Today I saw what made being a veterinarian the hardest: having to put a dog down. The moment I walked into the hospital today, there was a Great Dane lying on the counter and he looked pretty sick. There was a couple of vet techs crowded around him and one doctor who was giving him a check-up. The Great Dane had muscle atrophy, an old prostate, a bloated (maybe turned in) stomach, and was 12 years old (way past the age that Great Danes usually live). He looked extremely tired and it just seemed like he couldn’t live his life out happily even after surgery. The owners knew that the right thing to do was to put the dog down so they didn’t even discuss surgery. They immediately skipped to euthanasia. It was really sad to have to see a dog in that state and that’s when I realized that it’s more important to put an animal out of its misery rather than try to make them live a little bit more with their pain. It was sad, but it was the right thing to do and the Great Dane lived a really long life.
Along with this, we were also able to watch an FHO surgery of an 11 month old Maltese. The picture above shows some of the things people have to wear when entering and watching a surgery.
Today I shadowed Steve Floyd in the Preload department at Lenovo. I got a great opportunity to learn about AGILE (a set of principles and method of thinking designed for companies and enterprises) today, as I got to attend a Stand Up meeting of the Metrics group, which included Russell, Steve, Stefan, and Tony. In a Stand Up meeting, every member stands around a table and gives a run-down of what they did yesterday, what they are currently doing, and what they plan to do for the rest of the day. It is designed to increase accountability and efficiency, as well as encourage communication. The idea is for each member to give a 15 minute talk about all of their endeavors, and for everyone to offer feedback and familiarize themselves with each other’s work. Though it went a little shorter today, I found it seemingly inefficient. I think maybe a meeting like this at the beginning of the week and one at the end of the week would be better than having one every day as originally intended.
I also got to see one of the original prototypes for what is now known as the Thinkpad 10, and got to see all of the prototypes leading up to what is now the final build of the device (pictures included).
T.A.: “Four more days of lunch duty, and then I’m done forever.”
Kid 1: “Forever?”
T.A.: “Yep, I’m retiring.”
Kid 2: “You’re DYING?!”
You could tell it was a Monday. Everyone – teachers and students alike – was dragging when they came in.
I wish I could tell you how much fun I had today, but, if I’m honest, the most exciting thing that happened all day was a thunderstorm. I was slated to start working with Ms. Miller and the ESL kids today; however, just as the school day started, Ms. Miller found out that she had to be in meetings all day today and most of tomorrow.
For a kid who doesn’t own a smart phone (oh the horror) and cannot access the internet at the school, there’s not much to do when you’re not prepared to just sit around. There are only so many times I can play solitaire in one sitting, and I hit that breaking point today. I spent some of my time doing busy work for other teachers, like organizing papers and making sight-word rings for next year’s students, but most of my time was spent sitting alone without anything to do. How many people do you know have been so bored that they offered to do lunch duty? At one point in the day, I texted my mom to tell her how bored I was, and she responded with, “some days are better than others.” She’s right – today was just a weird day.
Tomorrow will be better. At least I’ll remember to bring a book…
I mainly helped individual patients perform certain stretches and exercises. Everyday, I am still learning more about common injuries, and I see people with new ones. I met a lady today who played flag football and has some sort of ITB strain, but the diagnostic is not certain because an MRI is still needed. She could barely bend her knee and told us she couldn’t fall asleep. I had an ITB incident from track this past season and it made me realize how lucky I was that my injury was not as severe as hers.
I also saw Jackie Riley recovering from her ACL tear. It was once again very fun to see someone I knew and have some casual conversation. She did pretty much the same exercises as I have seen numerous do over the past few days, yet I never really get bored by watching.
This week I changed jobs and started working at SAS. It was a big change from working at the General Assembly. The most interesting part of the day was what we did after lunch. I-Sah (the person I’m working with) the other intern, and I started talking about how to effectively rebrand SAS’s GatherIQ for the young generation. We brainstormed and talked for about 2 hours coming up with many ideas.
Today was another interesting surgery day. We got to see one surgeon cut the femoral head of a little scruffy dog’s femur. After a lot of shaving off the matted fur of little Cookie, who had clearly never been groomed in his 11 months of life, we headed into the OR. With the surgeon scrubbed in and the technician by his side, the scalpel cut through the leg to open up to bone. The surgeon was kind enough to let us peak in to see where the head of the femoral bone (which is supposed to be clean and rounded), was clearly flat like a pancake. He told us that this would be causing the 11 month old a tremendous amount of pain, so the easiest solution is to just cut of that part of the bone. The dog would still be able to walk and function normally and live a happy and healthy life. However, the drill he brought out next scared both Aesha and myself! After already seeing many surgeries in my short time shadowing, I can safely say this was the only one to make me feel a bit woozy. Having to listen to the drill cut through the bone was tough to get through, but luckily the knowledgeable staff had no trouble, and Cookie was already awake and happy before the day was over!
Today I shadowed the finance department at SAS. Similar to the IT department, I shadowed many different people today, switching about every half an hour. While I did meet many different people in finance department today, one experience that stood out was the meeting I attended with my mentor, Melody. This meeting was interesting as it spanned many departments. The finance, IT and human resource departments were coming together to discuss leaves taken by employees, such as maternity leave and medical leave. Each department played an important role in the discussion of its employees: The HR department handles employees, the finance department handles salaries to employees, the companies biggest expense, and IT handles the software that is used to track employees. The factor that was adding additional complexity to the issue was that the SAS company is found in over 40 countries. The team was in charge of employees in all of these countries, with each of these countries having their own policy in paid and unpaid leave. I really enjoyed attending this meeting as it was interesting to see many different departments coming together. Though I don’t think that I want to become an accountant, I still had a fun time learning the intricacies of the finance department,
One word: contamination. It’s like muttering the dark lord’s name. It’s like cursing in front of your mother. You say it and the whole world crumbles around you. The E. Coli flasks that Dr. Masoudi, Dr. Li Yin, and I had put together did not show growth over the weekend, meaning that some sort of alien substance had ousted our benign bacterium. Initially, Dr. Masoudi thought that the unwelcome stranger was Phage, a horribly persistent virus that would require a thorough bleaching of our workbench, but something had caught his eye before we went to bleach Dr. Li Yin’s station. At the bottom of our LB medium, a solution that we evenly poured in each of the E. Coli flasks, there grew an innocuous speck of fungi that competed for nutrients against our bacteria. It was this seemingly minor contaminating agent that forced us to pour 12 liters of prepared bacterial solution down the drain.
After washing our flasks and going over protocol again, we had to prepare new bacterial colonies that will house our precious Nb6B9 protein. We made two separate solutions: the first solution contains our LB medium and agar, a solidifying agent, while the second solution only has LB. The first solution was poured into about twenty petri dishes that serve as the houses for our bacterial colonies; we followed this by adding in the antibiotic kanamycin. Colonies will form overnight once we introduce E. Coli cells that have a particular plasmid, a set of DNA that is both resistant to our antibiotic and has the target gene for Nb6B9 production. We ensure that the plasmid enters the cell envelopes of the E. Coli with a half-hour cooling process followed by a prompt “heat-shock” that loosens up the cell membrane, increasing it’s permeability. Antibiotic exists in the petri dishes to weed out the bacteria that won’t produce Nb6B9 at our desired capacity, leaving the successful colonies that we will grow and eventually harvest. It’s a long process, but it’ll be rewarding once we extract our precious protein.
In the meantime, we checked up on the results from our Western. The membrane that has our protein imprint was taken to a special scanning device that emits different wavelengths of light to expose the presence of different bio-molecules. For example, DNA is detected using short-wave ultraviolet radiation. We had proteins though, and we forced the molecules to react with a substrate that leaves a bio-luminescent product. We turned the scanner from an ultraviolet machine to something like a photographer’s “dark room” so that we could see the faint bio-luminescence. What was found was a single strip of protein between 7 and 12 kDa that matches the identity of our Nb6B9 protein, indicating that Nb6B9 didn’t form any dimers (combinations of itself) and can be filtered out when using carboxypeptidase (the enzyme that we used to differentiate Nb6B9 from its constituent peptide chains).
Excited! (With a Pipet-Aid XP)
Carefully pouring deionized water in a flask.
Massing some agar, a solidifying agent.
Pouring a solution of kanamycin through a syringe connected to a filter
A light machine used to see the presence of proteins on a Western sheet
The electronic image of our Western sheet
A printed copy of our Western sheet attached to a notebook (everything must be labelled!)
Preparing petri dishes for our solutions – the flame is used to eliminate any contaminants in the air
Despite being Monday, I was excited to continue my adventure at RTI. For a good portion of the day I was working on organizing MicroPEM filters that are to be weighed in a sterile chamber (had to wear shoe covers). I created my own little assembly line for this process; take 10 filter covers and lay them in a line, open them up and clean each one with the air gun (definitely not what it is called but only way to describe it), place the sticker with label on cover, use tweezers and place filter in cover, close cover. Obviously did not require too much thinking but still important. I then took all those covers to the chamber with my shoe covers.
setting up the filtersfilters and shoe covers!
During lunch I attended a meeting for a new RTI ERG (employee resource group) called Women in STEM. The group was discussing their plans for community outreach for the younger stem community (specifically elementary school girls). It was very encouraging to see these women want to help young people like myself.
lunch with Women in STEM
My favorite part of the day was using the e-cigarette machine that I will continue to use throughout the week. RTI’s “grandchild” project, meaning researchers from different disciplines and backgrounds are collaborating on the same project, is currently about e-cigs and their effects on the body, specifically the lungs. The machine I got to use was the classic “mad-scientist” aesthetic; it has tons of wires and many different pieces of equipment somehow all connected together on a cart. Even though I basically just pressed two buttons to make the e-cig vape, I still thought it was so cool that RTI was doing this type of research. Up until now, I hadn’t heard of any research about e-cigs and their actual health effects, since many people just accept that they are “ok” solely based off the idea that they are a healthier alternative to cigarettes. I also loved the aesthetic of the equipment because it clearly reflected the engineering design of the machine and the complexity of the thinking involved for this machine to work.
Monday is supposed to be the quietest day at the museum. That was not the case this Monday, as we had four or five tour groups filter through the lab, each with fifteen to twenty children in tow. That means that my projects were put on hold, as I had to join the volunteers in making sure the kids were entertained, learning, and most importantly, not breaking our stuff. This meant that I explained the process of 3D printing about fifteen times to various ages with various levels of understanding. This variety challenged me to explain concepts that were so complex that I didn’t fully understand them, to children who would be content if I simply said that the reason the infra-red camera could pick up their motion was “magic”. However, I didn’t succumb to the easy explanation temptation, and I used various analogies and physical demonstrations to explain protein synthesis, basic electronics, the infra-red light spectrum, and the fact that no, they couldn’t take home any of the 3D models. Overall, however, it was a fun day, due mostly to the funny, often surprising interactions between the children and I. However arduous it was explaining Quaternary protein structure and amino acid linkage synthesis ten times in ten different ways, I had a great time stretching my creativity to new heights – or, if we’re going by relative heights between me and the students – new lows!
