Day 6

Day 6 – Finishing Our Print Jobs

Today at Chesterfield, Brian and I continued to refine our Cary Academy charger horse print before sending it to the carbon printer. The print itself only took about 15 minutes since the job was so short; however, something went awry! Turns out that the models we printed were too thin and did not have enough integrity to stay intact. That, on top of the fact that the ring hole was too big, caused the structure to fracture. So, we went back to the computer and refined the design so it would be thicker and the hole would be smaller. After a lengthy cleanup process, getting the resin off of the products, the new pieces were finally ready to be put into the oven. Brian proceeded to print out more of his reservoir designs since some of the ones from yesterday warped in the oven and did not function properly today. After about an hour, the new reservoir print was complete. Yet another small mishap occurred: one of the tubes in the half moon reservoirs was broken and rendered the entire model to be experimentally useless. Unfortunately, we had to toss those and were only left with three working reservoirs. We cleaned and cleaned until all the resin was sucked out using isopropyl alcohol and a syringe. All the products were put in the oven at the end and we will return back tomorrow to pick them up.

The past two days have been short, giving me some extra time to reflect upon my experience thus far. With only two days left, I am beginning to access the general conclusions I have made regarding the WEP. I never thought this program would have such an effect on my potential career interest. Coming out of junior year, I already knew that I was more of a STEM person and leaned toward engineering. Having taken Advanced Chemistry, chemical engineering and materials science were definitely up for consideration, but my WEP at Duke has truly helped develop my knowledge and further my interests. Dr. Gall’s lab is rather unique since it is a crossroads between mechanical engineering and materials sciences. I have limited knowledge in regards to mechanics and therefore remain apprehensive, yet mixing it in with something I am familiar with (chemistry) gives me an easy opportunity to further explore my potential interests in the two. Additionally, I am in awe of Dr. Gall’s lab particularly because of the drive each student has to achieve success. Dr. Gall is rather entrepreneurial based, meaning all his research goes to creating legitimate products that help people and not just publishing papers. All of these things intrigue me. Dr. Gall’s research compels me to consider the broader spectrum, because there are in fact multiple realms of engineering that share a common goal: to develop applications that further the state of humankind. Ultimately, working in this lab has given me just a glimpse at how far my passion truly extends to.

Charger Horse Keychains (Two Different Batches)

Today was a bit of a slow day because the client that was supposed to come in at noon forgot about the appointment.

While Mr. Hodgen was making a few phone calls I was tasked with cleaning the recording booth.

I dusted off the ledges and then sprayed and cleaned the windows. This seems like a unimportant and simple task however, the two glass panes that I was cleaning were veRY expensive. I don’t remember the exact numbers that he told me, but the two panes price put together is more then CA tuition so, yeah a lot of money. In addition to that, inside the booth there is a 15,000 dollar microphone, and I was spraying glass cleaner near it. Just knowing that if I broke anything, I wasn’t going to college was a little bit stressful. However, I was able to get the cleaning done with no accidents.

I also cleaned the wooden ledges and bases with a nice smelling lemon polish.

After that the day consisted of a lot of things that I have already explained in previous posts like mixing hip hop music and setting up the tape recorder.

Day 6 – IVPT

We spent our second day at Tergus Pharma with in vitro permeation testing (IVPT). Monica and Brandon, the two scientists, tested the penetrating ability of drugs on cadaver skin samples by using vertical diffusion cells. Each small glass cell was filled with a mixture of water and receiving medium to simulate the properties of blood, then covered with a small piece of preserved skin. There were three drugs analyzed today: an original drug already on the market, a proposed generic version of said drug, and a challenge sample mean to create differing results from the other two. Small drops of the liquified drugs were pipetted onto the skin and spread out with a spatula. Samples of the solutions below the skin were to be taken every 4 hours over a 72-hour period and analyzed using HPLC and mass spectrometry to determine the effectiveness of the drugs. Monica explained and demonstrated some of the guidelines of GLP (good lab practice); she and Brandon recorded data for each step of the procedure to ensure that the experiment could be successfully replicated if necessary, and an auditor from quality assurance monitored the dosing process.

Later in the afternoon, we shadowed Lynn, another member of the IVPT team. From what I understand, she was calibrating a mass spectrometer, varying the concentration of the added substance to optimize the peak height and width displayed by the detector. Overall, though I didn’t get to do any hands-on experimenting (with good reason), today’s experiences were a fascinating look into the details of the drug development process.

Day 6: Proportions and (More) Problem Solving

During another busy day at Louis Cherry Architecture, I started off the day with shadowing a meeting between one of the architects at LCA, Mr. Cherry, and a mechanic regarding a huge custom residential project. Carrying on from yesterday, I again noticed the frequency and the importance of problem solving as the entirety of the meeting consisted of brainstorming where to run the ducts for the heating and cooling system. They also laid out various system options such as boilers and cooling towers and geothermal heating and cooling. In addition to that meeting, I continued my greenhouse project by further testing my Sketchup skills and creating a frame for the greenhouse. The biggest challenge in doing this was that the frame had to be to scale as my first model was not. To keep the shape of my model from yesterday, I essentially shrank the whole thing but had to do so in direct proportion between my first model and my scale model. Next, I will be testing out shapes of the greenhouse, as it is more of a sculptural statement rather than a traditional vault. I am also going to play around with various glass panel sizes and structural beam sizes. Below are images of my math (yikes!) and my greenhouse frame.

Day 6

Day six was much shorter than the rest of the days in regards to surgery. With the 7:00 meet time along with only two quick surgeries, Dr. Huff and I were meeting with patients outside of the operating room by 10:30.

The first surgery consisted of a knee scope along with a patella (kneecap) repair. In the scope portion of the surgery, Dr. Huff cleaned out the knee joint by using clippers. By doing so, he relieved the patient of some of her pain. However, the main part of the surgery which was very interesting was when he relocated the patella. During this time, Dr. Huff cut an incision above the patella. He then tied a suture to the patella which was then tied to a portion of tissue above and to the right of the patella. As a result, Dr. Huff fully relocated the patella into its correct location. The reason for this surgery was because the patient had arthritis along the patella and fibia due to the initial placement of the patella. By relocating the patella, Dr. Huff took away the arthritis pains because there was no more bone on bone contact. Again, like I mentioned before in my previous posts, many of procedures of these surgeries are easy to understand if you use your head to figure out the problem. While the surgery is complex, the goal is often times fairly simple.

The second surgery was another knee scope. Similar to the first operation, this one only lasted about 40 minutes. Like the previous knee scopes I’ve seen, this one also involved Dr. Huff cleaning the knee joint out of torn tissue within the joint.

After about 10:30, Dr. Huff and I made our way over to his office. At around 12:00, we then met with a mentor/friend of Dr. Huff. The mentor was also a orthopedic surgeon who Dr. Huff had shadowed when he was a teenager. It was very interesting for me to see this as it showed me the cycle of interests. I learned that it just takes an initial spark of interesting and passion to fully engage somebody into pursuing a career path that they love.

Following lunch, Dr. Huff and I met with more patients. It was fun to meet all of the different patients and see their own unique cases. Even though today was one of the slower days, it was still action packed, and I had a blast! I’m looking forward to tomorrow!

Image result for patella relocation surgery

– Patella displacement

Day 6 : NTP Archives

Our main activity for today was visiting the NTP archives in Keystone, a facility a small drive from campus. However, since I didn’t know that the facility was off campus, I didn’t grab my government ID when we left our cubicle in the morning. Once we were leaving the building and I had turned in my visitor badge (which you have to return every time you leave the building), I realized that I probably should have gotten it. However, I couldn’t run upstairs and grab it considering I needed my ID to get into the building at all. I was in a real pickle, but we decided to figure it out when we got back from the archives later. We drove a few minutes to a building labeled the NTP archives in the keystone area of RTP. We were welcomed by a lady named Callie who welcomed us and gave us a tour around the office. Although the offices looked small, we would begin to realize that this facility was actually quite large, storing all of the data and samples from NTP research over the years. We first walked into a two floor storage facility of paper project files, with an incredible amount of boxes stacked one on top of another. Next, we were shown the film room and CD storage room which had filing cabinets lining the walls. In each shelf of the filing cabinet there were thousands of thin pieces of film, each with five or more pages of documents on them. In the center of the room was a small projector, which you could use to read the information on each of the film strips. After, we went to see another two leveled storage room of tissue blocks, the waxed blocks with tissue inside of them. Our tour guide explained to us how this room was actually full, so they were requesting to their supervisor to throw the samples of more than seven years out. We then saw the room storing histological glass slides (another two story room), which had an incredible amount of green storage compartments filled with hundreds of slides. Then we went to see the wet tissue storage room, also two-leveled, and also piled high with brown boxes. After out tour was finished, we met with an employee at the NTP archives who mans the database and digital imaging of the slides. She explained to us how the database works and how scientists are able to receive specific pictures for a specific study, usually using the images as aids to research articles. We then were given a tour of the frozen tissue storage room, which was basically three huge rooms combined. There were multiple refrigerators at -80 degrees Celsius and -20 degrees Celsius along with liquid nitrogen refrigerators and -20 walk-in freezers. All of these refrigerators held and enormous amount of samples, dating back to 1970.

Our tour had finished and we now met up with Dr. Malarkey to review some slides from the cell phone radio frequency radiation study. We looked at a number of slides, all of different rats in the study. We were able to locate a few lesions, characterized by the clumping of blue nucleus’ in one area to fight a disease or infection. After a few minutes we were able to categorize this lesion as a meningioma brain tumor.

We eventually returned back to the main NIEHS complex to eat lunch and sit in on the Dr. Malarkey’s gross review. Every Tuesday, Dr. Malarkey meets with students from 1-3 to help them review for their pathology exams. He told us that in order to become a pathologist, you have to know every disease of every animal. The review consisted of him putting nasty pictures of animals on the board and having the students name the disease present and describe it. Of course, the incredibly scientific and confusing words went straight over our heads, and we instead looked (or tried not to) at the bloody pictures of the animals.

I am so excited for tomorrow and all the fun activities to come!

histological glass slides

tissue blocks

wet tissue

frozen tissue

digital images

Day 6 – UNC-TV

Today was my first day at UNC-TV. I shadowed Ms. Deborah Holt throughout her day at the TV station and learned some very inciteful things. We started the day in the late morning with introductions. I learned that she hosts two shows on one of the UNC-TV channels: “North Carolina Weekends” and “Black Issues Forum.” We started off the day by going over the scripts she had received for what they were filming that day. She had me read them out loud to fix any weird sentences or grammar. After polishing the scripts, we headed down to hair and makeup where I was able to give a few helpful tips regarding beauty. Once all glammed up, Ms. Holt headed into studio B to record in front of a green screen. I was able to see the recording booth and some editing suits down the hall as well. With all the excitement, the day was over. It was a short first day, but I am excited to see what else UNC-TV has in store.

Day 6 – Shipping Out!!

Today was actually quite the action-packed day! As soon as I entered the office this morning, I headed straight to the conference room to meet Kaitlin, DeShara, and Taylor. DeShara and Taylor put together a 2-hour presentation on what they do in Clinical Operations. They both do a lot of the miscellaneous stuff. However, they seem to enjoy it a lot! It seems like they get to do a lot of various tasks such as going over contracts, invoices, and making budgets. Their jobs are essential to the well-being of the company. Taylor and DeShara are also hilarious. We were laughing for the majority of the presentation! They also have a very funny relationship. Through them, I realized that wherever you end up working, you will always make friends that can make your time there worthwhile. They also showed me a picture of them fighting over coffee which was plastered throughout the office quite some time ago (see funny picture below). I look forward to making these sorts of friends when I have a job someday!

After the meeting was over, Kaitlin and I went to get Erika so we could review our graphics and tables we made from the Brachyury data. Erika liked mine for the most part, but they do need some editing. I accidentally used the repeated data that made it look like there were 2000 people in the study instead of 10- whoops! Kaitlin made the same mistake in some of her visuals too. We can change our SAS code for that tomorrow. As 12 approached, we became more and more excited. Today, we were to go to ALMAC, the storage facility for Bavarian Nordic’s products. However, we decided to stop in downtown Durham for lunch. We met Janelle and Stephanie at this cute sandwich shop. Stephanie is stationed in Munich and is here on a business trip for the week. It was so nice to meet her! Over lunch, I learned that she is originally from France, speaks 4 languages, and used to work in a lab. I always thought that careers have these set paths that you must follow, but Stephanie showed me that there are many ways to get there. I also learned that you do not have to stick with one career your whole life.

After an enlightening lunch, we drove off to ALMAC where we were greeted by Lori. She is the person Janelle is in contact with concerning Bavarian Nordic’s products. After speaking with her, we were able to get a tour of the facility. When the warehouse manager came to greet us he said “I didn’t realize it was bring your kid to work day,” which was only kind of really upsetting. Brushing his remark off my shoulder, I focused on the tour. It was so cool to see all the precautions with handling and shipping medicine. We also got to peek inside one of the assembly rooms for the vaccines. I imagined it to all be automated by machines, but it turns out humans have to do it! I felt bad for the people who had to do it, though, because they have to be in a windowless room for hours on end in complete silence. All these measures are taken to avoid distraction and mistakes. Once we were done exploring the facility, we thanked Lori and the warehouse manager and headed back to Bavarian Nordic. Tomorrow, I have to get up bright and early to help interview another candidate for the job opening!

SAS Day 6 – Finance Day 1

The day started as usual at 10:00 o’clock except this time I went to Building T to talk with the finance team. I arrived early but it took me so long to find a parking spot that I almost ended up late. Fortunately, I was able to find an opening as someone was leaving. Once I got into the building I was greeted by Heather who took me up to Lisa’s office. Lisa then took us around the floor introducing us to all of her co-workers. She then gave us a brief overview of what she does at SAS and what her team does. After that, we headed to our first meeting with some people from marketing. The meeting was on budgeting and how the marketing team was struggling with the budgeting system that is currently in place. This meeting was really interesting because I got to see how the finance department works and supports the other departments with any of their needs. After that meeting, I went to talk to Julie and Kristina about what they do and what departments they support. From their we headed down to lunch in Building T. As usual, the lunch was amazing. After lunch, I met with Jeff the Treasury at SAS. He talked about what he does at SAS and it was really cool to learn about all the cool stuff he does. After meeting with Jeff, I met with Kelly who gave me an overview of tax and how SAS as a whole company handles taxes. Next, I met up with the interns and headed over to Building C for some coffee and open conversation. Overall, I would have to say that day one with finance was pretty fun.

Work Experience Day 6- The Family Firm

I think one of the things I find most fascinating about the Polanco law firm is that everyone there is always full of positive engery. There is incessant laughter and chatter filling the halls and drifting into storage closets and offices. In many ways, they seem like a big happy family. Today, I got to see this aspect of them really shine. Being a small office, they always go out of their way to celebrate the birthdays of others. It was another intern’s birthday over the weekend, this meant we had a huge potluck where everyone bought food and put down their work for about an hour. The entire office worked together to create the spread and pulled chairs into one conference room so everyone could enjoy their time together. It was fun to hear everyone joke about their least favorite classes in law school (there was consensus that Will writing was one of the worst classes) and interesting to get to know everyone in a more personal way. While this firm constantly deals with negative issues, they find ways to support each other and cheer each other up just like any other supportive family.I think one of the things I find most fascinating about the Polanco law firm is that everyone there is always full of positive energy. There is incessant laughter and chatter filling the halls and drifting into storage closets and offices. In many ways, they seem like a big happy family. Today, I got to see this aspect of them really shine. Being a small office, they always go out of their way to celebrate the birthdays of others. It was another intern’s birthday over the weekend, this meant we had a huge potluck where everyone bought food and put down their work for about an hour. The entire office worked together to create the spread and pulled chairs into one conference room so everyone could enjoy their time together. It was fun to hear everyone joke about their least favorite classes in law school (there was consensus that will writing was one of the worst classes) and interesting to get to know everyone in a more personal way. While this firm constantly deals with negative issues, they find ways to support each other and cheer each other up just like any other supportive family.

After eating, they have a new tradition where the person who is being celebrated gives a speech about their lives over the past year and their dreams for the future. Today, what this one intern said inspired me in an unexpected way. She told us about how a lot of her friends in law school used to be extremely passionate about fighting for justice and pursue careers in that area. However, after about a year a lot of them lost their passion. They became focused on making money and lost their interest in immigration law. She told us she was so thankful she hadn’t lost that passion, was greatful to the firm for working with her and teaching her, and was horrified by the notion many American’s have that they are better than other individuals just because they were born in this country. She also told us about how her family sometimes didn’t support her being an immigration lawyer, but she wouldn’t stop because this work is too important to her. As someone who is just begining to think about this career area, I found what she said to be inspiring. I spent most of my day digging in the firm’s data base to change the status of cases from open to closed (there were 600 cases to change, I only finished around half) and continuing with filing. However, the most interesting and meaningful part of my day was hearing why one law student wants to spend the rest of her life doing this kind of work.

(This is an image of the online data base the firm uses to store information on their cases)