Day 76 – 30th March 2018 – Fremantle

Col and I took the bikes out for a bit of a ride today.  It is reasonably hilly where we are staying which proves more of a challenge for me than for Col.  It didn’t help that I was having serious issues with my gears not changing.  Still nice to get out and about and get some use out of the bikes.

We headed over to the new house for a BBQ and the kids had friends over and went swimming.

Brad and Karren Guelfi are friends of Ken and Reagan’s.  Brad is a Biomedical Services Manager for the Health Department in WA and helped order the medical equipment, as well as contributing to the design of the Fiona Stanley Hospital in Murdoch near Fremantle.  He had arranged for a speaker to present on Nanotechnology in Biomedical Science at the Hospital, but as it was on Thursday before the Easter long weekend, the numbers attending were very low.  His wife Karren called Raegan to see if we wanted to attend and listen to help bump up the numbers.  So Raegan, Col and I went along.  Not your typical Tourist thing and certainly not what we expected to be doing.  But Mani the man presenting was so passionate about his area of study that you couldn’t help but become engrossed in the topic.  So good to listen to someone talking about something they love and know inside out.  Amazing the impact that this area can and will have on medical treatment too.  Mani’s area was on manipulating and controlling the shape of droplets using electrical charge.  While Nanotechnology is a very broad area of science, he spoke a little about some of the things they are working towards such as targeting cancer cells directly with radiation rather than the current treatment which damages healthy cells as well as cancer cells; Using Nano-sponges disguised by Red Blood Cells to fool the body into not attacking them and using these to target absorbing toxins from the blood stream; a Lab on a chip, placing small amounts of blood on a microchip for instant analysis.