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!