NCUR Summation

Currently on the train back from NCUR, and it's a real relief. The last week or so has been all sorts of rollercoaster.

Last Monday I had to catch the train from Seattle to Minneapolis, which is easy enough in theory. In practice, my fiance and I forget about Seattle's unique rush hour and then go to the wrong train station. One of the main downtown public transit stations is right next to the Amtrak station, so I ran as fast I could to the fancier station only to find that I had to haul my bright pink suitcase 200 yards back to the crumbling Amtrack depot.

One major lesson I learned about Amtrak last week: It is many things, but it is not fancy.

Also, bring your own food. Otherwise you can expect an extra 40 dollars on your travel costs and some serious concern for your G.I. tract. Seriously, the stuff's nastiness is completely untamed by train's microwaves.

I ended up getting to the station after the train was sealed up, but I was able to beg my way on in the nick of time. Then a tree hit the train. I always thought that trees were stationary, but apparently that's not the case in Montana. Duct taping / Repairing the damage to the train tacked on another three hours to the original 36, and subsequent delays had us rolling into MSP about an hour after my plane had taken off for New York. The tree also messed up a phone interview I was supposed to have on the train by stopping the train in one of Montana's numerous black holes of cellular service. Luckily, my school had also chartered a second plane I was able to sneak on and the tutoring agency accepts malicious trees as an excuse for missing an appointment. I made it safe and sound to my hotel and probably get to look forward to tutoring high schoolers struggling to stay afloat.

After all I'd gone though to get to the conference, I decided I needed to make the most of it, though I found that was harder than it seemed. To give you an idea, Ithaca college is roughly the size of wow and the buildings tend to look like the future. With over a thousand attendees, the oral presentations had to be held during class in multiple buildings. This made it challenging to pick and choose what speeches I wanted to see, as they were usually far apart and congested with both presenters and normal Ithaca students. I ended up running around a lot more than I should have in dress clothes trying to bounce between social science, criminal science, and biology presentations. Occasionally, the presentations were too packed to get in (strangely, that happened a lot with the criminal science presentations) so I had time to check out the art exhibits or the gym that had about 60 posters being presented at any given time. Honestly, the posters may have been my favorite part.

Of all the ways to present something, I think posters are probably the best for undergraduate work. From a reader's perspective, you can easily see if you are going to be interested in what is being presented while having unique access to the researcher. From a presenter's perspective, it allows you the most flexibility to tailor your words to your audience and I think it's a lot more exciting to do. You don't really get any of those benefits with speeches. Most people at an undergraduate conference are going to have very diverse backgrounds and attention spans, even if they do understand what you're saying, they might find out in the first five minutes that they'd rather be listening to someone else. Sadly, this happened a lot for me. If they weren't completely over my head, they were completely under it.

The only reason I tried to go to as many oral presentations that I did was that I'd never really seen any by undergraduate researchers before. Granted, there were also some poster presenters that had to be reeeeel bored. A surprising number of people were either uninteresting or were only presenting preliminary research and planning. I'm really not trying to seem pretentious, but it made me wonder just how far undergraduate research has to go. Maybe it's unfair to compare other's work with my own, but there was at least half a year of hard work backing up my poster. I actually had found something and had something to say. When I wasn't talking about research, I was promoting the trip and the Gilman Scholarship. Most importantly, I still had questions I wanted to answer and was able to learn new possible routes of discovery by talking with my fellow researchers. Perhaps I'm being to critical, but I think if you're flying half-way across the country to a national conference, you should at least have something concrete to show for it.

I'm over it. Besides, there was some pretty awesome work there. One group at the University of Minnesota did a pilot study of a chiropractic remedy for peanut allergy, wherein they found that while the blood chemistry of the subjects (n=6) did not change, they were able to eat peanuts after 6 weeks. Basically, the mechanism of allergic reactions, even anaphylaxis, is more complex than we thought. Another cool project was done by an University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire student who analyzed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and concluded that it was ineffective in smoothing over racial tensions that remained after the end of apartheid. One of my favorite projects was probably the criminal science presentation I saw about the CSI effect and it's apparently negligible effect on jury voting. One of my karate instructors was a prosecutor for my county and he had talked about it as a big concern nowadays, so it was nice to hear that the research indicates that jurors are still voting as they normally do.

Now I'm focusing on getting a job. After three months of nothing, suddenly I've an interview at a restaurant on Friday and I get to call back the people at Best Buy when the train roams out into somewhere where my phone gets service. All this is on top of the tutoring gig, a possible job as a temp lab tech (which I almost certainly would have got if I still lived in River Falls – go figure), and, most interestingly, an opportunity to teach yoga and taichi. A local school put an ad up on craigslist and offered scholarships to anyone who is interested in learning and helping them expand into new areas. That last one might take a while, but I'm seriously excited about it. Not only is a great background for naturopathic medicine, but this is one of those things I've wanted to do in the back of my head for a long while.

Where's my reset button?

I've been home for over a week now, and it's a little weird.

A lot of it has less to do with being back and more with getting ready to leave. The last week largely consisted of sending out more job applications and looking for a place to safely pass out in for a week after driving the 28 hours to Seattle. Some might see it as apartment searching, but after the amount of walking, driving, and flying I've done in the past few weeks, as long as the mice don't mind another snuggle-buddy I'll be happy where ever.

Our goal is to get everything squared away by the beginning of March. Between the planning and the worrying and the arguing and the nerve-racking, I'm about one more bout of food poisoning away from ecstasy. At least I think we've got our new apartment nailed down. We sent them money and called dibs. DIBS I SAY.

There's other things that are weird about being back. Even though Taiwan has a lot in common with the States, I've had to readjust to the things I was used to a month ago. Some things, like the floor toilets and the possibility of becoming road pizza whenever I was near a street, have been left behind fairly easily. The floor toilets provided a Great Fun in trying to not fall into them. Other things have taken longer. For instance, now that I'm diligently job searching, I pretty much need a crowbar every time I want some separation from my chair. Being in my apartment for long stretches of the day is very different from my time in Taiwan and being almost constantly on the move. While it was exhausting to travel and do so much, it was by no means boring.  Even when I am successful in rending my behind away from in front of my computer, River Falls provides only so much diversity in locale. It's a far cry from the kaleidoscope of Taiwan's scooter-filled metropolises, murmuring seashores, and wide variety of architecture and local business. 

It sounds strange to me, as I'm more of the "hide in my cave while everyone else has enjoyable interactions" type, but I also miss having a lot of people around. Part of me misses all the people-watching, but I wasn't exclusively a wallflower over there. It's a good thing too. Almost everyone in Taiwan - and there were a lot of them - was nothing but kind and willing to put up with me masticating the Chinese language into a pulp. Even though it was difficult to get our points across, I really enjoyed being around so many people that were as nerdy as I am. I've worked in a lab with other people before, but not with as many people or with as large a set-up as in Taiwan. Adding to the awesome, most of the people we were working with were brilliant. It was a little intimidating at first, as I am neither tri-lingual, bi-lingual, and I don't even have a master's degree, but everyone there was just too generous for my embarrassment to last for long. 

Now, I'm back to my friends who have no qualms with telling me, "I love you, but you need to actually open your mouth when you talk or quit attempting speech with a mouth full of peanut butter" and other sweet nothings regarding how much of a socially-stunted over-achieving dork I am.

Not having a state-wide snow emergency was pretty nice as well. The heaven's picked the exact worst time to dump it's contents on me. I'm having enough trouble accomplishing everything I need to and squeezing in last minute visits with friends before we go due to my job/apartment/figuring out how to move/packing up things. The last thing I need is being blinded by plumes of snow on a frozen highway.

Until the Midwest road system becomes largely dependent on tunnels, I'll have to make do. There's a small mountain of things on my to-do list, including:

• Find a Job.
• Figure out how to ship things to our apartment.
• Finish my research with Dr. Huang.
• Meet with some bio/chem/tech clubs and a few teachers on campus to give presentations of my experiences
• Prepare said presentations
• Prepare a poster for NCUR that combines my last year of work, including the trip to Taiwan.
• Meet up with friends one last time before going out to Seattle (and convince them to come visit)
• Help out in the play my fiancé is currently struggling to keep afloat.

Fun side note: I can make soy milk now, thanks to the tutelage of Dr. Huang's wife.

Also, I totally typed in "globspot" instead of blogspot and think the former is Much better.

Taiwan - The end is nigh pt. 1

2012 or some crap, right?

Soon to be back in the States blog.

There's a couple of things on my mind right now. I'll spare you my worries about getting hired anywhere anytime soon, as well as all the other weird and wonderful rites of leaving never-never land.

Right now, the group is Taipei again after spending the first portion of the week in Taizhong. We're in the process of scrambling to squeeze in as many last minute research projects, touring, and pictures as possible. This may or may not be because of the -20 degree weather that we get to look forward to if our flight somehow lands on the ice rink that is the MSP airstrip.

Our time in Taizhong was a bit of a mixed bag. We arrived on Sunday and mostly rested the rest of that day. Monday and Tuesday were spent doing more surveys of the TCM compounds we received from Drs. Cheng and the coral extracts from the NMMBA. It's a four day protocol, and because we had to leave for Taipei today, I got to try and carry three 96-well plates wrapped in tin foil and whatever else I could find to keep them from spilling in taxis, buses, and subways. It was worth it though, as the extra time allowed the embryos to be perfectly treated by most of the chemicals and we found a few new effective compounds to look at. Considering that Dr. Huang's model has been used to survey several hundreds of chemicals and only found two or three really promising drugs, this is pretty exciting.

We also took another stab at using the anti-AA antibodies we got from Dr. Yu at the Zhongshan Medical University. Unlike the survey, this has yet to really come to fruition. We've got a few kinks to work out still, some of which are quite interesting. One example of this is our use of the optical equipment at Tunghai University. In order to get better resolution and clarity, we've been using something called a confocal microscope. Basically, it builds a topographical map of a sample. By taking away layers and isolating certain areas, a confocal microscope allows us to see things that would be hidden when using a normal light microscope. In layman's terms, it's like looking through batman's microscope. I really like seeing all that those things can do, although it's good to keep in mind that we still have a small laundry list of other experiments to do with the anti-AA antibodies. Once we're back at our own lab, I plan to take full advantage of the very generous supply of antibodies from Dr. Yu.

Taiwan - PHOTO DUMP

I finally got around to captioning these suckers. Check out the links to see my hard work and play.

TCM College/Clinic/Museum visit

Academia Sinica Visit

Kenting (more to come)

Taiwan - Downtime-er?

Here's the promised pictures from the last post. I'm sorry if they're tinted with jealousy. The UWRF research facilities are only enough to get work done and not much more than that.

You know you're in Taiwan when you're almost too tall to use the emergency showers.

This is like the door that urine samples get passed through, only instead of a toilet, there's fish on the other side.

This is an air shower here, although I was sad to see that the researchers don't really use it. I don't care if it isn't need for working with zebrafish, I want to be re-pressurized.

Zebrafish room at THU, which is basically a carbon copy of every fish lab in Taiwan. It turns out that Dr. Huang's set up at UWRF is unique in it's use of normal fish tanks.

Mice!

The sole inhabitant of the rabbit lab.

Taiwan - Southern Taiwan and Kenting (Pt.2)

Good news. The Gilman scholarship finally got transfered to me today, so the UWRF financial aid office isn't about to have my thumbs broken. Hooray for non-cement shoes!

This trip has been an exercise in, if nothing else, flexibility. Almost none of the specifics details have gone exactly according to plan. Either we've had to do some things later than others and bump ahead a few things, or we've had to skip some plans altogether. It's unfortunate, but what can we do but make the best of it? Besides, being able to bend has given us a few happy surprises as well. One man's flat tire is another's sudden excuse to hike a mountain trail.

The guy showing us around, Tony, handled it pretty well.

We're back in Taizhong for a few days, but there's still a lot to be said about the past week. Looking at it now, I realize that we spent the entire week in or around the NMMBA in Kenting. There was never a moment when the sea wasn't within earshot or visible through a window. I miss it now. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't good for us to go swimming or snorkeling. If you look at the last post, you'll see that I did manage to scare Tony and Dr. Huang by flipping off the ocean.

The gymnastics actually started with cartwheels. It ended with my first b-twist.

Our tourism was very welcome after the time we spent in the NMMBA labs. Tony (for the record, one of the kindest men in Taiwan and I wish him and his soon-wife all the best) took the week off from his normal experiments to babysit Kenna, Kathryn, and I while we learned some of the basics of column chromatography and NMR spectroscopy. With the exception of the NMR, everything was pretty straightforward once we got over Tony's accent and my tendency to either project my voice or slur my words and speak to quickly. Things would have been even easier if he'd used a picture book to explain the process: chopping up a frozen sample of soft coral, extracting anything that might be interesting with methanol, and then loading the crude extract into a silica-powder column isn't that hard. Setting up the column was mostly just annoying after we'd gotten the TLC pre-runs done to identify the proper solvent mixture. (For the confused: a column is like a big series of filters for mixtures of chemicals. TLC is like a very small column that is often used to figure out how the column should be set up) Working with Silica powder, along with having the family-friendly trait of never leaving your lungs if you're unlucky enough to inhale it, is very similar to taking a toddler to the grocery store. It likes to go everywhere except where you want it. 

Science and fashion aren't friends, but my lungs aren't perforated with glass now either.

The NMR made packing the column look like a piece of cake. It's like reading Lewis Carrol's EKG. Luckily, we were assisted by another Dr. named Siu who was also extremely kind, if somewhat difficult to talk to. I tried my hardest to remember what I already knew and to interpret Dr. Siu's hand gestures and sparse English, but organic chemistry is pretty traumatic to begin with. Hopefully Kenna and Kathryn got something out of Dr. Siu's and my teamwork.

They were like biological lawnmowers.

I call him "Lefty".

Another person at the NMMBA that I should mention is Jo. Our first day, she showed us the tanks where she and her coworkers culture the coral and fish specimens the NMMBA collects. Imagine a cross between a farm and an aquarium all inside of a building the size of baseball field. There were tanks with jellyfish, non-jelly fish, coral, algae, sea snakes and so much more. For whatever reason, they provided a home for injured or damaged animals until they could be set free or cremated.  This included a couple of horses that used to be used to make antibodies to snake venom and now spend their time wandering all over the campus. There were also sea turtles, which are about entirely larger than you would expect them to be. 

Jo pointing out the coral farming to Dr. Huang.

Anyways, back to Jo. She was supposed to take us snorkeling, but with the weather instead showed us how coral can be fluorescent and how coral reproduces. (PIC) When we went out for dinner and drinks with Dr. Siu and his researchers, she also demonstrated her superior dog-wrangling skills. Along with three other people in the back seat of the car, they fought valiantly to keep their poodle Yummy from scrabbling into the front seat. It was some good fun, and a nice addition to my conversation on traveling with another one of the researchers named James.

Blacklights: Not just for raves anymore.

Next update: More of the NMMBA aquarium, more exploring beaches, more awesome people and jellyfish stings.

Taiwan - Southern Taiwan and Kenting (Pt.1)

Sorry  it took so long, but I finally posted pictures from Taizhong. They're captioned, so go ahead and take a look: Day 7 photos (Traditional Chinese Medicine College, Clinic, and Museum)

With any luck I'll get the rest of the photos I took with Dr. Huang's camera sorted, labeled, and posted sometime in the next decade.

Anywho.

This week started with riding the bullet train again, this time from Taizhong to Kenting.

Kenting is in the southern part of Taiwan. Kenna, Kathryn, and I were very excited by this as it was much warmer there than in northern Taiwan. I know that it's been all of a few weeks since I was in the brisk Wisconsin winter storm warning fiesta, but my body temperature must have adapted as I was shivering in the 55 degree wind with everyone else in Taiwan. It kind of sucked, I was expecting summer weather and ended up almost a chilled as back home. Thus the excitement for Kenting. There was even talk of needing swimsuits for beach excursions. I was extra excited by this, as I've never actually been in an ocean.

I've been sprayed by both the Atlantic and the Pacific while in both Washingtons, but I never got the chance to jump in and splash back. REVENGE WILL BE MINE!

Edit: My ingenious battle plan was unsuccessful in instigating ocean-swimming. However, I did manage to land a few flips and possibly even my proper B-twist.

Not as good as swimming.

After having spent the first two weeks in chaotic Taipei and the only slightly calmer Taizhong, arriving in Kenting was a bit of shock. It's located in the midst of national park lands and actually has things like open spaces. Compared to the cramped northern cities that seem to be the battle ground of construction workers and advertisers, Kenting and the surrounding area's lack of competition for both level and vertical square footage was like walking out of an oven. If it weren't for the ocean and, unfortunately, the scooters, it's got a lot in common with Wisconsin.

Actually, that's quite a stretch. I might as well say Popsicles have a lot in common with wind turbines.

Taiwan - Last day in Taizhong (pt. 2)

Sorry about that last post's tangent. This one will be more succinct, if only because it's almost three AM here and I was up much later last night. My pineal gland must be taking a vacation, but normal circadian rhythms are over-rated anyways.

My favorite part about our last day in Taizhong had to be the museum's section dedicated to medicine. As with the other exhibits, I was surprised by how extremely thorough and they were. Pretty much every kind of treatment mankind has devised was on display. There was clinical medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, and even some folk remedies from Africa. Apparently, there are some African tribes that basically practice acupuncture, except they do it with nails on a wooden doll that is meant to act as a decoy for diseases. The things look like sad porcupines. Another interesting aspect of the exhibit was how traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) was given almost as much space as the clinical medicine is, in fact most of the exhibits on human aging and disease included the perspectives of both clinical and TCM. It was a good reflection of how traditional Chinese medicine is regarded by the majority of the Chinese, although most go to a clinical doctor for much of their troubles. Granted, the line between clinical medicine and TCM really blurred for me while I was in Taizhong - especially at the Chinese medicine college with Dr. Cheng. While they were most definitely working with TCM, the were also testing it with macrophages and using genetic engineering to make better remedies - not to mention the work my group did with extracting active compounds from plants.

(It may sounds strange to those who here Naturopathy and guess the meaning to be "over-privileged hippie quackery" but as an aspiring ND, I was ecstatic to experience firsthand the blending of clinical and traditional medicine.)

After the museum our group explored the surrounding area, which included what I first thought was children's play equipment and later learned were public exercise machines. We also checked out a 16-story department store. Including everything you could find at Ikea for roughly the same amount, I wasn't a fan. I did like the massive arcade on the top floor, but the hounding by sales people (who make American door to door salesmen look completely apathetic) really ruined it for me. For one, I didn't understand a thing they said, and they seemed to think that it didn't matter. In truth, it didn't, because I was just window shopping. Explaining this was almost impossible. We were able to escape into the restaurant on one of the upper floors, only to be greeted by an equally menacing terror.

Actually, it was just really bad steak.

A general rule of thumb:  Whenever a restaurant serves food endogenous of a certain country, unless said restaurant is in said country, the food is almost always bad. Chinese restaurants in the states are NOTHING like restaurants in Taiwan or China. The food is faster, better, and cheaper here, unless you go to a steakhouse. Then the inverse is true. While this is pretty much common sense, we still make adventures to places with Western food once in a while. 

Taiwan - Last day in Taizhong (pt. 1)

I just found out I had been misspelling almost all of the Chinese words on this blog. As a result, I've probably been pronouncing many of them wrong as well. That's just swell. American tourists look bad enough as it is.

One of my rare gripes about the language in Taiwan is their non-use of the pinyin system. I'm not a fan of their total adherence to traditional characters either. Otherwise, the language is really interesting and fun except for those two details. Some days, those two details can really wreck a day. You can say a lot of things about China, but they were REALLY smart to make the switch to simplified characters.

Anyways, the last day of week two went as follows:

After finishing up the last of our week's work in Dr. Cheng's lab, we went to lunch somewhere nearby the science-museum. Dr. Huang, in one of his more and more prevalent moments of dry humor, had the girls and I thinking that the restaurants around the museum where all pretty upscale and that we would have to eat at McDonalds. The look on Kathryn's face was too delightful for words. We ended up eating at pretty fancy italian place instead, and I actually enjoyed it a lot. Throughout the trip, I've made it my goal to try as much as is safe to do so. Accordingly, I've been a little irritated when Dr. Huang or the others have suggested getting food that we could get back home. It just seems ridiculous to me to travel halfway around the world just to do the same stuff you can do at home. I did manage to get over my frustration though, as it is very interesting to see how other places portray different cultures, almost as much as it is to see the differences between how wrong the common American perceptions of Chinese culture are.

The science museum was definitely the highlight of the day, though the main chocolate exhibit was strangely disappointing. For all the people jostling around trying to see it, the only interesting things on display were the various scultures made out of chocolate, though they were pretty sweet. HaHaHaPUN. Actually, I was sad to find that we were only a llowed to look at the chocolate renditions of the terra cotta warriors or the Taipei 101. Neither were we allowed to eat the dim sum meal that was sculpted out of chocolate. It was very conflicting because the whole place smelled delicious but there was despicably solid plate glass between the displays and my mouth. Adding insult to injury, everything in the gift shop was apparently priced by Persian princes, so I couldn't go the legal route to fulfill the cocoa monkey that had been strapped to my back.

In all seriousness, the chocolate displays were really impressive and inspired. I saw some stuff done with food that I would never have the creativity nor the patience to complete, although that may be because that thought train would go something like: "Hey, I bet I can carve this into something INMYFACE!" ~insert the sound of starving raptors eating birthday cake~

The rest of the museum was much more interesting, partly because the legends on the permanent exhibits were both in English and Chinese, and partly because the displays were six kinds of awesome. I was pretty much floored by the animatronic dinosaurs that greeted me upon entering the main museum. Rating them on my scale of fantasticness, they had a score of three crying children.

It's like the metric system, but understood in the U.S.

I think they should have done better, but I'm not sure the youngsters in the room realized that the robots seemed to react to those around them. I was really expecting one to ask me if I was John Connor. I really like them. My inner nine year-old very much wanted to spend the entire time taunting playing with the dinosaurobots, but I decided that asserting dominants over robotic placeholders of extinct deathdealers was probably not the best example to set for the children that were already scared and confused by my lack of exposure to sunlight and blonde hair.

After glaring menacingly at some uppity velociraptors for next year's christmas card, I moved on to the exhibit of the human body. I'm not sure exhibit is the right word, as the majority of the museum's two top levels were dedicated to explain one aspect of Homo sapiens or another. Whether it was about human development, birth, and even death, the exhibit was astoundingly thorough. It's interesting, because in my use of the word "development", I mean it in the broadest sense possible. For example, the aforementioned T2000's could be seen as part of the human exhibit, as they were part of the evolutionary process that resulted in Neanderthaland and my more distant cousins. I think the one word that really described the exhibit was "thorough." You could start at a display about the origins of life and make your way up the Darwinian path to displays of Egyptian mummification and even cryo-preservation.

That last display scared me a little, mostly because I was under the impression that the only people who were crazy enough to pursue cold storage-based immortality died sometime after World War II. While I can see the benefits of cold-storage for things like space travel, I am a firm believer in death. It's not an issue that really bothers me at all until people try to cheat the system.

For a while I wanted to be a mortician because I thought I would be a good fit for the work given my comfort level. Part of the reason I'm no longer engaged in mortuary science was the realization that many people are vehemently opposed to accepting death as innevitable. It really surprises me how many people go about their lives as if there will always be another day to get their lives in order. Worse yet, just as many people spend enormous amounts of money to prolong the suffering and consequences of a life lived under the impression that tomorrow was soon enough. In a nutshell, my problem was that working as a funeral director would ensure that I eventually had to deal with everyone of those individuals. I couldn't stomach it, and switched.

Another thing that found strange, although not for the reasons you might expect, was the thermal imaging video of a recently deceased person cooling off. As I've said, death is something that bothers me, but I am very aware of how much it bothers others. I was simply surprised to see the cooling video and the artifacts that accompanied it in an otherwise family-friendly museum. 1000 year old mummies (out of their sarcophagi) and Incan burial masks (silver with red paint to symbolize blood – used to try and revive the recently deceased) are not things that would be on pedestals in an American museum. I'm not sure where I stand on the issue.

Too be continued. In the meantime, feel free to let me know what you think about shielding children from things like death.

Taiwan Day - I'm really not counting anymore.

I just got internet access for the first time in a few days. While I've been writing for the entire time, I've not been able to post. Even after tonight, I'll still probably not be caught up.

Research results from Week 2:

Rutin extraction, purification, and TLC

• With Dr. Cheng at the Chinese Medical University
• Rutin extracted via hot methanol from pagoda tree flowers (latin?)
• Active component (Rutinose) strengthens blood vessels, while the rest functions as an anti-uretic
• Took a long time to recrystalize and even longer to dry.
• Ended up getting multiple grams of solid sample.
• Made a new friend, Tsai. You can see his account in the followers list, from my conversation with him he's much smarter than me and also doing some really interesting work with genetic engineering and mushrooms. His group is attempting to increase the production of a medicinally significant protein inside of a mushroom. Actually, it's exactly the kind of project that I would eventually like to be a part of some day, mixing both clinical and traditional medicine.

Preliminary chemical survey of compounds from Chinese Medical University with Dr. Liu at Tunghai University

• 10 compounds with two positive controls and one negative control.
• No conclusive results, may have to redo the survey
• Recieved 20 more compounds to survey
• Found out that Dr. Liu is one of the most well-organized and helpful women alive.

Anti-AA cd/ciELISA with Dr. Yu at Zhongshan Medical University

• First day: observed the protocols done by the wonderful laboratory assistant, Jim.
• Second day: attempted the protocols observed yesterday with varying degree of success.
  • On the whole, everyone was able to get acceptable results, given some tweaking.
  • There were only a few moments where Jim looked worried about our well-being.

Anti-AA immunohistochemistry staining with Dr. Liu at Tunghai University

• Protocol was actually carried out very well, considering the trouble Kenna and I have had in the past and it being Kenna's first time. Normally a large number of embryos are lost amongst all of the washes and pippetting, we only lost a couple.
• Strange results, we'll have to repeat them.
  • Anti-AA Ab's appear to have stained the heart, a ring of cells in the tail, and parts of the eye. The MF-20 embryos did not stain very well for some reason, which is strange because they normally do. It is strange, and we're not sure what is going on with some of the stains. Hopefully we'll get access to a section and the equipment we need to redo the experiment, either during the last week or even after we get back. Either way, this work was the main reason we came to Taiwan, so if nothing else gets done in the near future, this project will be.

Most of this week was spent in one of the three different labs that we were working in. It was fun, but also exhausting. Having to travel to and from all the different work spaces and the difficulties of scientific discussion with sizable language barrier did a fantastic job of zapping all of my available energy. How tuckered out I was at the end of the day was probably exasperated by staying up late so that I could talk with my fiance. Luckily, I should be done with that kind of nonsense in two weeks, so if I can just withstand being a zombie for a couple more weeks I'll be fine. I'm pretty sure that once I get home from the airport, I'm going to hug my bride to be and then bury myself with covers and Nyquil for a week.

When I haven't felt like a drooling automaton, I've been trying to talk with some of the researchers and professors we've been sharing labs with. As I'm only capable of pidgin Chinese, the amount of information I've been able to extract from the conversations has fluctuated wildly. With some of the conversations I've had, it was an accomplishment just to get names exchanged. Others, particularly Drs. Yu and Liu, have been more accomodating. Another area I've had issues in when talking with people here has been that we're not sure what to talk about. I'm not sure, but I think that a lot of it has to do with not understanding the language in addition to the fact that we're not graduate students. On top of that, it's really hard for me to try and pry out what people are interested in. I think that if I were a better conversationalist, this wouldn't be such an issue, but right now the awkward sileces area little too prevalent. One thing is for certain, next year someone on the trip besides Dr. Huang needs to understand Chinese. Otherwise, we need to bring balloon animals to explain our ideas better.

Taiwan Days 6-13 - Heinz 57.

My goal tonight is to finally catch up with my posting here. Luckily, the last handful of days can be summed up pretty simply. We've been in one lab or another anywhere from 8 to 10 hours a day and then spending what little energy we have left to lift the covers on our beds.

I'm not complaining - I love research. There are days when my work with Dr. Huang is one of the few things in my life that I really understand. Even when I'm not sure about something I know that I can figure things out if I'm patient and diligent enough. In fact, it's these pursuits that make research the most rewarding for me. There aren't very many other jobs where you get to help discover things that no one has ever seen before. It's even more rare to see one's discoveries branch out into an ever-increasing spiral of new questions.

Take our group's research at the end of last week and all of this week. Some of the experiments worked out pretty well, some of them didn't. Being here for only a week with limited lab access and resources, it would be great to have all the experiments work flawlessly. In my experience experiments seldom behave this way. Partly this has to do with the exaggerated element of human error that unfortunately plagues undergraduate research. I think that the different fish and equipment we're using in our experiments may also be working against us. We're used to working with fairly vigorous wild-type fish from a pet store, but all of the fish we've had access to during this trip have been a lot more fancy (ie: transgenic and highly inbred). Being almost completely different animals, we've had to make some educated guesses regarding how to modify the experiments so that they would work properly. That considered, getting even mixed results is impressive.

Taiwan Day 4ish

This is my busy face.

 It is unfortunately apparent how behind I am on posting and how poorly the posts that I do have convey what I've want them to. I've been really busy lately. Hopefully, I can stay up late tonight and get some things finally filed away in my mental "done" pile. I've got Regina Spektor crooning in one ear and Dr. Huang's snores in the other, so let's start with actually explaining the events behind some of the photos I posted in the last post.

New Year's Eve was one big ball of crazy. It was also exciting, hectic, and on a few occasions nearly perilous. I guess that's how you know we're doing things right. The day started off harmless enough with some more work with embryos. For those who understand nerd, the following is what we were up to, as I now realize how extremely vague I was (You may thank my fiancée for this - and most of my other positive character traits). For those who don't, suffice it to say that we're finally doing some science and skip ahead to the stars.

Our work at Academia Sinica was basically the same thing that our lab normally does in River Falls, except better. Normally, we use in vitro fertilization to obtain roughly a few hundred zebrafish embryos for pharmaceutical testing and other experiments. I was pleased to find that the fish at Academia Sinica breed infinitely better than those at UWRF. We managed to get something in excess of 2000 embryos to work with, which was very encouraging until I found out everything Dr. Huang had in mind for those embryos. The first experiment was pretty tame in that it involved comparing the effects of known drugs for heart failure against a compound from La Crosse we've been looking at since the summer. I've done dozens of similar trials. The other two experiments were a little more daunting. Both were time trials, which is basically Dr. Huang-lish for "people get to draw straws for who stays up all night to change the embryo chemical treatments at 6 hour intervals. The main purpose of this sleep deprivation is to ascertain the "window" of a drug's function on heart failure. As we also had to harvest the embryos, we get to look at variation in gene expression as well (in experiments we'll be doing tomorrow). I'm not sure why, but Dr. Huang offered to do most of the time trials. This freed the girls and I up for the New Year's Eve. While he's a bit of a workaholic, it's nice to know that underneath he's got a heart of gold. 

***********STARS********STARS*********STARS (Someone needs to show me how to do cuts)

After the work with embryos was finished, the pictures from the last post are pretty indicative of what we did. Dr. Huang's old lab assistant ChinWei loaned Dr. Huang some of his nicer clothes for our fancy New Year's Eve dinner, even though that's not really common in Taiwan. In Japan it is, but I think ChinWei was pretty confused by it all. He played along with our sillyness very well regardless. We had Peking duck for dinner, which was delicious even with the breeze that blew through the restaurant. Afterwards, we went to ChinWei's house for the very energetic party his family was hosting. I had a really good time trying to comprehend the three different languages spoken with various degrees of intoxication, though this may have been slightly due to my own sampling of some very fine wine and sake. It had a great way of making the actual content of a conversation secondary to the intent behind it. Luckily everyone was there to have a good time, so the verbal chaos at least appeared to be friendly. Honestly, it was probably the theme for the night, as the Whole City was lit up with fireworks to celebrate the 100^th New Year of the Republic of China. Getting home from the festivities was no exception to the chaotic theme, as it looked like all of Taipei and then some came to watch the Taipei 101 worked in fire. With some help from ChinWei and the Taiwan public transportation system, Kenna, Kathryn, and I all made it home safe and sound. The only real mishap was that I almost paid the taxi three times the fare, so considering everything that could have gone wrong while we were being jostled by the gigantic crowd, I'm not complaining. As far as first real New Year's Eve celebrations go, Taiwan treated me pretty well.

Taiwan Day 4 - Camerafix

So far, Taiwan has only one thing that really irritates me. My camera has decided to be a greedy little power-monger. I'm lucky if I can get half a day with one set. This sucks. The pictures from our trip to the hot springs that I have been able to take can be found here, although my camera was uncooperative after lunchtime.

However, and I'm sorry if I mentioned this before and forgot, Kenna and Kathryn have been letting me use their cameras for some things. So I still have some way to share my experiences besides for long, rambling posts. Granted, I pretty much forgot about some of the pictures I took on their cameras until I was looking at their uploads on facebook and was really confused about why some of the photos seemed so familiar before realizing that I took them. Kenna and Kathryn's photos can be found here and here, and I've posted some of my favorites below.

The temple we visited on the first day when my batteries were dead. The girls and I did a lot of posing and sillyness with the stone tigers before we got kicked out for strangely unrelated reasons.

This is almost everyone that had pizza at the Academic Sinica. It was very cool, the old lab assistants meeting the new lab assistants. We all got to commiserate about how much of a task-master Dr. Huang can be. From right to left is Kenna, Me, Kathryn, ChinWei, Dr. Huang, and Benjamin. Brian also joined us, but he had to go before we thought to take a picture.

Koi at the restaurant where we had Peking duck. Unfortunately, they were probably the nicest aspect of the place. The food was good, but there was a constant breeze that turned the place into a giant fridge.

We all got dressed up for New Years and the fancy food. Dr. Huang even borrowed some of ChinWei's (on my left) clothes. I found out that unless you're going to a wedding or funeral in Taiwan, dressing up is pretty uncommon. I'm liking this country more and more by the minute.

After dinner, we went over to ChinWei's house.  After we hung out with the adults downstairs and were thoroughly overwhelmed with tri-lingual yelling, we went upstairs to meet ChinWei's younger brother Nick. He and his friends were a lot less exhausting to be around, for the most part we just shared wine and introductions.

Me doing Science.

Day 4 - Sciensauce

Good things to know about Taiwan's public transit system.

1. The buses don't stop unless you hail them.

2. The buses are privately owned, so they are all a little different.
3. As the buses are not government property, the drivers are just as reckless, if not more so, than the scooter drivers. If they were all amazing defensive drivers, the streets would be filled with carnage.
4. I'm borrowing this from a friend I met yesterday: when crossing the street, don't just look both ways. Look in every possible direction. In Taiwan, it is very possible to be hit by a car while on the side walk. It's like playing bloody knuckles with traffic lights.

Luckily, we all managed to avoid this fate and worse during the bus ride from Hell's amusement park the Downtown-most part of Taipei City after the train back from the hot springs. After being shaken like human martinis for 20 minutes, the bus poured us out into Academic Sinica research campus. Solid land never felt so...solid. After getting everything stowed away in the campus hotel that we were staying in, we toured Dr. Huang's old labs and had pizza with some of his old research assistants. While they understood English and I knew some Chinese, we ended up using Dr. Huang as a translator many times while talking about everything from babies to bioethanol. Even with the language barrier, I think it was good learning experience for everyone. In addition to a few new words, I learned that my pronunciation in both English and Chinese is roughly atrocious. Hopefully I'll improve or one of the other by the end of the trip.

Getting to take a look at the research facilities that Dr. Huang worked in was great. It was my kind of place, with science tucked in every nook and cranny and big, expensive machines waiting to be put to work. For the first time in a while, taking the GRE's started to look very appealing (GRE = big nasty test to get into graduate school). While it's been in the back of my mind for year or so now, I'm thinking that if for some reason I decide against going into naturopathic research, the reason will most likely be grad school. I'd probably try and do something with developmental or evolutionary biology. Ever since I took a zoology course two years ago, I've been really fascinated by the correlations between the different phyla and their indications. We covered everything from Eukaryotes to mammalia and I loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, I tend to dedicate the majority of my resources to my goals, so I've not really had the chance to explore my interests outside of medicine and healing. Even though I can be scatterbrained and have multiple interests\projects going in completely different fields, when it has come to getting into naturopathy school I have let very little be a hindrance. I may joke about grad school now, but that's all it is.

Naturopathic school doesn't have any kind of admission exam, as they emphasize instead on applicant history. I really like this about ND schools, although I must admit it took me a while to come around to not being completely skeptical about it. While frustrating and stressful and a royal pain at times, standardized tests are my friends. I was one of the lucky jerks that cruised exams like most kids eat Halloween candy. As a result, I had a really easy time seeing why organizations and the like to use them so frequently. In hindsight, the tests weren't a really good indication of anything other than my innate ability to fill in a bubble-sheet correctly. I still see how they can be useful in determining how capable someone is, but there's a lot they don't factor in. Unless you're being hired to take tests, performance can really only be measured so much by something like a GRE or the MCAT.

We also finally set up embryos yesterday before lunch. It's good to be officially out of trip's first few days that were set aside for tourism and getting over jet lag. I'm sure some people were getting sick of me only talking about the food and the sights. Granted, others might be less happy about it. Research is kind of an acquired taste. 

For the experiments, I was pleased to see that Kathryn was not useless in the lab. Having not seen her in the lab prior, I was a little concerned as I knew that a lot of the protocols we would be doing on the trip would be brand new to her. Many of the people I've taught the protocol to in the past have at first lacked confidence or just generally sucked. I know that I was that way at first. In truth, she's not as experienced as Kenna or myself, but she's a quick learner. It's really a relief. Hopefully her affinity for learning lab technique continues, otherwise this could become a rough couple of weeks for her.

After the embryos, we pretended to be vodka and gin on the buses again (I'm seriously considering borrowing a helmet from someone while I ride around) to go shopping and see one of the Massive public gardens in Taipei City. It was very pretty although since it's the winter a lot of things were out of bloom. It's also kind of chilly, which confuses every bone in my born-and-raised midwestern body. A week ago, the temperature outside was -5 degrees and I was fine, now it's 50 and I get goosebumps unless I'm wearing pants and a jacket.

After the garden, we had to skip the shopping we had planned on and instead went to see the Cheng Kai-Shek Memorial before it closed. On the way, we picked up some hot milk-tea for the girls and what I think was lemon-flavored battery acid for Dr. Huang and me. It was delicious, but my stomach could probably be effectively hooked up to jumper cables and used to start a car. I've also yet to take a tally of my remaining teeth. Another down side was that if we hadn't gotten our drinks, we would probably have been sick with the cold but also arrived at the memorial in time to see it. We arrived just in time to see them shut the memorial doors. From what I could tell, it was a lot like an Asian Lincoln memorial. Luckily, there are other things to see at the memorial, so it wasn't a complete waste. In fact, some of memorial's neighboring buildings simply defy explanation in size and detail. I'd venture to say that pictures might have trouble expression how beautiful and grand those buildings were as well. I guess I'll just have to take people with me the next time I go out there.

Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship

I've mentioned the Gilman scholarship a few times on this blog, but I should really explain it better - especially for those from the UWRF SURSCA blog. To properly do so, we need to go back in time, all the way to September.

My research professor Dr. Huang had just planted the seed of a possible research endeavor in Taiwan, leading to me researching all the possible sources of funding that he and I might obtain. I quickly found two things: I was initially discouraged to find that 3 months before the trip was much too late to begin looking into the majority of the international studies grants out there. Then I found the one exception to this rule: The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. It was a procrastinator's/late starter's dream. Granted, upon finding it I had all of a week or so to complete the application before the submission deadline. It made for some hectic times, trying to coordinate with UWRF's study abroad office and Dr. Huang - in addition to my normal class and research load. Somehow, I managed to get everything squared away on time with some proficiency. While it all worked out, I must say that unless you really like coffee or really despise the sun, give yourself more time than I had.

A little about this scholarship, taken from the scholarship's website.

"The program aims to encourage students to choose non-traditional study abroad destinations, especially those outside of Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The Gilman Scholarship Program aims to support students who have been traditionally under-represented in study abroad, including but not limited to, students with high financial need, community college students, students in under-represented fields such as the sciences and engineering, students with diverse ethnic backgrounds, and students with disabilities. The program seeks to assist students from a diverse range of public and private institutions from all 50 states, Washington, DC and Puerto Rico.

Award recipients are chosen by a competitive selection process and must use the award to defray eligible study abroad costs. These costs include program tuition, room and board, books, local transportation, insurance and international airfare."

Some other good things to know regarding eligibility.

Finally, some things you might not find on the website.

• It's really easy to apply, especially if you plan ahead. Most of the application is online and is used to determine if you are eligible. There were no letters of recommendation required and only two essays (that admittedly caused me a little trouble due to my professional writing having more in common with riding a merry-go-round while attempting to smash a speak-and-spell with my face). The rest of the applications largely consisted of proving that I was who I said I was. Honestly, for a chance at up to five grand, it wasn't a bad deal.
• The program requires recipients to do a "Follow-on Project", which is basically a way to make sure that recipients give back to their college and community in addition to helping promote the Gilman program. This blog is one aspect of my project, as well as meetings with multiple student groups and classes. One unforeseen addition to my project is the welcome, albeit somewhat unnerving, publicity I've been told to expect in the weeks to come before I escape the country. Word on the street is that the UWRF PR dept, as well as the local newspapers want to cover me. Unfortunately, this means that I will probably have to shave and tame the mullet that's been cohabiting my head wear for the past few months.



You'll be missed.

• This is technically on the site, but on average, 1 out of every three applicants gets accepted. I was one of roughly three thousand applicants, and the first student from the University of Wisconsin - River Falls to be accepted in the past ten years.

Ten years. That's ridiculous for one very, very simple reason: Me. 
I seldom find myself to be the sharpest tool in the shed. I don't have a 4.0 gpa. It's close, I'll admit, but I'm no prodigy. While it may help to be the best and brightest, the Gilman program is primarily geared towards the people who want it. In other words, it's is aimed at the people who recognize the importance of a global perspective and developing their standing not only within their own community, but in our ever-shrinking world. In my opinion, it's aimed at everyone, many just don't know it yet.

Check it out!

SURSCA Gala 2010!

The SURSCA blog just updated with details of the SURSCA Gala that I presented at a couple weeks ago.

One such detail is a picture of me in the most dire need of a haircut since I considered being vegetarian last year.

There are also things that are actually interesting to look at as well, particularly the quote of a quote (I'll just let you read it instead of quoting it yet again) of a CUR review team member that made me both surprised and proud. It's strange, I've been working almost a year as a researcher and I still had no idea of how impressive UWRF was regarding our research output. I wish I had known sooner.

So, do all your young college-bound lab-rats a favor and let them know that River Falls may not look like much, but underneath all the cinder block walls, leaky ceilings, and jack-hammer intensive rebuilds of the library entrances is a beastly capacity for research and learning.

Living life as a entropy-driven reaction.

My life is on the brink of defying the rules of thermodynamics. Somehow things keep getting more and more chaotic and exciting, but I don't see any signs of it slowing down. Eventually, everything should finally dissociate into complete disorder, but I'm apparently operating on cold-fusion now. It's both terrifying and amazing. The things people are capable of really astound me sometimes, even when I'm the one doing them.

What I'm trying get at is that I'm now applying to present at two new research conferences. One is this next Wednesday and is being held by SURSCA on my campus. I'm excited about it, having attended a few in the past, I now get to present my own work. The one thing that is unfortunate about it is that it's limited to the students on my campus. Granted, it will still be my first time presenting first undergraduate-oriented research convention, so I'm not complaining. I'll just make a million dollars one day and donate it to my school so it can become gigantic and awesome and such.
Until I win the lottery, I'm looking forward to the second conference a little more as it is much larger.And by large, I mean on the national scale. Assuming I'm acccepted, it looks like I am one of the lucky thousands of undergraduate researcher who gets to attend the annual National Conferences on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) meeting. It's being held at Ithaca University in New York this year. Normally this would be a bit of a hurdle, considering the currently taxed state of my finances. Being a college student and going  on a research trip to somewhere like Taiwan have a habit of shrinking whatever funds are available to me, apparently. This may be where the laws of thermodynamics plan to bring my life back into equilibrium, but the joke's on them. It I get accepted to NCUR, it's highly likely that I can get a scholarship covering travel costs and registration fees. Then I'll only have to pay for food, and while I admit that I enjoy eating a great deal, that won't nearly be expensive enough to prevent me from coming.

I have presented at a conference before, but it was very different from a normal conference. This past June, I presented my work from the summer at the annual WiSys Technology Foundation conference, which for the most part was great. They provided travel funds for almost every student who attended, however I'm not entirely sure why. By and large, the conference was geared towards connecting PhD's with entrepreneurs and really didn't address the undergraduate researchers in attendance. That is not to say that I didn't gain anything from going, on the contrary, I learned a great deal of things about intellectual property, biotech entrepreneurship, and more. While I didn't expect any of it, the most surprising and important thing that I learned was the value many people place in appearances and networking.

Beforehand, I had the opinion that a lot of the "professionalism" at conferences and in non-academic circles is mostly useless fluff. It took watching my more extroverted peers to show me the benefits of dressing up, small talk, and generally being able to talk about something besides the inflammation pathway in zebrafish. I'm still much more interested in what a researcher has to present, but I'm also keenly aware of the difficulty they'll have in convincing politicians, business people, and the general public that they have something worth saying. Unfortunately, most people like the smoke and mirrors of a presentation as much (if not more) than the actual content. Live, learn, and let lie, I guess.