UoM General Chat

[LeviLamp]

Everything isn't a park when you have cows, because they extensively graze the grass and ornamental shrubs and cause wide-scale soil erosion, and then the children's playground collapses into the earth.

(I'm sorry)

[vox nihili]

did you live amongst cows too?! i hope you also lived amongst cows, what isn't a park when there are cows?!
cowscowscowscowscows

Our nextdoor neighbours had some cows that quite often invited themselves onto our property. Mainly sheep now though. And bogans.

[scribble]

O____________________O I CANT TELL IF YOURE SERIOUS BUT I HOPE YOU ARE

levi, i will make sure to eat ALL of your grass when i become a cow >:[

[vox nihili]

O____________________O I CANT TELL IF YOURE SERIOUS BUT I HOPE YOU ARE

levi, i will make sure to eat ALL of your grass when i become a cow >:[

Absolutely serious




By the way, has anybody done Ancient Greek 1? Really loving the idea of knocking off my last breadth over the winter...

[Jono_CP]

Can I get into a Bachelor of Arts degree at UoM with a SEAS and an ATAR in the high 80's?

[Leronziia]

Can I get into a Bachelor of Arts degree at UoM with a SEAS and an ATAR in the high 80's?

Yeah, you'd definitely be a chance. SEAS does weird things sometimes. Friend of mine with an ATAR of 89 (end of 2012) got into science at UoM, and his only criterion was under-represented school.

[vox nihili]

So, I wake up this morning, and there are sheep all over the place.... Where the fuck did they come from? :|

[simpak]

Arghhh I'm so sick.
I feel like that guy that gave the MDHS Honours Orientation talk that was like 'during Honours I got sick and I ignored it and then it turned into a nasty chest infection that wouldn't go away for months' and my response was 'this dude is weak, then'.
AND NOW I'M TURNING INTO HIM, it's karma.

[litaluta]

on Friday I forgot to luck the door before going to uni, but as soon as I realized that I came back and my only reason was,what if the thief wants to use my anatomy notes as toilet paper ? ((((((((((

[neatfeet]

By the way, has anybody done Ancient Greek 1? Really loving the idea of knocking off my last breadth over the winter...

I did it last year. Such a good subject (and my highest mark to date!) It really helps if you've done Latin before, but even if you haven't you should be fine if you put some effort in. Try and get a head start before classes start, even if it's just going through the textbook or memorising the alphabet. Also try and do some background reading on the language structure and cases, they're a bit challenging if you've never encountered a case language before 

[charmanderp]

So, I wake up this morning, and there are sheep all over the place.... Where the fuck did they come from? :|

inb4 New Zealand joke.

[vox nihili]

I did it last year. Such a good subject (and my highest mark to date!) It really helps if you've done Latin before, but even if you haven't you should be fine if you put some effort in. Try and get a head start before classes start, even if it's just going through the textbook or memorising the alphabet. Also try and do some background reading on the language structure and cases, they're a bit challenging if you've never encountered a case language before 

Thank you very much! I think I might do it then. Personally, I've never studied Latin before but I don't have too much trouble with cases because I speak (some) Serbian and they've got 8 cases. Thank you for that

inb4 New Zealand joke.

[Holmes]

Bio questions, I've been reading up on it, but I'm unclear what the usual lifespan of T cells is, could I please have some help? I've picked up that once a B cell is activated by an antigen (with the help of a helper T cell), it proliferates and differentiates into an effector cell, which eventually becomes a plasma cell that can secrete antibodies at a very high rate, and then it usually dies after a few days to a month. I think that all B cells are made in bone marrow, and at the same time, that memory B cells can survive for years. So what's the usual lifespan of T cells, and are most of them produced in the thymus in foetal development, for the rest of ones life? Or are they somehow renewed consistently as well?

Sorry for the length (it somehow crept up), and I appreciate any help.

[simpak]

So what's the usual lifespan of T cells, and are most of them produced in the thymus in foetal development, for the rest of ones life? Or are they somehow renewed consistently as well?

Sorry for the length (it somehow crept up), and I appreciate any help.

T cells live as naive cells basically 'indefinitely' because they are renewed by a process of constant, slow division (homeostatic proliferation).  Once they have been activated and expand 95% of the T cells produced during the response will 'contract' (ie undergo apoptosis) but ~5% will remain as memory T cells.  This contraction process usually occurs within around a week or two of their activation.  The memory phase should be considered ~day 30 whereas the 'resolution phase' (infection cleared, contraction occurring) is considered ~day 14.  This is for an acute infection such as primary HSV infection (/cough/ my lab).  Memory T cells can survive basically forever, depending on the type of memory cell.  However, some memory cells end up 'converting' to what I might describe as a 'shitter state' over their lifespan so that they become less effective at protecting...it's not death though, they're still there.

Most T cells are produced early in life (not actually in foetal development, more so very early childhood) before the thymus regresses (degenerates).  T cell production continues throughout life but at a much lower rate/efficiency due to the degenerated thymus.  So you always have the production of new T cells in adulthood, the process is just less efficient than what it is early in life.

[Holmes]

Ah, thank you Simpak! So I now understand that homeostatic mechanisms maintain T cell populations at a fairly constant level. So if a T cell is activated during an infection, does it begin to proliferate very quickly to produce more T cells of the same specificity (if that makes any sense)? And also, if someone keeps on having infections or something similar that requires many specific T cells to be produced, could they kind of run out temporarily? Or are there so many that that probably won't happen? (Sorry if this is sounds like a childishly /naive/ question.)

Also, this one seems like it could be a bit complicated to answer, but how to T cells distinguish self antigens from non-self? I think that B cells have a screening process in bone marrow where like 99% of the cells produced are destroyed because they react with the self, but does something similar happen with the thymus or something? (and is there MHC involved in this... which keeps on cropping up all over the place when I try to find an answer to this...)