Week 12

I have been working very hard to complete all of my work without falling too far behind while keeping up with all of the activities that I love so much. My family has been very patient with me. We are making it work. I will be graduating in the spring!!! Let me just enjoy that for a few seconds... That means that I'll be transferring to ASU next fall. ASU is way more expensive than PC. There were a handful of scholarships due the week after midterms this semester. I was notified on the 12th that I GOT ONE! I'm so excited and honored to have been awarded the All Arizona scholarship. I will be representing PC as the All USA nominee. The scholarship will help me by paying for 64 credits at ASU. I don't think that it's a stretch to say that it is going to be life changing. Shout out to STEAM Club and Phi Theta Kappa. I'm pretty sure that I just raved about how awesome and meaningful your events were on my application. I'm so grateful to have the support and opportunity that I have at PC. My time here has been precious to me in a way that I hadn't anticipated.
For research this week, I went on a hike at Oak Creek Canyon. It was beautiful. I was so worried about everything that I needed to get done that I almost didn't go. I'm so glad that I did.

Week 11

STEAM Day was this week! I've been working with the STEAM Committee for months leading up to this event, so I was extremely excited. It came together great. It's one of my favorite events that we've ever had. Nearly every table  that I visited had information on available internships. The Department of Environmental Quality was there! I'd love to intern with them. The STEAM Club has been working on the music bench since nearly the beginning of the semester in preparation for the event. It came out great! We still have some finishing things. We couldn't have done it without James Peterson from the Chemistry Department.

I also did some SEM on 28 day plastics that I first treated with a specific detergent. From just these pictures it does appear to remove the biofilm more effectively than alcohol alone. There is still small amounts of biofilm on the plastics. It's become problematic for our FTIR because out spectra includes the biological material, and we are only interested in the plastic. We can't use detergent on an FTIR sample though. It works for SEM.

Week 10

The symposium was this week! Oh my goodness, I swear I wore no more than a 1 inch shoe, and I ended up with 6 blisters on my feet. I haven't had issues with the shoes before, but I haven't tried to walk a half mile in them either. The campus is so big. I always joke with people that after being at ASU Tempe I understand how skateboarding can be a valuable life skill. I don't know how anyone wears anything but tennis shoes there. I wanted to wear something a little more professional, but I have seen the error of my ways. I only had to walk one way on top of that. I managed to find a ride back to the parking garage.
The symposium itself was good. There were interesting projects and helpful talks related to careers. I did Much better this time around on the lightning talk. It was good overall. I wish that I had more time to look through some of the other posters. I only made it through less than half.

Week 9

This week we're working very hard on our poster in preparation for the BioSci Southwest Symposium at ASU Tempe. I actually submitted individually with the research that I worked on over the summer and was chosen for a lightning talk. I always forget how far I've come learning to work on the formatting and choosing poster content until I have the opportunity to help someone else. I think that I get so focused on moving to the next thing that I need to learn that I don't stop to appreciate all the work that I've already done. I'm going to try to work on that in the future.
I've done almost everything for the research that I will be presenting, but I was on high alert when I realized that I didn't have pictures of one of the plastics at the time point that we needed. I rushed to SEM and ended up getting good pictures, so it worked out. We also gathered and formatted some other things. Below is a picture of Ruben working hard to punch PVC. He's never punched plastic before! We had a bit of fun initiating him. :-)

Week 8

Tons of SEM this week. I finished the 7 day samples and the 28 day samples. Because the biofilms are so thick at 28 days, they mostly obscure the plastic except where they are flaking off after air drying. I cannot put anything that flaky into the SEM, so I'm making sure to spray it off thoroughly, but I'm not happy with the results. I'm going to be using different protocols going forward. I'm excited to be extending the time study, and I want to get it right before we get to the 56 day samples. Below is a picture of some of our plastic disks mounted on studs. You can really see the flaking.

Week 7

This week the STEAM club has been working on the musical bench. It uses electrical impedance to produce music. We hope to finish most of it by the STEAM Day event on campus.

I did some SEM this week and was able to find bacteria on all coincubated 7 day samples. The pictures came out great. I am really feeling more confident about my skills on our campus SEM. I am so curious to see if the SEMs at other places or very different and if that will affect the translation of what I have learned operating ours. I would like to continue to use the skill in my future endeavors.

Week 5

This week we did the PCR for our experiment and double checked the dates for all of our media additions and quantities. I'm going to think about if it is possible to UV degrade the plastics for part of the experiment. This should have the effect on oxidizing the plastic and increasing carbonyl groups that will make the plastics more biodegradable. I'm not sure about the availability of an appropriate UV light source. That includes the amount of time that I am able to use it. We've started SEM of samples from this semester. We have been attempting to use alcohol treatment for the removal of biofilms on the plastics post coincubation in order to better visualize plastic biodegradation. Preliminary SEM indicated that this is ineffective. We also have a specific detergent that we are thinking of adding to the protocols but probably just for SEM as we worry about its effects on FTIR. We'll see.

Can you see the bacteria and biofilm? This is one of the best pictures that I've gotten of it on our samples which is exciting. Unfortunately, it's not really what we were hoping to see.