Spring 2016 post 5: Just follow the rules yo!!!!

Well, this week at TGen was a bit of a snoozer. Nothing really exciting happened because Kathleen was out of the office all day Tuesday, which is my long day there so typically we do all the cool stuff then. Without her, I couldn't go down into the storage room or set up interviews with the lab techs, so what did I end up doing you may wonder? Write-ups -_- ....... I got to spend my time sitting around boring myself to death trying to come up with different ways to make following the rules sound like a fun thing you should want to do, as well as something you have to do. After a while, I grew weary of that, so I moved on to coming up with ideas for educational posters that Kathleen and I can hang around the labs. The goal of theses posters is to educate the scientists in a friendly (more like passive aggressive) manner to do a variety of different tasks, most of which they should be doing anyways. Without being able to corroborate the lessons we actually wanted to promote, and what some of the lab lingo meant, with Kathleen, the posters also fell short of anything presentable.

The week was not lost, however! Today I did get the opportunity to go up to the fifth floor and tour the labs on the east side of the building. Kathleen and I were able to find two prime locations that we deem suitable for an SAA. I was also able to interview a lab tech that works in the breast cancer unit there on the fifth floor. Getting these interviews has proven to be more of a painstaking task than I originally had anticipated when I first hatched this crazy idea to interview the labs. It seems to be paying off however since the information we are gathering is proving to be useful. In fact, after asking one of the lab techs if their lab had any mercury thermometers (which is on of the questions on the survey), they found one a few days later and handed it over the Kathleen so that we could dispose of it properly.

That pretty much sums up my week as far as being an intern goes. I hope you were able to find something amusing or even mildly interesting while reading. To hold you over until next week. I have something you can check out. If you have Spotify, you should check out their playlist called "Folksy Covers". It's very nice music and has covers of songs both new and old. Very good station. Well, see yall next week!

Spring 2016 Post 4: Playing in the labs

Hello all, and welcome back to my blog, where I shall tell you all about the woos and woes of my week at TGen. I would first like to start off with a woo. I got a giant bag of peanut butter filled m&m's for my office. I hide them in my super secret food drawer with the rest of my super secret food. The reason it's super secret you ask? Well, that's simple. First off, I don't want people to know where all the good food is, this way they can't steal it; and secondly, I'm not sure if were allowed to store food in our office and at this point, I'm too afraid to ask. Anyways let's get to some real business.

This week I got to spend more time going through the labs interviewing the researchers about their lab practices and sustainability efforts. I was only able to interview two scientists this week, both of wich work in the pancreatic cancer unit. This leaves me with one more lab to interview (I think) on the east side of floor four. I'm not entirely sure if we're going to interview the labs on the third floor or the west side of floor four yet, but I hope we do. The more information we get the better.

Also in regards to strolling through the labs, Kathleen and I scoped out some potential spots that we hope to designate as an SAA (Satellite Accumulation Area). This is just a place where all the scientists can place their chemical waste so that facilities can come through and take it away without bothering the researchers or accidently taking the wrong stuff. Apparently this happens frequently and it's a big problem. In facilities defense, it's hard to tell what's waste and what's not in some of those labs.

Another thing that we noticed during our stroll through the labs is that some of the researchers need to be educated on some basic lab practices, such as what qualifies as bio-hazard waste and belongs in the red bags vs what is not and can be placed in the normal trash bags. Some other lessons would be about cleaning up your workspace and what should be stored in a fume hood. I find it amazing that some of the scientists don't know these things. To help them learn, Kathleen and I are going to make posters with big text and whimsical pictures to help illustrate the point. I think this is going to be a fun project.

I made great progress this week on the hunt for SDS's aswell. I think I only have about 25 chemicals left that I need to find information on before I officially declare that part of the project done. We'll see what happens though with all these other projects coming up. If I get to spend more time in the labs next week conducting interviews and doing inspections it might not get done for another week. I personally just want to get it done.

Well, that's pretty much all I have for y'all this week. Till next time.

Spring 2016 Post 3: Progress, woooooo!!!!!!

Progress has been made this week in regards to my internship. The first success of the week was getting all the chemicals that I logged last week documented in an Excell spreadsheet. Now the real hard part of the project comes into play. I have to find the SDS (Safety Data Sheet) for each of the chemicals and list in the spreadsheet the primary hazards of the chemical, the secondary hazards of the chemical, the CAS number, and if there is even an SDS available that goes with the chemical. This is a lot harder than I thought since the vast majority of these chemicals are over 10 years old. I even found one container that was from 1986. The fact that these chemicals are so old makes it hard to find information on some of them due to the company selling out to other companies, chemicals no longer being produced, new formulas for the chemicals, or any other assortment of reasons. I've got about a quarter of the way through the list so far this week. Hopefully, I will be able to finish it on Tuesday.

The second success of the week happened today. I finally got the opportunity to go into the labs and interview one of the most important researchers that works in the brain tumor unit at TGen. The interview consisted of 14 questions, that I came up with, in order to evaluate what kind of lab practices are done in the different labs at TGen. We intend to use this information to help us develop ways in which we can make the labs more sustainable and safe while at the same time not hindering lab work. Next week I have three more labs to interview and then I get to start analyzing the information that we collected from them.

That is pretty much everything I have to report for this week. Like always, ide like to leave you with something. This week my mentor at TGen shared a few links with me about chemical safety and why it is important. I would now like to share those links with you. If anything, at least, check out the last two links. the second link is a video about an accident that happened in a school and the last link is a video that is just unbelievable if you like explosions. They are all worth a look though.

http://www.csb.gov/

http://www.csb.gov/videos/after-the-rainbow/

Jet Fuel Plant Explosion video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KuGizBjDXo

Spring 2016 post 2: All the chemicals!!!

This week for my internship at TGen I got to do something pretty cool. I got to go down to the chemical and biological disposal room of the facility. It is down there is where all the excess chemicals are stored that the labs no longer use and need to be disposed of. It wasn't until today that I found out just how much goes to waste in research in regards to chemicals. I kid you not, there were bottles of chemicals down there that weren't even opened. Some of these chemicals were still in their original packaging for crying out loud! Most of the other containers were only half used. I'm pretty sure there was only a small handful of containers that were reasonably empty with probably less than half a milligram of powder left in the jar. Anyways, I spent three hours in that room cataloging all the chemicals that were down there so that we could find a way to repurpose them or find another lab that can use them instead of just tossing them out. I'll say it one more time just to get the point across. I spent three hours down in that room cataloging all the chemicals that the labs wanted to throw out for any number of reasons. 3 hours worth of cataloging chemicals!!! That's how many there were! My goal for next week is to take the notes I took from cataloging and make a spreadsheet with all the chemicals down there listed so that the scientists in the labs can first go collect these unused chemicals for their research before buying new chemicals. We hope this will help TGen save some money by not having to pay as much to have so many toxic chemicals picked up on a weekly, as well as help save some of the scientists grant money for their research. This is just the beginning of a project in a long line of projects that we hope to accomplish in order to make TGen a better place.

Anyways, I would hate to leave you hanging without anything cool or even mildly interesting so here is a link to a video about cloning your dog. It's pretty cool stuff so go check it out! Till next time!

http://www.techinsider.io/clone-dog-korea-sooam-2015-8