Portland Rain in Chapel Hill

Hi all!

I hope that is blog entry finds you well. As I sit writing this the raining is coming down. It has been flirting with the possibility of a downpour all day, but the clouds have finally gave up holding back. I guess it will be a soggy run in the morning.

I am currently training for the Raleigh City of Oaks half marathon on November 1st. After years of running for fun I decided to train for an actual event. I am super excited. I've also found a great running buddy who is training for the Philadelphia marathon. We clock the higher mileage together, making it much more fun.

Ebony (my dog) and I started agility classes this past Thursday. For those of you who aren't familiar, agility is a sort of timed obstacle course for dogs. They go through a series of jumps, tunnels, teeter totters, weave poles, etc. with the goal of beating the clock and performing the actions with precision. The class we are currently taking is a foundations class, so we are learning the basic techniques for training on the obstacle course. The first class was a little slow for my taste, but it was just day 1.

A week ago Friday I presented my first poster on my thesis research project. It was a good experience, but a little different than presenting on my undergrad. research project that I was much more familiar with. This coming Friday I am giving another presentation on my research for a class. I think I am going to get comfortable with my project pretty quickly with all the presentations.

In other lab news...I am presently learning how to manage a mouse colony. Soon I will get to start breeding my mice. Fortunately I am not responsible for the daily care - feeding, watering, cage cleaning. That is a job in itself and there are staff in the mouse facility who do these tasks. I monitor the cages so they don't get overcrowded and characterize the mice (determine their genotype - whether or not they carry the gene that I am interested in). I also select the mice that I want to breed and oversee this process.

This coming Tuesday will be my first homeschool science workshop of the new school year. I have 26 4th-8th grade students who will be learning the basics of chemistry with the help of 6 other graduate students. It seems that many graduate students like to give back to the community, but most of them just don't have the time to organize anything major, thus they enjoy helping out at the workshops - which is awesome! I really enjoy working with the students. Their excitement about looking though a microscope or using 'simple' tools such as pH strips help me keep things in perspective. Organizing the workshops also reminds me of planning for parties or organizing club meetings - 4-H memories!

Well, it is time to sleep! Next time my goal will be to write a little more about my research project.

Happy Fall!

Sarah

Officially a North Carolinian!

Hello Friends and Family!

My gosh it has been forever since I have sent you an update! This year has flown by and I am well overdue. Believe me, if I had updated this every time I thought about it there would be 15 more entries than there are now. Well, I will attempt to hit the high points of the last 10 months without writing a novel for you all to read.

First thing is first, I survived my first year! Spring semester was insanely busy and this summer has been a nice break. I started back into classes this past week, much to my dismay. I don't mind the learning part, it is the time that it takes away from my lab work that is most annoying. I am taking three classes - a pathology lab, an experimental physiology course, and a presentation/professional development class. The physiology class has reminded me how much I like the topic of physiology and how much I loved my exercise physiology course at UP. After this year I will be more or less done with classes and work full time on research.

My research, that is another high-light from the spring. In May I officially joined a lab and a department. I am now a proud member of the Cell and Molecular Physiology Department. For my project I am studying colon cancer and stem cells - how stem cells may play a role in colon cancer. I really enjoy having a project that I can take ownership of and I love the fact that I will stay in this lab for awhile and not have to leave in a couple months like I did in my rotations. It is nice to feel settled somewhere.

In January I began to teach science workshops to homeschooled students from the surrounding area. I started planning for these workshops last November, so it was nice to see them come together. They were a big hit with the families and the graduate student volunteers who assisted me. Everyone enjoyed them so much that I decided to continue them again this year. It gives me a more creative outlet and I love sharing my passion for science with the students and watching them learn.

In February I had another teaching/science outreach experience. I went to Puerto Rico with a group from UNC to teach a molecular biology workshop to a small group of undergraduates. Some of them came to UNC this summer to do research and I hosted one. This year I am heading up the trip to Puerto Rico. I love the opportunity to use my Spanish. We teach in English, but once I told the students that I spoke some Spanish they liked to try to get me to speak it with them. I also spent one night with a family (one of the graduate students is from PR), so stayed with her family the last night. Her grandmother didn't speak any English, so I really got to practice my Spanish then. One really cool tidbit I picked up from the trip happened when we landed in San Juan. Everyone claps - all the natives at least. They are rejoicing that we made it safely and they are home - pretty cool!

Another exciting tidbit from this past year was adopting a dog from the local humane society. His name is Ebony and he is a Border Collie/Flat-Coated Retriever mix. He was about 8 months old when I adopted him. He is a great companion and super smart. He has learned numerous tricks and picks up on things super fast. Unfortunately his intelligence also means that he gets bored just as easily. He has eaten or destoryed more dog toys than I care to count and also done a number one various household items that do not belong to him. Most recently he finished off a blanket. I bought it for him in January and since then he has been gnawing on it. Last night I saw him swallow the last piece... :-) I am planning to start agility classes with him next month. I am hoping this will give him an outlet for his energy and a way to exercise his brain!!

Well, I think that's enough for now! I'd love to hear from you, so drop me a line when you get a chance. I try to be better about responding to personal notes than I am about blogging - promise!!

Peace!

Sarah

P.S. After living here for over a year, I am now officially a resident of NC - hence the title!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that you have all recovered from your food comas and found some good sales if you chose to shop on Black Friday! I think I owe you an update from NC.

I am doing well, getting really excited to head home for Christmas. I will be home from Dec. 19 - Jan. 2nd, so if you'd like to get together, please let me know. :-)

On to what I have been up to...At the beginning of November I bought a car! I am very happy with it and glad to no longer be stuck in my apartment or dependent on others for rides. It is a Carolina Blue Toyota Corolla. The color was purely coincidental, but being that blue is my favorite color I am thrilled. I pumped gas for the first time a couple of days ago. Since it is illegal to pump your own gas in Oregon, I had never done it before. It was easy enough!

The following weekend (after getting my car) I had a small gathering at my apartment for a few people from my program. I baked sugar cookies for us to decorate and we drank apple cider and played games. It was really fun. Below is a picture of the group.
Last weekend I went to Washington DC for the National Sigma Xi Student Research Conference. I left NC on Friday morning and drove to the airport in the snow. It was crazy! Fortunately the snow didn't stick and I made it there safely. The flight from here to DC is less than an hour, so before I knew it I was checking into the hotel and then the conference. I presented a poster on my fruit fly research that I did as an undergraduate. It was great fun to share my research with anyone who was interested. I also met other students and researchers from around the country. I especially liked talking with those from Oregon. It was fun to hear about Portland and how things were on the west coast. :-) I got a chance to do a little site seeing and went to the National Portrait Gallery and American Museum of Art, which was about 2 blocks from my hotel. I enjoyed looking at the exhibits, particularly an exhibit juxtaposing art by Georgia O'Keefe and Ansel Adams (Jo I thought of you). For those of you who don't know, O'Keefe is a painter and Adams is a black and white photographer. Both artists like to capture mysticism in their art and they often paint similar landscape type works. Many of Adams pieces are very close up while O'Keefe's are somewhat impressionistic. I also liked this contemporary art piece that was composed of license plates from all 50 states and depicted the preamble in cryptic English (see picture below). It's very creative. I stayed in DC until Sunday morning when I flew home with a grand total of seven other people. The plane was small. but not that small! We each could have had our own row, maybe two! I have included some pictures from the conference/my trip. First me with my poster. Second, the group from the Columbia-Willamette Chapter of Sigma Xi (the Portland group) . Third me in front of the National Portrait Gallery and American Museum of Art. Fourth is a picture of license plate preamble. The last two pictures are some great flower arrangements that were in the lobby of the hotel.




I spent Thanksgiving with some wonderful friends that I have known for 15 years. They live here in NC and are like a second family to me. I had a wonderful time sharing in their Thanksgiving meal and traditions.

Classes here are winding down. I have three left and then finals! I am super excited to be done for the semester! Once classes are over, I have a week long statistics training class and have to present a poster my semester's research project.

Research in my lab rotation is going pretty well. I am very busy. Things have really picked up now that I am almost done. I am working on multiple projects and getting some interesting and unexpected results. I have primarily been running western blots on proteins taken from the large intestinal epithelial cells of mice. For those of you who aren't familiar with this technique, western blotting involves taking some kind of protein sample (in my case proteins from intestinal cells) and denaturing them (breaking the bonds that hold the protein together). After doing this, using chemicals and heat, I load the proteins into the wells (indentations) in a gel that I made. A gel is similar to very stiff Jello. The samples run through the gel because of an electrical current that I run through it. Running the proteins through the gel allows me to separate them based on their size. I then transfer the proteins to a membrane and incubate it with an antibody that binds to the protein I am interested in. This allows me to identify my protein among a bunch of others and make comparisons between samples. Prior to coming to this lab I had never run a western blot before. Now I have run quite few!

In other news, I have decided not to volunteer at the humane society right now. I went through the orientation, but I don't have a lot of free time, so I am holding off for the moment. Instead of volunteering at the shelter, I am organizing a series of science workshops for homeschoolers here in the Chapel Hill area. I am really excited about these workshops. I miss teaching and giving back to the community. This will allow me to do both. I am still organizing everything, but so far, I have a location and a general plan of the topics we will cover. I am going to teach the students about the scientific method, weather, the cell, genetics, bacteria, and the organs of the body (with a pig dissection).

Well, I think that is the majority of my news for the moment. Thank you all so much for the emails and letters! I enjoy all correspondence and I am sorry if it takes me awhile to respond. I will try to get back to you soon, especially once exams are over, I will have more time.

Peace!

~Sarah

Happy Halloween!

Hello Family and Friends!

It is high time that I send you an update from Tar Heel Country. If I had an entry posted for each time I thought about posting an entry there would be about 5 additional entries on here...the best laid plans! So I debated whether I should write a lot of little entries or one long one. I decided to go with one, hopefully this won't get too long. Here I go, the highlights of the past three weeks, with pictures!

In mid-October I went to the UNC vs. Notre Dame football game! It was an excellent game, suspenseful to the end. It all came down to the last seconds, UNC was up and Notre Dame had the ball yards from their end zone. A few minutes, time outs, and yellow flags later, UNC held on and won the game 29 to 24!Final score!
Leanna (my housemate) and I standing in front of the stretching team! We sat together in the UNC student section.

Last weekend I went to a pumpkin carving party! It was great fun. Just a small group of graduate students with pumpkins and creativity. The girl whose house the party was at lives less then a mile from my apartment. It is amazing how many of us live so close together. Below is my pumpkin, I was going for an autumn leaves theme!
Pumpkin guts!
The group! Left to right - Corey, Megan, Andy, Me, Adam, and Mary.

The finished products!

Last Wednesday I went to an amazing concert! The band Great Big Sea played in Raleigh. Don't worry if you haven't heard of them, I hadn't either until about 5 hours before the concert. A guy from the Newman Center choir invited me because he had an extra ticket. They are a band from Newfoundland. They play traditional folk music and some of their own stuff. It has a Celtic rock flare to it - meaning that the beat is awesome. My hands were sore from clapping almost non-stop. They were great with the audience and they played for about 2.5 hours. I liked their music so much that I bought a CD. Here are a couple U-Tube links to some of my favorite songs. They are also very talented and play numerous instruments!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdiSQsx4igM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDE0M1dYijA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTrF8ROCWZ0&feature=related

For Halloween yesterday I went to a party at a faculty member's house with another girl from my apartment complex. It was nice, fairly low key. I dressed up as a cat - my last minute costume idea. I will try in the future to avoid last minute Halloween costume shopping. I do not recommend it...it was crazy! Check out my poor attempt at cat whiskers below!

I am still in school. :) Classes and lab work continue. I managed to survive another round of exams last weekend. Actually I am planning out my classes for next semester and my next lab rotation too! I will keep you posted on the rotation. Right now I think I will be taking a class on complex genetic traits (as opposed to traits that are influenced by one gene i.e. the gene that causes Huntington disease). I will also take a molecular biology course that focuses on the steps involved in gene expression from the RNA level to DNA modifications that change whether or not a gene is available to be expressed (epigenetics). Both look exciting. Something interesting I learned about last week was how Golden Retrievers are being used to study the human genetic disease muscular dystrophy. Apparently these dogs get a spontaneous genetic mutation that results in a similar condition to that seen in humans with Duchenne Muscular Dystrohpy. These animals are used to test potential disease treatments and explore the differences in symptoms seen across individuals that occur with the same gene mutation. Typically one would assume if the gene mutation is the same that the phenotype (the physical characteristic produced by the gene) would be the same. In muscular dystrophy this is not the case. It was really interesting to hear about how these dogs are used to study the disease. I am glad that they do not induce the mutation in the dogs, they just use one that is already there. I don't think I could work with the poor dogs, but hopefully they will produce results that help people.

This coming week I will finally be orientated at the humane society. Last time I went, I realized that I had signed up to volunteer at the wrong shelter! Oops...apparently there are two shelters in the area and I neglected to look at the address when I signed up.

It finally feels like fall here. We have had a couple of heavy frosts and the leaves are turning gorgeous colors! I am planning to take some pictures of the leaves soon. Today we had beautiful 70 degree weather and I think there is more to come tomorrow too!

I hope that this finds you all doing well!

Cheers!

Sarah

One Sixth

Greetings Family and Friends!

I think it is high time I drop you all a line and catch you up on things here in NC. First to explain the title. I have now been here for one sixth of a year! I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by. It does not really seem like October. I think that is partly because the weather here is still really nice - no complaints! It is still pretty sunny and in the 70s. The leaves haven't really started to change or fall and thus it seems like late August maybe September in Portland. Only the pumpkin in our living room and the calendar on my wall remind me of the present month.

The past couple of weeks have been a bit of a struggle, but I think I am on the up swing now. It was a combination of stress, loneliness, and general frustration getting me down. This week was much better and I have high hopes for the future.

A little about what I have been up to...lots of studying, class, and lab work. Last weekend I had my first take home test. I had heard that these exams take the whole weekend, and I would like to confirm the hearsay. I didn't work on it 24/7, but I didn't do much else besides the exam and felt like I needed a weekend when it was over.

Lab work is going alright. We have run into some snags, but we have options to try, so hopefully we can clean up our DNA samples. By clean up I mean separate the DNA from the proteins and other "junk" mixed in the solution with it. To do this we have been using a small cellulose membrane and a variety of buffers (solutions) to get the DNA to stick to the column while all the other stuff flows through. Then we add water to elute (wash) the DNA off the column and collect it. We have done this numerous times with limited success. Our DNA either sticks too well or not well enough to the column. At most we have recovered 20%, pretty sad...'tis the story often in research. That just makes it all the more exciting when it finally works!

I feel like I am starting to get better at reading scientific journal articles and I am constantly finding connections between lecture material and my research in lab. Both these developments excite me.

Last weekend I went to the humane society across the street from my apartment complex (convenient I know!). I was headed to volunteer orientation. I decided to volunteer at the shelter to get my animal fix and to give me something fun to do. Anyway, I showed up just to find out that I had signed up to volunteer at the other shelter in North Carolina and not the one across the street. Oops! I straightened the whole thing out and signed up for orientation at the right shelter. Training is in about a month. Hopefully I will still have time when November rolls around...

This week I ventured out to the local DMV and got my North Carolina driver's license. Quite the experience. Besides jumping through the usual hoops characteristic of the DMV, I had to chain my bike to a tree because there was no bike rack and unfortunately it was not allowed in the spacious waiting room. :-/

Yesterday I went on a great trail run with some other people from my program. We saw three white-tailed deer who made a loud sneezing noise at us. These deer were much more jumpy than the ones around my apartment complex (shown in the pictures).

Tomorrow I am going to watch the UNC v. Notre Dame football game! I entered the ticket lottery and managed to secure a ticket. I am going to cheer on UNC with my housemate who graduated from Notre Dame. I should be an exciting game because both teams are 4:1.

I will leave you with this lovely photo of an unwanted house guest discovered in our apartment one evening - a cockroach! My housemate put it under a glass and put a large textbook on top. Unfortunately the cooler temperatures have brought these critters into our humble home. We had quite the adrenaline rush later that same week trying to squish one at 12:30am. We resorted to vacuuming it up when it refused to die!

As always, thank you all for the emails! They are much appreciated!

Happy Autumn!!

Sarah

Craziness

Hello for the third time!

This has been a crazy week. Being gone all weekend and having the first two midterms of my graduate school was not a good combination. I have so been looking forward to this weekend and I am thrilled that it is finally here!

Before I plunged into a week of seemingly endless genetics and pathology, I celebrated my birthday. I turned a whole year older on Sunday. I celebrated by going out to dinner with a friend and being sung to by my wonderful family! :-) I think I may bake celebratory cupcakes or something in the future...

Monday - Thursday were primarily a blur during which I spent every spare moment buried in a mountain of new information. My wonderful lab PI and post-doc gave me Wednesday and most of Thursday off for studying. I am very grateful to them for their understanding. I know other first students who weren't so lucky... My genetics exam was not too bad. It didn't turn out as well as i hoped, but I am glad it is done. The pathology test was actually fun - weird I know, but it was very well written so that you really had to know the information in order to answer the questions. It was fun to read through them and pick out all the little intricacies that could trip someone up who had a cursory understanding of the material. I say this without knowing how I did, so hopefully I didn't fall for too many tricks. I have discovered two things - 1: I really like histology type material - especially because the lecture prof was excellent. I think part of it is also because I am a visual person, so I can see what I am learning about. 2: I have discovered that I dislike the "complex" stats involved in genetics...I think I am more of a molecular geneticist.

Enough about tests, moving on to some other exciting tidbits from this week - actually all from today. Due to the trend of nice weather, I decided to test out my new bike (finally) and rode to campus. The ride is quite short, only about 15 minutes, however, I have discovered why they call this lovely town Chapel Hill. I live on a hill and campus is on a hill, unfortunately this is not the same hill. :-( The one downside to biking, it really is uphill both ways. haha! Aside from needing to get my handle bars tightened so they stop squeaking, the bike works quite well. I love the fact that it is so light. I even rode in the street and did not have any close encounters of the automobile kind - also reassuring.

The other semi-exciting tidbit from today is a new technique I did in lab, well it is actually a common technique, but it was new to me. I finally got to run a PCR reaction. For those of you who are not familiar with this, PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction. Basicially it is a way to increase the concentration of a sample of DNA. A common use for it is in forensics. Say someone has a small amount of DNA from a crime scene, but they need a larger amount to actually run tests. They could use PCR to make the small sample larger. Some of you may be thinking, why is Sarah so excited about doing PCR, there is really nothing to it! True, it is pretty easy, but I had only learned about it in class up until this point and I have found that don't truly understand something until I actually do it, thus now I know.

One other fun event from this week was a Newman Center choir potluck that I went to on Monday. I got a chance to meet a few other graduate students and some community members, share a meal, and then sing afterwards. Oh, I have started playing guitar at Mass. It was such a joy when I did it two weeks ago for the first time in about a month. I really realized how much I missed it. I found a fellow choir member who lives about 5 minutes from apartment complex and literally drives right by on his way to Mass. This was exactly the scenario I was looking for. He and his family have been wonderful picking me up on their way by!

Tomorrow afternoon I am hoping to go to the UNC vs Virgina Tech football game. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I can get in...I hear it is pretty hard. Eileen, I will be thinking of you as I deck out in my Tarheel Blue! :-)

Well, that is all my news from Tarheel Country. Thank you so much for all the personal emails, I really enjoy reading them and hearing from you all; however, I realize my response time is much less than ideal. :-/ I also hope to get caught up on that this weekend...

I hope that you are each doing well!

Take care!

Sarah

Sun + Beach + Genetics = FUN!

Hola!

So I spent last weekend at a hotel in Atlantic Beach learning about the latest genetics research going on at UNC and soaking up some rays on the sand. Our trip began Friday afternoon after class. I carpooled with a couple of other first year students. It was a long 4 hour trek to the coast and it poured down rain, so much that it was hard to see the road, fortunately that didn't last long.

We arrived at the "retreat" around 10pm at which point I went to a poster session (a set time where some of the students and post docs talked about their recent work in the form of a poster). On Saturday I listened to a series of talks, spent some time studying on the beach - lame I know, but I had exams this week, so I had to prepare :-(. The rest of Saturday was spent with more posters, presentations, and some alcohol.

On Sunday we headed home after more presentations. The retreat was a really great way to connect with students and faculty in an off campus environment. I talked to some faculty and graduate students about potentially rotating in their labs. I am really starting to settle in here and meet lots of nice people. I think the program did an excellent job of selecting great people, because I have yet to meet another student that I don't get along with.

For your viewing pleasure I have also included some photos taken at the beach. Some of them are various artistic renditions of the pier I was studying under. The towel is a souvenir we each received for attending. I was pretty excited to get a free towel and a weekend at the beach just for listening to some great science!

While the retreat was fun, I am super excited to spend this weekend around Chapel Hill catching up on some stuff! In the next entry I will cover the high-lights of this past week, promise it will be the last one for now!

~S