I leave Maine tomorrow and today was my last day in the lab. For this year. Dave asked me earlier in the summer if I would consider returning next summer and the more I think about it the more I really want to return. So today I told him that I will definitely come back, but that we will just have to discuss the time frame because I want to spend two weeks on Beaver Island with my favorite bio prof doing field research.
To celebrate my last day, a couple of friends and I went hiking last night on the back side of the islands (where there are no tourists). We intended to go up two peaks: Parkman and Bald. However we forgot that it is getting dark much earlier now so we found ourselves stuck on top of the first one watching the sunset. We made it down with a combination of cell phone backlights and lighters but the stars were amazing. It was a good adventure to end with. Today after a morning in the lab my lab mate and I went kayaking to check out an oyster aquaculture facility across the bay. Now it's just packing and saying goodbyes.
I wish I could skip school and stay here :(
Friday, August 18, 2006
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
a year ago today....
I arrived in Ecuador to start seven months of wonderment. I really wish I was back there right now. I'm trying to decide if there's any way I could visit my family for Christmas and my real mom wouldn't kill me for not spending all my winter break with her.
Memories:
Some of the people I interviewed for my oral lit class
A spider in the Amazon
My family at Christmas
One of Darwin's finches
Climbing down a mountain on the inca trail trek where I almost died from altitude sickness
Memories:
Some of the people I interviewed for my oral lit class
A spider in the Amazon
My family at Christmas
One of Darwin's finches
Climbing down a mountain on the inca trail trek where I almost died from altitude sickness
Friday, August 04, 2006
para mi mama ecuatoriana: algunas fotos de maine
Una puesta del sol sobre el mar desde mi laboratorio
Todas las personas que trabajan conmigo con sus familias en una isla cerca del laboratorio. Estoy en la primera fila con un saco azul
La primera salida del sol en los estados unidos desde la montaña Cadillac. Subimos la montaña por la noche y llegamos justo con la salida del sol. Fue lindísimo
El lago "Burbujas" en el parque de Acadia
Unas flores cerca del mar
Te extraño muchísmio,
Un beso y abrazo fuerte,
Emily
Monday, July 17, 2006
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Fourth of July and beyond
I finally have a project for my thesis! I'm definitely going to be looking at how long ex vivo tissue cultures can stay alive. The cool part about it is that I will be attacking the problem from four levels. First, I will use a couple of stains and a confocal microscope to tell the ratio of alive to dead cells. Then, I will run a PCR to check to see if the cells are producing RNA. I will make sure the cells are producing proteins using a Western Blot and finally use a ussing chamber to see if they are still transporting. If all of these turn out to be true, this could be a very nice and easy model system for culture. Much easier and simpler than traditional culture.
For the past few weeks, I've been doing a lot of hiking.
I climbed Pemetic mountain in the fog. We hiked through the clouds on the way up and when we reached the top we were above all the clouds and it was sunny. Maine mountains are amusing because the initial climb is really steep but the last third is usually much less so and meanders to the top. I also climbed Seargent and Acadia, as well as several other mountains with French names that I can't pronounce.
My roommate is a really good whitewater kayaker and she's teaching me how to roll in a whitewater kayak in between sea kayaking trips around the bay. So far she hasn't let me actually do roll, just practice the 'hip snap' but hopefully I'll advance to real rolls in the near future.
The big event in the recent past however was definitely the fouth of July. All the student interns made a float for the parade so we were working for the days leading up to the fourth on costumes and decorations. The theme of the parade was "fun in the sun" and like true science geeks we turned it into "fundulus in the sundulus" Fundulus is the genus of a species of fish that is commonly worked with in the lab. We made our float into zones of the ocean with a beach in the bed of the truck with people playing volleyball in muscle outfits followed by an intertidal zone where fishermen 'caught' individually wrapped sweedish fish and tossed them to the crowd. The best part of the float was behind the truck, in the deep ocean. There we had people dressed as sea creatures worked on in the lab. There were lobsters, crabs, jellyfish, dogfish shark, sea urchins, kelp, and of course fundulus themselves. One of the fundulus was actually mounted on a racing bike in a stroke of late-night genius. So my Fourth of July began around 1am when a couple of friends and I took a break from making costumes to drive into the national park and measure a 5K race for the fun run later that day. We got back around 2:30, went to bed for a couple hours before getting up to go to the parade at 6:30am. The parade iteself was tons of fun and we ended up winning first place for the most humorous float. After cleaning up the float, we went to a clamb bake sponsored by the lab where I ate my first clams and mussels. They were realy good. Immediately after eating a ton of seafood, we all drove over to the fun run. It turns out we didn't measure the run correctly so it was actually almost 6.5K instead of 5K but it was still a blast. Finally, we went to see the town band play and the fireworks. Unfortunately, the fireworks were almost completely hidden by the fog in the harbor. Their anticlimactic appearance was softened by the fact that we were all sitting in the harbor eating take-out thai food.
The next day we heard the cook talking about some other fireworks in a town about an hour away from the lab. We decided to go check it out and they turned out to be a private party at the house of a man who owns about 1/3 of the island. We walked in anyway, obviously out of place and ended up meeting the owner himself during the fireworks. Some of the wiring during the fireworks went awry and their dock ended up catching on fire twice but we had a great time pretending we ran in the circles of wealthy Maine.
Jellyfish lead the float
Rolling down Cadillac mountain at sunset
Acadia lake
Biking fundulus
My lab dressed in 4th of July finest
The whole gang
My hiking buddies, Lindsey and Liz
Glorious crabs
For the past few weeks, I've been doing a lot of hiking.
I climbed Pemetic mountain in the fog. We hiked through the clouds on the way up and when we reached the top we were above all the clouds and it was sunny. Maine mountains are amusing because the initial climb is really steep but the last third is usually much less so and meanders to the top. I also climbed Seargent and Acadia, as well as several other mountains with French names that I can't pronounce.
My roommate is a really good whitewater kayaker and she's teaching me how to roll in a whitewater kayak in between sea kayaking trips around the bay. So far she hasn't let me actually do roll, just practice the 'hip snap' but hopefully I'll advance to real rolls in the near future.
The big event in the recent past however was definitely the fouth of July. All the student interns made a float for the parade so we were working for the days leading up to the fourth on costumes and decorations. The theme of the parade was "fun in the sun" and like true science geeks we turned it into "fundulus in the sundulus" Fundulus is the genus of a species of fish that is commonly worked with in the lab. We made our float into zones of the ocean with a beach in the bed of the truck with people playing volleyball in muscle outfits followed by an intertidal zone where fishermen 'caught' individually wrapped sweedish fish and tossed them to the crowd. The best part of the float was behind the truck, in the deep ocean. There we had people dressed as sea creatures worked on in the lab. There were lobsters, crabs, jellyfish, dogfish shark, sea urchins, kelp, and of course fundulus themselves. One of the fundulus was actually mounted on a racing bike in a stroke of late-night genius. So my Fourth of July began around 1am when a couple of friends and I took a break from making costumes to drive into the national park and measure a 5K race for the fun run later that day. We got back around 2:30, went to bed for a couple hours before getting up to go to the parade at 6:30am. The parade iteself was tons of fun and we ended up winning first place for the most humorous float. After cleaning up the float, we went to a clamb bake sponsored by the lab where I ate my first clams and mussels. They were realy good. Immediately after eating a ton of seafood, we all drove over to the fun run. It turns out we didn't measure the run correctly so it was actually almost 6.5K instead of 5K but it was still a blast. Finally, we went to see the town band play and the fireworks. Unfortunately, the fireworks were almost completely hidden by the fog in the harbor. Their anticlimactic appearance was softened by the fact that we were all sitting in the harbor eating take-out thai food.
The next day we heard the cook talking about some other fireworks in a town about an hour away from the lab. We decided to go check it out and they turned out to be a private party at the house of a man who owns about 1/3 of the island. We walked in anyway, obviously out of place and ended up meeting the owner himself during the fireworks. Some of the wiring during the fireworks went awry and their dock ended up catching on fire twice but we had a great time pretending we ran in the circles of wealthy Maine.
Jellyfish lead the float
Rolling down Cadillac mountain at sunset
Acadia lake
Biking fundulus
My lab dressed in 4th of July finest
The whole gang
My hiking buddies, Lindsey and Liz
Glorious crabs
Saturday, June 17, 2006
and the awesomeness continues to increase...
My Saturday:
1) wake up and eat bananas with peanut butter at the co-op for breakfast. Pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a granny smith apple and a couple of nalgenes and head out to Acadia with some friends.
2) climb one mountain, the second highest one on the island.
3) get to the top and decide another mountain looks pretty cool and climb that one too (the highest peak on the island as well as the Eastern Seaboard)
4) hike back to the car through a creek scrambling over boulders
5) see whirligig and other cool aquatic beetles swimming in a pond
6) hang out in Bar Harbor and eat the most delicious french fries known to man while chilling under a tree in the park
7) drive back to the lab and see my lab mates walking over to my PI's house to take out his kayaks
8) run back to help them
9) end up sea kayaking for hours, crossing from the island over to the mainland while seeing porpoises, seals, bald eagles and comorants
10) make a really yummy dinner with lab mates
11) play volleyball as the sun sets
Yep, I had a pretty cool day today. My friends Alex and Lindsey hiked up Dorr mountain and then hiked over to Cadillac before heading down to the car for the day. When we got back around 3pm, I went out kayaking until 5 or so and realized that I love kayaking.
I don't have any pictures of the kayaking but there are some pictures of the hike:
Alex and Lindsey halfway up Dorr mountain looking onto the bay between the island and the mainland
Some ant-pollinated wildflowers...I also took lots of pictures of mosses and lichens but I will spare you those :)
Lindsey, Alex and me at the top of Dorr mountain
View from the top of Dorr, looking out onto the outer islands. You could actually see Rockefeller's boathouse as a small shiny rectangle from the top
Cadillac mountain as it appeared from the top of Dorr mountain. Little did we know we would have to climb down Dorr mountain and then all the way up Cadillac. This would be a good place for a zip trek :)
1) wake up and eat bananas with peanut butter at the co-op for breakfast. Pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a granny smith apple and a couple of nalgenes and head out to Acadia with some friends.
2) climb one mountain, the second highest one on the island.
3) get to the top and decide another mountain looks pretty cool and climb that one too (the highest peak on the island as well as the Eastern Seaboard)
4) hike back to the car through a creek scrambling over boulders
5) see whirligig and other cool aquatic beetles swimming in a pond
6) hang out in Bar Harbor and eat the most delicious french fries known to man while chilling under a tree in the park
7) drive back to the lab and see my lab mates walking over to my PI's house to take out his kayaks
8) run back to help them
9) end up sea kayaking for hours, crossing from the island over to the mainland while seeing porpoises, seals, bald eagles and comorants
10) make a really yummy dinner with lab mates
11) play volleyball as the sun sets
Yep, I had a pretty cool day today. My friends Alex and Lindsey hiked up Dorr mountain and then hiked over to Cadillac before heading down to the car for the day. When we got back around 3pm, I went out kayaking until 5 or so and realized that I love kayaking.
I don't have any pictures of the kayaking but there are some pictures of the hike:
Alex and Lindsey halfway up Dorr mountain looking onto the bay between the island and the mainland
Some ant-pollinated wildflowers...I also took lots of pictures of mosses and lichens but I will spare you those :)
Lindsey, Alex and me at the top of Dorr mountain
View from the top of Dorr, looking out onto the outer islands. You could actually see Rockefeller's boathouse as a small shiny rectangle from the top
Cadillac mountain as it appeared from the top of Dorr mountain. Little did we know we would have to climb down Dorr mountain and then all the way up Cadillac. This would be a good place for a zip trek :)
Friday, June 16, 2006
Maine is the coolest!
I arrived in Maine Sunday evening. By Monday evening I had jumped into the frigid ocean for a night swim and hiked one of the mountains in Acadia National Park. Things kind of slowed down for the rest of the week but tonight I'm going in to Bar Harbor to hang out for the evening and tomorrow morning I'm climing the second highest peak on the island with some friends. The environment in my lab is way more relaxed than anything I have experienced. We get there early in the morning but often leave before 5pm for the day. We take a long lunch break where Nancy, the lab cook makes us a wonderful lunch and then go out to catch killifish in the river before returning back to the lab. I haven't started my project yet but basically I've been working with these oligonucleotides called morpholinos to try and get the to skip and exon in the pre-translational mRNA in the opercular and gill cells of the fundulus. So a typical day starts with making and running a gel, isolating mRNA from the fish organs and running a pcr. Eventually, I will be doing my own project with the urotensin II receptor in the gills of fish. Urotensin is basically a potent vasoconstrictor and there's some evidence that it might play a role in osmoregulation as well so I will be sequencing the receptor and looking at its expression and physiological role in fish. Fun :) Then I will also be doing some physiological work with a special chamber where you can measure the flux of ions across the gill by measuring the voltage it takes to nullify the current within the chamber. I'm probably most excited by this work. As promised to some of you, I finally have some pictures of the lab. I will try and get more of Acadia and Bar Harbor this weekend.
Daisies enjoying the ocean
My lab...note how it overlooks the ocean :)
Chairs to sit on and ponder the ocean and possibly your pcr results
The ocean as seen from the lab
More ocean from MDIBL property
Star point by the dock in the lab
Daisies enjoying the ocean
My lab...note how it overlooks the ocean :)
Chairs to sit on and ponder the ocean and possibly your pcr results
The ocean as seen from the lab
More ocean from MDIBL property
Star point by the dock in the lab
