Definitely.

Check out #WhatShouldWeCallGradSchool because it's awesome.

Halleloo!

Please excuse my extended absence. Apparently, I'm not very good at keeping this updated when things are going at "bat-shit crazy" speed. Here's a brief recap of what's been going on in my life since February:

1. SOT was awesome! How great it is to see this expansive world of science and toxicology outside of this hole I live in, here in the lab. It is so easy to forget why I am putting myself through all this; seeing all this other research and successful professionals really excites me. I was totally nerding out over things like new methodology and mechanisms in neurotox, but I also was cherishing the connections I was able to make. In any event, drinking and going out to jazz clubs with various professors didn't hurt either. Perhaps by simply incorporating people from industry and government into the mix, the science world was given a personality and a human-ness that's severely lacking from my within academia.

2. Peru was, as expected, fantastic. I really can't complain about sunny, 85F weather. It was super relaxing, spent time on the beach and ate a lot. The wedding was great-- a lot of fun, beautiful ceremony at sunset over the water... as you can imagine, it was incredibly difficult to return to rain and lab-slave life.

3. Girlfriend and I also found out the sex of the baby (due in the beginning of August)-- it's a girl! Really amazing, and scary at the same time. Girlfriend is already worrying about her getting pregnant. I'm still worried about changing the diapers. Hmm...

Fig. 1. Baby Girl at 20 weeks. She has fingers and hands and a nose! Yeah!

4. Lastly, things in the lab have actually started to turn around!!.... !!! I am slightly hesistant to really celebrate just yet because I still am only half believing it to be true. I am sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop and for things to go horribly wrong.... I'm pretty sure that won't happen, but really, I have no idea what to expect with my work. I can't tell you what exactly changed, but the experiment I had been doing with little success has finally worked. In addition, the results are showing surprisingly drastic differences between my treatments and controls! To that, I simply have to say, Halleloo! (Please refer to Figure 2 if this saying eludes you).

Fig. 2. Shangela from RuPaul's Drag Race on LOGO. Halleloo!

If you haven't already, please watch RuPaul's Drag Race for some pure entertainment in the form of America's Next Top Drag Superstar. These chicas are sexy. Til next time, 'echa pa'lante.'

Grad School Made Me Blind

I want someone to do a study (or, actually, several studies) on grad students working in labs. Here are some ideas so far::

1. Repetitive Stress: No, I'm not referring to the chronic stress from advisor expectations or the constant disappointments. The ergonomics peeps should study repetitive stress due to pipette use, or overuse as the case may be. It's a legitimate problem I worry about.




Fig. 1. The scariest looking lab worker pipetting something colorful (generally not the case).


2.  Blindness: I'm pretty sure that sitting in a dark room for hours staring into a microscope, scanning for and taking pictures of fluorescent-glowing cells is likely going to cause long-term damage to my perfect vision. Prospective cohort?

Fig. 2. Approximate size of and light availble in the room containing the microscope.

         3. General measures of sanity. I think this might actually be ongoing in certain departments-- the attempt to monitor stress and its effects on certain health outcomes. I believe one was related to cancer, actually... Imagine that headline when the study reaches mainstream media-- "Scientists say, Grad school gives you cancer!"

In Better News

Because my last post was oh so uplifting, I thought I should put a quick new note to state that things are not as miserable as they seemed last week.

The microscope is up and running..good enough for me to use but still with issues, so I'll tread lightly. I'm still in the process of optimizing this new assay, but I am hopeful. Aside from the 12-hour time point deal, it's a fairly simple and easy assay for which I can store my samples and do it as I please. Flexibility is always nice.

As for new data, the results from the latest experiment were a bit different than what I had previously seen (of course). The need to potentially switch directions on my project is still to be determined. Let's all cross our fingers that this doesn't have to happen.

In other news, Girlfriend is pregnant! I'm pretty sure anyone who actually reads this knows this by now, but as this blog follows my life both in and out of grad school, I think this is a relevant and important detail. Now the goal is to do my oral exam before mid-August or else I'll be competing with a newborn for prep time. Eeek! :)

Fig. 1. My reaction to Girlfriend being pregnant. Or, future baby.

Speaking to that end, in more good news, I have officially formed my disertation committee. Yay! Now I just need the data and I can make some progress.... 'Till next time.

Merry Christmas! Love, ROS Assay

Many of you who know me know that I have been battling with this horrible and unreliable assay in the lab for over a year now. I have gotten some useful data, but it was messy, and I have been trying to get "just one more" experiment to help the statistics (good science, right?) for about 6+ months. [Note: The assay measures ROS = Reactive oxygen species produced in response to exposure to a chemical, like pesticides in my case]

Well, ladies and gentlemen, IT FINALLY WORKED!

Fig. 1. Me on 12/15/10

I won't quite say that I'll never have to do this assay again, because that's likely not true. And I also won't say that this means it will work consistetly from now on. BUT, this did work correctly after I changed some things and eliminated some steps, which is very promising for future use. YAY!

In other news, it's almost Christmas! I love Christmas. I am flying home to the family on Tuesday and I'm super excited. It's always a little crazy and stressful seeing all the fam, but Christmas always makes up for all that. Especially Christmas Eve and the 95464575 types of fish we have (ok, more like 6 or 7), but it's definitely my favorite holiday ever. It also helps that I get to see my neice and nephew (one who just turned 4 today! and the other who is already walking around, respectively), and my step-sister whom I haven't seen in over a year! Please refer back to figure 1 for approriate emotional response.

I'll try to keep everyone updated a bit more now that this quarter is over (and that dreaded Biopharm class is complete).

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and much love (from me, and the ROS assay).

Hbar/2

It's been a pretty boring week here in the lab.  The upside to this is getting to listen to the awesomeness of "The XX" station on Pandora.  The Xx - "Islands"

Other than the week being boring, it's been relatively unproductive, much to my chagrin. Some cells I had to image ended up looking pretty shitty, if existent at all.  This is frustrating on many levels. For one, these experiments take about 2 weeks each, and (why don't we ever say "for two"?) also because I am actually really curious to know the results of these experiments.  Their results could be potentially exciting and make me -gasp!- want to do more experiments!  Imagine that... interest in my work.

Aside from this being a pretty normal occurrence-- things not really working-- I really have a hard time deciphering when experiments "don't work" (meaning something legitimately goes wrong: conditions were unfavorable, etc) or when I did something wrong.  This uncertainty is maddening because unless it's an obvious mistake or blatant contamination of the cells, it's very difficult to tell if I'm truly just a 'bad' lab scientist or these assays/protocols are imperfect.  While there's an excellent chance the latter is true (as most human-made things are far from perfect), I can't help but feel like I am doing something wrong or not seeing something that I could and should change.  If I can't figure it out, then I can't change it, and I keep repeating the same mistakes. 

How is this cycle productive?  I don't know if it makes me feel better or worse that this is a seemingly normal feeling for most lab-based graduate students.....

See:

and

The not-so-veiled reference to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in the title of this post is because I feel like that principle comes up in life a whole lot. My interest in quantum mechanics sprouts from a great professor of physical chemistry back at UMass, and for a love of the duality of electrons (or anything). Perhaps that's a Gemini thing.

Anyway, without delving into details, the principle says it is impossible to simultaneously determine certain pairs of physical properties to a high degree of acuity. There is a limit to how certain you can be of these two things (momentum and position of a particle/wave, in PChem) at any given time. While this is not really what we're talking about on a macro scale, with life or experiments, I feel it's relatable. I often feel like it's impossible for me to know much with a high degree of certainty.  I'm skeptical and somewhat doubtful of everything, as I'm someone who likes to analyze everything.  There are times when this is a good thing; scientific progress, for instance, requires these traits. And then there are times when it's disastrous-- like when I'm too doubtful of myself.

So, how much doubt is healthy skepticism, leaving room for analysis/improvement..and how much is just flat out hazardous to one's sanity and respectable self-assurance?

Lather, rinse, repeat

It's amazing how much of wet lab research is mundane routine. In general, research is incredibly tedious and slow. And very often, you don't find something groundbreaking and revolutionary. I wish more people understood this. My father, for instance, repeatedly asks if I "discovered anything yet." This makes me feel like this:
I forgive him quickly because he doesn't really get it, and that's ok. But, you would think that 3+ years later, he would understand when I explain it to him for the 50 millionth time why it doesn't work like that. It would be nice for others to understand the nature of lab-based research and what goes in to a single experiment. For instance (and not all experiments are like this, it's usually discipline and project specific), ONE of my experiments on primary neurons [brain cells harvested from an animal, a rat in this case] takes me about 2 weeks from start to finish.  Or, the fact that hundreds of experiments need to be conducted in order to 'safely' (read: with as little uncertainty as possible) make a conclusion about anything.

Sadly, simply saying something is 'bad for you,' or causes problems for human health, is not satisfactory for government-implemented policy. Years and volumes of data indicating a problem are needed to combat the use of whatever it is (i.e. industrial use of certain chemicals, certain pesticides, etc). This usually results in going down rabbit holes to prove inane points of HOW exactly this thing is bad for you. Research funds and man-hours are wasted on experiments necessary to find the smallest amount of a chemical that will not cause adverse effects ("Acceptable Daily Intake" of certain food additives, supplements, or even pesticide residues on foods, for example). Instead of eliminating the contaminant, industry waits for more time to pass with these studies and new policies to pass before they're ever expected to change.

I think some of the most important things I've learned in this program are about the politics surrounding the policy and decision-making towards anything public- or environmental-health related. It's quite amazing how little priority either of those two things get in this (and most) country(-ies). I love learning, but many times,the more I know, the angrier/sadder/more frustrated I become. I find myself envying the oblivious and ignorant, which is an interesting conclusion to come to when striving for 'higher education.'