A New Life in Quito

Written in the ATL airport with no free wifi:

First post—it’s always the hardest. After two weeks of spending pretty much every waking moment in the lab trying to complete my independent research project, I finally feel ready for the Ecuador trip to begin, somewhat. I’m anticipating visiting a third world country, but from many people that I’ve spoken to they say that the city is great—basically first world—but you travel an hour outside in any direction and you’ve hit the rural areas with health and wealth disparities galore. I’m excited to hit the ground running, as many of you know I would be. I should be meeting with a few of our collaborators at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) on Friday, May 20th to make sure we have enough supplies for our field study at the end of June. If not, then we’ll have to order it through Emory and make sure they get in before Marissa Grossman (my research partner!) comes down to Quito on June 2^nd. Looks like we're planning on doing 400 assays every other week for 4 weeks from the end of June through July. In the meantime we'll be helping out with the current projects so we have space when ours begins. Ahh nerves, excitement and curiosity are hitting the roof! It’ll be a pretty darn busy summer: Spanish school (5-6 hours a day of individual tutoring for 3-4 weeks), blogging, complete my research report, ORIENTATION 2011, and preparing/going into the field for the water microbiology study. The next time I post I would’ve already landed and started to adjust to the high altitudes. Fingers crossed I don’t get altitude sickness! Adiós!

From Quito, Ecuador:

For those of you who think that Quito is incredibly warm all day long you are VERY wrong. Because Quito is about 2800 meters above sea level it gets incredibly chilly at night and in the early mornings, but the afternoons are super warm or chilly (again) or raining. Definitely temperamental weather. I'm currently living with a host family that consists of a German guy dating an Ecuadorian girl who are both a year older than me and only speak Spanish. It's pretty awesome. One downfall: cold showers, I would almost argue the warm bucket baths in Africa were better. :-P

I went in to the USFQ lab earlier today to talk to our collaborators about supplies and other materials we need for the field study and eventually celebrated one of the microbio lab doctor's birthday! Everything here is so reasonably priced. Each meal is about $2-3 dollars and staying with my host family is about $10 a night. Did I mention the currency is US dollars? My Spanish needs some brushing up for sure but I can pretty much understand what everyone is saying...so far. The public transportation is also another thing to boast about. It's not perfect, but it's pretty darn good with 1 trolley bus, 1 metrobus, and 1 ecovia bus: all travel north and south on main roads--10 de agosto, América, y 6 de diciembre. The entire city is about 45 km wide so it's not too difficult to get around, but I've definitely gotten lost for a couple hours trying to feel my way through the streets.

I think I'll spend the weekend running in la parque carolina, which is right next to my host family house and check out la Mariscal that's known to be a 'hoppin' nightlife place. Bring on the salsa! It's a little bizarre, but I almost feel like I could live here for a very long time before wanting to go anywhere else. Let's see how the research experience turns out and we'll go from there. Chao!

Preparing for winter!

After having just finished up my junior year at Emory, I'm preparing to go to the other side of the world and research in New Zealand for the summer! As an anthropology major, I have spent my last two summers excavating in Jordan, but now I will try my hand at studying in a lab abroad.

My research at Emory is with Dr. George Armelagos where I make thin sections out of ancient Sudanese Nubian bones to look for evidence of tetracycline labeling. These ribs are about 1500 years old and are extremely well preserved. Next year I will be writing an honors thesis on my work with these human remains and continue to examine the evidence left by this antibiotic and its possible origins of ingestion by the population.

This summer, I will be working on a project that is a bit different than my research in Atlanta - I'm going to be looking for evidence of erosive arthopathies, which includes diseases such as gout, in human remains from Polynesia. Rather than cutting up bones with a band-saw and creating thin sections to look at under a microscope, I'll be studying the gross anatomy of these bones to look for pitting and lesions caused by specific diseases. My mentor for this summer will be Dr. Hallie Buckley of the University of Otago in Dunedin. She, like Dr. Armelagos, is also a paleopathologist.

In the mean time, I'm here in Chicago, resting up from the school year and preparing for my adventure down under! I just purchased a pair of hiking boots suited for winter weather, as my other pair are meant for the desert and won't keep my feet very warm. Even though I will be working in a lab most of the time, I am going to definitely do some hiking over there and spend as much time as I can outside in that beautiful country! The only thing I'm sad about is that I will be missing summer, as I'm used to working outside all summer as either an archaeologist or a lifeguard, which is what I've done for the last 7 years, so this will be a definite change! To cope with that though, I have some warmer hiking clothing so I can ignore the fact that it's cold and spend time outside, so it should be just fine! :)

I have a week left before my departure and almost everything is taken care of, except for my laundry! I will have to get to that next ...

The beginning of my Ecuadorian Adventures

With the end of finals just around the corner, the summer is looking mighty fine. My Ecuadorian adventures will begin on May 18th, 2011 and go up until August 14th, 2011 where I will come straight back to ATL in preparation for Orientation 2011! No doubt, it's going to be a fun-filled summer with much more of a 'roughin it out' type lifestyle for a good 12 weeks.

First, I'll be traveling to Quito, Ecuador where 2-3 things will happen:

1) Moderately serious to serious note--I'll be taking about 3 weeks of intensive Spanish schooling and staying with a host family. Let's keep our fingers crossed that I come back with a bit more fluency under my belt.

2) Less of a serious note--After taking Spanish classes in the morning, I'm hoping to take some salsa classes in the afternoon for $5 per hour! I doubt this would make me a pro, but it sure sounds like a heck of a lotta fun!

3) Seriously--I will also be going into the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador laboratory to make sure that we are fully prepared before heading into our 4-week field sampling (in Northern coastal Ecuador) with 2-weeks in between to process the samples in the Quito lab.

A significant portion of my research will involve collecting water and soil samples to test for antibiotic resistance to Escherichia coli (E. coli), which is a common indicator used to detect fecal contamination (i.e. poop in the environment). The research project I will be participating in is called EcoDess where environmental health researchers from the US and Ecuador are interested in the intersection between diarrheal disease and environmental change. Fortunately for me, this type of research is EXACTLY where my passion lies: poop and water. Who would've thought anyone could be attracted to that combination? ;-) Trust me, there’s a ton of us.

I'm sure I'll squeeze in some time for traveling around the country/countries (keep up with the blog and you'll hear all about it!), but until then get ready Ecuador because we're gonna fall in love with each other by the end of this trip.

Joshua @ Emory

Hello world:

I'm in the middle of writing final papers, studying for final exam, and preparing for final presentations in my next to last semester at Emory. After catching up with senior friends and attending Graduation 2011, I will spend a valuable week at home with my beloved family.

I will be departing for London from New York on May 26th. The return flight is already set for August 19th. It's always good to begin with the end in mind, as I've been learning that general relativity of time just means it goes by faster as you get older.

I will be conducting research at the University of Oxford's Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology (ICEA). I will be working in the lab of the Director, Robin Dunbar, a renowned scientist currently studying pro-social laughter. My goals include determining this phenomenon's effect on experimental economic cooperation and contributing to the developing theory on neuro-biological mechanism of Duchenne's laughter.

I plan to keep you all updated throughout the summer on my progress and my adventures. I will be blogging updates like this one, as well as posting pictures, and - when more appropriate - "vlogging." Video-blogging will be an enjoyable experience, for both parties I hope, and will have to suffice when I cannot Skype with you.

In the meantime, I appreciate your prayers and support for a fantastic (and unforgettable) summer 2011!

- Joshua de Gastyne

Hi everyone,

I am super excited to go to Vancouver this summer and can't wait to get there. Meanwhile, I have to study for finals. :) How fun.

I'm majoring in neuroscience and researching the songbird brain here at Emory. In Vancouver, I will also be studying birds, but more from an ecological/physiological perspective. I think it will definitely help me learn more about these animals and understand them as a whole. I will be working in the lab of Dr. Tony Williams at Simon Fraser University, and mostly likely studying how anemia in zebra finch mothers affects their offspring and parenting quality. Dr. Williams and I aren't 100% certain about what I'll be doing, though, so it's likely that I'll end up investigating and helping out with a number of different things. This is a good thing though, because I'll be able to learn many new techniques and perspectives.

For the rest of my time in Vancouver, I plan to go hiking/running/general exploring as much as possible. A friend suggested to me that I visit Victoria, so I may do that at some point as well.

Off to finish the semester! See ya later. :)

Farewell America. Hello Finland

I will attempt to write this blog all in Finnish. Here we go.

Not really.

Well, what can I say about this AWESOME experience I will be having this summer? Besides the fact that it will be awesome and legendary? Nothing much. I will be taking my MCAT at 8AM on the 21st of May and leaving for Helsinki, Finland at 5PM on the same day. I'll be taking a quick stop in London then arriving in beautiful Helsinki at around noon the next day (their time). This summer I will be doing things I would never have gotten to do if it weren't for the IRES program, Cathy, and Emory. Not only the research side of things will be completely novel and AWESOME, I will have the opportunity to travel across Europe and experience European life on my own and live life.

The research is with Dr. Matias Palva, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Neuroscience Center in the University of Helsinki. The team works with human subjects and has been attempting to discover the underlining neural signaling and mechanisms for working, short-term memory systems using EEG and MEG. These techniques are both new and extremely interesting for my studies here at Emory and for my future as I plan on partaking an 8+ year journey into a combined MD/PhD program. More specifically, I will be integrating a brand new visual working memory paradigm that may include distractors in between encoding and recognition phases in which the human subjects will be required to remember the encoding image to investigate the effects of the distracting image. In addition, I will be responsible for creating this task while also helping with recordings and analysis of the data.

Looking forward to the 21st, eating reindeer and moose, sauna-ing, and of course working =D

Peace,

Will

Introduction

Hi! My name is Sara, and this summer I will be researching in Ireland at the University of Dublin Trinity College. My PI overseas is Dr. Mani Ramaswami, and I will be studying the mechanisms that regulate GABAergic (neurons that make GABA as their neurotransmitter) facilitation in vivo. Specifically, I will be investigating the role of RAc1 and Synapsin I, a protein involved in the release of vesicles from the reserve pool in neuron terminals, in habituation. I will be conducting larvae dissections and studying the neuromuscular junction (NMJ) to acheive this aim. Additionally, I will be aiding in the other experiments of the lab, which encompasses measuring lateral neuron (LN) facilitation and PN repression. For the other lab experiments, I will get to use a two-photon microscope, which I am really excited about. I will be leaving for Dublin on the 30th of May, and I plan to return on August 17th, just in time for a short break and classes to start back up again. Currently, I do not have a place to live lined up. I am watching the rent postings, but I think it's a little too early to find a place to live since I'm not leaving for another month and a half. I am trying to get a place near the University so that I can walk to the research lab instead of finding a means of transportation. I will be doing some traveling while in Ireland. I plan on visiting many different cities in Ireland, as well as cities in other Western European countries. More on that will come later. I think I might try to find a way to volunteer at a hospital on my down time outside of the lab. I don't want to just go back to my apartment every time I leave lab, and I think getting a feel of another country's health care system will be really exciting. We'll see how that goes. Until then, Sara