STEM – Page 7 – CA Work Experience Program

Flow

Today, we were left to our own devices as we weren’t required to meet with Dr. Aziz. I continued my work on simulation water flow through a fungal filter by making nutrients, O2, Co2, etc. spawn at the bottom of the screen and move upwards, vanishing as it reaches the top. However, when the speed of the water is set above 1, nothing moves upwards properly, leading to a giant dead zone where only the top and bottom rows have these nutrients.

The problem is this one line of code, which is supposed to make the nutrients disappear if they’re about to exit the top of the screen, but is apparently going gung-ho on everything and deleting it all as soon as it spawns in.

As I don’t know how to solve the issue, I’ll have to consult with Dr. Aziz tomorrow.

Synthesis 2: Enzyme Boogaloo

This morning, Emily and I worked together in a call to combine aspects from both of our models into a single new, seizure-inducing model.

Compared to the original base model we were given, Emily’s model had large pieces of new code that could be easily copied, as opposed to mine which had smaller bits scattered throughout, so we decided to copy her new work into mine. She did have an issue in which the O2 levels would go negative for no apparent reason, but working together, we identified and fixed the issue, which was a small piece of code that had been inserted in the wrong place.

As Emily is now working on separating the lignin from the fungus and putting it in the patches instead, I am now currently working on making the model simulate the flow of water through a filter, and I look forward to Emily completing her work so I may incorporate it as well.

Combining Our Work

Today, Ethan and I merged the code we had been working on for the past four days. It was so cool seeing our work finally come together into one model.

Check out our combined model in the works!

I spent the remainder of the day working on the lignin aspect of the model to make it more closely resemble reality. Right now, the code is set so that fungi consume lignin, even though it’s actually enzymes that the fungi produce (LiP) that break the lignin down to glucose.

-Emily

Day 5: Vector Textiles Environmental Modeling, Check-In meeting and presentation planning

Today we had a check-in meeting with Mr. Self to detail our plans for the presentation. We developed a short outline for what we wanted to present and explained to him our rough draft. We also did some mathematical research on how much total Permethrin 225 million Permethrin treated nets would have. Our group collaborated very well on creating the basis and template for the PowerPoint, a laying out a solid outline. I learned how to style a PowerPoint template for exactly what you are trying to present, which I didn’t know before but is very useful. I also learned how to write/design a good hook for a PowerPoint that will engage the audience and encourage them to keep reading. I look forward to continuing to design and create our presentation next week!

Team Building – Sarah

Today we did something a little different. Instead of presenting the research we had done previously, we took a little break from NFTs and blockchain and worked on some team building and communication by playing a game called Valorant together. We were all on the same voice channel, telling each other where enemies were and what our plan should be. We didn’t end up winning a whole lot of games, but we had a lot of fun.

Post-Sales Engineering

Today’s activities entailed more laid back and open discussions with professionals. An interesting one was with a post-sales engineer who was able to explain to us how she helps customers after their purchase. I was interested in this career because, while it still heavily incorporated sales elements, it seemed to require more technical knowhow than pre-sales engineering. Examples of some of her projects are optimizing client networks to have less downtime and helping customers configure Cisco products. She also told us about TAC engineers and sales engineers, which provided helpful context.

-Price

Synthesis

After this morning’s meeting, most of today was spent fine-tuning the model. The one new feature I did add was making it so the glucose would slowly spread out over a large area, causing the fungus to have to chase after it more. Most of the variance for the temperature setting was created by using a slightly-controlled random number generator, which made the increase and decrease in effects very linear, but I received an equation from Emily which would make it a more natural bell curve, shown below.

This marks the first step in combining our models. Tomorrow, we will meet again and work to combine my fungus growth and temperature control with her dissolved o2 and PH controls, among other things, into one complete model, and we will go from there. I was planning to make all of the simulated organisms and nutrients move from one side of the screen to another to simulate water flow, but I questioned Dr. Aziz and he said focusing on the interactions in the existing model was more important, so I’ll scrap the idea for now.

Progress – Lenovo Day 4 – Sarah

Today, Greyson had a meeting in the morning so instead of our morning meeting, we just kept working and making progress on our research. After watching the first 15 minutes or so of a podcast with Garry Vanderchuck and Mark Cuban about the growing market of NFTs, I continued research on something called DAOs.

DAO stands for decentralized autonomous organization. It is essentially to the business world was cryptocurrency was to the economic world – a way to cut out the middle man. With cryptocurrency, people got around the need for banks by decentralizing everything using blockchain technology. DAOs make use of this same technology and they cut out the need for CEOs and boards of directors. Instead, these companies have no central leadership and are owned by all the members of the company collectively. Every transaction the company makes is transparent to its members and all the rules and code for the company are laid out in smart contracts, which are also accessible to all the members of the company. DAOs, like NFTs, are another way to utilize blockchain so that ordinary people can work together and take back control from large organizations and governments as we move into the next phase of the internet.

Day 4: Vector Textiles Environmental Modeling, Final Wrap-up Research

Today was mainly focused on finishing up all of our research. We continued to investigate the indirect effects of Permethrin on humans, and looked into how each region in sub-Saharan Africa would be affected. It was no surprise that we concluded that areas with more water, such as the rainforest areas in Africa and the Rift Valley areas, would yield the most damaging effects if large amounts of Permethrin were introduced there. The main skill I took away from this week so far is how to collaborate in a team to maximize the amount of work that can be done. With such a large question needing to be answered, it would have been impossible to come to an answer if we hadn’t split off into separate research groups. This is certainly a skill that can be used in other jobs and areas of life.

Dissolved Oxygen Fun

I spent the bulk of my day today fine-tuning some of the enzyme kinetics aspects in my code and incorporating dissolved oxygen, which is a key component in cellular respiration. First, I had to add into my code directions so that the dissolved oxygen would be consumed. In a physical experiment, there might be bubblers to add more dissolved oxygen to the water as organisms consume the oxygen, so I had to also add that aspect into my code. Unfortunately, it was difficult to see on the model if my code was working, so I decided to write code so that the background would change colors to indicate how much oxygen was left. That solved my problem! And it was cool seeing all the colors.

Look at all the colors! The different shapes represent different elements in the model (fungi, bacteria, enzymes, and contaminants), and the blue background represents nutrient-rich water.

-Emily