Take Him Seriously Please. He Needs Just As Much Reassurance, And Love, And Care, As Any Girl Who Has

Wishing you a nice weekend! It seems like the dragonfly tells us from which direction it comes.

Kitty gets around.

Finish Your Antibiotics

I’m sorry, this isn’t Jojo at all but I think I’ve had it for today. As a pharmacy tech, I’m tired of hearing “Well, I started to feel better so I didn’t finish them.” I always knew this but now as a Molecular and Cellular Biology major, I not only know why but how. If you’re willing to heed my advice from the title, good; be on your way. If you need to know more, keep reading.

It’s widely known–to some extent–that not completing a regiment of antibiotics can result in resistant bacteria, or even super bacteria.

But in an infection, you already have resistant bacteria lurking. Not taking antibiotics doesn’t literally create resistant bacteria. So how, then, do the antibiotics take care of the resistant ones?

A lot of antibiotics aren’t bacterialcidal: They don’t actually kill them. Many inhibit growth by some mechanism depending if the bacterium is gram negative or gram positive. For example, penicillin inhibits growth by disrupting the formation of a peptidoglycan layer on gram positive bacteria. Others target the LPS layer on gram negative ones. This keeps the non resistant bacteria at bay. So what kills the resistant ones? Your immune system. Antibiotics buy time and energy for your immune system to recognize and destroy the resistant strains. Your immune system is intelligent in that sense and can form antibodies for new illnesses. It’s important to give your immune system this time because bacteria grow, mutate, and transfer genetic material at astonishing rates. If you wanted to look at a microcosm of the mechanics that go into evolution, you’ve got it with bacteria. 

There are three methods aside from binary fission in which they transfer genes (I won’t get into the minutia of the form of informational material): Transformation, transduction and conjugation.

In transformation, a bacterium can pickup lost genes from a ruptured and dead cell.

Transduction is a way to transfer information via a viral vector.

In conjugation, genes are transferred through something called a pilus: It’s a bridge between two cells that pipes a copy of the information from one cell to another receptive cell and is the only method that doesn’t involve killing either cells. Resistant bacteria like to give around that resistance information like they’re burning a CD for their friends.

So please finish your antibiotics if you’ve been given them. It doesn’t matter if you’ve started to feel better or even great. Finish them.

(Hey science people, If I’ve missed anything or even got something wrong, help me out. There’s obviously lengthy stuff I’ve left out but I think I got the basics).

“Uh oh.”

Crosses (†††) - Option

Shortcut Keys I Use the Most While Writing

In General

Ctrl + S = save (Don’t care if the document I’m on autosaves. I am too much in the habit of doing this and don’t plan to ever fall out of practice.)

Ctrl + Z = undo last action

Ctrl + Y = undo last undo action

Ctrl + End = jump to the end of the document

Ctrl + Home = jump to the start of the document

Ctrl + Left Arrow = jump text cursor one word over to the left

Ctrl + Right Arrow = jump text cursor one word over to the right

Ctrl + A = select all text in document

Shift + Directional Arrows = select a segment of text

Ctrl + Backspace = delete word to the left of the text cursor

Ctrl + Delete = delete word to the right of the text cursor

Ctrl + X = cut selected text from document and place in clipboard

Ctrl + C = copy selected text from document and place in clipboard

Ctrl + V = paste cut/copied text from clipboard into designated section of document

Ctrl + B = bold

Ctrl + I = italics

Ctrl + U = underline

Ctrl + F = find certain text

Ctrl + Down Arrow = jump text cursor to start of next paragraph

Ctrl + Up  Arrow = jump text cursor to start of current/previous paragraph

In Google Docs

Ctrl + Shift + Y = dictionary

Ctrl + Shift + C = word count

Alt + Shift + 5 = strikethrough

Ctrl + Shift + 7 = numbered list

Ctrl + Shift + 8 = bullet point list

Ctrl + K = insert/edit link (can be applied to highlighted text)

In Microsoft Word

F7 = spellcheck

Shift + F7 = thesaurus

Shift + F3 = cycle selected text through ALL CAPITALS, Initial Capitals, and no capitals

Ctrl + E = justify center (align text to the center of the line)

Ctrl + L = justify left (align text to the left margin)

Ctrl + R = justify right (align text to the right margin)

In Microsoft OneNote

Ctrl + Hyphen = strikethrough (not applicable on browser version)

Ctrl + Period = bulletpoint

Ctrl + N = new page in current tab

Shortcut key equivalents for keys that may be excluded on your keyboard

Alt + Backspace = Delete

Alt + Up Arrow = Page Up

Alt + Down Arrow = Page Down

A literal sleepy baby.

No one said the waffle keyboard was more efficient nor, say, even worked. It just feels good. Really, really good.