Was tagged by Cocoy and then by Edward to do this 8 random facts about me. The rules are quite simple;

1. you share 8 things that your readers don’t know about you then at the end, tag 8 other bloggers to keep the fun going. Each blogger must post these rules first.
2. Each blogger starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, a blogger needs to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

I have a feeling I’ve done this meme once but heck, this is another chance to disclose if not confess a few more random (if not weird) facts about my self. As friends, blog-friends and readers have always come to know me as that uber-serious geek. Enough pish-posh and now here’s the inevitable.

The 8 facts:

1. Though I’m a Human Biology major, I have more books about the Humanities (Pol-sci, History, Sociology, Philosophy etc.) than the about the life sciences. It all started back in my sophomore year in highschool when I met one of my most influential teachers of all time. He opened up my mind to whole new perspective and this is what makes my personality today.
2. I’m not totally against the piracy of music. If I happen to really dig a particular band or artist’s music I’d go out and spend money on their original CD. If only one or two songs gets me hooked, I’d acquire just those particular tracks in some other evil way. Why spend lots of money on a whole album CD if I’m just going to listen to two or three songs?
3. Still on music, I could really have a bad case of LSS or the last-song-syndrome. If a song really gets me hooked, I’d be playing it in repeat, all day in my mp3 player. Strange thing is, it takes me weeks to remember the whole lyrics by heart.
4. I’d rather be an ‘irregular’ student than the ‘regular’ one. It gives me the freedom to design my schedule for the semester allowing me to balance(?) academics with my extra-curricular and social involvements. Besides, I get to meet whole new bunch of people every subject, every semester which I think is one the best things in college.
5. It was in second year of highschool that I signed-up for my very first e-mail account. It was not a Yahoo! account like what 99% of my classmates had, rather it was a Hotmail account. I was so much of an e-mail noob back then the password to that account was well, ‘password.’ It was so rudimentary (not to mention ridiculous) hackers at the local internet shop I frequented failed to open my account while they easily broke into my friends’ inboxes and messed up their lives.
6. If I don’t know you personally or at least spent time with you online (via forums, chat or on-line games, email, blogs and blogging) I would not add you up to my list of friends in Friendster. Call me snobbish or anti-social, I’m not comfortable with the idea that the majority of the 300+ so-called friends in my list are persons I’ve never even met in my entire life. The way I see it, it’s quantity over quality.
7. Volunteering for something has always been natural for me. Especially in the laboratory. I have volunteered samples of my blood, head lice (back in elementary), fingernails, hair (all sorts of it), saliva, ear wax, cheek cells, sweat, urine and almost every bodily fluid in laboratory experiments in the past 15 years or so of studying. Though I have yet to offer my stool and semen samples, but what the heck, anything in the name of science right? (That’s why I wouldn’t be surprised if a clone of myself would be somewhere else wreacking havoc and chaos to humanity. Cool!)
8. I had never lost a tooth in the hands of dentist in all of my life. Whenever I had one about to come off because a replacement has matured and come out, my mother would get a sewing thread, wrap a neat loop around my loose tooth and in the count of three, she’d yank the damn thing out of my mouth. It was quick, almost painless, a whole lot cheaper than going to the dentist and it was an experience that helped me become a man.

You learned a lot new and weird things about me today didn’t ya? Now to continue this tag, I’ll be tagging 8 wonderful people who have visited my blog this past few week.

Melo Villareal of Manila Freelancer

Jammed of JammedPh

ApplesH of Apples-Pie

RexRazor-ex of The King of Blades

Deuts of Deuts.net

Kegler of Ar-wee-der-yet

Shaun Low of Shaunlow.com

The 8th blogger to be tagged is you! Yes you my beloved reader. If you’d take on this tag, let me know and I’ll link to your post in a summary post by the end of next week.

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As a follow up to my previous entry, here are the final versions of the laboratory photos I took last Monday using the Sony Ericsson K800i. I did away with the large texts produced by the phone’s default Photo DJ editing software and instead tweaked, cleaned and resized the photos using Photoshop CS.

For those who are taking up Histology classes, I hope the photos below will be of great help in your studies.

The specimes were representative samples of the different epithelial tissues found in the different organs and parts of the human body. Epithelial tissue is a diverse group of tissue that cover or line all body surfaces, cavities and tubes. Thus, epithelial tissue perform a myriad of functions since they act as interfaces between different biological compartments and even the outside environment.

Epithelial morphology and physiology, meaning their properties and functions vary depending on their location in the human body. They could be classified into the following:

Shape

• Squamous: Squamous cells are flat cells with an irregular flattened shape. A one-cell layer of simple squamous epithelium forms the alveoli of the respiratory membrane, and the endothelium of capillaries, and is a minimal barrier to diffusion. Other places where squamous cells can be found include the filtration tubules of the kidneys, and the major cavities of the body. These cells are relatively inactive metabolically, and are associated with the diffusion of water, electrolytes, and other substances.

• Cuboidal: As the name suggests, these cells have a shape similar to a cube, meaning its width is the same size as its height. The nuclei of these cells are usually located in the center.

• Columnar: These cells are taller than they are wide. Simple columnar epithelium is made up of a single layer of cells that are longer than they are wide. The nucleus is also closer to the base of the cell. The small intestine is a tubular organ lined with this type of tissue. Unicellular glands called goblet cells are scattered throughout the simple columnar epithelial cells and secrete mucus. The free surface of the columnar cell has tiny hairlike projections called microvilli. They increase the surface area for absorption.

• Transitional: This is a specialized type of epithelium found lining organs that can stretch, such as the urothelium that lines the bladder and ureter of mammals. Since the cells can slide over each other, the appearance of this epithelium depends on whether the organ is distended or contracted: if distended, it appears as if there are only a few layers; when contracted, it appears as if there are several layers.

Stratification

• Simple: There is a single layer of cells.
• Stratified: More than one layer of cells. The superficial layer is used to classify the layer. Only one layer touches the basal lamina. Stratified cells can usually withstand large amounts of stress.

• Pseudostratified with cilia: This is used mainly in one type of classification (pseudostratified columnar epithelium). There is only a single layer of cells, but the position of the nuclei gives the impression that it is stratified. If a specimen looks stratified, but you can identify cilia, the specimen is pseudostratified ciliated epithelium since stratified epithelium cannot have cilia but may be very rarely found in fetal esophagus. A cell that contains hairs will be around ten times stronger than a regular cell

Specializations

• Keratinized cells contain keratin (a cytoskeletal protein). While keratinized epithelium occurs mainly in the skin, it is also found in the mouth and nose, providing a tough, impermeable barrier.

• Ciliated cells have apical plasma membrane extensions composed of microtubules capable of beating rhythmically to move mucus or other substances through a duct. Cilia are common in the respiratory system and the lining of the oviduct.

From protection from the outside environment via the keratinized skin, to absorption of oxygen in the lungs to helping the egg cell make its way into the uterus, epithelial tissue serves a multitude of roles and functions necessary for our survival.

More about epithelial tissues later on and it will be followed by another important kind of the epithelial tissues, the epithelial glands.

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One of the top reasons I’m thankful and proud that I bought the Sony Ericsson K800i phone is it’s camera. At 3.2 megapixels powered by Sony’s renowned Cyber-shot technology, the K800i makes a good entry-level digital camera that you could take any where and will give you good quality close-range photos.

I took it with me into the Histology Laboratory class last Monday and used it’s awesome camera to take images of the tissue samples we viewed under the light microscope. The K800i certainly made the lab activity fun, a lot easier yet a bit challenging.

We were tasked to view and study the various samples of epithelial tissues and we are expected to draw the specimens in full-colored details in our trusty paper skecth pads. Tedious and time-consuming it may be but this technique helps us become more familiar with the subjects we study, this time around it’s the epithelial tissues.

It’s a big challenge because our class were divided into groups and we were given only 1 light microscope per group. So it’s 5 students using 1 light micropscope. So much for being a private university with sky-high tuition fees and boasting of premiere-facilities, but more of that in another time.

With this ratio of students to laboratory equipment, time was a bit of a problem. We had to work fast in getting the slides focused correctly and then draw them on-the-fly in our sketch pads because there are others who are waiting in line for their turn. That’s where the K800i and other similar phones come in and make things easier.

Instead of hogging the microscope, I used all my alloted time to focus the slides and then take snapshots of it so that my other group mates could move up the line and spend more time observing the specimens. An added bonus to that, I have photos as references that I could use in reviewing and studying the lessons at home or wherever I go.

To share the benefits of this tool, any one in my class could ask for copies of the photos right after I took the shots all thanks to the Bluetooth or Infrared connectivity built-in to the K800i phone. Of course their phones would need to have the same connectivity features and ample free memory to recieve the photos because at 3-Megapixels, the file size of the photos could be quite hefty on the phone’s memory. Of course if this is not possible I could always share it with them via email or via my Zooomr account.

Another great feature of the K800i is its built-in photo editing software called Photo DJ in which I could add items like frames, clipart elements and in-photo texts. This nifty trick does the job of labelling the photos accordingly, since most tissue samples look almost the same at first glance and more so to the untrained eye. (ehem) My only gripes is that you cannot resize the text so if the specimen’s name is quite long, there’s a great chance that it would overlap on the image itself. Still the K800i is certainly a good tool to have around the laboratory.

But here’s a caveat; I find it quite tricky to get good shots of the specimens because getting the K800i properly aligned with the light microscope’s eyepiece is not an easy thing to do. You need to keep your hands steady and your fingers ready to push the capture button because one wrong move however slight, could ruin the shot. It’s the most challenging part but I’m confident that more practice is just what I need.

Thankfully, our instructor was kind enough to allow us to continue using our camera phones inside the laboratory but just for taking photos of the experiments and activities we perform. After all, it is still a general policy that using mobile phones or other gadgets inside the laboratory is prohibited, well in DLSUD that is. I wonder how it is in other universities?

In conclusion, I’ve just found a new way of boosting my classroom productivity thanks to the K800i and I’m sure everyone else who owns a phone with the similar features and functionalities could also do the same. Better yet, get yourself a similar Cyber-shot phone from Sony Ericsson.

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