week 6: Tax Exempt DNA Paper

This week I started fundraising for the magazine and launched the online portion of it. One of our stories is on Team Albertas project they presented at IGEM last week, it's a really cool concept that cuts part construction down to a few minutes. Also It's pretty exhausting trying to convince people to sponsor a completely untested idea by a stranger but I think we are doing a good job so far. I'm pretty excited how it's going to turn out, we have some really good writers, Andrew Hessel, Ben Krasnow, Bryan Bishop, Cathal Garvey,Forrest Flanagan, Lawrence Schembri.

On Thursday at DIYbioHou we showed presentations of a few top projects from IGEM. My favorite being Team Slovenia who developed a way to use Zn fingers to bind bioparts to a sequence of DNA to give you more control over the linearity of synthetic systems. I was a little nervous because I thought I'd been scooped but thankfully I hadn't and their designs will improve my research project. As for the meeting, We had a decent turnout, 6 people including a random bio prof from Rice.

I also spent alot of time this week working on the projections and budget for OSF so that our 501(c)3 application goes smoothly come January. OSF is already a non-profit corporation but Tax exempt status

would make alot of things easier even if means alot more paperwork for me.

Total Hours of Service Learning: Bio(6) + Paper (13) + OSF (7) = 26 hours

Week 5: Print, Art and Bio.

This past week I commited to publishing a magazine dedicated to Citizen Science. It's appropriately called The Citizen Science Quarterly and the first print issue goes to the printer Jan 15. The reason behind the magazine is to show people of all ages that science is not something only those with degrees and fancy labs are allowed to do. It's not the best time for print but it's the most affordable way of reaching people who aren't active online.

On thursday, was the weekly DIYbioHou meeting. We recently moved to an amazing warehouse downtown on 2010 commerce st. So there was no "class" today, instead we drew up plans and the budget for the wetlab.

Also this past friday aka yesterday, was the official launch of my art show titled "Brain as Art", it featured an EEG(video of it in EKG mode) a friend and I designed and built plus pieces of art, some artists made that were influenced by the brain. It'll run at the C2 Gallery from now until Jan and I am glad it's over. Artists aren't real big on deadlines which puts a strain on the curator with a deadline.

Total Hours of Service Learning: Print(9) + Art(17) + Bio(8) = 34hrs

Week 4: Service Learning

I am giving up on trying to volunteer at Ben Taub. I just can't make the thursday orientation, on account of them holding them at the exact same time as I hold DIYbio meetings. Which is ironic that Im not able to do my Cell Bio volunteering because I'm too busy teaching people biology for free(aka volunteering). I think maybe the service learning project shouldn't just be limited to clinics and hospitals. While that limitation makes sense for those entering the health profession. It makes no sense for those of us who have no interest in working in a hospital. Not to mention most volunteer jobs I've realized are not even close to science related and sitting at a help desk for 10 hours is not a good learning experience. Nor is it a good use of a students very limited time.

So rather than attempt to guess why someone felt Service Learning would be beneficial and try to find a random volunteer position which I wont enjoy. Because it'd be taking away from time I could be doing science. Starting now I'll be sharing my experience with all the work I already do that both helps others and helps me learn more and is relevant to cell bio (or at the very least science).

Week 3: Expected Disease

Bad News: I skipped the volunteer orientation on the 7th. Good News: The meeting I went to instead got me 1 step closer to 501(c)3 status plus I was able to sign up and get my TB test completed, so I should be able to start immediately after the next orientation Nov 4th.

So I do not have any new hospital volunteer experiences to report on yet.

Instead I'm going to be making a guess as to the main diseases that I will see at Ben Taub.

1. Diabetes Type II: I think alot of people will be in the hospital for Diabetes type 2 because the average diet today contains a large amount of sugar and high blood sugar can cause alot of chronic problems like amputation, heart problems and kidney failure. All of which require repeat hospital visits. Also, developed Insulin resistance is a neat concept because it's essentially a form a cellular memory. I wonder if transplanting certain psychiatric techniques that depend heavily on resetting chemical receptors would be beneficial for curing Type 2 Diabetes.
2. Heart Disease:When your cardiac tissue is starved to death it is said to be permanent. This concept is interesting as it highlights the bodies in ability to build back from ground zero. It requires a certain level of healthy tissue in order to rebound.
3. COPD: This is a very disappointing disease simply because it is 100% preventable. Decrease the number of toxins entering into your lung and you decrease the likelihood of COPD. The majority of the current toxins result from cigarettes but if life spans increase and air quality stays the same in cities, we will see an increase in environmentally based COPD. That said I believe there is a way to reverse COPD if one were to study more thoroughly the stages of the disease on a cellular level.

Those are my guesses and a few of my thoughts on them. We will see in a week or two if I am correct or completely wrong.

Week 2: Ben Taub

I have emailed Carol Gooden, volunteer coordinator for Ben Taub Hospital.

I need to turn in my application and attend a volunteer orientation on October 7.

I also need to get a tb test. There's not much more to report on until I attend the orientation.

Week1 : Is there a point?

The purpose of this blog is to keep track of my experience volunteering at a local clinic. I must admit I haven't really been rushing to sign up with a clinic. It's not nervousness or even laziness thats kept me from signing up becaus I know you exactly what I will do and see volunteering with a clinic. I've worked in a wide range of medical settings from a state of the art hospital like the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio(TX), to a run down hospital in Kisumu(Kenya) to a mud hut with a back pack filled with whatever surplus we had in our truck. Across the board it is always the same thing. Poverty results in a lot of people falling prey to needless(see preventable) disease such as tuberculosis, pneumonia or simple infection. And then corruption and money driven healthcare prevent the proper treatments(usually as simple as the proper antibiotic) from reaching those who can't afford it the most. I kind of went off on a tangent, so I'll skip to my point. A person could spend their entire life working and helping people in a low income health clinic but the amount of people you help will always be additive(1 person at a time) when the problems are growing exponentially. So while I like helping people, it never sits well that with each person I help, thousands more will go unhelped and so I try to spend my time working on ways to help groups not individual people.

Of course, I'm pretty sure the point of this assignment isn't to solve poverty or cure any major diseases. If I had to guess, the purpose is to expose us to how cellular disease works on a macro scale, or maybe just to broaden our points of view. I'm not too sure but I look forward to finding out.