Fencing

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This afternoon I hopped across the parking lot to the tune of “Eye of the Tiger.” I had one foot pointed forward, one foot pointed sideways, and my right hand out in front of me like I was holding an imaginary sword. This was not part of a strange cult ritual or mental breakdown. It was a fencing club exercise to help us work on our form. By the end of it my legs were burning, my hair was sweaty, and it felt amazing.

Fencing club is an on campus organization where people attack each other with swords, in a friendly way of course. We get some exercise and channel our inner medievalist. There are three types of swords in fencing, foil, saber, and epee. Everyone starts with foil, and if they like they can go on to saber (we don’t have anyone who knows epee right now). We do some drills then free fence.

Today there was a wedding in Killworth Chapel where we usually practice, so we went out into the parking lot. It was a sunny day, probably one of our last, and it felt good to get out enjoy it. We had considered fencing through the wedding reception, to give the newlyweds a show, but decided against it. Here’s how that conversation went:

“We should go fence through the wedding.”

“Yeah that would be cool. No wait. That would actually be horrible.”

“Yeah it kind of would.”

So we went outside instead. If you want to join us sometime, we practice Thursdays seven to nine in the dance studio. Hack hack, chop chop.

Fireworks

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It’s the Friday of the first week of class, which means LogJam!, free food, and fireworks. Five of my friends and I—despite having eaten the free food—have just eaten at our favorite Japanese restaurant on Sixth Avenue (Bento Teriyaki & Sushi). Dusk has begun to mask the sky, and anticipation is in the air; the fireworks are starting soon.

“Come on,” a friend says. “We don’t want to miss the fireworks.”

“It’s not supposed to start until nine,” I say. “We have plenty of time.”

A sizzling crack splits the sky. We can see the burst of light but cannot see its fiery shower.

Everyone stares at each other. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It isn’t nine yet.

Our feet slap the pavement as we run back incautiously in the middle of the road. We split into pairs. I find myself with M. The two fastest have already crossed the street and the others seem to have resigned themselves to be together—they linger behind.

“Come on,” M says.

We run across the street and onto the grassy slope behind Weyerhaeuser. The fireworks have increased in volume. Our view of the explosions is blocked by the tower of the building.

“Hurry up!” she says. “Take pictures for me, my phone’s dead.”

It’s a command, so I whip out my phone as we scramble up the dewy hill. The explosions are louder, nearer, brighter.

We round the corner of Weyerhaeuser building, and there it is—a fountain of red. Yellow takes its place, replaced thereafter by three bursts of orange. That is the picture I capture—the only one M approves of.

We stand at the crest of the hill, the canisters shooting up out of plumes of colored smoke. We watch as the fireworks light the night.

I see the lights explode out of darkness, then trickling, fade away. I think about how fleeting the displays are.

There are moments of great beauty in life. We like to remember them, so we take pictures of them, write stories about them.

As I looked at the picture I’d taken after the stillness of the night returned, I realized that I had captured one such moment. And I realized how important it was to record those fleeting instances. So that come what may, I might always look back and know a moment’s exploding beauty.

The moment I captured.

Hit the ground running

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The second-to-last semester of college begins. My schedule: two parts advanced math, one part Spanish literature, and one part digital humanities. It’s recipe that causes me to put brainpower in every assignment that I do, and one that absolutely reaffirms my choice of major. Number theory work can throw me for a loop, but I’d rather be frustrated and confused by math homework than anything else.
Coming home from study abroad, people have been asking me whether I enjoyed it, and whether I’m glad to be back. Yes, and yes! Chile was a fantastic time, and I miss lots of things: speaking Spanish on the daily, my host family, the fun of transporting to another city to go to school, living close to the beach… whenever I run into one of the UPS students who were on my program and start reminiscing, I am reminded that we had it pretty good there.
However, I don’t get nostalgic too often. This year is shaping up to be a good mixture of coming home to the same things I was doing before I left and discovering some new things. One of these special bonuses to the semester was the Race and Pedagogy National Conference, hosted by the university once every four years and taking place in September. It was great and inspiring and motivating to see the dialogue that included students, community members, and speakers and attendees who traveled from all over the country to be there. I know that I will be digesting my personal takeaways over the course of the coming months, and I hope that these issues will remain on people’s minds and as part of a positive discourse on campus. Particularly when hearing from people who live in the Tacoma area, I kept thinking how I wanted to hear these voices on campus more. Of course, this is also a prompt for me to get more involved off-campus. It is hard to fit any new stuff into my schedule at this point, but you can always squeeze in one more thing, right? I don’t really want to get into that final year conundrum of wanting to “fit it all in” without spreading oneself too thin, so I’ll just say that for now a quick pause between class and work is enough for me to stop and smell the roses, and to be thankful for the here and now.

Teaching English in a French Classroom

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Today was one of many new discoveries, doing things that put me out of my comfort zone, but things that felt so fulfilling all at once. Thursdays I am busy solely with my assistant English teaching internship. With my schedule and class numbers all laid out, I headed for building D (the school where I work is huge, but I found my way around really well today), only to find it was just me and five students for la conversation collège. It took me a few minutes to realize I wasn’t assisting a prof, but that I would facilitate the conversation alone in English. This turned out to be really fun for me! Slowly I adjusted back into English, surrounded by young people who understood every word I said. All five students had different British accents when they spoke English, one had more of a British London accent, for example and another more of a Yorkshire-like accent. These students have a parent who is French and another who is British, hence why they live in France, but travel to England often to visit family. I just had fun the whole time asking them questions, since the idea is for them to have a chance to use their English. When I told them I was going to Morocco for my fall vacation, one of the boys asked, “vacation?” One of the other kids quickly explained to him it’s the same as, “holiday.” The kids were very helpful answering any questions I had about French vocab and where to find the teacher’s lounge. I look forward to more spontaneous discussions with them.

Next, I worked with the prof, Mme. Lalaude in my own separate classroom, which I was not expecting. I knew, however, that we agreed I would work separately with a small group of her students, while she worked with the other half. The middle school French students looked confused for a moment when I told them to place the chairs in a circle and not to go to their desks. I think I brought with me my American casualness, lack of formality, yet still able to take charge. That must have been quite the interesting surprise for them: who is this American student and why does she do things so differently? I prefer classes Socratic seminar style: everyone is gathered in a circle, there is a sense of equality and less strict formality. I think it really charges the energy of the room and certainly puts me more at ease because I like to sit next to the students, not above them. We went around and made introductions and I had each of them explain their favorite activities, writing on the board to explain certain grammar that was unclear. I laughed with them, enjoyed hearing their travel stories to America or England, and would occasionally switch to French to translate anything unclear I had said in English. It felt like something I was supposed to be doing: I’ve always loved working with young people, especially when it comes to learning foreign languages. They are my French teachers and I am here to facilitate the class period in English. It’s very much a win/win situation. It was really funny seeing the first group reluctant to switch with the second group of kids. I felt like I had done something right.

The last part of my English teaching at the school was to work with high school students. This definitely put me out of my comfort zone the most. I think it’s due to the fact I’m closer in age to the high school students. I don’t have the natural sense of authority with age when I’m with the middle school kids. So I had to really fill the space with purpose and look like I know what I’m doing. I made the same kind of introductions with the high school kids with their desks all in a circle. I facilitated more complex discussions in English like what do you like, or not like about the U.S. when you visited? One girl in the class shared how she found Americans more friendly than the French during her visit. Another student asked me what I liked about France. Since there were two other American-French students in the room, I chose my answer carefully. My experience is not the same as theirs. I have been in France as long as they have, nor do I have French family members. I told them I liked how the French in general are more relaxed, mostly because Brittany where I’ve spent most of my time is calmer. People get a coffee, or share a meal together and they take their time; they’re not constantly rushing. One of the American-French students mentioned how that wasn’t her experience, but she said, “Yeah, Bretagne is kind of dead,” meaning everything is way more chill here than Paris, or other parts of France. Zack, the second American-French student said how much he liked the European community, the food, and how much more relaxed people were as well.

I think the students didn’t mind my presence at all. It was certainly something new for them and I look forward to planning lessons for the middle and high school students. I’m just more used to working with middle school level students; they aren’t as self-conscious about their English and are more curious to ask questions. So for each group, I will have to compartmentalize a bit: what kind of communication in English and in general works for this age group and what doesn’t? It’s going to be a good challenge and learning experience for me. I’m planning on personally journaling about it. Overall, it was a very satisfying day!

A Star-studded Summer

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A clump of healthy Pisaster ochraceous on San Juan island

Sitting here in the sun with my feet pressed familiarly against Harned’s red brick patio, I can’t help but be overtaken by a strange feeling. It seems as if the summer is flying by ever so slowly. The past two months spent conducting summer research here at Puget Sound have been a kind of exhilarating whirlwind that I could never have anticipated during the frantic weeks I spent writing my proposal in the winter. On one long drive between study sites, I was shocked to realize that in the past two months I have seen about 2,000 different sea stars. This sheer number has trained my eyes to instantly identify the species of a sea star and evaluate its health with a sensitivity that only repetition can offer.

But perhaps I should retrace my steps and introduce my research. My name is Haila, and I am a rising Junior majoring in Biology with a minor in English. I’m currently working with Dr. Joel Elliott and fellow student Katie Pyne to evaluate the effects of sea star wasting disease. This aptly-named marine epidemic has traveled up and down the western coast of the United States, brutally dissolving our beloved celestial echinoderms. The cause of wasting disease and the way in which it is transmitted is still very mysterious, although researchers get closer to finding an answer each day. Fortunately, Dr. Elliott and his students have been closely monitoring local sea star populations for years, providing us with solid baseline data to which we can compare the condition of present populations.

San Juan Island photos 264On the days of the month with the lowest tides, Katie and I venture out to the rocky intertidal, GPS and measuring tape in hand, and collect data on every sea star we can find along a previously established transect. We try to collect as much data as we can so that we can be prepared to answer as many questions about the disease as we can. For each of the 2,000 sea stars mentioned above, we have data on species, arm length, color, GPS coordinates, tidal height, arm loss, and sickness level. We then randomly sample the area of the beach in which we expect the sea stars would be feeding, usually in the mussel zone or the barnacle zone. Since sea stars are keystone predators (they are integral to the diversity of their communities because they prey on and suppress hearty organisms like mussels and barnacles that might otherwise dominate the inter-tidal), we would expect a change in sea star populations to set off a change in the populations of their prey items. However, this change will likely occur more gradually than can be observed in the length of a summer, so we hope to provide a baseline for comparison in the future. When the tides are less than ideal, we return to the lab to study the behavior and physiology of baby sea stars, but we’ll save that project for another blog post.

So far, Katie and I have had the privilege to explore some of the most rich and beautiful intertidal zones that Western Washington has to offer, from  the locals sites in the Tacoma area to the beautiful shores of San Juan Island  to the rugged points of the Olympic Peninsula that house the largest organisms we’ve seen. Personally, I am infatuated with the intertidal zone and the organisms that inhabit it, and this research seems so suited to my love of the outdoors. I spend my time sitting in tide pools, climbing slimy boulders, and crouching down to peer under rocks. In a way, it has given a focused direction to my time spent surrounding myself in wild environments and examining, with wonder, nature.

I have always seen science as a place for mystery-solving, elucidation, and exploration. In the past few months, sea star wasting disease has wriggled itself into the public eye with the flashy appeal of its mysterious cause and its gruesome, zombie-like effects. While to the general public sea star wasting disease is a devastating condition destroying a highly recognizable and culturally significant organism, I feel fortunate that I have been given the opportunity to spend time examining the disease from a scientific, ecological perspective. To me, this epidemic is incredibly complex in its effects and implications.

A wasting Pisaster ochraceous on the Olympic Peninsula

A wasting Pisaster ochraceous on the Olympic Peninsula

Although community interactions are so elegantly intricate and important, they have long been the ecologist’s foil. An animal living in the intertidal is affected by a myriad of different factors: abiotic influences like temperature, wave action, and substrate type can vary immensely among sites, within a habitat, and even from one rock to the next. And, to add to this, all of the organisms that share an environment are connected in dizzying webs that are undoubtedly even more complicated than we understand. And this is what has made our research simultaneously frustrating and interesting, providing us with an abundance of questions and few answers. I’ll try to provide you with a snapshot of where we are at right now. Sea stars are wasting, and the culprit is likely a virus. It seems simple enough, right? But once we ask one question, it only sprouts more and more opportunities for inquiry. We might ask, how do sea stars contract the virus? Can it be transmitted through water? Through contact? Through the shellfish that the sea stars eat? We are seeing huge variation among different habitats, and different types of sea stars seem to be differentially affected. So, is the disease aggravated by temperature? Wave action? Prey source? Are certain types of sea stars affected more than others (are small ones more resistant)? Are the sea stars that we see without lesions completely healthy, or does the virus have a substantial incubation time? We see a high recruitment of baby sea stars. Will they be healthy, or will they become infected when they grow up? If the disease results in a large loss of sea stars, which are keystone predators, what will happen to the communities they left behind? Will the mussels and barnacles dominate?

Perhaps most frustratingly, it is likely that each location will respond differently. Differences in mussel population in different habitats could be the result of differences in settlement, differences in food levels, and differences in the availability of good places to live. All of these factors are likely to effect the response of a mussel community to the absence of sea stars due to sea star wasting disease. However, even with the seemingly daunting lack of control that ecologists face in the field, we are not discouraged. These questions remind me of how much we still have to discover, and this opportunity for contribution (combined with pure curiosity) acts as the fuel for a researcher’s motivation. This summer has been a lesson in flexibility, careful planning, and persistence. I can already tell that the skills I am gaining now will be valuable in the remainder of my education and beyond. Thanks for reading!

Recruitment Struggles

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Undertaking a long, multi-step project or process often involves unforeseen difficulties. While these challenges can be similarly frustrating to experience, combating them often necessitates a very different set of skills. Some problems require patience, while others require rapid ingenuity; other problems are best viewed through a creative lens, while some should be addressed as methodically as possible.

However, solving problems effectively can often default to a simple formula: one tries various solutions, fails, and subsequently bases future attempted solutions off of previous failures.

In the context of my research project, the largest challenge that I have had to deal with is recruitment. Participation in my study is limited exclusively to students at UPS, and since a large percentage of students go home during the summer months, I have a small potential sample size to draw from. However, there are still more than enough students for me to reach my minimum goal of 40 participants, as well as my ideal (and wildly optimistic) goal of a sample size of 80 participants. Despite the fact that I am offering $5 as compensation for participation, it has been difficult to find a steady flow of participants.

I initially thought that it would be sufficient to advertise solely via flyers placed around campus that advertised my study. Theoretically, the allure of getting $5 for 30 minutes of participation would be too much for some students to resist, and I would be overwhelmed by potential participants clamoring to get a piece of the action. In reality, the experience thus far had been vastly different. I’d be lying if I were to say it wasn’t a little bit of a letdown when, after putting up my flyers, I received little to no interest in the first week.

However, I also knew that in order to optimize the number of potential participants, I needed to undertake a more active, personable, and tangible recruiting process. The frenetic pace of daily life makes it difficult for a student to pay attention to every poster or flyer that they see, much less consciously decide to consider the information that it displays. By deciding to go around to summer classes and actively present about my research to students, I knew I had a much better chance of engaging them.

If I were going from classroom to classroom, handing out surveys, and simply asking students to fill them out, I would have no problem; people are not inherently opposed to participating in research studies, nor are they inclined to not want $5! However, participation in my study is different – it requires conscious effort – potential participants have to clear space in their schedule, contact me to set up a time, and show up and participate. That’s a significant amount of work, with a relatively small incentive; I can completely understand how other concerns and interests can make prioritizing research participation an afterthought.

Despite these initial setbacks, I am determined to continue working to get as many participants as I can. While it can be difficult at times, every single person that I get counts, and I frequently have to remind myself that, quite literally, “they all add up”. Hopefully the coming weeks will see steady, progressive participation as I look to reach my goal of 40 participants!

Announcing Proscenium Journal for New Plays

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I’ve been helping start a theatre journal called Proscenium that’s gearing up to publish plays and theatre-related articles for its inaugural issue this fall. The new journal aims to create the first free, online platform for sharing new plays. More information (and submission instructions) can be found at www.prosceniumjournal.com

The project’s been really rewarding to work on so far. The journal’s received submissions from authors all over the country, some with long production histories and others just starting, and it’s been fun reading and getting to be a part of the amazing work people are doing.

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Proscenium sprang largely out of an absence of opportunities for new playwrights to publish their works outside of large publication organizations like Samuel French. And unlike these venues, Proscenium does not collect royalty cuts from authors – it obtains only one-time publication rights to the pieces it prints. The journal aims to create a new publication model for playwrights.

While there are a variety of literary magazines, journals, and other general publication outlets, there are currently very few similar publications for new theatre. As a result, there are likewise very few opportunities for undergraduates to publish dramatic work. And given the enormous volume of impressive dramatic writing happening at Puget Sound – through playwriting and creative writing classes, Student Initiative Theatre’s playwriting festivals and workshops, Ubiquitous They sketch comedy, and via the theatre department – we definitely encourage campus writers to submit to the journal.

Speaking of submissions, Proscenium is taking submissions up until its August 1st deadline for the fall issue. Plays can be sent to submissions@prosceniumjournal.com – please include a brief 100-word author bio and your piece as either a PDF or Word document. We’re looking in particular for short one-acts and ten minute plays to fill out this first edition.

Besides Proscenium, I’ve otherwise been busy editing XRDS, the national undergraduate magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery. I’m a feature editor for the magazine, which entails brainstorming authors and themes for the publication’s various issues, steering the general direction of the magazine, and lots of editing! I’ve been editing articles for our upcoming issue on natural language processing, an exciting fusion of language and computer science (at least for a dual biblio/technophile like myself). If you want to check out more about the magazine, go to: xrds.acm.org

Between the two magazines, I’ve definitely been forced to brush up on my editing skills! It’s also showing me, though, that there’s almost nothing more entertaining to someone who likes reading and writing then reading and revising new writing and helping bring writing to new audiences.

Research Reflections

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A brief demographic questionnaire from the study.

A brief demographic questionnaire from the study.

 

Hi everyone! I’m Stephen Baum, a rising senior and psychology major. This is my first ever blog post, as well as my first summer conducting research independently, which, initially, was a slightly daunting prospect. While I was incredibly excited and humbled to have received a summer research grant, I was anxiously aware of the challenges that lied ahead. Somewhere along the line, I visualized myself drowning in a sea of journal articles that I was hopelessly inept at trying to interpret. However, thanks to the support of my advisor, Jill Nealey-Moore, (Ph.D, Psychology) I have neither downed nor am I (completely) inept at reading and analyzing articles; thus far, the research process has been fantastic and extremely rewarding, albeit challenging.

While I can’t speak entirely about the specifics regarding my research, as I am still running participants and don’t want to compromise the scientific validity of what I am testing, my research generally examines how an individual’s mood alters as a function of various tasks that they perform. Participants in my study come into the lab, complete several written exercises and questionnaires, and are then compensated for their participation. The study in its entirety takes around 35 minutes, which, figuratively speaking, is in a “sweet spot”; long enough to comprehensively examine how the tasks influence mood without leaving a participant overly fatigued and potentially compromising their ability to concentrate.

As a whole, my reflections on conducting research thus far are positive. It is very apt to characterize a considerable portion of the research process as unglamorous; for every significant finding or “eureka” moment, there are hours and hours spent in the lab, at the computer, or the library, meticulously sorting through the world of online publications, struggling with the margins on a set of questionnaires, and agonizing over the heading on a written activity. Research is inherently painstaking, and it highly prioritizes attention to detail; those that put in extra effort will be rewarded with the most fruitful, and often, most unexpected findings. Since a significant portion of the validity in experimental psychological research rests in ensuring that each participant in the study has as identical of an experience as possible, minutia cannot be ignored. In this way, routine is a researcher’s best friend, as the experimental procedure for each and every participant follows a pre-drafted “script” that standardizes language and controls for deviations. While some may find this monotonous, the process is incredibly inherently satisfying for me, as I get a certain gratuitous please out of agonizing over organizational details and running a participant directly according to the script.

Additionally, being able to work in such close proximity to Jill and pick her brain has considerably advanced my academic development. The axiom “work smarter, not harder” comes to mind – while research does require you to work (very!) hard, which Jill demonstrates, it rewards innovative, critical though and harnessed spontaneity. Observing Jill’s careful and analytical reasoning has enabled me to grasp the value of such traits in an experimental setting.

Watching my thought process systematically evolve from when my research project was in its fledgling stages has been incredibly gratifying and empowering. I believe that largely due to the help of those around me, I’ve been able to progressively develop a variety of skills that will benefit me even outside of an academic research setting, such as the ability to problem solve in difficult situations, or ration time and resources in an advantageous manner.

So that is about it! Hopefully I can keep everyone up to date with my adventures in the lab as my study progresses. I’m looking forward to being able to speak more freely about the semantics of my research and the theory behind it. Stay tuned!

It’s autumn down here

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While all of you Northern Hemispheric folks are starting to enjoy summer, some of you starting out a few months of vacation, down here we are hard at work with final projects, papers, tests, sailing, camping, swimming, playing, watching the World Cup, and trying to squeeze every last drop out of this precious time.

Last Friday was my third time sailing here, through my university.  Because there are many people who have dropped out, I officially have a place in the class/team, and they opened it up for other folks to sign up.  So I not only got to practice managing a boat that I’m still fairly new to, but also had the fun and funny experience of teaching brand new sailors, who had never set foot on a boat, how to sail.  In Spanish.  Some of the words are anglicisms, like outhaul and cunningham, while others are terms that I never fully learned in English either.  We got to go a bit away from the harbor, surfing the large swells and enjoying the brisk breeze.

When I left and got back to my house, Chile’s first game had just begun and my living room was awash in red.  Beer and orange soda were mixed in glasses (fanschop, it’s called, meaning fanta-beer), eyes scarcely strayed from the screen to greet me, and a few people were munching choripan (chorizo-pan, or sausage and bread, because Chilean world cup fare is all about the portmanteau).  I felt sticky from spending my afternoon in a wetsuit, so I went to take a quick little shower.  Just as I was toweling off, I heard the unmistakeable ruckus of the first goal, erupting from the television, from the people downstairs, soon followed by car horns honking and yells from nearby houses.  I wasn’t quite downstairs when a second goal followed on the heels of the first.  As soon as I sat down, my presence near the TV seemed to turn the tide and although they continued to overwhelmingly possess the ball, the Chileans were having trouble scoring, and Australia got a few breakaways, and then a goal.

Normally, gatherings with family and friends here seem pretty relaxed, with a free flow of food and drink, but on this occasion I saw the obsessive soccer fanaticism that caused delayed and refills, grabbing chips, or even just taking a sip of beer until the ball was out-of-bounds.  Wouldn’t want to lose concentration for a second, after all.  At one point, I think I went too far into this concentration and came out on the other side, wondering which of these little moving dots of light I was supposed to be focused on, but the yells of my companions brought me back to reality.  We were reduced to a simple worldview pitting Us against Them.  I thought about how in Ultimate, the onus of being a good sportsperson is placed on each player, and the integrity of the game is only held up through self-refereeing.  By contrast, soccer players will frequently argue with a ref’s call, seeming to want the advantage for their team at any cost.  However, you also see them helping players of the opposite team to get up, shaking hands after a contentious moment, and kicking the ball out of bounds when someone on the other team is injured.  These moments remind us that even in an atmosphere of the fiercest competition, there always remains that human element, where brief shows of compassion are expected and as much as shows of great athleticism.

Chile’s Jean Beausejour scored the team’s third goal just before the game ended, and I was there to see it, and to be part of the room of fans, jumping up and down with a pride as if each one of them had personally participated in making the goal happen.

This is a great place to be for the World Cup.  I watched the US-Ghana match as well, this time at a bar with a huge group of Americans, and I have to say we did our country proud with face paint and noise, chanting extra loudly to make up for the fact that there were no car horns outside accompanying our yells. To both of my red, white and blue teams: I couldn’t be prouder, vamos Chile y vamos USA!

Beginning Research: Learning, Slicing, and Splashing brains

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As this is my first post, I would like to briefly introduce myself: I am Emilie Kurth, a rising senior here at Puget Sound. I am majoring in Biology, minoring in French, and I am also a member of the Honors Program. This summer is my first experience conducting research outside of a controlled classroom setting. I have found this change to be liberating in how I approach my scientific questions and the relaxed environment has also encouraged me to become more self-motivated as well as innovative with my biological thinking.

Plastic Pollution in Alaskan Waters

Plastic Pollution in Alaskan Waters

My research project requires a relative amount of creativity because it combines two rarely linked fields: neuroscience and ecology. I am studying the reproductive and neurophysiological effects of chronic plastic exposure in two species of seabirds: the Northern Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) and Sooty Shearwater (Puffinus griseus). Unfortunately, these seabirds are two of many species known to ingest plastic, which represents the largest global marine pollutant, measuring at 315 billion pounds in 2009. Plastics are used universally, and in order to optimize their functionality and durability, many plastics are manufactured with chemical additives such as bisphenol A (BPA), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), nonylphenols (NPs), and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), all of which interfere with the neuroendocrine system. Once seabirds have ingested plastics, these chemical additives can leach through the blood stream and into major organs. I am researching to examine if chemical additives have permeated the brain, (particularly the hypothalamus which controls eating, sleeping reproduction, etc.), and the gonads (ovaries and testicles) of juvenile Northern Fulmars and Sooty Shearwaters. I am searching for abnormalities of size and structures in these anatomical regions using dissection, weighing, and microscopic techniques.

Thawing a California Gull

Thawing a California Gull

My past three weeks working in the labs of Peter Hodum (PhD, Biology Department) and Siddharth Ramakrishnan (PhD, Biology and Neuroscience Departments) have focused predominantly on learning and trouble-shooting my methods. I have practiced my procedure on several ill-fated California Gulls donated by Slater Museum. And from my practice, I have perfected my techniques of extracting the gonads, fixing them, and then slicing them into 5-20 µM thick slices (which is extremely small) using the Cryostat, which essentially is an extremely precise and high-tech deli slicer. Additionally I have learned the art of staining slides, where the histology slides to which the

Frosted Histology Slides with Attached Tissues

Frosted Histology Slides with Attached Tissues

sliced tissues have adhered are dipped into a series of chemicals that tinge the tissues with purple, pink, and blue hues, allowing for observation of surface details beneath a fluorescent microscope.

 

 

 

Thus far, fixation of the brain has served as the largest challenge, wherein I produced a flubber-esque brain and unintentionally splashed it all over my laboratory station (whoops!). However, today I dissected a perfectly fixed brain (after Siddharth suggested sawing holes into the skull so the fixative would better permeate the tissue), and it is currently soaking in a second fixative where it will stay for several days until it is ready to

Ventral View of the California Gull's Brain

Ventral View of the California Gull’s Brain

undergo slicing and analysis. I am optimistic that this brain will offer much better results than the last few, and once I have solidified my procedure with the brain, I can finally begin to analyze the Northern Fulmars and Sooty Shearwaters!

Until next time!