Demonstrating and tissue culture

Hi everyone

So in the past couple of weeks:

1. Demonstrating:
I have begun to do some demonstrating on animal handling, I am assisting in an  undergraduate class where they learn about handling and the requirements of rabbits, guinea pigs and chinchillas. I have so far found that I am extremely fond of guinea pigs, I feel that I would like to have one again one day. I used to own a guinea pig his name was Sir Eat a lot. Which i think described his personality perfectly, we got him from a small zoo in Derbyshire when it closed down in 2000. Anyway enough about my previous guinea pig.

I am enjoying demonstrating, its nice to see how the undergrads are so enthusiastic, and wanting to learn and handle the animals. I am also learning a lot about these animals, especially about chinchillas, I had never handled a chinchilla before until I was trained for this work. I think its important not to talk down to the students, which I thought I would have a problem with but in the end it has been ok. Many of them have pets at home and they already understand a bit about the animals.

So from doing this kind of demonstrating I have so far learned, the requirements for keeping rabbits, guinea pigs and chinchillas, how to sex them and common diseases/illnesses and problems.

2. Tissue culture
Ok, so I have started to do some tissue culture which has been eventful. I have managed not to infect any of them yet and none of them have had to be thrown away yet.... watch this space.

3. Life outside uni
Since i last posted, I have moved house to be closer to uni which has been been great and very helpful as now I dont have a long commute as I did before. 

Weekly update

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks, I have finally started writing my literature review and now have 1000 words write, probably not very good words, but at least something is written down. I have had a couple of meetings including with a UK zoo, which was very interesting.

The plan for my project is going to be written so I have know which direction my research is going to go in, I know that I am studying various aspects of Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus in Asian elephants. I feel this is an interesting area and I feel that i will be ale to contribute to the research in this field.

I think elephants are amazing creatures, from researching information for my literature review, I have found they are much more complex than what I thought. Rather than just being big and grey, they have a very complex social structure which has taken up a lot of my time allocated to research this week.

Outreach

Yesterday was the science outreach event, my colleague and I designed a stall based on teaching children anatomy. We showed them a full body model which was like a jigsaw where they put the organs back inside the body. We also had a larger model of the heart, which showed the children what the inside of your heart looks like, the final thing we did was to provide a quiz sheet which went down particularly well, usually with children having to help their parents. Very young children also very much enjoyed the mirror that we provided.

I have not previously had experience with children so this was a new experience for me. I really enjoyed taking part in the event, it enabled me to learn how to communicate to children and how to make activities fun and interesting. I would like to take part in the event again next year but I would like to explore another topic.

I am going to do some reading today and hopefully make a start on my literature at some point this week; I am finding it hard to get pen to paper and actually start at the moment. I am also re vamping my blog today adding photos which I have now found :) so please take a look at the My Life page as it now hos some photographs.

Its already been a long week.......

Its felt like a very long week so far, trying to get my head around bio informatics. This is an area I am pretty unfamiliar with, I have spent hours researching sequence alignment which I think I now understand the basic principles of.

I feel like I have not achieved very much this week, on my week to do list I have only managed to tick off two things, I am feeling a little disheartened this week. Creating a to do list was possibly not as good of an idea as I thought, especially when you can barely tick anything off. I feel that I do know enough and I'm worried that I will look stupid.

I have a busy weekend as well, Science in the community outreach program on Saturday, where my colleague and I have created a stall on anatomy. Where we are going to enlighten children and give them some information on the human body. We are also providing chocolate and sweets.