WOW. My first impression of Rome. For those who haven't been I strongly recommend going at some point in your life. The food, history, architecture, culture...it was all amazing. In the three days I was there I walked over 30 miles throughout the city visiting Vatican city (St.Peter's Basilica, Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel), the Roman Forum, the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Pantheon, the Mouth of Truth, Trevi fountain and every side street in between. What I found the most amazing was how you could be walking down a street and on one side you have a Burger King and on the other a church or some type of monument that is thousands of years old. At the Roman Forum the majority of the ruins are from the BC period (BC!), and Julius Caesar walked the very same dirt roads throughout the area that I did. It was amazing to think that such historical figures had been in the same area and that I was staring at something that has survived thousands of years of time. In the United States the oldest man-made things we have are a couple hundred years old, so to comprehend that I was in the presence of something thousands of years old..wow...just wow. Not to mention the Sistine chapel, perhaps the most "wow" experience I had while in Rome. It truly is a masterpiece and a wonder to think someone was able to paint a ceiling that elaborately and beautifully. Sadly you can't take photos inside of it so I can't share those with you, but another excuse for you to visit Rome so you can see for yourself!
Just thinking about the food is making me wish I could hop on the plane and go for dinner right now. By far the best pizza, pasta, gelato and tiramisu I have ever had. Not just because it was "in Italy". The food truly is much more delicious, the noodles are all homemade, the mozzarella and tomatoes from the pizza are extremely fresh tasting and the desserts are again, wow.
 |
| Me in the Roman Forum |
 |
| PIZZA |
 |
| A room in the Vatican |
 |
| Statue in the Vatican |
 |
| Roman Forum, buildings from BC period |
 |
| Colosseum |
Last week at lab was a little frustrating. I was performing the stereotaxic lesions on my mice, however my lab partner and I kept running into problems with the anesthesia. For some of the mice, once injected they would start trembling as if from hypothermia. However we tested this theory and tried heating pads and that didn't help, then we tried different concentrations of ketamine within the anesthesia concoction. This didn't help either. Then for some mice they wouldn't fall asleep at all. It seemed as though the more we added the more awake they became.We tried changing all the variables in some way, asked everyone in the lab and no one had ever seen the reactions we were seeing in our mice before. Eventually we were able to sedate the mice that hadn't passed away by injecting them several times throughout the lesioning process instead of a full dose before we began. In the end about a 1/3 of the mice in our project died either from the issue of the anesthesia or the trauma of the lesion. We found that those with lesions to the hippocampus fared worse that those with lesions to the striatum, so for the behavioral tests this week we decided to eliminate the hippocampus group from our experiment (there was only 1 mouse left in this group remaining). This week I started the behavioral tests with my remaining mice (Rotarod and T-maze) so far all the mice seem to be doing well so I'm excited to get more data from these mice over the next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment