The Science of Waiting

Oh the horrors of writers’ block! It attacks unscrupulously; it kills off the few functional brain cells left in one’s mind, it makes a nest of boredom and lays eggs of unproductivity in the now empty skull of the host. During the development of these eggs, the host experiences debilitating (more like annoying, but let’s stay with the drama) symptoms such as repeated head scratching, prolonged periods of inactivity, repeated sighing and intermittent forehead-bashing on study desks. Scourge of scourges, it leaves poets in tears, authors in stress-mode brought on by die-hard publishers, song writers uninspired and bloggers with nothing to write about!

DAMN YOU, WRITERS BLOCK!!

~End Scene~

Yes ladies and gentlemen, my four week hiatus was as a result of scientific writers’ block: I could write on every other topic except science. Scientific progress was aplenty, but I just didn’t know how to WRITE IT UP. No, it has NOT improved.

So I’ll write on a topic of a different kind: scientific in nature but not quite in the way you would expect…

I shall write on the science of WAITING. (You shall feel the pain of writers’ block too.)

As I type this (because I pre-type my articles way before I post them), I am dying of boredom at home. There are two days before lectures and labs start and I am ITCHING to get back to work already. I’ve called my mother several times today ALONE (she told me to read a book when I called the third time in an hour… She then told me to write one when I called her again… And told me to stop calling her when I told her I had finished writing…) and my little cousin is sick of playing with me (he’s three. Three year olds never get sick of playing. The extent of my boredom should now be apparent).

So I took to reading my new second year textbooks, which proved to be really reaaally fun!  Yes, best couple of days of my life I tell you. I got so excited about the various lab practicals I was going to be doing, how I was finally FINALLY FINALLY FIIIIINALLY  going to be doing some legit work in the labs, growing cultures, testing samples, doing some genetic engineering and possibly creating a monstrosity of nature...! Mwahahahahahahaaaa!

Then I got bored. Then I started typing up this article. (Fwahahahaha!)

Ahhhhhh.... So ends another article, no doubt the single most annoying article you have ever read.

 At least YOU didn’t WRITE it.

Damn writers’ block.

Bacteria Based Test Strips for Diabetics?

Diabetes is a disease that is prevalent across the globe with, according to the International Diabetes Federation, around 840 000 confirmed patients in South Africa alone (studies suggest that there may be as many as 1.5 million patients). Thus far, diabetics rely on blood testing machines check their blood glucose levels. Although they are small and portable, these machines can run into the hundreds of rands and cause a great deal of inconvenience if lost.

In January news broke that students at the Missouri University of Science and Technology had devised a biological system that could do away with current methods of blood sugar levels testing. The new system relied on strips embedded with genetically modified bacteria that could show a patient’s glucose levels through something as simple as a colour change in the strip.

The bacteria used in the strips were a non-virulent strain of E. coli, bacteria that fluoresce when glucose was present in their environment. The bacteria were genetically modified such that they would change colour when exposed to glucose, instead of just fluorescing. These modifications could also be refined such that the colour change of the bacteria and thus the strip relates to the blood glucose levels of the patient:  green could represent normal glucose levels, yellow if levels are borderline and red if glucose levels are elevated.

If successful, these strips would mean greater convenience for diabetic patients: using something as simple as a disposable colour-changing strip to monitor one’s blood sugar levels would be much easier than carrying around a machine in your bag, one that if destroyed, would mean coughing up hundreds of rands to replace. Not so?