You never see the behind the scenes of photoshoots. Hard work getting the perfect positions and perfect lighting to make the photos turn out amazing for the clients.
Images
Behind the Scene Secrets
Participated in a meeting about Marketing and the secrets behind the business no one tells you about!
Brainstorming Ideas
Today served as a planning day for the next two weeks. After reading about NC NOW and researching current issues that the organization is working on, we started brainstorming ways we could help. Ms. Paliga gave us brief overviews of some of the things that NC NOW is trying to focus on and then we came up with ideas to achieve those goals. Some of the current interests included Medicaid expansion in North Carolina and fighting against an anti-abortion law that is being considered.
We then met with Ms. Paliga and shared our ideas. Together, we came up with ideas for how to spread awareness and get more people involved in NC NOW’s initiative. Over the next two weeks, we plan on creating postcards for people to call legislators, writing to our own legislators, building the organization’s presence on social media, and even redesigning the NC NOW website. 
Julie’s first day on the job :)
Today consisted mainly of a captivating introduction to EpicGames, Unreal Engine (the game they use), what goes into creating game engines and designing characters and sets (long-story short: billions of tiny triangular pixels arranged with the help of programs coded to determine how the light sources would hit different parts of the scene), and plans for the next two weeks. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Polge, a senior programmer at EpicGames (and an all-around awesome individual). One really cool part of my day was playing around with Unreal Engine’s MetaHuman creator. Basically, this application allows you to design your own eerily-realistic-looking avatars by contouring facial features, adjusting a ton of settings, and choosing different body parts and details. Each metahuman is creepily realistic, and it’s very easy to adjust settings and features to indicate different genders and/or ethnicities. The featured photo is an example of these metahumans (totally looks like a real person. It’s astounding how advanced and high-quality game graphics are). I’d say this has been a pretty solid first day.
Day 1: Clinic Visit
Emma, Julia, and I (Kat) visited Dr. McElveen’s clinic today to shadow him during a few appointments and procedures. One procedure that stood out among the others was when a patient came to the clinic with fungus in his ear. When the doctor found the fungus and alerted the patient, the patient was surprised which amazed us as he wasn’t even aware that the fungus had grown after his surgery. We watched as Dr. McElveen extracted the fungus which highlighted the both gross and fascinating sides of medicine (that fungus can grow in your ear without you even knowing!!).
Test
Dogs are life’s greatest gift.
Day 1
Due to unforseen circumstances, my schedule for the day actually changed just last night. The doctor I was originally working with is out for a few days, so I got to shadow Dr. Tyler Cope and Dr. Kristina Wulff today. I went in at 10:00am instead of the previously scheduled 7:30am and met up with Dr. Jaime Blanton to complete orientation and fill out some paperwork saying I’d abide by Duke’s rules and HIPPA. I then met Dr. Tyler Cope to tour the facility, which I had actually seen before since I used to go to the clinic for my own physical therapy. Aside from the physical therapy area upstairs, the Duke Physical Therapy Sports Medicine Clinic also contains a gym downstairs, indoor pool, outdoor track, and is adjacent to a more traditional doctor’s office. At the end of the tour and before Dr. Cope’s first appointment, I learned how the station carts are organized and how each station is set up. Each cart contains everything needed to reset the tables between appointments and some basic tools needed during sessions.
The upstairs clinic area is split into 4 main sections: The waiting room, exam rooms, the open gym area, and staff desks. Dr. Cope stayed in the open gym area and used the tables there to assess his patients, but the doctors can also use one of the separated exam rooms. In the open area, there is a cart between every few tables, and there is also a cart in every exam room. Of the exam rooms, some are like the first one pictured below, with curtains separating them between each other and the open gym area. There are also more closed off rooms like the ones in a standard doctor’s office.
At the end of the day, I worked with Dr. Kristina Wulff who was working with patients in the pool. She explained how utilizing the pool allows patients to work more comfortably since the pool takes off some body weight pressure, which is especially useful for post-op patients. Water to hip height takes off 50%, mid chest height takes off 75%, and up to the neck takes off 90%. The water resistance also forces patients to utilize different muscles.
I’m excited to go back in tomorrow and work with Dr. Cope again to see some more patients!
Hey kids its me
Hi guys this is a Girl
Day Four – Exciting Results!
Today I felt much more comfortable and at ease. I no longer got lost when walking down the seemingly identical hallways to get to the Griffith Lab. I also ran into one of the other women who works in the same room as Dr. Bermek as I was walking in. She was really nice, and we had a short conversation as we were walking to the lab. It was a nice way to start the day. What I really like is all the other people working alongside Dr. Bermek are women. There is a great atmosphere in a place I thought would be strictly business. All the women I am surrounded by are extremely smart with many degrees. They all help each other out when they have questions about a protocol or need to borrow a pipette or gel lid. They also are always joking around with each other which I found really entertaining and funny. Once I walked in, Dr. Bermek and I, like every morning, made a plan for the day. I had a made a table of the amounts of supercoiled and relaxed DNA I counted on the EM on Tuesday. We took a look at the table and began calculating percentages of supercoiled vs relaxed DNA from the plain DNA sample, the UL8 sample, and the UL8 + CIP sample. I had a little bit of a hard time with the math at first but I caught on quickly. Once we finished calculating the percentages, we compared our results to the gel we had run the day before. The EM percentages were a good indicator of how the protein and CIP acted, but we also ran a gel because a lot of my counting and categorizing was personal based on which category I though the DNA would fall into. The results from the EM and the gel were pretty similar which was nice to see that I had counted somewhat correctly.
After we finished calculating the percentages of supercoiled vs. relaxed DNA, we checked on the agarose gel we had set up yesterday afternoon since it had finished being run and stained. The gel we ran was similar to another gel Dr. Bermek had already run, but she wanted more distinct bands, and on this gel, we tested time and concentration. Dr. Bermek thoroughly washed the gel with water because she knew she potentially wanted to use this gel for her paper, so she was very careful. Once Dr. Bermek saw the gel image she was jumping up and down with elation. She said it was one of the prettiest gels she had ever seen. The bands were really distinct which is exactly what she wanted. We were debating on whether to use a 0.6%, 0.8%, 0.9% or 1% gel, and we ended up settling on a 1% gel because of other protocols we had read online and it paid off. I, with a little bit of help from Dr. Bermek, made the gel that worked so well, so I was super excited. She told me “I need you here more often” which was a wonderful thing to hear. Dr. Bermek did not enjoy making agarose gels very much. When she showed the gel to one of the head guys in the lab, he also reiterated how nice the gel looked. Seeing the gel turn out so nicely made both Dr. Bermek’s and my day. We sat down and analyzed the gel. The basic conclusion we came too after a long conversation was the DNA began to relax with 75nM of the UL8 protein. With the reaction time gel we saw the protein began relaxing the DNA within only 15 seconds and the DNA became super relaxed in only two minutes.
After we finished analyzing the gel, we began to set up the next experiment. We were testing a drug used for the herpes simplex virus to see how it worked with the topoisomerase experiments we had been doing the past couple of days. Setting up the different amounts of each ingredient for the experiment required many calculations. I was nervous about all the math and didn’t fully catch onto everything. Each ingredient needed to be diluted which took at least 45 minutes to make all the dilutions. I helped Dr. Bermek with a couple of the dilutions, but she physically added all the ingredients into each tube. There were so many steps she let me sit down for a while and just watch her because of the complexity of the protocol. I am also much slower at pipetting than she is. Once she finished adding all the ingredients to the tubes, we had to wait awhile to incubate the samples. Dr. Bermek and I talked for a little while before it was time for me to go while we were waiting. It seemed like a little bit more of a relaxed day, but I still learned so much. It’s crazy how much knowledge I have obtained in just four days because I am immersed in each experiment. To me, working in a lab and learning about science is sort of like learning a foreign language. You have to immerse yourself and make mistakes in order to improve. I’m excited to rest up this weekend and recharge for another fun week!
The beautiful 1% gel I helped make being stained.
The wonderful results of the Agarose gel with very distinct bands.
Day 1
Today, was my first day at Plexus. Plexus is a contract engineering company meaning that they engineer product for other people and do not create any of their own products. After touring their massive labs and design areas, I met with Mr. Alan who is a Product manager. He talked me through how Plexus acquires work and the life cycle of the project. I found it very interesting that every project went through at least six stages with four of them having testing. I have included a picture below of the six stages being requirements, prototyping, engineering confidence, alpha, beta, and then production. This process can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. I thought that it was really cool that as an engineer at Plexus you could work on such a variety of projects and see a variety of projects in such a short time period. I had lunch with the Product Managers and learned the wide backgrounds that they come from. While they all had engineering degrees, they ranged from computer engineering to industrial engineering. After lunch I spoke with Jesse, he showed me how they write requirements at Plexus. The most important rule with requirements is that they cannot be subjective as they will be tested; therefore, the requirements must be test able. At Plexus, a requirement that must be in the final product is indicated with a shall in the statement. Additionally, something that is nice to have is indicated with a should. Once these, requirements have been written similar Verification statements are written that describe how one can be certain that the product delivered meets the requirements. Another important aspect of Product Management is called an architecture, this documentation, outlines components that will interact and varies from detailed interactions between individual pieces to broad overviews of what the product does in general. I look forward to another great day. 
