That's the plan

There's so much hanging after this semester. Usually, I feel relieved after the semester is over, but there's so much left to do that .... well I guess that I still feel relieved. I do not have that feeling that things are rolling away from me. I still feel like there's a ton to do, and I haven't gotten some of grades back yet, so I'm a little anxious about that. Over the break we're going to begin a test for colonization with more regularly sized plastics. I'm a little disappointed that we couldn't start the 120 day co incubation, but this is great practice for that. I am very motivated to complete the test for colonization, and I find that I'm definitely feeling more comfortable organizing our tests and trying to think of solutions to issues that come up which is good because honestly I was starting to feel like I was just being way too dramatic about issues that were popping up in the process of my research when I should have been just problem solving. Dr Cotter has really been a wonderful example of that. We are going to bang out this colonization test, and we'll find out some stuff. You always find out something.

In retrospect

I'm a bit relieved that this semester is coming to an end. Towards the end all the little things that had begun to get away from me really started adding up most especially with my research. Given the semester to do over again, I'd try to plan ahead better for due dates, and I'd try to schedule more time for meetings with my research partners. We could have especially benefited from paying better attention to our data as it came in instead of just at the end when we could lump it all together. I'm looking forward to next semester even though I'm happy to be through this one.

Major issues

I’ve been thinking about the kind of setting that I’ll be working in if I go into biotech. It seems like it will be a lot of pharmaceutical companies and the like, and while I really would love to know the things for that major and potentially contribute to people’s well being in that way, I just don’t think that that’s the type of setting that I would be most happy spending the majority of my time. I’ve really been eyeing environmental science. I’ve gotten some good feedback about it, and I think that it would be flexible, and I can’t imagine that I’d ever run out of things to explore.
Attached is a PDF for an event that the STEAM club will be participating in a breakout session, but I’ve heard that there are also going to be some other really awesome people presenting as well including the robotics club among others.

Internships and GPS

    This week one of the S-STEM members from ASU West did a presentation about internships. Basically he said that it was all networking. *sigh* It’s not exactly music to an introverts ears. I love that I’m meeting people that are interested in science like no other people that I’ve met anywhere else, but I’m a pretty independent spirit. I don’t like to be an inconvenience for others, and when I’m ready to do something, I don’t really like have to ask anyone else before I can handle it. It’s a bit of an adjustment for me. I know that it will make me more flexible and just better all around.
     Anyway, it’s all a lot of word of mouth according to him which just makes the S-STEM program even more amazing. Another person was telling me that you can also research what projects people are working on that you might find interesting and email and chase them down to ask them if you can work for them... most of the time for free, but he said that if they like your work well enough, they’ll probably try to find a way to have you paid in order to keep you on the project.
     After that presentation, Dr Hamdan gave one on GPS/GIS. GPS is more the hardware, satellites, raw data. GIS is the software that brings all the data together into something more manageable. Dr Hamdan teaches a couple of online GIS classes at the college! It kind of all ties in really because a lot of the internships with the forestry service require the use of GPS and GIS. I was kind of eyeing those because I have career ADD and I was considering doing something with environmental toxicology.   :-D   Don’t judge me.

Forestry Services Internships

That’s an old listing, but you get the idea. A lot of GPS and GIS. Technology changes everything, and I certainly want to be prepared with the skills for any position that I might be interested in. It’s so awesome that we have classes for that.

Advisor meeting and hole punching

     My meeting with the advisor was great. I really appreciated having someone from the actual school there to talk to about classes. Before joining S-STEM, I had a really hard time trying to decide what the best path was especially when my undergrad degree was going to be split between two schools. I know that I could have made an appointment and seen an advisor apart from the program, but it was so convenient to have him just there when I was already there and studying anyway. The extra awesome part was that the advisor had also gotten part of his degree in philosophy!!! I really want to minor in some kind of philosophy. I’m not sure what yet. There’s logic and ethics and ancient. The advisor said that he’d email me some of the options that they have available. I always thought that having a minor really sounded like something special and tough, but really it’s only 6 courses (only two can be lower division or at the community college level as I understand it). That’s not so hard.
     Research continues of course. This week we are breaking our hands trying to punch out uniform plastic circles. Fun, fun. It’ll be a huge help during SEM and FTIR though especially compared to randomly grated microplastics where I expect the tool marks to be more completely random and chaotic. You never know what something will really look like once you get down to the micro level though. *shrugs* We shall see.

Eyeing the future

I've lost my note cards! I'm so sad about it. I had all the information from the mixer in those, and I kept thinking that I'd write this post after I found them. The mixer was good. I really enjoyed meeting the professors that were there. Their participation makes me think that they're actively interested in working with students which makes me much more likely to seek them out in the future. Actually, there were THREE of them whose projects were super interesting to me! I don't know how I'm go to settle on one project. I suppose that reflects my hesitance to settle into one degree as well. An adviser told me not to worry too much about choosing and that he thinks people are too worried about specializing and that leads to people being less well-rounded. I don't know though. Specialization is how we got more complex organisms. I kinda like the idea of being an expert in something, but I think he's probably right about focus especially as an undergrad.
     Anyway, I heard about a professor whose last name is Price that works with genetics and flies that sounded really interesting, but I didn't meet them, so that's about as much as I got from that. I met Pam Polidoro who was Completely kind and helpful. She not only patiently answered my questions about her research but also my questions about differences in fields close and/or related to hers and referred me to her colleagues when their research was relevant to what we were talking about. Oh! She told us to email her for invites to talks one of the people that she mentors gives about research that is relevant to ours! I'm gonna do that as soon as I'm done here! But you see how nice and helpful she was?! I would love to work with her. Most of her stuff is related to aquatics and microplastics which is part of why I'd like to work with her, but after meeting her, I just think that she's a lovely person. I also met Karen Watanabe, and we talked a lot about toxicology and the difference between environmental toxicology and medical or pharmacy toxicology. She seemed very knowledgeable, and from what I gather, she kind of straddles that line but leans toward pharmacy since her interest and research is more towards the potential or eventual effects on humans as opposed to the environment. Finally, I met Dr Marshall whose research is based on the study of proteins like enzymes as it relates to cell signalling, their interactions with each other, and their effects on gene expression. I know those things are all kind of similar and overlapping, but I can only tell you about what I understood as I heard it. I probably got some stuff wrong or even inaccurate about their stuff. If they ever hear about it, I hope they'll forgive me. I just wanted to point out how interesting all the things that they are doing are and the fantastic opportunities that are there.
     Meeting Dr Marshall last was very fortunate because she actually gave us a small tour that ended in us getting to see her lab. For the most part it all seemed very standard which is a comfort. The whole campus has the same kind of cozy feeling that I've come to associate with Phoenix College. I very much look forward to spending time on the campus. Don't get me wrong, it's still much larger than Phoenix College and finding where you fit in such a larger place can sometimes make us seem smaller as individuals, but it really is a very pretty campus and I like the idea of contributing to that thing that is so much bigger than me. Anyway, rambling! Sam is actually a part of Dr Marshall's lab, and as it turns out, they are quite the artists, regular renaissance scientists. :-P

We'll talk about it later

Oooo my goodness, this week has gone by in a blur. It's like juggling and the balls all start moving just a little too fast, and they feel like they're starting to get away from you. I have a couple of tests coming up, and I'm almost finished moving. I'll be so happy to get past those things. I think then I'll feel much more like I have a handle on things. On the up side, I'm feeling less tense about Physics which is super strange because that's one of the tests that I have coming up. I think that I'm "getting it" more than I'm giving myself credit for. We'll see when that test comes! It might actually be three tests now that I'm thinking of it. We're going to focus on finishing the SEM and interpreting the pictures for our research this semester. We're going to start a new round of co incubation with more regular sized micro plastics as well. That will give us a chance to repeat the experiment and potentially confirm our initial findings and it will also provide us with more material for FTIR testing because we really didn't have much left after SEM. I think I'll keep it short this time and get studying.

https://ramsayburt.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/water-on-marsgandini-juggling-at-assembly-roxy-edinburgh/

Women of Color in STEM

I've been meaning to write this post for like 2 weeks. It is time. I do not have everything that I want to show and note about it right in front of me, so I might add some stuff later, but if you're reading this, feel free to ask me whatever about it. I highly recommend it based on my experience.
First thing they did on Friday was to feed us which was unlucky for me because I had already eaten in preparation for the event, and it's just weird to be the only person not eating. I kind of stuck out the whole conference though because I was the least educated person attending. It was a little daunting, and they had breakout groups and special times scheduled just for networking, so I was feeling entirely out of my element though there were some very nice people there, I guess I just didn't understand why they would be interested in networking with an undergraduate student. Maybe a better description would be to say that I felt as though I didn't really have any peers there. After everyone was done eating, a special group of students from a program called ASPIRE from local public schools presented some of the things that they'd been learning in the program. As part of their presentation they had us compete to see which table could make a sonobe cube the fastest which was fun and a little hilarious too. I had a great table. I actually happened to sit next to one of the women presenting on another day! I thoroughly enjoyed talking to all of the women at my table. They were wonderful. After that, Stanlie M. James, PhD was the keynote speaker. She talked about a variety of issues surrounding women and women of color in general. It was a great opening to the conference because unfortunately you still have to explain to some people why you need programs to support gender and racial equality. If I ever have any free time again, she has some books and published material that I'd like to look at.
The second day, I made sure not to eat. Lol. They had coffee and muffins and all that, and someone that I knew in passing was actually there! It was nice to see a friendly face. The keynote speaker was Coral Evans, the mayor of Flagstaff. She was assertive and strong, and she talked about having a GED and still going on to complete her master's degree and just being very confident in addition to some different things that she's done to give back and benefit her community. I really admire her. We did breakout sessions and I went to Turning Your Research into Evidence-based Policymaking. I don't remember exactly all the reasons that I chose that one when there were so many available, but it probably had to do with my conviction that good public communication about science is SO important. Dr Nicol Turner-Lee was absolutely fantabulous. I'd say that I aspire to accomplish some of the things that she's done, but she's accomplished so much and so many amazing things that I can't even imagine. She's currently working with the Brookings Institute. (I don't know the significance of that, but they talked about it like they're only letting the best of the best in and she says that everyone there has written a book so now she has to write a book. I'm glad that she's going to write a book because her book sounds super interesting!) She's going to write a book about people who are invisible and are becoming more invisible because they don't have access to technology and/or the internet, so data isn't being collected about them and they aren't being represented in large portions of society. It really has the potential to be an "insult to injury" situation in low income and rural communities. Again I have notes if you're interested in more. Then we did lunch followed by a question panel with Coral Evans and Dr Nicol Turner-Lee and then another breakout session. I think that I must have been super exhausted and nervous about having no peers at this point because for that session I chose Starting or Growing You Own Small Business. I have absolutely zero interesting in starting a business. They talked about a program that is absolutely free that will help you navigate everything. The program was designed to empower women all over the world and give them the tools that they need to take care of their families. (It was kind of interesting that they said there were studies that said that if you wanted to truly take care of communities and empower families, you do the most good helping the women as opposed to helping the men.) The program is designed for women, but it is free and accessible to absolutely anyone including men. I'll put some pictures below. If you were think or know someone that is thinking about owning a business, you should definitely check it out. Did I mention that IT'S FREE. It will basically make your business plan for you and help you learn how to get startup capital.
Anyway, that's they really big stuff about the conference. This post is already way, way too long. I have notes if anyone wants more information just ask.

Still a bit behind

It's a little exhausting constantly thinking that you're behind. I love all the stuff that I'm doing, and in general, I'm doing very well at all the things that I'm doing. I can't help but thinking that I would be doing even better if I weren't behind and feeling so rushed. I'm actually moving this month though, so that makes the time crunch even more real. My baby goes back to school this week and that will help get us back on schedule. My research group is Still working on putting together our protocols for FTIR, but SEM actually went completely smoothly this week! It was amazing. The first sample wouldn't seem to focus, and I was beginning to have the sinking feeling that this week would be a repeat of our previous sessions where something different slowed us down every freaking time. Dr Ong helped us through a bit and then we flew through the rest of the session. He's teaching a class that includes an SEM portion along with some other equipment and techniques that I really want to take in the spring called Micro-Nano technology (MNT201). If I remember correctly, he said that it will certify you for some type of tech position. It sounds kind of awesome. Our pictures were good. Dr Hamdan said that it's very normal to be ready to get work and get a bunch of things done and then something happens to sabotage it all and you get Nothing. She's so calm and helpful about everything. Awww, we have such great professors. I love Phoenix College. Anyway, maybe SEM was a sign of things to come and everything will go super smoothly and I will be completely caught up. lol smh We'll see. I'm going to post some of the stuff about the conference next. Promise.

MNT201

Late! Everything is late!

     Hmm, so I'm going to try to focus on this whole week as a learning experience. I obviously did NOT plan ahead well enough. Last week ended with my research mates, super busy with presentations and what not which I was kind of grateful for because that meant that they didn't need me. I've never voluntarily presented anything of an academic nature in front of anyone with an academic background in the field in my life. Dr Cotter assures me that this is coming. I have thoroughly freaked myself out about this eventuality, so perhaps when the time comes, my only embarrassment will be my lack of education and expertise and not my stunning awkwardness from nerves. Doubtful. I'm sure that I will be better with practice. I'm just not hopping up and down to jump into that. Anyway, then my son had all this stuff at school, then my alternator DIED (cars do not work without alternators much to my dismay), then I had two tests. Oh my goodness, I can't help but think that if I had planned ahead better that I wouldn't have stumbled through the whole mess so clumsily.
     I also managed to continue to collect some background research on the use of FTIR. I can't wait to take organic chemistry and start in on biochemistry. The last time we did SEM was a little disappointing because I had hoped to get more accomplished but there were all these delays because the machine was acting finicky because of one tiny freaking ring being a little out of place on the sample mount. Sigh. The pictures we got did seem to be really indicative of biodegradation. They were incredibly rough and cracked compared to the alcohol treated plastics. That was exciting at least.
     I finished my background paper, but it was late. I hate being late, but I really had a problem turning in something that I thought could have easily been better if I only put a few more hours into it, so I waited to finish it until I had the few hours. I'm still deciding if that was the best decision. I've heard that it's common for researchers to turn in papers that aren't their best because it's more important to them to meet the deadline, so I wonder if I'm being outside the norms of a field that I hope to participate in. I understand that it's a balance and that the paper didn't have to be perfect, but I just knew that it could have easily been better. This blog post is late as well.
     On the upside, I went to 2 of the 3 days of the Women of Color in STEM conference at the ASU Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology. It was amazing and also daunting. I'll tell you all about it next week. :-P

FTIR focus

     I finished my research proposal (and on time too). We treated plastic 4 with alcohol again and tested for contamination on PIA and TSA. So far, no contamination after 48 hours. I think we're good to go. Today we'll redo the SEM pictures of alcohol treated plastic 4, and we'll take new SEM pictures of all Pseudomonas species for all 7 day intervals of plastic 3! This is potentially really momentous because this will be the first time that we'll be looking not just for proof of colonization but also for actual biodegradation particularly between the day 28 co incubation and the alcohol treated control. I think that number 3 will be a particularly good sample to begin to see degradation because in the last SEM pictures we took it were more porous. That makes it more susceptible to degradation because of increased surface area.
     In addition to that, we've really been cramming this week in preparation for doing FTIR. That is Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. As I'm still figuring out the ins and outs, I won't attempt to explain it, but it's based on the infrared spectrum which is very interesting all in its own. It was discovered by William Herschel in an experiment where he was trying to observe temperature differences in the visible light spectrum. He passed light through a prism to separate it and placed a thermometer in each different color. As a control, he put a thermometer next to red. His control was NOT room temperature.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=2275
Anyway, I just thought that was neat, and I was talking to Maria about it, and she's learning a lot about it for her astronomy class. FTIR works my observing absorption and output of infrared light that is unique to a substances functional groups and can be used to identify substances or even molecular changes in substances. That's what we are most interested in. Any molecular changes that might indicate biodegradation of our microplastics.

Scanning Electron Microscope and ....you guessed it... RESEARCH!

     I think that I'm not using my time efficiently enough. It's something that I'm always working on including organization. As a result, I worry that I'm not making enough headway in meaningful background research for my project. It just seems that sometimes the things that I'm interested in lead me off in a research rabbit hole until I'm not even super sure where I am. Well, hello Alice. That would be fine, but I need time to do things other than research and half the time I don't even feel like I have the knowledge or experience to understand what I'm reading anyway. It Really gives you an appreciation for all the professors who give it to you like you are a 5 year old. I need some easy, digestible information. LOL. Josh said one time that NOVA was like candy because they spell everything all out for you without you having to do the work to find the information yourself. I need some research NOVA candy. That would be amazing. Then I could just focus on my research instead of decoding other peoples' research. *sigh* Sugar is bad for you. Thinking is good. My physics instructor assures me that my brain will hurt less once it adapts to thinking in new and different ways. I haven't seen any research in evidence of that though, so I guess I better get on it.
     In that same line of thinking, when we were using the SEM we almost had an extremely disappointing moment. The first sample we put into the microscope was plastic 3. Every single part of the picture was blurry. It was terrible, and we just kept trying to look at different areas with different magnifications and different brightness and different contrast and different focus. We burned up too much time before we moved onto plastic 4. Luckily the pictures of 4 were just fine. That's the plastic for which we were worried about contamination. We didn't see any in the pictures (more on that in a moment). Kassandra and Maria couldn't stay a lot longer, so at some point I ended up taking some of them by myself. Dr Hamdan coated 3 in a second layer of gold, and the pictures came out just fine. Dr Hamdan had said that the microscope would only take pictures of "reflective" surfaces, and I didn't even think about it at the time, but that didn't mean reflective like you can see your reflection, I think they meant reflective like one of the physical properties of metals. The SEM only works on conductive materials and that is also a property of metals. In honor of giving it to you like a five year old, I have found the following link:
https://kids.kiddle.co/Scanning_electron_microscope
Which is really a very good place to start to understand if you ask me. I'm feeling very much like a 5 year old trying to understand the mechanics of how the SEM works. The link has a ton of great examples of SEM pictures. Like this:

But I keep wondering how -if we couldn't even take pictures of a porous plastic- did they take pictures of biological samples?! I want to take my very own picture of Pseudomonas fluorescence. I keep hearing, "Don't contaminate the hella expensive piece of equipment", but it's been done, and I wanna do it. Dr Ong said something that made me think that the microscope would burn up anything not coated in gold, and they told me no liquid. Is it that the lack of conductivity burns it up because the electrons that don't bounce off don't have anywhere to go or is it that the moisture in any sample that has it gets too energy excited? Maybe it's both, but if that's the case, HOW DO THEY HAVE FREAKING PICTURES OF BLOOD CELLS??!!
     Plastic 4 IS contaminated. *very unhappy face* We are alcohol treating the already ground up number 4 plastics again.
     What if I heat fixed the bacteria to the double sided tape and mount and then coated it in gold??? I swear I saw a sticky note in that link that had a note saying that it was too "delicate" to be coated in gold, and it looked like those pictures came out just fine. I'm just sayin'. By the way, they also had pictures of SNOW FLAKES.

Background Research...Yay...

     So when I started week two, I was very focused on the background research. I really want to understand what other people have to say about Pseudomonas fluorescens and micro plastics, so I'm not beginning completely from scratch.... and now... I think that I realize a bit more how idealistic and vague that statement really is... There is a TON of information and some of it most definitely more helpful. I'm almost relieved that I'm joining an existing research project so I don't have to do it on my own, and on top of that Maria and Kassandra are old pros at some of the stuff that I'm a little wobbly or rusty. I'm grateful for them. I feel like I'm getting to work with them and they're really getting good at some of this stuff. Plus, of course, they've already started the research, so I have specific stuff that they thought was helpful which helps to narrow it down greatly; though, there is still a TON of it. But less of a ton. Lol. 

     Research has kind of taken a backseat as the week has gone on though. We started putting the alcohol treated plastics on TSA and PIA plates to test for contamination. Everything was fine, but plastic 4 has come up with contamination twice! It's a little frustrating, and I'm the one that made those plates, so I keep going back over it in my head wondering if there was some little thing that I did to contaminate it. I'd much rather it be me than the entire plastic sample be contaminated. Maria and Kassandra keep reminding me what a pain it is to create them. Anyway, I can't think of anything that I did and the other five plates that I prepared didn't have any contamination. Boo. Oh! It could be that the plates that show contamination were too wet when prepared. I'm thinking that seems like a Very good possibility because I also prepared a PF plate for my bacteria and when I looked at it under the UV lamp, only the bubbles on the side of the plate fluoresced. Apparently,  Pseudomonas Loves moisture. Obviously, I also had to redo that plate as well. The pictures are pretty cool though. I've got to get back on that background reasearch.

     This week was all prepping to participate in research. I watched and read lots of lab safety information. Then I identified an unknown bacteria. It was a microbiology throwback. I think that got me into the right headspace to start thinking about my research project. It wasn't difficult. I used the steak plate method to culture onto PSA plates that I incubated at various temperatures. My bacteria had some pretty green splotching (seen in picture). Then I did a gram stain noting the colony and cell morphology. I used a dichotomous key to determine that I needed to do an Oxidase test. Then cultured on some different media. I eventually found out that my bacteria was Pseudomonas aeruginosa. That's one of the bacteria used in the research in which I'll be participating, so that made my heart a little happy. Even at 1000x magnification, I couldn't see any flagella. That would have been extra special cool. I looked it up on Google though. Yay Google, there were lots of good pictures. It still wasn't as cool as seeing it on my own slide.
     I was kind of curious about the practical use of dichotomous keys. Most of what I read afterward seemed to indicate that it's being replaced by the use of identification using genetic markers. Sadly, I was talking to the other members of my research group and they've already done that for the bacteria that we're studying. I missed it! I did get some information that my group has been using for their background research to start my folder on the project. I feel like I'm finally getting started. It's good.