campaigns. However, smoking is
still a major health issue facing Britain, remaining one of the main causes of
death in the UK. About half of all regular smokers will die due to smoking,
equating to 100,000 smokers dying each year. Smoking is also a major
contributor to respiratory diseases, and is accountable for over one third of
respiratory deaths as well as one quarter of cancer deaths.
The government currently funds stop smoking services to help
people quit smoking. But unfortunately due to government spending cuts, these
are currently being decommissioned and disappearing from some areas completely.
They also face the problem that their current techniques used to help people
stop smoking are not working as well as they should.
Stop smoking services employ clinicians who use techniques
rooted in psychology to help people stop smoking. These techniques stem from
behaviour change techniques like setting goals and making action plans. They
help people to make plans to avoid the temptation of cigarettes by thinking of
alternative actions. For example, if they wake up and have a craving for a
cigarette, they should go and do the dishes first. Or they make a goal of
trying to cut down to five cigarettes by the end of the week.
These methods work, but are not working well enough. This is
in part due to the stop smoking techniques not being carried out properly, as
some advisors fail to deliver stop smoking techniques efficiently. Recent estimates suggest that these methods
are not working for about 80% of smokers. Something needs to change because
smokers who have been smoking for years are not receiving the support they need
to help them quit smoking, and the amount of clinicians who can help are
decreasing.
Now, psychologists at the University of Manchester have a
solution. Health psychologists explore people’s attitudes and awareness of
their own health. They research ways to prevent unhealthy behaviours, like
quitting smoking, and promote healthy behaviours like going to the doctor to
get your health checked.
Emma Brown a PhD researcher at the University has spent the
past three years conducting trials researching how self-rewards can help kick
the habit. These trials have been focusing on trying to reducing smoking rates
amongst individuals from the community and from the prison population.
Self-rewards are a
behaviour change technique where a reward is only given on successful
completion of the specific behaviour. For example, people plan to get through a
week of not smoking, then they will plan to give themselves the treat of a meal
out on Friday night. This is different to the current techniques where plans
are made to engage in an alternative behaviour to smoking, like making a cup of
tea rather than having a cigarette.
Self-rewards are self-administered, but they do take a bit
of planning. People need to plan what, how and when these self-rewards will
happen. The reward doesn’t have to be anything grand, it just has to be something
that you enjoy and can reasonably do.
Self-rewards are showing promising results for people trying
to quit smoking. As Emma Brown explains that ‘people who use [self-rewards] are
three times more likely to quit than those who don’t’. But due to the ongoing
nature of the trials that Emma Brown is conducting, we will not know the full
scope of the effectiveness of self-rewards until September 2016, when the
trials end.
But using self-rewards to help people quit smoking is still
new, and needs researching further. Emma Brown suggests that future research
will need to look into how self-rewards can be administered on an individual
basis, and how the NHS can use this valuable technique to help people quit
smoking. At the moment, all we know is self-rewards work if people are
supported by a clinician, to make sure that the rewards they set are feasible
and realistic.
Although challenges still lie ahead on perfecting
self-rewards, the hope of a technique that can be done individually and will
help quit smoking for good, is a very promising thought indeed.
For now, the best advice to kick the habit once
and for all may be set a goal, stick to it and treat yourself!
Introduction
Hello, my name is Ed Trotman and
I’m employed as a graduate intern with the University of Manchester, working
specifically on the Schools-University Partnership Initiative (SUPI). I’ve
recently graduated from the University with an MA in Art Gallery and Museum
Studies. Prior to this I completed an undergraduate degree in History at the
University of Bristol.
You might not have heard of Museum
Studies as a degree option - it involves the study of the role of museums and
galleries in society as well as how museum professionals (e.g. curators,
conservators, educationalists) go about putting on displays and exhibitions.
The idea is that it provides a basic training to enter the museum sector. As a
Master’s degree it took place over the duration of a year (although some
Masters take longer!). In this time I learnt about a variety of aspects of
museum work. I also did a lot of volunteering with staff at the Manchester
Museum, the Manchester Central Library, the Museum of Science and Industry and
Manchester Art Gallery. The course culminated in a research project assignment.
This could be on any topic related to Art Gallery and Museum Studies.
Thinking about my experiences of
learning about and working in museums and art galleries I decided that I wanted
to investigate the educational role of these institutions. I discovered that
cultural organisations play a bigger role in society than I was aware of. It is
common, for instance, to find that museums carry out community outreach
projects in poorer socio-economic areas, host workshop classes for the very
elderly and those with dementia and provide educational activities for people
of all ages and backgrounds struggling with disability.
Despite their social good however,
factors including transport costs, limited free time and a lack of familiarity
with cultural institutions often prevent many adults from accessing the
museum’s educational resources. I was interested to know how museums and
galleries could seek to attract more adult visitors to talks and workshops, how
best to engage with them whilst they were there and how to encourage them to
come again.
In Depth
After doing some reading I found
that not that much research had been done by academics within the field of
Museum Studies into adult education in cultural institutions (which was
actually pretty shocking!). In order to understand more about the best ways of
going about adult education in museums/galleries I looked at Adult Learning
theory. In particular, I read about the Theory of Andragogy by Malcolm S.
Knowles. This is a foundational theory of adult learning which states that adults
learn differently to children. Knowles defines six key principles which explain
how adults learn differently. These include the ideas that adults rely heavily
on lived experience to learn, that they always need to know why they need to
learn something before learning it and that they prefer to be self-directed
when learning. When these ideas were published in the sixties they were fairly
controversial but have now become more accepted. Knowles argues that these
principles can be applied to almost any situation in which adults are being
encouraged to learn.
The focus of my research was to
understand if Knowles’ principles had broader application within cultural
institutions. I assessed two educational sessions for adults at Manchester Art
Gallery including a gallery tour and a workshop, carrying out focus group
interviews with participants in both. I found that, in the workshop class, many
of these ideas were already being used by gallery staff to great effect and
could be seen to have application. In the tour session meanwhile it was clear
that teaching staff were contravening several of Knowles’s principles and
consequently adults reported feeling frustrated with their experiences. As a
result I concluded that the principles of Andragogy had practical use here. The
process of carrying out this research and writing it up was really interesting,
especially as I felt like I was contributing something new to the field of
Museum Studies. I got to speak to members of the public about art and art
galleries and practice my interview skills.
Going Further
If you want to find out more about
my MA, the Theory of Andragogy or the sessions I attended at Manchester Art
Gallery follow the links below:
Art Gallery and Museum Studies at
the University of Manchester: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/masters/courses/list/01100/art-gallery-and-museum-studies-ma/
Knowles’ Theory of Andragogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andragogy
Manchester Art Gallery, Exhibitions
and Events: http://manchesterartgallery.org/exhibitions-and-events/
Museums Association http://www.museumsassociation.org/home
by YPU Admin on September 3, 2015,
. Tags:
ab-initio, Bologna, communication, french, Humanities, interpreting, Italian, languages, linguistics, masters, morphology, Research, society, syntax, and translation
From High School I knew I really wanted to study languages and hopefully
pursue a career in translation or interpreting. So I chose French and Italian
at Manchester because I wanted to continue studying French after taking it at A
Level; but I also wanted the opportunity to start a new language from scratch.
Manchester offered several ab-initio languages and I decided I really wanted to
study Italian.
During my time at Manchester I particularly enjoyed the modules which
focused on core language and also linguistics, such as Structures of French
Language, French Syntax & Morphology and The Structures of Modern Italian.
They allowed me to gain a greater and more in-depth knowledge of both languages
whilst benefitting my spoken language and understanding of where modern day
French and Italian both stem from.
After graduating, I planned to work for one year, and now, having gained
this experience, I will go to Italy and study for a Masters in Language,
Society and Communication at The University of Bologna.
