Bovine TB found in wild boar for first time in UK

A group of scientists have recently performed tests on a 60 kg female wild boar in the UK founding signs of bovine tuberculosis. This discover is the first of its kind in the UK and has raised some concern among the farmers. They think this could contribute to the presence of this disease in cattle, but researchers say this species has a low risk of spread the disease.

The study is conducted for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), which recently has said: "This finding does not change our risk assessment of the roles of other wildlife at present and we continue to monitor confirmed cases of TB in all animals, including wildlife, as part of our ongoing TB surveillance."
DEFRA also said the main risk for human become infected is the handling of infected wild boars or their carcasses in field. So they recommend basic hygiene practices and the wearing of protective equipment to prevent the contact with aerosols.

The wild boar joins to the list of wild reservoirs of bovine tuberculosis. Some animals of this list, like badgers, are considered a real threat for some governments, like Wales which performs culling on them. The UK promotes the culling of some animals like wild deer when the levels of infection are too high. Scientists are divided about this measure is really effective.

ps: this is the main article http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/21/bovine-tb-found-in-wild-boar

The Faculty

I must admit that I love my faculty because it has a lot of good things (to me) that others don't, like the green areas. But I reckon that it has a lot of facilities deficiencies too.
Firstly, the restrooms, at least the male ones, are so far away from everything and the only one which is in a central place is too little and old. I know it's too difficult to build new restrooms in better places, but at least the most used one should be remodelled.
Another problem I could tell is about the cafeteria. This place doesn't have structural deficiencies but it has serious quality problems. The menu is too limited and expensive, and the food is bad cooked and the portions are so small. In addition, sometimes you can found some insects in your salad or a piece of steel in your soup. This is a serious issue because this is the only cafeteria in the faculty and the services that it offers should have a minimum of quality. Several times the students have complained about it writing letters to the authorities of the faculty but all remains in the same state. Considering this, the only solution I see is the changing of management.
To finish I'd like to mention something that many people could consider anecdotic but to me, is a bit worrying. The faculty is now in a remodeling process: the walls are being repainted, there are new lawns and there are new signs which are written in Spanish and English. The issue is that some of them have misspelled words which is a very shameful thing considering that it belongs the best University in the country. Everytime I see them I feel ashamed about it. The solution is easy: rewrite them!

Horses! =D

There are a lot of animals I like, but there is only one which take the first place in my list and that's the horse (I should say the dog is very close). Since I was a kid I've admired this wonderful animals but as a lot of people I was pretty afraid of them, mainly because they are so impressive.
When I was around 10 years old I had the chance of ride a horse by myself and in that moment, I fell in love with horses forever. I was (and still I am) astonished with the way the horse can mix up the elegance and strength in its running.
Horses are really faithful animals. Some people don't think so just because horses usually don't perform signs of happiness like dogs which waves their tails and jump around. When a horse is happy to see its owner, it just walks towards him or her.
Another reason I really like this wonderful animals is that horses in addition to be "pets", can be a work tool in country or city (races). But, to my mind, horses are in a special category: they aren't pets neither work tools, they are just Horses.
A few weeks ago, I had a vocational crisis about my work area as a vet. Since I began to study this career I'd been strongly convinced about to work with horses, but lastly I experienced some things that made me think about to work with little animals like dogs and cats. I discard all my confusion thanks two things: In a shift in the faculty hospital a cat scratched me with no reason, he just hated me; and the next day after that I visited a Training Center for Arabian horses (which run endurance races) where I knew about a new work field. To sum up, I fell in love with horses again.

My Top Five (not too convinced about it)

I'm not a big fan of Santiago but I think this city has a lot of interesting places to visit even though I haven't visited all of them.

1.- La Moneda Palace: The house of government is an idispensable place to visit because is a building with a lot of history. It has a very beautiful architecture too: It is the only build in South America of a pure Italian Neo-Classical style (it was built between the years 1786 and 1812 and was designed by the italian architect Joaquín Toesca).

2.- Central Station: originally called "Alameda Station" and designed by the famous architect Gustav Eiffel, The Central Station is the main rail terminal in Chile which make it a place with a very hectic life (specially commercial). The dark side (as some Star Wars's fans says) of this place is the crime: since it is such a crowded place, the thieves can steal things from people (mainly tourists) easily.

3.- Sta Lucia Hill: to my mind this is one of the most beautiful places in Santiago and one with a lot of history too. This place was the hill where Pedro de Valdivia watched the Mapocho Valley for first time and reclaimed it as property of the Spanish Crown. Like the mentioned places before, this place has a beatiful architecture with a lot of fountains, gardens and viewpoints; all of them were part of the remodeling plan promoted by Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna in the year 1872. Besides, the National Library is next to it and that's another interesting place to visit.

4.- The Palace of Fine Arts: this museum is the oldest in South America and possesses a lot of importan art collections. It also has a great French architecture. Furthermore, since the museum is located in the Forestall Park, you could take a nice walk towards Baquedano Square and buy an unusual flavored ice cream (like pepper, tomato, cinnamon, etc) in Emporio La Rosa.

5.- Quinta Normal Park: this is a huge park with a lot of museums and university faculties. You could spend all day inside and perhaps you couldn't visit all its features like The Natural History Museum, The Contemporary Art Museum, The Children's Museum, The Science and Technology Museum, etc.

This list is not in importance order, but if you ask me the top one in the list should be Sta Lucia Hill and then all the others.

A really hard work

I don't like to talk about controversial topics (like death penalty), but that don't mean I don't have an opinion about it, I just don't like to express it.
As far as I am concerned, death penalty is not a punishment at all because the condemned person is released of all guilty in the moment he or she is executed.
Some people agree with my opinion but they give humanitarian and religious arguments. I just think that there are better ways to punish a criminal like life sentence, in which case the convict will be paying for his crime until his death and he won't be able to commit another crime again.
In addition, some countries which still contemplate the death penalty abuse of it. For instance, in 2007, in North Korea, an important business man was executed in a stadium in front of 120.000 people on charge of making phone calls abroad, which, if you ask me is just an exaggeration.
To sum up, I'm convinced that the solution is the implementation of a really efficient penal system which guarantees the serve of the penalties. Actually it doesn't happen and that' why some countries still believe in death penalty as a solution.

Ticket to Ride

There are several countries I want to visit like Japan, Germany, France, Mexico, etc. But, for a lot of reasons, the very top of my list is England.
I'd really love to go to London and visit all it's classic touristic features like The Buckingham Palace, which is the home of the Royal Family; Trafalgar Square; The Tower of London, which was house of the Crown Jewels for several years and was the place where Anne Boleyn was imprisoned on charges of adultery, treason, witchcraft and incest; The Tower Bridge; The Parliament Building (obviously with the Big Ben) and The St. Paul's Cathedral. But visit the modern buildings like The Shard of Glass, The Millennium Bridge, The City Hall and The London's Eye would be really awesome too. To sum up, I want to visit all the famous buildings in London.
As a regular (not extremist) football fan, it'd be so great to visit the Wembley Stadium which is like our National Stadium and the Stamford Bridge Stadium which is home of Chelsea FC.
In a non-touristic term, I think that study a PhD in England would be really useful to me, that's because England have a really good medicine of big animals, like cows and horses, which is my favourite veterinary area. It'd also be good to improve my English level and I could listen the British accent (which I consider so polished and sexy) all day.
Another reason why England is the first country I like to visit is the Music. As far as I know, there are a lot of festivals of indie and garage rock music (which is my favourite one). And I'd love to visit the studios of Abbey Road, where The Beatles recorded their albums; and the Apple Corps building at 3 Savile Row, where they made their last live performance in the rooftop.
Probably I could live all my life over there but now, I'm dying for spend just a couple weeks or months over the Pond (as American says).

2009 Second Term: A Productive One

The second term of 2009 was like the headline says, a very productive one, but that was only in the academic context, although I had to retake FOUR subjects (yes, I failed in the most epic way in the second term of 2008).

As I said, that was a really productive time: I learned a lot of Physiopathology, which has been really useful to me now I'm taking Intern Medicine. Also, I finally could understan Genetics, but I'm still thinking that it's useless in the pre-grade level.

On the same topic, the second term of 2009 had one of the best academic experiences I've ever had in this career: I had my first shifts in a Horse Breeding Precinct called "Haras Paulina". A friend and I had the Tuesday night shift in which we had to give some water to the animals, check the mares which were about to foal, and check the physological constants of the foals.

As I had so much to study and some work in the horse breeding precinct, my social life, which honestly has never been too active, became only a shadow of what it was: I just hanged out with my university friends when we were in the faculty. Sadly, my social life is still stuck in the same state, although, I can see some signs of "recovery".

Luckily, this term ended so nice compare with the second term of 2008. I passed all my subjects, my entire family was alright, I assisted a mare to foal in one of my shifts, and for Christmas my parents gave me a Xbox 360 as a reward for all my physical and psycological effort done in the term (and also because I bothered so much asking them for it).

Transantiago u_u

When the new transport system of Santiago started three years ago, I think I was one of the few people who was supportive about it. I must say that my opinion change a bit in the first week and I still think in the same way.
Comparatively, Transantiago has a lot of good things and, obviously, has some bad things too. First of all, as I see it, one of the best qualities of this new system is the change of the payment system; the use of the Bip! card make the work of the drivers safer to themselves and for the users of Transantiago.
Another good thing of this system is the partial change (at least) of the old yellow buses; the new ones, although they are slower than the yellow ones, are cleaner and more quiet than the old ones.
Unluckily, I've been a bit affected by this system: when I used the old system, it takes me half an hour to arrive to the faculty, but now it takes me one hour! That's because I have to do two changes: bus to undergroud, and underground to bus. That's the only bad thing, but I think it's a realy big deal.
To improve this system, I think that people in charge should analyze better the changes between bus and underground and get it better, because that's the point where this new system fails. I don't say that the changes must be removed, I say that they must be organized in a better way.

New One

New course, new blog xD