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3/1/2012 10 Comments The Harvard ForestI spent a week during the past January break at the Harvard Forest, located in Petersham, Massachusetts, writing, drawing, exploring, and discussing ecology with nine other Harvard students as well as Harvard professors. Called Reading and Conserving New England, this optional Jterm activity was an incredible way to experience the life of an ecologist, a nature artist, a conservationist, and a poet, all in one, too-short week.
Here is a piece that I wrote after being part of an expedition into the Black Gum Swamp, crusted over with frost and snow on that wintry January day. We were on a mission to collect a sediment core and examine the history of the swamp by literally extracting a sample of earth out of the ground. ![]() Image made by Stephanie Wang A recent publication in the journal Epigenetics has raised interesting questions about the way we handle cancer research today. The researchers in charge of the study claim that the average petri dish may not be providing scientists with accurate information on the real-life growth patterns of cancer cells. DesRochers et al. study oral cancers and in their most recent paper, they uncovered the effect of utilizing a 3D environment simulating the lining of the mouth to grow clonal cell populations. Through the use of bioengineered human tissue, the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine researchers found that a tumor's microenvironment plays a strong role in the cancer's progression, focusing especially on the role of E-cadherin expression. If this is the case, then we are studying cancer cells in the wrong way. DesRochers et al.'s discovery has the potential to transform our current approach towards cell culture. This study highlights an issue that many scientists face: in order to control for outside factors, researchers may in the process produce faulty imitations of reality. To read more, click here. 1/9/2012 0 Comments Mouse DissectionAs a middle schooler, I never got a chance to dissect a frog. As a high schooler, there were no rats, cats, pigs, or other hairy mammals whose innards we could examine.
My first dissection was quite recent-- about a month ago. It was a brown-grey mouse with big yellow teeth and I made a bloody mess trying to extract the left quadricep. Since then, I've gotten much better at dissecting and have found it exhilarating, even, to see inside the body of a once-alive mouse. There's that side of working with mice, but there's also a conflicting side of me that appears only after, battering against my scientist gaze. You are a mouse killer now, it says. This side of me arises when I go into the mouse facility in the Biolabs and hear the hundreds of mice rustling in their tiny cages, cramped and growing fat with lack of exercise. It arises when I hear squeaks of pain after cutting the ears of one mouse to distinguish it from the others in its cage. It arises as I (with great pleasure) pet baby mice on the head after weaning them from their parents. I think mice are adorable. I also like dissecting them. Who knew working with mice would be this...divisive? My obsession with mice (living and dead) have resulted in the drawing and poem below. 12/29/2011 0 Comments Global Warming, Too Real(Columnist's Note: Part 4 of the Having a Successful Relationship with Research is still in the works. It will be up shortly!) This past semester, I decided to take a class called Statistics for Biology, taught by Professor John Wakeley. As part of the final project, I had the opportunity to analyze any set of data I wanted. Not having enough of my own data yet from working in the Wagers Lab, the new lab that I joined this semester, I decided to download data sets online. I chose to look at the relationships between three climate change factors: atmospheric methane levels, global temperature, and global mean sea level. Doing the statistical analyses using Excel and by hand, it was empowering to see for myself that indeed, climate change is no joke. I looked at data from 1992 to 2008, a seventeen-year period. If you're interested in hearing more, feel free to read the abstract to my paper, located below the images and to comment! ![]() Over the seventeen-year period that I examined (1992-2008), all three climate change factors have increased (and significantly so, as shown through t-tests that I perform in my paper). ![]() These linear regressions show that there are positive correlations (which I later prove are significant) between a response variable (on the X-axis) and an explanatory variable (on the Y-axis). A. As atmospheric methane levels increase, so does global temperature. B. As atmospheric methane levels increase, so does global mean sea level. C. As global temperature increases, so does global mean sea level. Presumably, the mechanism of action should be something along the lines of: Greater Atmospheric Methane Levels cause Higher Temperatures (due to the greenhouse effect) which cause Increases in Global Mean Sea Level by melting polar ice caps Abstract In a three-part statistical analysis, I first followed three separate data sets that contained measurements of global sea level, global surface temperature, and atmospheric methane (measured from the Barrow Weather Station in Alaska) between the years 1992 to 2008. Despite the acknowledged increase in these three particular causes and effects of global warming by national agencies, the statistical analyses associated with these claims are not made readily available to the general public. Thus, by performing linear regressions and calculating correlation coefficients, I was able to reinforce the claims that there has been a significant increase in global sea level, global surface temperature, and atmosphere methane levels over time. Additionally, I compared the three climate change factors to each other and found that all were significantly correlated between the recent years of 1992 to 2008. In the last part, I tested my hypothesis that Barrow, AK temperatures correlate with atmospheric methane levels (measured in Barrow, AK) differently than New York statewide temperatures (an arbitrary location). By performing this comparison, I provided evidence that location subsets of the global temperature data set correlate differently with atmospheric methane levels from Barrow, AK.
12/29/2011 0 Comments Speaking out of Feeling: PoetryIt still hasn't snowed yet where I live. Flipping through some of my old files, I came across a poem I wrote last year, as I tramped through Cambridge on a white-sky, white-ground day. Brings back memories of winter-- which hasn't quite hit either Long Island, where I am now, or Boston. The pictures below are thanks to my artsy roommate who captured bits of my hometown when she came to visit over Thanksgiving. Not much has changed-- the pond hasn't frozen over yet, as it should, and last I visited, ducks were still swimming happily in its waters. ![]() Photocred: Meng Chen Winter Wandering Salt freezes upon brick, brick burns with cold, tingling and the old-age spots appear at the surface, roots of them penetrate like eyes, pupil-less and rimmed with frost-lashes. The cold ages, latches death-sentences onto flowerbeds and candlewicks-- my breath disappears as a moist spirit traveling cloudward, joining other breaths, other quietly trawling voices filling the sky. Under the snow, something must be moving, something yearning to be hit by the dim and budding sun, surrounded still by white, a white impenetrable, a black that crusts out of shadow into white. My footsteps crinkle as the church bells proclaim another hour. The clock has icicles for hands. I wait for summer, knowing everything will melt to color. 12/23/2011 1605 Comments The Internet: New Paths for ScienceSchool is out and so I had a sudden burst of creativity. The result? This collage graphic I made. The World Wide Web truly is a boundless resource. Everything's out there, lying in wait for us to harness it. The Internet provides the potential for revamping the way the scientific community is connected, the way medicine is delivered and diagnoses are made, the way research is coordinated. The possibilities are varied and seemingly limitless! And it's in our hands to makes something of it. Here's to the past innovations of 2011 and the coming inventions of 2012! Some of the Top 10 Inventions of 2011, as named by Popular Science. See more here. By Stephanie Wang ![]() Here begins a four-post blog series on how to start doing research as an undergraduate. What does it exactly mean to do research in college? How does one begin and what can one expect? Performing research requires gentle cultivation, passion, and dedication; in many ways, you begin to develop a healthy relationship with your research lab. Through the sharing of my own experiences in these upcoming blogposts, I hope that you may find that devoting yourself to a lab is more feasible! Research is an activity that is truly worthwhile. So, read on and enjoy! >> Part One: Lab Drama and The BreakupAbout the Blogger
Comments?8/1/2011 0 Comments India in the ClassroomThe India portion of the Summer Institute in Global Health is split into two parts. The first week was a series of lectures from our program director, Sonia Suchday, two other Einstein-affiliated teaching assistants, Rosy Chhabra and Karel Amaranth, and three St. Xavier’s College psychology professors, Maurine-ma’am, Lucy-ma’am, and Ruby-ma’am. This upcoming second week will be devoted to collecting data through the handing out of surveys on stress and anger to Xavier’s students, ages 18 and older, and through performing one-to-one interviews. The picture above is the college itself: a single, extended stone building with wide arches, courtyards, and elegant stain glass windows. Like a typical old, historical building, there is no AC. St. Xavier’s College reminds me strongly of Hogwarts. There is so much character in its European architecture, even in the way the mold grows, outlining the spires and windowsills of the place in a gothic elegance. The college is situated directly beside the busy streets of Central Bombay, near Victoria’s Terminal, a similarly extravagant building which acts as a train terminal but actually looks like it should be a British palace. There is a herbarium inside the school, spiraling stone staircases that lead to dead-ends, and classrooms, one after the other, the right side of the room acting as a hallway in order to provide a means of getting from one area of the college to another. Monsoons aren’t a light drizzle, they’re like “BOOM! I WILL RAIN ON YOUR HEAD!” –Dena Shayne (one of the girls in my program) I understand what monsoons are now.
Monsoons are the way water falls from white sky, July to September, hour after hour, filling the streets with chai-colored streams, the way umbrellas become one’s best friend and taxi cabs, your worst (Why do they seem to ignore foreigners when a monsoon hits? Cab after black, bug-eyed cab drove by, their drivers smiling and waving to us, as we stood in growing puddles of rainwater with our arms outstretched.) Monsoons are a break from the humidity, the moisture in the air falling out in the waterfall of it. They darken the sky ominously, downpours in the early morning, around six at night, then later in the evening. Monsoons are warm droplets hitting rooftops and ground in a rushing noise, fat and unstoppable. Run in a monsoon storm and get drenched, soaked to the skin in a wind-wrenching wave of precipitation, and laugh at the freedom of it. Groan at the way a monsoon hits right before dinner and savor, instead, chocolate-chip cookies, Target-bought freeze-dried peaches and green tea. Wear only waterproof footwear, preferably sandals—there are monsoon puddles on every sidewalk, monsoon rivers flowing down alleyways. Blame the monsoon for wet skin and the sticky feeling of sitting for hours in a pair of drenched pants. Today was the worst—it rained ALL DAY and there are no signs of stopping even now. It’s the sixth day in a row this week. I am so sick of rainnnn. |
What's HotGet the DigestAbout the Blogger![]() Stephanie M. Wang is a Chemical and Physical Biology major at Harvard College, Class of 2013. She is a pre-med who just can't get enough of the hard sciences. She loves learning new things, frisbee, poetry, every kind of apple, people. Stephanie blogs regularly for the Scientista Foundation: Find her blog here!
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