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