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On a hiking trail on campus. Absolutely stunning.

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I’ve seen odd parasites the past few weeks but this one made my skin squirm! Most likely tapeworms. There were 4 of them curled up in a crevice of the small intestine of a 2.3 cm frog. Photos taken by me

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Journal Entry 4

Entry 4 July 1, 2015

Odd dreams.

I had this odd dream last night - waking up and realizing that it wasn’t real was a surprised. 

I had caught lots of frogs from the wild and had to transfer them into containers so they don’t escape. But I only had once container with a not so strong cap. So I stepped out of the room to find another container, but all the frogs had escaped and jumped all over the house. In the sink, in the toilet, on the bed, on the table, EVERYWHERE. I caught each of them with my bare hands - each slimier skin than the last. 

I’ve been working with frogs this summer. Experimentally infecting them with parasites and looking at the immunological response produced. In working with these frogs - there is also a lot euthanization involved. Honestly, I feel terrible about it because when I’m necropsying them I need their little hearts to be beating in order to obtain blood from them. I know that although my lab has the protocols and husbandry clearance to be able to work with these frogs - I’m riddled with this sort of guilt. When you raised your experimental animals from it’s infancy, it’s hard not to emotionally invest. I understand why scientist don’t name their animals now.  By giving it a name, they are given an identity. And when something has an identity, it’s easier to see it as a living being.

I understand that for the sake of science, we do experiment on animals out of necessity. That there are protocols set in place to ensure the least amount of suffering is inflicted. But what really scares me is that I’ve become emotionally immune as the number of necropsies I do increase. So far - I can’t keep track of how many frogs I’ve euthanized. At least 30 adults frogs and 30 young frogs. I was so terrified when I first began, feeling squeamish as I did the ventral incision and saw the guts spilled out. But unfortunately it has become normal. Making the incision to get to the heart, to puncture the upper atrium and allow for the blood to be pumped out of the heart and sucked up by a capillary tube. 

I might have aged 10 years in the past month having to deal with death everyday. 

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Journal Entry 3

Entry 3 June 14th 2015

The scariest moment in my life happened 2 days ago. My brother and my mother both left me voicemails.  My brother left me a voicemail of him sobbing and telling me that he couldn't take it anymore. That he was going to kill himself because of arguments with my mother. My mother left me a voicemail about how she could not deal with my brother anymore - that she could no longer trust him as her son and as a person. 

These voicemails have become almost commonplace. I decided to go off to college far away from home because it was the most financially viable option. But being away from home - could no longer stop the conflicts and act as a middle man between my brother and my parents. My brother is a coward, yes. He throws away his responsibilities for the sake of convenience and ease. He often skips school on the premise of being “sick” or “tired”. His blatant disregard of my parents efforts of raising him, providing a roof over his head, food on the table, clothes on his back, infuriate them.

Those things may not seem like much to the privileged, but I grew up poor. My parents work hard for those “basic essentials” and thus had instill this sense of duty in me. My brother grew up in the latter years, when our family got settled and my parents made  steady and modest income. My parents made sure we had just enough. Never too little, never too much. Because they worked so hard - they were never home. My brother and I were raised by after school teachers. I became my brother’s closest ally and surrogate parent. 

My parents don’t know how to interact with him. It may be because we grew up as Asian American that we lack the fluency in our ancestral tongue. The language and cultural barriers are hard to overcome. 

In Confucianism, one of the main tenets is the idea of filial piety - that it is one’s duty to respect and do the bidding of one’s elders. To my parents - there isn’t another reality than this one. I grew up following this tenet because of my love and appreciation for my parents. They came to a foreign country with little money and prospects, in the hopes that their children have a better life than they did. They speak little English, and are treated like second class citizens - but they endure the indignity for us. 

My brother doesn’t seem to understand these things. He’s only 13. He’s going through puberty. He has his own problems. This  combined with my mother’s habit of anger and blame shifting, isn’t particularly a great combination. 

In my first year of college, being away from home, our family situation has deteriorated. My brother has become depressed. My mother has been calling for me to yell at my brother. My mother complains about his behavior - yet she does not to mitigate it. She doesn’t give him any punishment - just yells at him. I’m quite sure these bouts of rage are emotionally damaging on both ends. Recently my mother found out that some of the money she uses for laundry and groceries was missing. My brother vehemently denied taking any of the money - about 120 dollars, from her drawer.He said it was likely that one of the boys he had brought over to our house must have stolen it. And he had confronted this boy, but this boy has denied any wrong doing despite having that exact sum in hand. My mother did not believe this story, as my brother has lied to her many times before. She continued to yell at him - the exact argument, I do not know. She left in her voicemail, that he couldn’t be her son. That she did not raise a boy who would steal. That this was a bad cycle of behavior and he would go to prison if this were to continue. The anger and disappointment oozed from her voice. My brother had left 2 voicemails 5 minutes before this one telling me about his decision on killing himself. That he couldn’t take my mother constantly yelling at him, making him feel unworthy and unloved.

I returned these calls as soon as I got back to my dorm. My calls failed to reach 3 times. On the fourth try, my brother is on the other end wet heaving. His voice was quiet. He said he couldn’t live anymore - that it was hard. 

My brother has many times threatened to kill himself this year. 

I have constantly pushed my parents to go to family therapy - to try to better their communication with my brother. But, Asian families do not like to air their dirty laundry in front of anyone. Especially in front of a therapist. To my parents - going to family counseling is the acknowledgement of a problem. We have problems. They don’t want to think it’s a problem. 

I feel guilty for leaving home. I feel guilty for running away from my family’s problems. 

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Journal Entry 2

Entry 2 June 7th 2015

It’s been officially a week since I’ve been in Florida. I miss home, I feel trapped. I feel scared. The research fun ish. I like the frogs, but it has honestly made me question whether I want to continue down this road. I don’t know if I want to do lab work. Lab work is quite boring and tedious. I suppose this summer is suppose to be for me to explore my interest and look into other fields. But I really do want to work in a molecular biology lab in particular. I do like having these animals, as any sort of novelty it is quite cool, but I don’t think I would like to continue. Maybe I don’t want to go into science. Actually no. I probably do. Maybe I don’t want to do a PHD. I’m not sure how to compromise and commit so long of a period of time in my life to get essentially a piece of paper. How do people do this? Being in the lab for at least 6 years for your PHD.

Aside from my fears of the future, I want these months to go by really quickly. If this was fun, maybe I would endure it. But it has only been a week and I’m already starting to cross out the days. I want to get off campus. I want to go places, and really enjoy my summer doing crazy amazing things. I want to go hiking. I want to get a license and go road tripping.

Growing up in New York City, I took for granted the great public transportation system. I took advantage of everything being so close to one another and went everywhere. There were so many different ways to entertain yourself that was within my ability to get there physically.

Being down here in Florida, there are really amazing things to do here. It’s just I can’t get there. I need my bike. It would really help to get anywhere. Hopefully I can rent a bike next week to go places.

I remember having similar sentiments when I first went to college. And I told myself, college is what you make of it. Your time is what you make of it. You can enjoy it by actively changing something you don’t like. I will enjoy my time here. If I don’t, it will be my job to make this place as enjoyable as possible!

End of entry 2

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Tracking My Summer With Journal Entries

Keeping Track of My Progress in the Summer

Entry 1 June 4th 2015:

I’m suppose to write to keep track of where I am and where I want to be in the next few months. Hopefully it will help me learn from my mistakes and grow as a person. Possibly. I’m not sure. We’ll see what happens.

Today was an odd day. I woke up at 10:33 today. On average days - I would constantly wake up in the middle of the night and shift my sleeping position. It’s really cold in our dorm. My roommates set the temperature to 73 - which I think it is an overkill. Anyways, I don’t have a thick blanket so waking up in the middle of the night in cold temperature makes it really hard to fall back asleep. Waking up at 10:30 though, I missed going in before 12 and the session today lasted until 4.

We had a social today with the mentors and other people. The program has really tried to help us learn how to network. But networking is hard. Thinking of what to say is hard. The issue is really, would I bore these people with my spiel? My life is quite boring in many sense. How do I network with these people is I can’t really talk to them without facilitation from an outside force. And in this case the outside force was my mentor Lisa.

I’ve notice how easy it is for some people to simply make conversation. It’s quite hard to do that in a group setting. What sort of conversations am I to have? Science? Well I think I finally understand the complaints people have about scientists. It’s probably just a stereotype though. Dr. P doesn’t seem to have a hard time. How can I improve on this predicament? Should I try coming up with conversation topics as a go to? I’ve never really have to encounter talking to adults.

Adults. I speak about adults as a separate group of individuals. As if I’m not part of this category of “adults”. Honestly, I don’t feel like an adult. I still feel like a child. It still feels so foreign.

Reading a piece about first generation college students earlier, I think that my inability to speak and connect with adult figures may stem from my lack of interactions with adult figures. My parents haven’t exposed me to those situations - where it’s necessary to speak formally, where it’s necessary to make conversation. I wonder what it would be like if I were raised in a middle to upper middle class family. Where my parents have connections and can offer help. It’s alright though. I’m doing pretty well by myself, but it would just be nice for that luxury to be accessible.

Today I experience the passive aggressive aspect of my mentor’s behavior that her other students had mentioned. I wasn’t really sure how to deal with it. But the issue was my fault - and thus I tried responding as professionally as possible. Logically I understand why she would say those things, but emotionally, it stabs me a little bit.

I think I’ve also learned to sit alone. I’ve always feared the idea of sitting alone. It brings back terrible memories. The awkward years. But sitting alone is completely fine. It’s sort of freeing to be able to think and interact with only yourself. I think I will be homesick from this experience. The summer hasn’t really started and I already want to go home. I think it’s just that I’m missing friends. But the research is exciting so that is what is really pushing me through the days.

At a bigger university - I can’t understand how people can find friends. Talking to people - so many damn people is quite scary. What do people do here to socialize? I know greek life is humongous but….

That is the end of my thoughts for entry 1

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I felt this piece sums up quite well  a few issues that first generation college students are facing. 

As a first generation college student, I can relate to a lot of the problems. The point of going to college for me was to try getting out of poverty and find a way to support my family in the future - as they have supported me all my life. The issue now compromising what I am actually interested in as oppose to what has job security and enough compensation to support my aging parents and myself. That being said, I think this conversation must be had to help first generation students with these different issues. 

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Carl Zimmer discovered that his belly button is home to 53 different types of bacteria. One of them usually lives in the ocean. Another one lives in the soil. In Japan.

So even though he’s never been to Japan, Japan has been to his belly button. A fascinating look at a very unique part of our microbiome.

(via Discover Magazine)

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This is awesome! Bacteriophages in extremophiles? I would love to follow up on what they find out about the protein structures!

Nearly indestructible virus can survive boiling acid Though it sounds terrifying, the bizarre virus could actually be enlisted to help cure human ailments.

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What. This is a thing? Adding this to my wishlist!!!!

Microbe cross-stitch embroidery. 

You can buy them here: [x]

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Worms that parasitize plants! 

I have never heard of such a thing. It’s quite amazing!

Soybean Cyst Nematode (Heterodera glycines)

…a small species of plant-parasitic nematode that is native to Asia and has been introduced to Africa, North America and South America. Soybean cyst nematodes parasitize soybeans (Glycine max) and can cause chlorosis, root necrosis, loss in seed yield and growth suppression. The second-stage juvenile (J2) is the only stage that actually penetrates the roots (the first occurs in the egg, and the third and fourth stages occur in the roots). The J2 enters the roots through the plant cells right to the vascular tissue and induces cell division in the root. As it feeds it swells to the point where its posterior end bursts out of the root and becomes visible. This only occurs in females,  males retain their shape and leave the root to find females. Once the female lays her eggs and forms an egg sac inside herself. She later dies and her cuticle will form a cyst. The larvae will develop inside the cyst and the cycle will repeat itself.

Phylogeny

Animalia-Nematoda-Chromadorea-Tylenchida-Heteroderidae-Heteroderinae-Heterodera-H.glycines

Images: Unknown and Public Domain

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(Caenorhabditis elegans) A Species Of Chromador Nematode.

source

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Pretty SEM image. I love the colors. Would love to learn how to color SEM images!

Nematoda | Emil Zieba

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Will be working with this adorable invasive species this summer!

We’re raising these in the lab. They’re quite frisky actually! A possible hypothesis by my mentor about how these frogs were raised actually effects metabolism and hyperactivity.

The frog raised in the hot and humid Floridian temperature seem much jumpier than the frogs raised in the lab ~73 - 75 degrees. 

*Blurg* says the frog. 

Osteopilus septentrionalis - Cuban tree frog

Isn’t it adorable?

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Adventures of A BioNerd

Cheers to first posts!

Hi. This summer I’m working at a big research university on a ecoimmunology project. I will be documenting this adventure and I hope you will enjoy the wonderfully weird oddities of this adventure!