Profile: Izmira (Mira) Farhana Mohd Ismail

I was born... months after the first International Islamic Games held in Izmir, Turkey. It was quite a historical event and my parents decided to name me after the beautiful city... hence Izmira!

At school I... was very timid and quiet, I became talkative when I joined the debate team in University

My first relationship was... with my highschool sweetheart at 14, whom I am now happily married to :)

Friends say I'm... cheeky

If I wasn't me I'd like to be... a very glamorous TV host with my own talk show on prime time

At the moment I'm reading... ' Barking' by my favourite comic fantasy writer Tom Holt


My worst job was... none really. I've worked once as a chemist sales assistant and I loved every minute of it!


At the moment I'm... sequencing the ovine CLN6 gene to find disease-causing mutation/s

... which is interesting because... finding the mutation will not only help our affected sheep with Batten/NCL disease but also provide helpful information for children with a comparable human form of the disease.
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Profile: Michael Bertoldo

Mysteriously nicknamed 'Big Bad' for reasons unknown to the Eds, this second year PhD student has been busy jetting off around the globe in his quest to improve the reproductive performance of sows during seasonal infertility.

I was born... 1/1/1984

Friends say I'm... a d**k

If I wasn't me I'd like to be... dunno

At the moment I'm reading... The Costello Memoirs

My worst job was... Kitchen Hand

At the moment I'm... procrastinating

... which is interesting because... right now you probably are too!
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Across the ditch... dutch... dtch?

As requested by the bakeoff crew... oh yes, and don't watch it if you're offended by the word "sht".


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A slice of the action at the Camden bakeoff

On Wednesday a cake competition was held in the Shute building- a new excuse to eat cake and bake cake for those so inclined! The morning was very successful as members of the Shute building rallied in the tea room to sample the 14 cakes, slices, muffins and biscuits created by some of the very finest cooks in the Vet faculty. Each baked good was judged on its appearance, texture and flavour by anyone willing to taste test and contribute a gold coin donation to charity. Sophie Hoft won a prize for best dressed cake - a beautifully decorated yummy mocha fudge meringue cake. Meg Donahoo's lemon yoghurt cake was judged the people's choice award. A good time was had by all and few leftovers remained. $52 was raised for charity.

Ed's note: This blog entry was Meg's prize (punishment?) for winning.

Bakeoffs are abounding in the Vet Faculty at the moment. If you are in the city on Thursdays, come around to level 6 of Gunn or 'India' in the J.D. Stewart building and join in. Next week- Emily Wong will wow us with a yet-to-be-named delicacy!

by Meg Donahoo
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Get your hands off my chloroplasts

A kleptomaniac sea-slug brutally assaults a plant, assimilating parts of it into its own body to become a hybrid plant-animal intent on world domination. Sounds like science fiction, right?

Well, ok, I made up the world domination part. But the rest is true- see the video below! Thanks to Jerry for tipping us off about this.


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101 things to do whilst completing your PhD - #1

In the spirit of every procrastinating PhD student that Hugh Kearns (speaker at our postgrad conference) was talking about, here is a new semi-regular segment! So, #1 is... enter an international dance contest in which PhD students must dance their thesis. Yes, this really exists!

Sue Lynn Lau, a University of Sydney PhD student has won this competition ("Dance your PhD"). Her entry was entitled “The role of vitamin D in beta cell function”. View it here. Her prize is a trip to Chicago, where she'll see her winning entry performed by professional dancers.

The competition is run by Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. So who's entering next year?!!!

Thanks Lee for tipping us off about this!
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SciFi poll

Over the past few months, New Scientist has been running a poll asking readers to vote for the best science fiction book and movie of all time. The winners are revealed here. All you scifi fans out there- do you agree? If you're not a fan and want to be (who doesn't want to join the glamorous world of SF fandom?!), here are some suggestions.


Top five films
1. Blade Runner
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Serenity
4. Forbidden Planet
5. The Matrix

Top five books
1. Dune
2. Foundation series
3. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
4. Ender's Game
5. Hyperion series
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Lemmings under threat

You know lemmings. The small furry rodents that supposedly arrive in plague proportions and then suicide en masse as the food runs out. Incidentally, does anyone else remember the game “Lemmings”, which was released in the 1990s? The obsession of a generation of kids, you can play it here if you are in the market for some time wasting or nostalgia… But I digress! Some new research has revealed that global warming is threatening the lemmings in a most peculiar way. No, these little critters haven’t been driven to suicide by frustration about the lack of human action to prevent climate change…

In fact, the idea that lemmings commit suicide is a myth. What really happens is that in some years they become superabundant (because more young than usual survive- female lemmings can have up to three litters of 12 young per year!), which means that food becomes scarce. During these times they can become so hungry that they disperse in large numbers and to find food. Occasionally, large groups will leap into the sea (sometimes from a cliff!) and swim off to find food, which led to the myth that they commit suicide.

But where does climate change fit in? The new research, published in Nature this month, has shown that lemming numbers are declining because the ‘wrong’ type of snow has been falling in Norway. During winter, lemmings live in the subnivean space that forms between the top layer of snow and the ground. Here, they can remain protected from predators and insulated from cold weather, feeding on the exposed herbage, until the end of winter. Recently, though, this type of snow has not been forming, and worse still, freeze-thaw cycles have meant that a layer of impenetrable ice has been forming over the moss. This has led to a decline in lemming numbers, which will of course have knock-on effects up the food chain on populations of predators such as Arctic foxes and snowy owls. This is just another example amongst many showing that we humans must change our ways if we are going to ensure the survival of the planet.

A lemming- the real kind!
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Profile: Meg Donahoo

Meg is a second year PhD student investigating the immune responses to vaccination against an intestinal disease in pigs. If she can find immune cells in the pig that are linked to vaccine protection then it might be possible to use these in the pig industry to determine whether vaccinated pigs are protected against future infection.

I was born... in the baby factory in Melbourne- that's right, I'm not a two headed Tasmanian

At school I… got picked on for being rosey in the cheeks, apparently I looked like a tomato

My first relationship was... with the floor, I couldn't walk until i was 3 so I polished the floor with my bum

Friends say I'm... feral because I could happily go a week or two without a shower, and showering when you go camping is sacrilege in my books!!

If I wasn't me I'd like to be... one of those hot looking tv presenters who gets to travel to cool places for free.

At the moment I'm reading... a quirky book about horsie people.

My worst job was... cleaning old people's toilets!!

At the moment I'm... playing with lots of poo, blood and intestines- it's fun, really!

... which is interesting because... you can find out a lot of information about someone (pigs) from their poo!

Meg facing her fears and making friends with a chook

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Sheep disappears in shock murder mystery

In a world exclusive, The Appendix today uncovers a hoax that will shock the nation. After five years, we reveal the unthinkable… Dolly the sheep is alive and well, and living in the Faculty of Veterinary Science.

Dolly, a Finn-Dorset sheep, was catapulted to fame after her birth fifteen years ago as the first animal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell. At first, she enjoyed the attention she garnered as she held press conference after press conference on the media circuit and dazzled fans lining the red carpet. However, her enthusiasm faded in the wake of a series of cruel smear campaigns implying that she had an eating disorder reported after a series of wild fluctuations in her weight. After a brief period of respite in the Betty Ford Clinic, Dolly returned home and quickly fell pregnant to a bad-boy Welsh Mountain Ram known only as Sanchez.

Five years after the birth of her triplets, she had disappeared into obscurity. Compromising photos of her dancing naked in a notorious Soho nightclub precipitated a second media frenzy. Dolly’s behaviour grew increasingly erratic. Unable to cope with the glare of the spotlight, Dolly cut her hair shockingly short and then disappeared into seclusion again. Shortly afterwards, she was reported dead from ‘progressive lung disease’.

However, a chance encounter in the sheep unit prompted intrepid investigative work by the Editors of The Appendix. “When I saw that woolly coat and yellow eyes, I just knew it had to be her. She has aged a little, but there’s no hiding a face that famous.” Dolly is, in fact, still alive, and currently living in hiding in the Faculty of Veterinary Science (Camperdown). Dolly refused to comment on this story, but sources close to her suggest that “She just wants to live her life as a normal sheep. After her disastrous relationship with Sanchez, Ryan [a merino ram, the love of Dolly’s life] really grounds her, and they have made their home here together.”

Dolly herself seems unaware of the implications of her choice. When we delved deeper into the “official story”, the truth became increasingly sinister. Not only was Dolly’s death faked, but the body displayed in the Royal Museum of Scotland may be that of a victim of this foul conspiracy. We have little doubt that this is the body of a sheep that tried to tell the true story.


The body of an unknown sheep was substituted for Dolly at the Royal Museum of Scotland.
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