With so many extra trips and lectures I chose for this London holiday it’s hard to remember what options I have chosen and what days they fall on. Ironically enough, I didn’t know that this morning I would be attending a lecture on neurodegenerative disorders such as dementia given by Rubile Balendendra. Similarly, I couldn’t remember why I chose to learn about this topic, as I don’t have an interest in this field; Nevertheless, some parts of the talk did interest me and I specially took notes on the following concerning neurodegenerative disorders: their symptoms, mechanisms behind them, and for those born in 2015 30% of them will suffer from one of these disorders. Additionally, that percentage will most likely increase without any medical intervention. With people living longer than ever and the ever-growing need for elderly care, it’s clear now that finding affordable and efficient ways to care for those in need is a need globally.
Normally this is where I would get lunch, but I’ve found it hard to eat while I’m here and I’ve been eating around 1.5 meals per day; Back home I would have closer to 2.5. I don’t know if it’s the climate, the amount of walking around, or the fact that 90% of the time our lunches are sandwiches but either way I seem to eat very little out here. During today’s lunch break, I just laid in the grass, chatting with my Aussie posse.
Moving to our second lecture Ghada Bassioni, an engineering professor working in Cairo, explained her journey in STEM and some of her memorable projects. Though many presentations have this same theme I assure you they aren’t repetitive given the extremely broad specialisations each speaker has. Similarly to Rubile Balendendra’s talk I sadly have little interest in engineering. Her work investigating the curse of the pharaohs was fascinating, but this only lasted for a third of her two-hour talk.
Well, you can’t design every talk for every student and I knew that my enjoyment of the day would come from meeting back up with Issie and Tobias during our free time. Meeting up we headed off to the Science Museum to check out machinery used throughout history and during the space race. We even fought a coin machine to give us our crushed coins.
