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Showing posts from July, 2019

Capstone Update/Mental Health Post

I'm still working on what it is exactly I want to do for my Capstone Project. Right now, I'm interested in researching the mental health side of global health. I feel in comparison to infectious diseases, mental health issues such as schizophrenia and depression don't get as much coverage or aren't seen as significant when they have massive impact from the standpoint of quality of life. Health is defined as a well-being of both body and mind: not just getting the right nutrition and exercise, but also being mentally stable and happy. The question then lies in how we can perhaps address these issues of mental health, which is something I'm interested in looking into. I've been doing research on the present studies on depression and the epigenetics behind mental health and think I would like to pursue a discussion with a depression researcher for a public event, publish articles on the Paw Print, or even make a podcast episode (though I can't say I have the ed

The State of Science in Latin America

During my trip to Vietnam and Cambodia (which you can read about in my previous blog posts,) I had some time to read and think about what I had learned the past school year. One book that I had brought along with me was Advice for a Young Investigator, or Reglas y consejos sobre investigacion cientifica, by Santiago Ramon y Cajal, a Spanish biologist. As I was reading, I took note of how Ramon y Cajal saw Spain in a negative light pertaining to its research and development, illustrated by the quotes below. Pero cuando, por dificultades insuperables, sea ello irrealizable (según ocurre desgraciadamente en España, donde las Universidades carecen de libros modernos extranjeros y las Academias no tienen recursos para suscribirse a las revistas científicas más importantes), no debemos, por monografía de más o de menos, dejar de acudir al laboratorio... But when this is not feasible due to insuperable difficulties (which unfortunately occur in Spain, where the universities lack r

Books I've read this summer for global education

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Hello everyone, I wanted to talk a bit about the books I've read over the summer that have relevance to being educated about global issues. This will be a working document for a bit, as the books on the list of books I am working on will steadily migrate to the "Books I've Read" list. Also, reviews for books I have read will get steadily added. Without further ado, let's get to it! Cambodia Never Fall Down This book was recommended to our travel group to Cambodia as a means of seeing what Arn Chorn Pond had experienced under the Khmer Rouge regime. The account that Arn provides is full of detail concerning the regime and details his harrowing experience as a young musician trying to survive. I read it in a single night. I just couldn't put down the book. The account of Cambodia at that time period is so unlike anything that I have experienced or either that I am familiar with at all, and contains brutal imagery and anecdotes. However, where this book