This week has been pretty uneventful. The main thing that I do now is maintain and sample the batch cultures (bacteria cultures with different types of food/waste). Each day I test the pH levels of each sample, and if they are too high I add HCl to them until the pH goes below 7.5. I also feed them with their respective foods. The last thing I do is sample them for analysis.

Today at the lab I helped a fellow intern by making a two liter solution of "food" for something called the "Biohydrogenator." While I am not sure what it does, I am sure it is important, as it has been sitting on the lab bench ever since I started. In order to create the solution, I had to use an anaerobic glove box (fancy) to extract Na2S and FeCl2 from special bottles and put them into the mixture. I also weighed out different amounts of potassium acetate, potassium phosphate, ammonium chloride, and sodium phosphate (thanks to Pete for teaching me how to do that) and add it to the mixture.

I am still continuing my research into the wonders of phosphorus and the how desperately we need to start looking for ways to obtain more of it. Not to worry though, as it seems there are quite a few doctors in labs all over the world working on ways to recover it from our waste. There is hope.

My primary goal now is to bump the copy and pasted posts from my front page so people will stop reminding me that I copy and pasted something from the website. Just kidding. Sorta.

My laziness with this blog, however, is definitely NOT indicative of my lab work. I have been going in (nearly) every day for the past few weeks. My professor is working on writing a chapter for a book ( a SCIENCE book) about phosphorous and I have been helping him find current research and methods for recovering phosphorus from wastewater. In case you haven't heard, we are running out of phosphorus. Phosphorus is a key ingredient in the nitrification of soil, and if we don't have any, we can't grow crops (and we all die). Just remember that the next time you relieve yourself and it's not in a phosphorus recovery plant, you are killing the human race.

Here is a picture of something I have been working on. It is two circular pieces of plastic with ~50 holes drilled into it. I had to thread a long string of rayon fiber through each hole... 3 times. The above picture resulted in a failure as there was residue from the drilling between the two pieces of plastic.

Here is a picture of the first failure:

As you can see, it is not nearly long enough to fit into the glass cylinder. The third time, however, I ended up getting it right!

This week was very busy. I continued working in the lab. The Biodesign building itself is very large. There are quite a few different projects going on at once in each of the six labs. The labs themselves stretch the length of half of the building. The lab that I am working in, Environmental Bioengineering is only several benches, and there are always other doctors and interns working all around me. My mentor, Dr. Steve VanGinkel, works with three other interns from ASU. Dr. VanGinkel is a research scientist at ASU and will be leaving at the end of this semester to go to Georgia Tech.

My responsibilities in the lab vary from day to day. The most interesting thing I have done is learn how to use a Confocal laser scanning microscopy microscope (CLSM). CLSM is a technique that allows 3D images to be created by scanning in-focus images from selected depths. The images are then used by the computer to create a high-resolution 3D image (as well as each individual section).

I have been going to the Biodesign Lab at ASU for several days now, and after learning much about the history and current states of my mentor's many different projects, I had my first assignment. To put it simply, I had to drill holes in a small plastic circle and thread tiny fibers through it. It was not difficult, but it was time consuming.

I am still unsure of what my future responsibilities will be in relation to the project, and I will be sure to update this as soon as I know.