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

Epilogue

This was a summer of amazing opportunities and challenges. I never thought that I would be able to have the chance to go abroad in college. Since freshman year when I first plotted my academic route through college, I always thought that there would simply be no time to be able to finish college in decent time and be able to explore the world. I knew that just picking up and traveling for a summer would not necessarily be the best thing to do in the eyes of medical school admissions offices, I resigned myself to school years laden with science classes and summers chockfull of academics and science. When Leah, Cathy and company first told me about IRES, I knew this would be that chance to be able to do everything that I wanted to do. Not only was I able to work in the lab of one of the most famous developmental geneticists in the world, not only was I surrounded by brilliant scientists in the forefront of their fields, not only was I able to learn and be exposed to a lot of cool and awesome science, but I also got to live in London AND travel throughout Europe. Yup, it was pretty sweet.
Things I learned this summer:
1) I hate eggs. Don’t get me wrong, I do thoroughly enjoy an omelet, but I cannot stand electroporations. Ugh! I think over the course of the summer I electroporated close to 400 eggs. All I wanted to do was throw them out the window or cook them… I need a new animal model…
2) The science community is really, really small. Especially my field of developmental genetics. EVERYONE knows each other! When I told some of the PIs in my division that I go to Emory, they started rattling off names in a game of science geography. Turns out one of PIs collaborates occasionally with my current biochem teacher, Bill Kelly.
3) Science labs come in as many varieties as the people who populate them. As an undergraduate, I have been fortunate enough to have worked in not one, but three labs. Each one has been so completely different from the others. My first lab was small, young and highly motivated (through love of science and fear of the PI…) my second was/is also young, but there was a real sense that everyone wanted to be there, loved what they were doing and really got along well. Over the summer, my lab was fairly large and old / well established. The PI had very little to do with the day to day activities of the researchers and in general there was a very unusual hierarchy with the veteran post-docs practically playing the role of the PI. I found out that picking a lab is not just about the science, but whether you know you can work with these people for whatever amount of time.
4) America is not as amazing as I always thought it was.* (* see note (5) before freaking out!) London is a massive, cosmopolitan city with EVERYTHING and even more stuff then Atlanta and most major American cities. It has one of, if not the best, public transportation systems in the world. The tube might be super expensive, but it rocks. If the US wants to be competitive with the rest of the world, I think we (the US) need to focus on overhauling infrastructure with a greater emphasis on public transportation to help ease congestion, reduce environmental emissions and help ease movement between and within towns and cities. Beyond transportation, there are many things that just might be better overseas. There are many more wireless service providers, which leads to better service and lower prices. And I can go on…
5) America IS the best country in the world. I would never want to live anywhere else. Yes, you can do pretty much everything you can here almost anywhere else in the world, but it just does not really compare to the opportunities that the USA provides (at lease for me). Being away from home for so long has really helped me to appreciate what I have missed all summer. There is still a lot that the US can learn from Europe, but I feel that for the most part we are on the right track.
6) Being a tourist in Europe is awesome. There’s the old joke of a European in Philadelphia, waiting in line (queuing) to see the liberty bell and wondering why the Americans are making such a big fuss over a 250 year-old cracked bell. “Your history goes back 300 years; our history goes back 2500 years.” Guilty as charged.
7) The world is big, but not that big. Different countries have different cultures and traditions, but when you boil away all the ‘superfluous’ stuff, people are essentially the same. We all hopes and dreams. I feel that backpacking alone, by force exposing me to so many different people really helped me to see this. I feel that traveling alone really is an opportunity not just to experience new cultures and have fun, but is an incredible opportunity for self-growth. Many people now a days are always on the move- there is really no true down time. Even in between activities we plugged ourselves into our ipods. It’s an information overload. Sometimes you just need a seven hour train ride with a dead iPod to really just sit there and think about life and anything else without zoning out to the constant buzz of music in our ears…
8) Of course there is more, but I’ll leave it at this.
I had a great time this summer, especially when I was able to meet up with some fellow IRES students. This experience would never have been possible without IRES – thank you so much Leah, Cathy and everyone else who allowed all of us to have this fantastic summer! Thank you so much!!

tiger woods ^ us golf open

all this week and last week i've been doing more trials for the experiment i started two weeks ago... i changed the concentration of ouabain in a few of the experiments as well to see if the effect was any different.. this week i also learned how to hand make glass electrodes.. by using a capillary tube and pulling each side apart over a flame so the ends that were pulled apart would come to a point and then i had to cut and bend the electrode so it was in the proper orientation to make electrical recordings...

this past weekend i went to mykonos.. it was AMAZING.. i love greece.. it's such a fun place to travel to... i had the chance to actually go to the beach and swim in the ocean which i love doing during the summer months...i stayed on the beach all day.. one of the beaches i went to had a bar/restaurant right next to it that started playing loud fun dance music at the night.. everyone started dancing most of the people still in their beach gear...i went into the town.. walked around.. did some shopping, watched the sunset, and ate some delicious greek food :) .. and finally, one of the days my dad and i decided to explore the island more and just drove around got out of our car took pictures and enjoyed the scenery... I am really tired after the trip though.. all my traveling has really worn me out!

i've had some really great experiences and have had a great summer! i'm so glad i've been given this opportunity!

and some pictures for your enjoyment of greece and the us golf open above :)

London pictures :)

Windsor castle and part of incredible doll house
Queen play :)









parliament, notting hill, market, tourist freaking out over a squirell, changing of the guard, really cool cars, London bridge, telephone booth :)