[6.6.2020] still trying to keep up with studying Korean each day, feeling much more confident with hangul and the repetition is kicking in and I feel like it’s finally starting to stick! vowels are pretty much down so it’s on to consonants, dipthongs are still giving me a bit of trouble but overall I’d say my alphabet learning is going well!
i'll be having pharmacology next sem, any tips?
HI! :)
Pharmacology is the heart of pharmacy. You need to have a good memorisation skill but understanding it will be the key. Sad to say, there is no shortcut. You need to take a lot of your time to study it by heart.
Study the normal mechanism of the body
Study the abnormal mechanism of the body
Compare the normal & abnormal mechanism of the body
Study how the drug works to correct the abnormal mechanism of the body
for example you are studying cardiovascular drugs: 1. study the normal physiology of the heart 2. study what happen when a person has a cardiovascular disease 3. study the difference between a normal heart & a heart with cardiovascular disease 4. study how cardiovascular drugs will correct the condition
Use one side of the card and write the drug & other side with is mechanism of action
Use one side of the card and indicate its pharmacologic category & the other side with the list of drugs under that category
This are very handy & you can bring it anywhere you go. :)
In this way, the information will be easy to remember.
For example,
the non-specific beta blockers are NSTP (Nadolol, Sotalol, Timolol, Propranolol)
specific beta blockers are BEAM (Bisoprolol, Esmolol, Atenolol, Metoprolol)
beta blockers, mostly but not all the time, ends with -olol
angiotensin II receptor antagonist usually ends with -sartan (Losartan, Candesartan)
HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors usually ends with -statin (Simvastatin, Atorvastatin, Rosuvastatin)
ACE inhibitors usually ends with -pril (Captopril, Lisinopril)
Proton pump inhibitor - ends with -prazole (Pantoprazole, Esomeprazole)
H2 receptor blockers -ends with -tidine (Famotidine, Cimetidine)
The arrangement of medicine either in the community or hospital setting is mostly by their therapeutic category. Observe. Read. Write. Repeat. In this way you will be familiar with the drugs more.
there are a lot of guide books like Pharmacopeia, but due to technology it is easily accessible to everyone today. :) There are several apps that are downloadable for free in the Apps Store & Google Play like…
Epocrates
Micromedex Drug Information
Monthly Prescribing Reference
The course itself is not easy but if you have the determination to study & to learn, nothing will come difficult. Good luck to you! I know you can do it. :)
You know what’s awesome? Research. You know what’s not awesome? Not being able to get access to research because it’s stuck behind a paywall and you don’t belong to an institution/your institution doesn’t subscribe to that particular journal.
FEAR NOT.
Here is a list of free, open access materials on a variety of subjects. Feel free to add if you like!
GO FORTH AND LEARN SHIT, MY FRIENDS.
Directory of Open Access Journals- A compendium of over 9000 journals from 133 countries, multilingual and multidisciplinary.
Directory of Open Access Books- Like the above, but for ebooks. Also multidisciplinary.
Ubiquity Press- Journals covering archaeology, comics scholarship, museum studies, psychology, history, international development, and more. Also publishes open access ebooks on a wide variety of subjects.
Europeana- Digital library about the history and culture of Europe.
Digital Public Library of America- American history, culture, economics, SO MUCH AMERICA.
Internet Archive- In addition to books, they have music and videos, too. Free! And legal! They also have the Wayback Machine, which lets you see webpages as they looked at a particular time.
College and Research Libraries- Library science and information studies. Because that’s what I do.
Library of Congress Digital Collections- American history and culture, historic newspapers, sound recordings, photographs, and a ton of other neat stuff.
LSE Digital Library- London history, women’s history.
Wiley Open Access- Science things! Neurology, medicine, chemistry, ecology, engineering, food science, biology, psychology, veterinary medicine.
SpringerOpen- Mainly STEM journals, looooong list.
Elsevier Open Access- Elsevier’s kind of the devil but you might as well take advantage of this. Mainly STEM, also a linguistics journal and a medical journal in Spanish.
Hello, lovelies! This week, I talk about how I got a 2300+ on the SAT without any outside tutoring or prep classes. Yes, it’s possible, and I tell you how to do it in the video.
I also put together a masterpost of resources below. Even if you aren’t self-studying, a lot of these things might be helpful:
PREP BOOKS
Official College Board SAT Study Guide (The Blue Book)
Direct Hits Vocabulary (Volume 1) // Direct Hits Vocabulary (Volume 2) — What makes these books stand out from other SAT vocab books is the use of pop culture references to explain definitions. For example, the first word in Volume 1, ambivalent, is given the sentence: “In The Avengers, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, and Thor are initially ambivalent about joining S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Avengers Initiative.”
Barrons SAT 2400 — Fabulous book, helpful strategies. I didn’t read the whole thing or do all the practice problems; I only used it for extra help on the sections I struggled with.
Grubers SAT 2400 — Didn’t personally use it myself, but it was recommended by a lot of my friends.
CRITICAL READING
→ Non-SAT Critical Reading Advice
→ My favorite reading sources:
The Atlantic — mix of interesting articles
Variety — pop culture focus, but with more cultured language
New Yorker — very cultured, good place to pick up vocabulary
New York Times — classic SAT reading material
Boston Globe — I have a soft spot in my heart for their entertainment and style sections
National Geographic — exactly the sort of passages you’ll find on the SAT
→ Vocab Flashcards (mentioned in video)
WRITING
→ Top Writing Errors
→ Top Grammar Rules
MATHEMATICS
→ Khan Academy
TERRAFORM: ambient electronic sci fi playlist for space kids trying to ace their finals
( listen on spotify / my other playlists )
Generic
Lessons learnt from this summer by @minijournals
Tips and guides
Selfcare guide
Self care by @kimanoir
Self care tips for students by @theorganisedstudent
12 steps for self care
Self-care to do list
Some little self care things by @irinastudies
Self-care guide by @thetrevorproject
101 self care ideas by @microstvdy
Self care by @littleredstudies
Finals self care by @rubypolar
Instruction manual by @hufflepuffwannabe
Some self care tips by @lovefulls
Self care by @lazyhermione
15 self care ideas by @kaleylearns
Little self care things by @flowerais
Self-care by @mlstudies
Self care by @likelyhealthy
A very brief guide to selfcare by @ejlandsman
My favourite selfcare tips by @rubynerdy
26 selfcare activities by @sheisrecovering
Little habits/things to do more of by @heyrosiebee
Sleep
Guide to sleep by @educatier
Balancing sleep & education by @brbimstudying
Perfect night sleep
How to go to bed early and actually fall asleep
Water
How to drink more water ft printables
Hydration masterpost
Breaks
Take a break
Types of study breaks by @samsstudygram
Tips for getting better rest
Treat yourself
Simple ways to treat yourself by @anitastudy
Guide to treating yourself by @pennyfynotes
25 No/Low cost self care acts by @gaygirlhustle
Feel good
How to feel better by @bbangstudies
Feel good by @librarystudies
7 ways to feel better by @p-antarei
If you are having a bad day by @theblacksiren
Destress
Easy ways to destress by @parisgellerstudy
Stress relievers by @noteology
How to deal with stress by @studywithclover
Apps to help you destress by @gracelearns
Tips to manage stress by @fairy-studies-blr
Burnout
How to deal with study burnout by @eintsein
Avoid education burnout by @neuroticmedblr
Mental health
Saving your grades from a crisis by @smartstudy
Chronic illness + studying by @studysenior
Coping with mental health by @overstudies
Studying with depression by @rannedomblr
Anxiety
Anxiety distraction games by @peachou
Anxiety masterpost by @dotgrids
Relaxing doesn’t help anxiety by @merrybitchmas91
Meditation and focus
Study sounds
Others
What to do with notebooks by @tbhstudying
Podcasts for students by @studyquill
Period masterpost
Dealing with eye strain by @studylikeaslytherin
Listen by @studyblr
50 things you can do without looking at a screen
How to live a better life by @wilstudies
Fitness & health for student by @abby-studies-art
Friendly reminders taken from @cwote
Your mental health is more important than your grades
You are good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, and strong enough
Don’t just be good to others, be good to yourself too
Embrace all that is you
You will be okay
Just breathe. It will be okay.
Be proud of yourself for how hard you’re trying.
Be nice to yourself
Don’t beat yourself up. You are doing the best you can.
Be gentle with yourself, you’re doing the best you can.
Better things are coming.
Loving yourself is the greatest revolution.
Remind yourself, you deserve to be happy
Respect yourself. Don’t let others tell you who you are.
Learn to say no to people and things that make you unhappy.
Enjoy your own company.
Forgive yourself.
Never apologise for how you feel
Give yourself some credit. You’ve come pretty far.
Mental health is just as important as physical health.
Surround yourself with good vibes
Stop worrying about people who aren’t worried about you.
If you find you are surrounded by toxic people… Cut. Them. Out.
Trust yourself. You’re smarter than you think.
This makes me sound stupid but what does a feynman diagram mean?
You don’t sound stupid! They can be pretty confusing at first, and I’m sure you’re not they only one that doesn’t fully understand them (myself included) so let’s learn how to draw Feynman diagrams!
You do not need to know any fancy-schmancy math or physics to do this!
I know a lot of people are intimidated by physics: don’t be! Today there will be no equations, just non-threatening squiggly lines. Even school children can learn how to draw Feynman diagrams. Particle physics: fun for the whole family.
For now, think of this as a game. You’ll need a piece of paper and a pen/pencil. The rules are as follows (read these carefully):
1. You can draw two kinds of lines, a straight line with an arrow or a wiggly line:
You can draw these pointing in any direction.
2. You may only connect these lines if you have two lines with arrows meeting a single wiggly line.
Note that the orientation of the arrows is important! You must have exactly one arrow going into the vertex and exactly one arrow coming out.
3. Your diagram should only contain connected pieces. That is every line must connect to at least one vertex. There shouldn’t be any disconnected part of the diagram.
In the image above, the diagram on the left is allowed while the one on the right is not since the top and bottom parts don’t connect.
4. What’s really important are the endpoints of each line, so we can get rid of excess curves. You should treat each line as a shoelace and pull each line taut to make them nice and neat. They should be as straight as possible. (But the wiggly line stays wiggly!)
That’s it! Those are the rules of the game. Any diagram you can draw that passes these rules is a valid Feynman diagram. We will call this game QED. Take some time now to draw a few diagrams. Beware of a few common pitfalls of diagrams that do not work (can you see why?):
After a while, you might notice a few patterns emerging. For example, you could count the number of external lines (one free end) versus the number of internal lines (both ends attached to a vertex).
How are the number of external lines related to the number of internal lines and vertices?
If I tell you the number of external lines with arrows point inward, can you tell me the number of external lines with arrows pointing outward? Does a similar relation hole for the number of external wiggly lines?
If you keep following the arrowed lines, is it possible to end on some internal vertex?
Did you consider diagrams that contain closed loops? If not, do your answers to the above two questions change?
I won’t answer these questions for you, at least not in this post. Take some time to really play with these diagrams. There’s a lot of intuition you can develop with this “QED” game. After a while, you’ll have a pleasantly silly-looking piece of paper and you’ll be ready to move on to the next discussion:
What does it all mean?
Now we get to some physics. Each line in rule (1) is called a particle. (Aha!) The vertex in rule (2) is called an interaction. The rules above are an outline for a theory of particles and their interactions. We called it QED, which is short for quantum electrodynamics. The lines with arrows are matter particles (“fermions”). The wiggly line is a force particle (“boson”) which, in this case, mediates electromagnetic interactions: it is the photon.
The diagrams tell a story about how a set of particles interact. We read the diagrams from left to right, so if you have up-and-down lines you should shift them a little so they slant in either direction. This left-to-right reading is important since it determines our interpretation of the diagrams. Matter particles with arrows pointing from left to right are electrons. Matter particles with arrows pointing in the other direction are positrons (antimatter!). In fact, you can think about the arrow as pointing in the direction of the flow of electric charge. As a summary, we our particle content is:
(e+ is a positron, e- is an electron, and the gamma is a photon… think of a gamma ray.)
From this we can make a few important remarks:
The interaction with a photon shown above secretly includes information about the conservation of electric charge: for every arrow coming in, there must be an arrow coming out.
But wait: we can also rotate the interaction so that it tells a different story. Here are a few examples of the different ways one can interpret the single interaction (reading from left to right):
These are to be interpreted as: (1) an electron emits a photon and keeps going, (2) a positron absorbs a photon and keeps going, (3) an electron and positron annihilate into a photon, (4) a photon spontaneously “pair produces” an electron and positron.
On the left side of a diagram we have “incoming particles,” these are the particles that are about to crash into each other to do something interesting. For example, at the LHC these ‘incoming particles’ are the quarks and gluons that live inside the accelerated protons. On the right side of a diagram we have “outgoing particles,” these are the things which are detected after an interesting interaction.
For the theory above, we can imagine an electron/positron collider like the the old LEP and SLAC facilities. In these experiments an electron and positron collide and the resulting outgoing particles are detected. In our simple QED theory, what kinds of “experimental signatures” (outgoing particle configurations) could they measure? (e.g. is it possible to have a signature of a single electron with two positrons? Are there constraints on how many photons come out?)
So we see that the external lines correspond to incoming or outgoing particles. What about the internal lines? These represent virtual particles that are never directly observed. They are created quantum mechanically and disappear quantum mechanically, serving only the purpose of allowing a given set of interactions to occur to allow the incoming particles to turn into the outgoing particles. We’ll have a lot to say about these guys in future posts. Here’s an example where we have a virtual photon mediating the interaction between an electron and a positron.
In the first diagram the electron and positron annihilate into a photon which then produces another electron-positron pair. In the second diagram an electron tosses a photon to a nearby positron (without ever touching the positron). This all meshes with the idea that force particles are just weird quantum objects which mediate forces. However, our theory treats force and matter particles on equal footing. We could draw diagrams where there are photons in the external state and electrons are virtual:
This is a process where light (the photon) and an electron bounce off each other and is called Compton scattering. Note, by the way, that I didn’t bother to slant the vertical virtual particle in the second diagram. This is because it doesn’t matter whether we interpret it as a virtual electron or a virtual positron: we can either say (1) that the electron emits a photon and then scatters off of the incoming photon, or (2) we can say that the incoming photon pair produced with the resulting positron annihilating with the electron to form an outgoing photon:
Anyway, this is the basic idea of Feynman diagrams. They allow us to write down what interactions are possible. However, you will eventually discover that there is a much more mathematical interpretation of these diagrams that produces the mathematical expressions that predict the probability of these interactions to occur, and so there is actually some rather complicated mathematics “under the hood.” But just like a work of art, it’s perfectly acceptable to appreciate these diagrams at face value as diagrams of particle interactions. Let me close with a quick “frequently asked questions”:
What is the significance of the x and y axes?These are really spacetime diagrams that outline the “trajectory” of particles. By reading these diagrams from left to right, we interpret the x axis as time. You can think of each vertical slice as a moment in time. The y axis is roughly the space direction.
So are you telling me that the particles travel in straight lines?No, but it’s easy to mistakenly believe this if you take the diagrams too seriously. The path that particles take through actual space is determined not only by the interactions (which are captured by Feynman diagrams), but the kinematics (which is not). For example, one would still have to impose things like momentum and energy conservation. The point of the Feynman diagram is to understand the interactions along a particle’s path, not the actual trajectory of the particle in space.
Does this mean that positrons are just electrons moving backwards in time?In the early days of quantum electrodynamics this seemed to be an idea that people liked to say once in a while because it sounds neat. Diagrammatically (and in some sense mathematically) one can take this interpretation, but it doesn’t really buy you anything. Among other more technical reasons, this viewpoint is rather counterproductive because the mathematical framework of quantum field theory is built upon the idea of causality.
What does it mean that a set of incoming particles and outgoing particles can have multiple diagrams?In the examples above of two-to-two scattering I showed two different diagrams that take the in-state and produce the required out-state. In fact, there are an infinite set of such diagrams. (Can you draw a few more?) Quantum mechanically, one has to sum over all the different ways to get from the in state to the out state. This should sound familiar: it’s just the usual sum over paths in the double slit experiment that we discussed before. We’ll have plenty more to say about this, but the idea is that one has to add the mathematical expressions associated with each diagram just like we had to sum numbers associated with each path in the double slit experiment.
What is the significance of rules 3 and 4?Rule 3 says that we’re only going to care about one particular chain of interactions. We don’t care about additional particles which don’t interact or additional independent chains of interactions. Rule 4 just makes the diagrams easier to read. Occasionally we’ll have to draw curvy lines or even lines that “slide under” other lines.
Where do the rules come from?The rules that we gave above (called Feynman rules) are essentially the definition of a theory of particle physics. More completely, the rules should also include a few numbers associated with the parameters of the theory (e.g. the masses of the particles, how strongly they couple), but we won’t worry about these. Graduate students in particle physics spent much of their first year learning how to carefully extract the diagrammatic rules from mathematical expressions (and then how to use the diagrams to do more math), but the physical content of the theory is most intuitively understood by looking at the diagrams directly and ignoring the math. If you’re really curious, the expression from which one obtains the rules looks something like this (from TD Gutierrez), though that’s a deliberately “scary-looking” formulation.
You’ll develop more intuition about these diagrams and eventually get to some LHC physics, but hopefully this will get the ball rolling for you.
a study blog for collected references, advice, and inspiration
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