Summer Life

So it's the 28th and nobody has kept up with Andy's idea of the posting after grad.
Well I just thought I'd share my current events:

Gadabout gave me a job, so i've been working at the front desk every day. Saw Ms. Misha when she came in for her hair appt. Thanks Mrs. K for recommending Gadabout!!

Hope you guys are having fun. Sorry I missed skate country

Miss you,
Tini

No End In Sight

Can we keep this going forever? I feel like it'd be a cool way for everyone to keep in touch and know where everyone else is at in life.

Not entirely sure if we still have to post but...

Unfortunately, the people at Prototron Circuits forgot to send me the quote for the boards, so by the time I received them to sign off on the cost, it had pushed the delivery date back too far to be ready by presentation time. Basically, the boards will be finished sometime during the day I present. While that ticks me off and depresses me in equal measure, I think I'll have more than enough to talk about staying in theoryland without showing off an actual demonstration. In other news, I've almost finished my paper to turn in in lieu of a purty stethoscope. It currently weighs in at around 10 pages, and does not include circuit schematics, board layouts, code, or pictures.

'till next time,

Alex Davis

GRADUATION

Patty needs to talk to all of you at once, so we need a senior meeting. I also need to talk to you about the ceremony.

How about we all arrive early for the Thursday presentations, at 5:00?
Ms Toews

Yep, It's Almost All Done!

So this week I have finally finished up my paper. It is nice to not have to worry about writing it anymore. (Of course there will probably be some minor revisions needed, but the hard part is over.) Not that my paper is finished, I have been focusing on creating a power-point about my project for the presentation.

Like Brian said, there is so much to be said on our 20 minute presentations, so hopefully I will have time to finish it, practice it, and refine it. The rest of my time for the week has been filled with birthday parties, practice for an upcoming 3v3 soccer tournament, and practicing bass.

Diagnosing my first patient!

So not too much has been happening this week beside working on my paper and putting the final touches on my presentation. Since that's pretty much what everyone is doing I won't bore everyone with such things.

Luckily for all of us exciting things are happening at Dr. Chua's office. There were quite a few trauma emergency patients this week, which although I'm not allowed to see them in the hospital I still get to hear everything about. On Monday Dr. Chua got called in at 2a.m. to do emergency surgery on a lady who had a brain hemorrhage, he got it out and then she started squirting blood! He got it all under control even though she coded three times and 24hours after surgery she was beginning to wake up.

We're also starting to see patients who I recognize. Most people don't just sign up for surgery, they like to think about it more tests are generally done and then they come back to further discuss their options. On Friday an 82 year old woman with a pituitary tumor came back. Her vision in her left eye is being affected because the tumor is pushing on her optical nerve, but with the vision test they also had a much more focused MRI scan.

Dr. Chua, his P.A. Lisa and Dr. Scully all looked over her scan because she has quite the tumor. Your pituitary gland is roughly the size of a pea and this tumor is the size of a strawberry. Dr. Scully turned to me and asked how I would treat her. Needless to say I was very taken aback at first, but then I just answered which shocked him. I thought she shouldn't have surgery because of her age, other health problems, and medication list. Also pituitary tumors are very slow growing, so at her age it most likely won't change her life that much. And I was right!!! I correctly diagnosed my first patient. Dr. Chua was very proud and Scully and Lisa were impressed.

All in all it was a GREAT week!

Muttering imprecations all the while.

This has been an interesting week. The spectrographic spectrometer failed to produce conclusive evidence of the Zeeman effect, so we had to use an interferometer, a very high resolution imager. We took some photos, got our pattern, and figured that this would be a piece of cake since all we have to do is put it in the computer, let it do its thing, and it'll spit out an analysis of the ring system created by the interferometer... oh. The computer's broken. So, we had to find images which can easily show the effect. And this all has to be done with analog film, so you don't know until you develop the film. Or - like I did one time - you failed to secure the new film properly, and find out that all those photos you took didn't expose onto new film...

I honestly don't want to think about it.

I have pictures. I am happy.

Thank you and good night.

*Gasp* You are a high school student?

So today, Derek and I gave a presentation at the U of A undergraduate research symposium. Afterward, we received numerous compliments on how well our presentation went which made us feel pretty smart.

Initially, before we gave our presentation near the end of the symposium we had been feeling pretty nervous since a) everyone else presenting was at least a junior b) every other presentation title contained huge amounts of jargon c) about half of the other presentations were concerned with extremely complicated looking quantum mechanics equations whereas our presentation dealt solely with lowly, lowly classical mechanics. In other words, our presentation didn't fit in with the others (i.e. it was probably understandable by everyone).

By the time, the symposium ended there was only one other presentation that I fully understood and that concerned the efficiency of windmills with different numbers of blades (2 blade turbines produce the most power at high speeds and 5 blade turbines are better for low wind speeds). Despite the many complicated presentations, the fact that after 4 years of study one gains this awesome power to understand slide after slide of quantum mechanics equations is both amazing and motivating.

Anyway, afterward, we got free food, compliments, and a lecture on how awesome physicists are.
And now I must get back to my paper...

Seis de Mayo Monster Mash

As I type this, there is a Bigfoot expert recounting his tales of Bigfoot tracking to the museum's programming director. "Picture a gorilla about 8 feet tall...They're very crafty...The best sound recordings come from the Sierra Nevadas...This redneck woman kept feeding him blueberry pancaked with syrup!" It's my last day at the museum and I am going to miss this place.

As of today, I have finished up both my presentation and my proposal. I'm due to present my proposal to Ama in a few hours. This week at the museum has been extremely busy. Everyone is preparing for the spring fundraising gala, which is happening this evening. The point of the event, titled Seis de Mayo Monster Mash, is to release the topics of the museum's Sunday lecture series, Mixed Taste. It's going to be insane! There will be Bollywood dancers, King Kong, Godzilla and several strong men lifting up a smart car, along with several volunteers representing topics handcuffed together. Tickets cost upwards of one hundred dollars, but I get to go for free and don't even have to do any work (because it's my last day).

I can't wait to come back to Tucson and see all of you soon! By the way, if any of you are looking for a good summer read, I would highly recommend Daniel Dennett's Conscioisness Explained. It's absolutely mind-blowing. And what's even more mind-blowing is the fact that I might be taking a class from him sometime in the next four years!

The Attractin Gene

This week, I am continuing to focus on my presentation. I also hope to meet with Mr. Johnston and make any necessary revisions to my research paper. After communicating with my post-doctorate mentor at Professor Nachman’s laboratory, I further obtained additional, valuable information concerning my experiment. During my experiment, I combined the Armendaris and Carrizozo, New Mexico, specimen. This was possible because, not only are the two populations in close proximity to one another on their respective lava flows, a previous study demonstrates that the two populations are actually one population of interbreeding animals; thus, the geographic separation between the two locations has not led to speciation with respect to the rock pocket mice located in these regions. There is always more to learn regarding an experiment and I am eager to continue to gain knowledge to better analyze my data.

The Pace Quickens

Last week I felt pretty good about how quickly I could run through a batch of RT-PCR. That was nothing. Instead of running each genotype on separate days, I had to run all the different mops in one day, because this is my last week, and Mario needs these results for his presentation at the lab meeting this Friday. These genotypes are color coded in the picture with mop1 as black, mop2 as blue, and mop3 as red. 84 tubes full of PCR product, and 12 tubes full of cDNA are what I have to show for my 10 hour day at the lab

I will be running the gels of these tubes tomorrow, but after that the only thing that is certain is that I will be writing.

So Much to Say and So Much to Write

With revisions and possibly more paragraphs to add into the paper as well as all of the things I want to mention during the presentation I've still got some work to do. It is nice that the paper is not as limited as the presentation but I also wouldn't want to go on for too long in the paper. 20 minutes is quite the short amount of time to speak about all of the things I've learned and experienced during the project but I guess I'll have to get lucky on how I present. Hopefully I can practice enough so that I don't make the same mistakes that were in previous presentations throughout the school year. It's the last push and I've got to be ready to give it my all.

They changed my life, one hair color at a time...

So last Friday was officially my last day at the Resource Center. Dear god it broke my heart to walk out of that office, away from the group who i'd spent every week with for the past 3 months. Of course I couldnt just end our relationship there, so I agreed to help Megan with the Gadagirl Model search May 1st and 8th. (By the way, any of you 18yr + girls out there want to audition to be a cover model for Tucson Lifestyle Magazine and be used in a Gadabout ad, as well as help out some local charities, feel free to come to the Oracle Salon next Saturday from 10am-2pm).

I guess it's time to start crackin' the whip and get a move on with my presentation. It's coming along, slowly but surely. I can't believe graduation is less than 3 weeks away!

Is it sad to say that I already miss my desk in Megan's office? I do.

Birthday Wishes

So much of my work this week was on my paper since Dr. Chua was in the OR most of the week. I did work with him on Wednesday which was fun. He is now having me read the scans before him and tell him what I see. Thankfully we didn't have as many patients with herniated disks (it gets old after awhile), we had a woman with a tethered spinal cord. Your spinal cord should descend from your brain stem and nerve endings should filter down your spine, but it isn't connected to the bottom it just hangs. Hers because of a birth defect was fused, this can cause kidney and bladder problems, and although there is a surgery that can fix it it is so risky (because of the specific complication she had as a baby) that no doctor specialises in that surgery.

Wednesday we also got to have cake because Dr. Chua and I both had birthdays on Friday. April 30th is clearly a good day to be born =).

Next week should be very interesting (for me at least) because he is in the office every day except Tuesday. He says my suture knots are looking really good and my speed with them is picking up, although my suturing itself needs improvement. He looked over the parts of my PowerPoint that talk about my time with him to check my work and said he was very impressed. If any BASIS kids want to work with a a neurosurgeon in the coming years I highly recommend him, not only is he a great teacher but he really likes BASIS now.

Dessert Week at the MCA

     As I reflect back on this week's work at the museum, what instantly comes to mind is dessert. On Wednesday, a new baker in town brought a huge sample platter to the cafe in hopes of becoming a supplier. Since there were so many pastries (which were all vegan), the whole museum staff was invited to taste the pastries and give their input. My personal favorites included a cherry almond muffin and a chai cupcake with ginger icing. Continuing with the desert theme, Thursday was the birthday of the museum's cafe manager, so we all gathered in the cafe and had Boston creme pie and champagne (well, everyone but me) in celebration.

    As far as my project goes, I am finalizing my proposal and working on my power point presentation. I'm a little worried about how I will manage to condense my experience at the museum into twenty minutes. There is so much to talk about! 

    On Thursday evening, I went to an amazing performance at the museum. The piece, performed by local artist Michelle Ellsworth, was essentially a response to recent scientific research indicating that the Y chromosome is becoming increasingly obsolete. Did you know that the Y chromosome is loosing genes at the rate of 4 every 1 million years? Pretty intense. Anyways, in her performance, Ellsworth presented some of the archival work she's doing to preserve the memory of men when they no longer exist. She also displayed some apparatuses she'd invented to represent men, my favorite being a large, unblinking eye representing the male gaze. Overall, it was hilarious and an excellent performance.