CX717 nixes sleep deprivation

Slashdot had an interesting article today about a new drug that may help combat the decrease in mental acuity associated with sleep deprivation. According to a Reuters article, CX717 was tested on monkeys and "when the monkeys were subjected [to] 30-36 hours of sleep deprivation, average performance accuracy dropped to 63 percent, which was restored to 84 percent after CX717 treatment." Wow, that's the difference between a failing grade and a B minus, depending on the school! Good news for med students! Here's a link to articles on BBC and a more extensive one from Cortex Pharmaceuticals, the maker of CX717. I tried to post a link to the Reuters article, had trouble with the tag.

Stupid Subconscious

I keep having these dreams where I've been accepted to SGU, but as soon as I go to Grenada, everything goes wrong: I arrive late, I lose my room key and cell phone, I can't find all my luggage, I'm late to classes, I get lost, I fail every quiz or can't find my homework, etc. Weird, huh?

My intro

As you may have read in my bio, I am applying to premed. I just finished my personal statement for the application, and I think it's a great way to introduce myself without having to come up with a whole bunch of new text, so here it is, the first draft, anyway.

Personal Statement
I have always been an ambitious person. Even when I was in grade school, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to become a doctor and study diseases transmitted by insects. Why insects?, you may ask. I have had a lifelong interest in the creepy-crawlies of the world. At any point in my childhood, one could have walked into the house to find various bugs in baby food jars or under magnifying glasses. I would read as many books about them as I could get my hands on. But I knew that in addition to doing something with insects, I wanted to do something that would be of direct help to people. Medicine was just such a discipline. Being a doctor could open the door for me to enter into remote areas, where people couldn’t access or even afford help. I could study and maybe even eradicate yellow fever, malaria, West Nile Virus, and more.
My interests did not only lie in the sciences, though. I have always had a passion for the arts. I played the viola in my school orchestra from the third grade through the end of my schooling, and continue to play it today. I was the principle violist in my school orchestra two years, assistant principle two years, and I was the principle violist in the Houlton Community Orchestra, where I played for one semester while I attended the Maine School of Science and Math. I also played in the Mid Maine Youth Orchestra, comprised of exceptional students from the surrounding area who were accepted by audition. I even attended the American String Teachers Association Summer Camp for two years, and I have written compositions for strings since I was 14 years old. Playing the viola is an outlet for me, and I believe it has helped me in many areas of my life, both mentally and academically. I also enjoy singing; I was trained classically when I was 14, and I sang in the school chorus all throughout school, as well as community choruses and in the Maine All-State Chorus, by audition. I was also a participant in the Continental Harmony Project, where I joined a select chorus to perform a preview of a special group of compositions about the foothills area of Maine.
Theater has also been one of my passions, and I have been able to participate in many different aspects of it, including costuming, props, makeup, set construction, and of course, acting. I performed in both musicals in my high school career, as well as several one-act plays and several community theater productions. I believe acting has helped me to develop important skills in public speaking, and the behind-the-scenes work has proved to be a great problem-solving arena.
I was always enamored with learning and challenging my mind. I participated three years in Odyssey of the Mind, a problem-solving challenge for students, and I was a regular participant from the fifth grade on in Knowledge Masters, where students conspire to answer hundreds of questions on many different subjects in as few seconds as possible. I also did a lot of creative writing, and I was even named 1997 Promising Young Writer by the National Council of Teachers of English, the only one in Maine that year; and I was named a National Merit Scholarship Commended Student in my junior year of high school. However, due to family and medical problems beyond my control, I did not graduate high school, but instead got a GED. I had a perfect score in the math section of the GED and excellent scores in every other area.
After school I spent some time trying to bring my health back up to snuff, going to doctors and adjusting my life. I was active in the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship Club at the local university, where I volunteered in many projects including a trip to a Boston soup kitchen and Vacation Bible School. Then I went to work at Wal-Mart. This was definitely not a part of my original plans, and if you had asked me in high school, I would have vehemently barred the mere thought of working at Wal-Mart; but in time I actually grew to enjoy it. I worked as a cashier, and I was eager to learn different areas of the store, so I trained in the Snack Bar, the Fitting Room, Layaway, and Customer Service, and even though my official job title was "cashier", I was actually more of a "floater" because I knew more areas of the store than the majority of the other employees. I especially enjoyed Customer Service and Layaway, because I got to deal with more complex problems of organization and customer relations. I encountered many disgruntled customers, and I believe I became adept at handling difficult situations. I learned a lot about people, and a lot about myself. One of my goals every day was to try to get every customer with whom I dealt to smile. Of course I didn’t get smiles out of 100% of them, but I did my best. I think this will help immensely in my medical career. I believe every person deserves to feel welcome, appreciated, and respected, and that is very important for a doctor when dealing with patients.
I am confident I will make an excellent doctor. I have always watched programs on the television that contained medical procedures, and read books about doctors and medicine, with intense interest. The human body is an amazing thing, and the care of others is paramount in my priorities. Some have asked why I want to be a doctor instead of settling for becoming a nurse practitioner or a physician’s assistant. My reply is that I would never be satisfied with going only partway when I know I have the ability to go all the way. Even when taking a first aid course, I have so many questions going through my head and I always want to learn more than what I’m offered. I am determined to go through with this, all the way. I am dedicated to learning, in order that I may make a difference in people’s lives, no matter who they are or where they live. As a doctor, I can provide more help than as a nurse or a P.A., and I will have more knowledge to fall back on. This has been my dream for many years, and I am dedicated to it.

Well, there you have it. That's me. More to come later.