insect lore

Ming-baby

I'm majorly distracted right now. This usually happens before a big exam, like this coming Friday in biochemistry. Well, in the tradition of procrastination, I figured I'd post some pictures of my summertime pets. I purchased two praying mantis egg sacs at the beginning of summer from English Gardens and the results were these amazing creatures. One-hundred to 200 translucent mini-mantises (I'm talking a centimeter big) hatched from one sac. This is Ming, she lived in my front bush for two months and I peeped on her daily chillin'.

guess who (hint: I chose a TV character)

Wow! Another eventful evening spent at the Cheesecake Factory serving some pleasant but mostly ungrateful patrons. My feet are KILLING me. I would love nothing more than to strip down, take a bath and enjoy a nice glass of wine or two while I’m at it! Oh shoot I almost forgot…the guys are expecting me across the hall.

I wonder what crude remarks Howard will make tonight, and in what language. Ya know, scratch that. Ever since I hooked him up with Bernadette he’s been much less, umm, disturbing. I really should watch what I write on this thing cause I don't know if who and his big brain are cyber stalking me! I wonder if he’ll ever find a girlfriend. It looks pretty grim but I guess if Amy is taking up his time all the better, lol. I wonder what’s on the menu for tonight, Thai, Chinese, or pizza. Mmm, I hope Thai but I think I’ll have to take a rain check on that bath and do some therapeutic shoe shopping tomorrow. G’night all! 

from the lab bench

Chemistry, 2006 by Thomas Allen 

Yesterday (Tuesday, January 25, 2011) I spent a cool three hours getting acclimated to the lab I will be working in, hopefully, until I graduate. I observed and at one point assisted in performing a lactate assay with another student lab assistant. To phrase this as clearly as possible, a lactate assay is a test demonstrating one kind of biochemical pathway.  It involves the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) which catalyzes lactate, the chemical compound in question, into pyruvate, another biologically important molecule. All of this stuff matters in processes like lactic acid fermentation, which occur when we metabolize or pump some iron. Whenever you 'feel the burn' you're actually feeling the build up of lactic acid in your muscles.

Spectrometer 20

Brown and clear bottles, some big and others small, were pulled from a fridge you neglect to store your lunch in because it's stocked with chemicals. I watched my new colleague pipette test tubes with the necessary requirements (water, buffer, LDH, etc) that allow the chemical reaction to take place. Twelve test tubes were set up with five different concentrations of lactate as well as one control. For accuracy, each concentration was allocated to two test tubes.The tubes were placed in a room temperature bath for thirty minutes and an ice bath immediately after the 30 was up. Putting the tubes into an ice bath halts the reaction. Afterward all samples were read using a Spec 20. A Spec or Spectrometer 20 is a piece of equipment that measures the amount of light absorbed by a solution (our dial was set to absorption not transmission which is the amount of light that passes through). Lastly, we attempted to construct a standard curve plotting our data, which is still in progress. Is it just me or is Excel 2010 newly confusing?

One of the better parts of this experience, thanks to funding, is not having to use wholly inaccurate rubber-bulb-big-glass-stick pipettes. Yay!! I know I will be running more assays because the whole point is to refine my laboratory techniques. 

who says scientists have no personality?

I have to leave for class in a few but my once-professor-now-boss showed me this gem yesterday:

 

the hunt

Science + art: felt and embroidery petri dishes.

Hot damn, I feel so limited. I'm on the hunt for a well-written, science related blog authored by a female. I found this chick's blog http://blog.sciencegeekgirl.com/ but I'm on the fence. Stephanie Chasteen is the self proclaimed "sciencegeekgirl" and she has the chops, and by chops I mean a PhD in physics, to hold that title. She posts some relatively interesting content but I feel a slight disconnection to her writing. Her posts are informative but lengthy. Lengthy because I scoured my biochemistry book all afternoon and I'm beat. I would rather find a blog more similar to mine -- student work, a little less polished and wholesome, more raw writing. I could be asking for the impossible but I might as well stick her in my RSS feed for the time being.

Photo courtesy of freshphotons

abundance

The Jeep is officially mine! My car died at the end of December (the power steering pump went causing a detrimental chain reaction) and my parents gave me their old Jeep while they went car shopping for a new one. I'm extremely lucky and incredibly fortunate.

My kindle also came in and I have something to say on the matter. First, amazon shipping never fails to impress me with their promptness. I don't mind waiting an extra few days for free shipping because I'm saving some change I can spend on Pita Pit. So, kindle came, along with a copy of my favorite Sandra Bullock movie Practical Magic and my material possessions are just making me happy as a clam for the time being. I can't get any good use out of them though because I have a biochemistry test next Friday and some mad catching up to do. 

The authentic book v. digital book debate makes my head spin. I'm a bibliophile through and through but my shelves are stocked. Moving out is going to be one giant hassle because of my ever-increasing book collection. Here is my pros and cons lists for the paperback and the pixelated.

Real books - pros

• Nothing beats the feel of a $5.99 Meijer special, it's like a textual adventure. 
• New book smell
• Sharable
• If it only cost $5.99 who cares if you spill something on it or drop it in the pool after lounging. This really depends on the book though. If Janet Evanovich's Three to Get Deadly turns into a crinkle fan I could care less but my pristine and overpriced biology reference books, it's safe to say I covet.
• Libraries and might I suggest checking out the site http://bookshelfporn.com/ if you are so willing, all you English majors creeping on my lameass blog.

Real books - cons

• Old book smell, unless you're into that sort of thing
• Books are awesome. My only real issues with them are superficial (like yellowing and mustiness) and that they take up space if you have too many.

Digital books - pros

• Storing up to 3,500 books is impressive. Even more impressive if you can read them all. This reminds me of a quote by Sylvia Plath, though a little depressing

"I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited."

The first line rings true and the second half of the quote kills me. The great thing about books and reading is it allows you to peek inside the lives of others, feel happiness, anguish, pain, etc., fantasize and escape from the mundanities of your own existence. Yes, time is limited but I seize the opportunity to learn as much as possible while on this unbelievable floating rock. 

•  Amazon (I use amazon because I'm not familiar with other e-reader territory) offers free books 
• Ease of selection. I can start a book, realize it's stupid, and move onto something else. This might interplay with the increasing trend of generation instant gratification. 
• In tune with the last bullet, flights and layovers will be much more pleasant thanks to portability. 

Digital books - cons

• I have mentioned this in previous blog posts but story time! Story time would feel sterile on a kindle. Children's book illustrations are gorgeous which leads me to my next point...
• My future kids will be exposed to the beauty of coffee table photo memoirs like Moonage Daydream: The Life and Times of Ziggy Stardust. I can't see photo books translating well on a digital reader.
• Spillage. My e-reader is the gulf and my 7-11 Big Gulp is the Deepwater Horizon. Let's get real. My hugely oversimplified analogy to an Earthly offense like the complete annihilation of the gulf ecosystem and economy is not comparable.
• I'm not sure if this is a con or not but here it goes. I have no problem reading the sports section of the New York Times while on the porcelain throne. If you're an environmentally conscious citizen newspaper will be recycled anyway. While on the toilet, the proximity of e-reader/laptop/iPoo to hygienically questionable areas bothers me. 

With that, I think I'll end this ramble. If you have anything else to add or disagree with feel free to leave it here. I'll give a more proper review on functionality once I put the thing to good use! 

/rant

Do you know what sucks? Making mindless mistakes on quizzes because you second guess yourself. I need to stop obsessing about things I cannot change. Christians say that one prayer (aptly named the serenity prayer):


God grant me the serenity 
to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Yeah, so basically I'm 6/7th atheist BUT my brain needs to gain some wisdom and tell itself to shut the fuck up sometimes. There's an easy solution, try harder (and ignore the students in class who ask questions the book can clarify). Writing this has made me feel better.