Lots and Lots of Small Things

Greetings from Lovely Houston!

Well, if my lack of recent blog entries is any indication, things have really picked up here in Houston! Now that plumbing has been over for a while I’m really getting into the Nanotech stuff! My project continues to be awesome (though elusive) and I’ve been working with Azeem on his project which I still maintain is the coolest thing probably ever. He’s making gold nanoparticles which can potentially be used for targeting cancer cells in the body in order for localized treatment. Super cool, right!?

Recently I’ve been also doing work for the research grant that I have from AU this summer to begin work on my senior thesis (capstone). Last weekend I was desperately working on a draft of a literature review for my project. Lots of work!

Also we’ve also been having a lot of fun in the city. We went to the downtown Houston aquarium last Thursday. As far as aquariums go, it was not quite the best (its hard to beat the Baltimore aquarium or the one on Orkney Island!) but it was a lot of fun. The little kids discovery zone was, as always, quite a good time. I touched a horseshoe crab, and a shark, and a sting ray! BUT! After I touched the rays wing it tried to crawl up the side of the tank at me! At first I thought it was trying to attack me. But, after careful reconsideration I have figured out that the ray was pretending to be a dog and wanted to be pet more. In any case, after the museum we had dinner at the restaurant at the aquarium which had an enormous aquarium in the middle of it with a SAWFISH IN IT! Well worth my 10 dollars admission.

The post-doc who works in the lab across the hall invited me, Jeff, Rick, Kevin and two of the graduate students Chris and Hung to go with him to an event that was held at the Museum of Natural Science last Friday called “Mixers and Elixers.” The museum was enormous and when we got there it was already rockin’—there was a dj and a few tables set up. We walked around for a little and then we went down to see an IMAX film—“Galapagos: 3D.” I kind of feel like I had seen most of the footage of the island before—those big turtles and those lizards that swim seem to look a lot alike. But a good deal of the movie was about two marine biologists who were looking for proof of Darwin’s theory of evolution by going to the bottom of the ocean near the Galapagos Island in a special submarine. The best part of the movie happened when they were down in their submarine using special appendages to suck up interesting looking fish and they spotted one really neat one that looked like it had frog legs and an enormous mouth, so they lined up their fish-sucker behind it but the fish was too big! It got it’s legs sucked in and its mouth opened up and its eyes got wide like it was saying “What the--?” Hilarious. I hope they managed to let him go. When we left the museum there was a symphony orchestra playing at the Miller Outdoor Theater just over the hill from the museum so we got to see the end of that too.

Today, we had to give lab tours as part of the REU program requirements. It was neat to see some of the other labs. Also, we ended up being led into the room where the mice are kept which apparently one is not supposed to go unless one has proper animal clearance. Somebody came running into the room to tell us to get out and she told us that we were all contaminated because these rats were infected with all sorts of rat diseases. She was concerned that we would go to try to see the other rats and would spread the diseases to the rats that were supposed to be controls, but we were concerned about what it meant to us to be rat-disease-contaminated. Should we check when our last tetanus shot was? Should we drink lots of orange juice? I’m pretty sure we will survive, though I am checking to make sure I don’t grow mouse whiskers and a tail.

After work the REU students when to the Museum of Natural Science (again) to see the exhibit on the inventions of Leonardo Da Vinci. He was a really smart guy and he had a lot of good (and also crazy ideas). Then we went to the free normal exhibits, but we were kicked out before we saw everything. The exhibits were really interesting though—dinosaurs, lots of alternative energy stuff, and even some things about nanotechnology and microprocessing. Sweet, right!?

Tomorrow we’re going to a lecture in the morning that the dean invited us to. The speaker is someone who does forecasts for oil futures (or something. Does that make any sense?). I’m hoping that Azeem is back tomorrow (he’s been out the last two days, which makes my days in the lab very boring and slightly directionless). Fingers crossed!

I made the group at the museum get our picture taken in front of this exhibit because I thought that the "Super Small" title would be hilarious given that we are working on nanotech projects. So if it is not actually hilarious, please, don't tell me!

Fight Speed!

Hey all!

I printed using the lithographer (that crazy machine to the left)! Hooray! I am so excited about getting to work on real stuff now! Even though I am basically acting as Azeem’s personal assistant currently, I could not be more happy about it! I really like what I’m doing—it’s a cross between normal photography and something all small and science-fictiony. And when we get everything calibrated and figured out and I get to work on the membranes it will be all medical technology-ish! Gah! So exciting!

Well, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, allow me to tell you what’s been going on. We finally finished with the plumbing, and now I am training in on all of the equipment with Azeem. I’m slowly learning the incredibly complicated process of opening and closing valves and flowing various amounts of nitrogen gas in order to create a good vacuum in the system and maintain a level of voltage that supports the ion beam. It’s awesome (see above for more about my excitement). I really like it and I feel like I’m learning a lot about a very specific and sweet field. Nanofabrication and microfiltration is what all the cool kids do, let me tell you.

Speaking of cool kids, the REU kids dominated at the Cullen Oaks "Amazing Race" scavenger hunt last week. We went for the free food and the raffle to win an ipod and we got conned into actually playing the game. It was one of those ones where they give you a clue that is in riddle form and you have to figure out what it means in order to know where to go to get your next clue. One of the RA's who checked us into the building told us that we should have asked someone who knows the apartment complex better to be on our team, but we sure showed him. We were sprinting all over the apartment complex--I'm sure we looked hilarious.

Also last week, Corlisa, my roommate, introduced me to "real" barbeque. Apparently all of my life I have been mistaking "cookouts" for BBQ. We went to a restaurant called Pappa's, and I had a barbequed baked potato stuffed with BBQ beef. Oh my gosh, it was one of the best things that I have ever tasted. I can't wait to go back! YUM!

Another thing that is cool is 2 hours of bowling for $3. That’s right, this campus has a bowling alley in its sort of student union place, and yes, it is that cheap. Almost all of the REU students went last Friday and it was sweet. I’m not half bad at bowling, and some of the others are really pretty good. There’s also cheap pingpong and a bunch of video games. The best part though, is that they play really awesome music the whole time, and also that the bowling turns into cosmic bowling at 10. Excellent! Pretty sure we’re going back this Friday.

On Sunday, Rhys (an REU student from UH who is the “social director”) took some of us to the Houston Roller Derby. Rick, Harsh, Kristin, Rhys, Mariana and I headed down to Bayou Place to see 4 teams of girls on roller skates battle it out. I had never seen roller derby before and had little idea of what to expect. It was really neat and it looks like an awesome and fun game. I briefly contemplated looking up the local team in DC and trying out and then I realized that about half of each team was sitting out the game with injuries so I rethought that. It was really funny because each girl has to have a unique number and name. Some of them were slightly inappropriate for this forum and others were just funny: Scarlet O’Hurtya and Chainsaw Chick for example. I’m thinking that if I played I’d have to be number 3e8, and my name would have to be Fight Speed. That would be cool. We did see one fight right in front of us, where a girl jumped on the other girl’s back and yanked her helmet back and tried to start punching her. It was pretty intense, like a hockey fight. The game is super complicated so I can’t even begin to explain, but rest assured the other girl deserved it.

Until next time!

Eureka! I've got it!

Howdy Doody Y'all (am I getting more convincing?)

So I thought that this would be just a weekly blog, where I would post once on the weekend--my reflections on the week and stuff-- as a way to pass the time when everything in Houston is shutdown (see the rest of the story below), but it turns out that I have some time to spare and some fun things to report on, so you can choose to read on for adventures around downtown Houston, or you can give up now--no hard feelings.

Saturday passed by in a haze. I got up, ate breakfast, asked someone how to find the gym, went to the gym, came back, showered, got dressed, walked to campus, went to the library, walked back from campus, ate lunch, looked at the clock, aaaaand.... it was 2:30. No joke. Then there was some watching of some professional pool (billiards?) sharks in hiding, and then subway for dinner. The next day after the gym, Harsh called me and said "We're going downtown!" Thank goodness, I thought.

After a surprisingly short busride, we found ourselves in the middle of downtown Houston. The city is shockingly small, actually, but it's really beautiful because the area around it is so flat that you can see the little cluster of buildings from every side. We ended up walking in the opposite direction of most of the attractions, so we instead saw Minute Maid Stadium, the Convention Center, and Chinatown. We had appetizers at a little sports bar where they apparently have a Wii bowling league. After that we came back to our appartments and I got to work on my Powerpoint for my presentation on Tuesday.

My Powerpoint is awesome. It is one of the best Powerpoints I have ever even seen. It's going to blow everyone else out of the water.... I can only hope that what it says is correct. I was able to ask Dr. Ruchhoeft about my project today, and it turns out I'm not really working with Azeem. Instead, I am going to be looking at the development of a method in which the microfiltration membranes that we create will be stuck to a porous structure that will act as a support for the fragile membrane. Eureka! Finally I have my project, and even though the fine details still escape me, I could not be more excited!

I think it's going to be an nano-ly awesome summer.

Wish me luck tomorrow!