Protect your tools!

Thinking of taking some homework along during holiday travel?

These days, one of the primary tools of students are laptops and other mobile devices. The problem is that these things are stolen faster than one per minute!

For any of us planning to take our tools along during travel over the next few weeks, here are some tips published at the PC World website:

Holiday Travel Tips: Protect Your Laptop and Privacy
Thomas Wailgum, CIO.com
Sunday, November 30, 2008

For speeding through the security line, you may want to check this out:

8 Laptop Bags That Will Help You Speed Through Airport Security
By Becky Waring
September 16, 2008 Computerworld 2008

And here's even more advice from YouTube . . .



[If you don't see the video viewer in your newsletter or feed version of this article, please go to The A&P Student blog site to view it. ]

The Lion Den?!

What is this Lion Den, anyway?

The Lion Den website is over ten years old. Back in the days it began, the web was just starting to be used by professors for their students' benefit. Our college, like most others at the time, was not prepared for extensive web publication by faculty. So instead of waiting for the college's IT department to catch up to me, I decided to just create my own website.

Because I was a lion tamer in my youth, before I became an A&P professor, I thought a good name for my website would be related to big cats. LionDen.com was available, so I used that one. You'll notice that there is a section related to circus wild-animal training at the website.

But mainly, that's where I put the learning outlines that my students needed in their A&P courses. Then, I started adding study tips. Then PowerPoint slides. Then all kinds of help for my own students.

But as the years rolled on, I found that many students from all over the world were using the material at my LionDen.com website. So now I've begun posting resources that any A&P student might be able to use. Part of my goal of starting this The A&P Student blog is to help students find those resources . . . and many others . . . so that they can learn A&P more easily.

So that's why my website for students (and circus fans) is called LionDen.com!

Go check it out . . . and comment here about what you like, what you don't like, and what else you'd like to see added!

. . . and stay tuned for a major redesign of LionDen.com coming this summer!

Sad pucker

I was recently going over some reviewers' comments as I check over the page proofs of the new edition of our Anatomy & Physiology textbook.

One of the comments criticized our description of the perimetrium of the uterus as being part of the parietal peritoneum. The reviewer erroneously thought that it should be the visceral peritoneum.

This is a common error, alas . . . to forget about the fact that some abdominopelvic organs are in fact retroperitoneal (outside the parietal peritoneum). Even the reviewer, who is an A&P professor, got this one wrong.

One easy way to remember which abdominopelvic organs are retroperitoneal is to use a mnemonic such as SAD PUCKER:

• S = Suprarenal (adrenal) glands
  
• A = Aorta/Inferior Vena Cava
• D = Duodenum (second and third segments)
  
  
• P = Pancreas
• U = Ureters
• C = Colon (ascending and descending only)
• K = Kidneys
• E = Esophagus
• R = Rectum

Or instead, Ursula Uses Kids to Deliver All Lemon Pies except Sue’s Tasty Crust

• Ureters
• Urinary bladder
• Kidneys
• Duodenum
• Adrenal glands
• Large intestine
• Pancreas
• except (not retroperitoneal) Sigmoid and Transverse Colon

Have you visited Study Tips & Tools at the Lion Den website?

Here's a book on how your memory works, and how you can improve it . . .

[NOTE: the mnemonics given here are adapted from a Wikipedia entry]