Tom Bassindale, Sheffield Hallam University A drug designed to help cancer patients rebuild wasting muscles has become one of the most contentious substances in elite sport – and the scientist who discovered it now spends more time trying to stop people using it than encouraging its medical use. James Dalton,…
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How THG Evaded Detection: A Dive into Steroid Chemistry
The death of Victor Conte last week, founder of the BALCO lab at centre of a massive steroid scandal, has brought back lots of memories of that time period. I was working in the London WADA lab at the time and it was quite exciting to be in the midst of it all. Why was the drug at the centre of it all known as ‘The Clear’?
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Can you use AI to dope?
“Give Me a Doping Programme to Improve my Marathon Time” We’ve all been reading about how AI is going to steal all our jobs, can it steal the job of the athlete support personnel in guiding the use of illicit methods to improve performance? As a recreational runner (‘hobby jogger’?)…
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World Anti-Doping Agency ban Carbon Monoxide use from 2026
In the last few weeks the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) have published their new list of prohibited substances and methods, as it does each year. This year they have added a new method onto the list – the non-diagnostic use of carbon monoxide (CO). Isn’t CO in the atmosphere all…
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How do we know if testosterone is ‘non-endogenous’?
Yesterday we discovered that Paul Pogba, the Juventus midfielder was provisionally suspended after drugs test found “non-endogenous testosterone metabolites” in a urine sample. The sample was collected on 20th August after Pogba was an unused substitute in a game in Italy. Pogba can face a ban of four years if…
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Reflections on leading our undergraduate curriculum redevelopment
At the start of academic year 2022-23 the university embarked on an ambitious programme of curriculum redevelopment. This encompassed all of the universities taught provision, categorised in various ways: ‘standard’ undergraduate teaching; taught postgraduate teaching; practise focussed education and apprenticeships. The aim from the University were to simplify course structures…
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Embedding Sustainability in the Science Curriculum
All of the undergraduate courses in the Department of Biosciences and Chemistry at Sheffield Hallam have just successfully gone through a full revalidation. From 2024 our department will be offering refreshed versions of our courses in: Biology Biochemistry, Biomedical Science Chemistry. And introducing a new exciting course ‘Biomedicine and Health…
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Is this the end of the lecture and exams?
For Universities, and in particular science education, some of the main issues we faced have been how to deal with closed laboratories (see this blog piece), exams and lectures. I’ll have a look at exams and lectures here.
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What is your idea that got away?
The One That Got Away This is another of my ‘BitRot’ inspired doodles from the summer, transferred from a google note into this blog piece. I did actually voice type it on google, maybe I should have just recorded it as an audio file. Another time. In the book Bit…
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Finding the positives from online learning in a pandemic
At the moment I feel like Rumpelstiltskin trying to find golden threads of what we have delivered over the past year. Some say that this year will have changed University education forever, I must agree, I htink we can take some really positive things from it. We also need to see what aspects of the face to face and campus experience we have really missed and look at getting those back as soon as possible.