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).