Amy Qian #5: Last day here

I went to the museum again to collect data last Sunday and finished coding and uploading them on the last day. We still don't know the results yet and my mentor told me she is going to see if we have enough data later and email me about if we need more data. I asked my mentor and professor how this project is going to benefit our understanding on pedagogy contexts and how can we use this information in more practical areas and my professor told me to think about it myself and emailed her about what I think. 

Today is my last day at Stanford :( My lab manger organized the whole lab to have a picnic together. I brought food that I bought from local supermarket and we played frispi together. We had a lot of fun and I am truly going to miss my lab buddies :( 

My professor and lab manager bought me a Stanford mug and thanked me for helping them this summer. I had a lot of fun and learnt a lot in the past 6 weeks and hopefully I will see all of them again in the future! 

Thank you all for a great six weeks experience! 

Amy Qian #4: Data Collecting!

Again, I collected data for most of the week and coded the videos. In addition, I went to Bing Nursery School and helped my mentor for her another study. Basically, in this study, she is trying to see if children are more likely to tell the person who doesn't see them win the game that they win the game. In this study, children are presented a card games four times and they were asked to pick a card. If they pick a card that has a sticker on it, they receive a sticker. But if they pick a card that doesn't have a sticker on it, they don't get a sticker. For the first trial, all children are designed to get the sticker. For the second and third trial, they recieved a sticker card and a non sticker card once with two different people watching. Then, they played the game again and got stickers. Finally, the children were shown two pictures of the two people who watched the game and were asked to choose one to tell her the result. Hypothetically, professor predicted that children would choose the person who saw them did not win the game to tell the person that they won the game. 

Moreover, I went to the poster presentation of my lab members, Andrew and Grace. The poster presentation was a lot of fun and it reminded me of the poster I presented back in Peddie. There is one poster regarding how taking pictures on iPhone and sharing them on social media affected our memories that I found particularly interesting. The results show that people who took pictures and shared them on social media had better memories of the object that those of who did not share them on social media. However, taking photos while observing the object in general decreased person's memory on this object. 

Time passed fast and I can't believe it is my last week soon. I am going to miss this place a lot. 

Amy Qian #3 August 15th

Grace left at the end of this week for MA. Our lab members went to a spicy Chinese restaurant to eat dinner to congratulate Grace for finishing her summer internship. The dinner was great and I told my lab members to try all the "disgusting" Chinese food (such as organs) and they did! :) 

This week is particularly challenging for me because I went to the museum by myself for the first time. I had to do both recruiting and consenting. The first day was a big bomb. I got rejected six times in a roll and I felt so destroyed. In the end of the day, I only tested 2 children. My PI told me it was completely normal and everyone had good days and bad days. Because I went to the museum in the afternoon, most of the people were leaving and it made sense that people would reject me. 

I spent most of my time collecting data and coding my videos because my mentor and I figured that we are actually short of enough samples of 4 year olds. So my job this week is mostly collecting data. 

The past two weeks reading groups have been very interesting and the topics are on pedagogy contexts and learning. Moreover, I got a chance to present the paper with other undergrads. This is very exciting and new to me: I presented power point and my understanding of the paper in front of everyone. We examined whether being altruistic is human nature or not from both a social and neuroscience perspective.

I was a bit nervous at first because I was afraid that I might make some mistakes. However, my lab members are really nice and understandable and told me that I did a great job.

Amy Qian #2: First time testing!

This week I got to go with Grace and Mika to test in a local museum at Stanford. It was a really interesting experience. Our lab has a testing room in the local museum and we go to the museum and look for children of the right age and collect data from them by playing lab designed games. 

For the first couple times in the museum, I was piloting for Grace and Mika and did not get to the actual testing part myself.  Before testing, researchers need to recruit children and give parents consent forms. Mika sent me an powerpoint before hands on what kind of problems I would encounter during the recruiting and consenting process and how I should answer them. Since the experiments require video tape or audio tape, we need to be really careful in making sure parents  are okay with that. 

I got to test on my own project (VPT) on the third time going to the museum. Basically, in the experiment, the children are presented with a puppet show called Emma and her friends (laptop in a fancy box to create a feeling that this is a magic show). And then, the children are shown with two shows: 1. There is an orange on the table and Emma asks what fruit that is. The guy on the left says it is a banana and the guy on the right says it is an orange. 2. There is a number 6(from Emma's perspective) on the table. Based on different conditions, Emma either knows or doesn't know about the number. Then she asks what the number is. The guy on the right says either 6 or 9 and the guy on the left says the other. Then, we ask children couple questions such as "who did a better job answering Emma's question" The game takes about five minutes 

It was really awkward at first because we had to go up to parents and asked them if they were willing to let the children play games with us. Sometimes, even when parents agreed to participate, children rejected us. 

The first day of my experiment went well overall. I coded the videos and sent the videos to my mentor. My mentor gave me suggestions on my voice tone since we have to be careful when we worked with kids.  

We didn't have lab meetings and reading group this week because some lab members went to LA for a convention. 

Also, on the weekend, my friends and I went to a concert together at Stanford! Another great week. One third there! 

Amy Qian #1 First week at Stanford

I arrived at Stanford last week on July the 15th and the weather is great in California. I talked to and met my PI, Professor Gweon and our lab manager, Mika on the first day and briefly talked about what I hoped to accomplish in my next six weeks. There are four other people who worked in the same room with me. Two of them are Stanford undergrads, one is Wellesley undergrad and another one is a high intern as well. They are all very nice and welcomed me to the lab. 

On the first couple days, I helped the lab members with their ongoing block project and made blocks. Mika and Grace explained the project to me. This project is related to rarity. Basically, the project is trying to figure out whether children between the age of two to five have a preferences on things that are rare. Two different colors red and green blocks are shown to children and children are asked which block they want to play with. Because adults tend to choose something rare over common, researchers are trying to figure out whether infants have the basic instincts to choose the rare one as well. Meanwhile, I learnt how to code videos and helped coding videos for VPT (that I collect data for the rest of the summer) on the first couple days.  Mika and my mentor Xuan explained to me once again what my project is about and I realized some of my understandings before were wrong and I had a more thorough understanding after watching the videos. 

In order to make undergrads and high school interns learn more about psychology, my lab assigned papers for us to read and held reading group every week. This week, the reading group topic is preferences. In addition, there is a lab meeting every week for lab members to present ongoing projects.

In terms of living location, I lived in a graduate student dorm which is 20 minutes walking distance from my lab, which is in Main Quad Jordan hall.  Since it is not a far walk, I walked to campus every day instead of biking. 

The first weekend was awesome and I went to San Francisco with my friend. We went to Fisherman Wharf and China town. It was a lot of fun. 

It's been a great week and looking forward to next week. :) 

Matt Erman #5- Finally Got Data!

Hi Everyone! I know it has been about a month since I last posted to the blog, but that was because I was awaiting data from the experiment that I was working on. Guess what? I just got the data from the experiment I was working on this summer. Just to remind you about my experiment, I was screening a specific gene in yeast cells, checking to see how yeast cells with different deleted genes were affected by a wide range of genes, all of which are related to the C9orf72 gene, which is a gene that is being studied to see its effect on the progression of ALS in people. Thanks to the screen, we were able to find multiple genes (24 in all) that caused yeast cell death, with many of the genes causing different reactions in the cells to cause the cell death. 

During my last week at the lab, I was really happy that I had the opportunity to see the person I was working with, Matt, have his thesis defense. It was really cool to see how much work he has put in over the years to earn his PhD. I think the best part of his presentation was how he talked about how his research evolved over the years, in that how much more in-depth his interest and research became as the years past. It was cool to me how his interest in the subject developed, from something that he was kind-of interested in, to something he wanted to spend the rest of his life studying. What made this cool to me was that if his interest in the topic blossomed into a desire to find out as much information as possible about ALS, I can only imagine what my future could be, whether my interest can turn into a PhD like Matt's did. 

All in all, I am so happy that I had the opportunity to work out in California. It taught me how to survive on my own, to work in a lab, and showed me how what research is really like. I was so lucky to end up in such a great lab with such great people, and was able to work on something that really interested me with ALS and neurodegenerative disease. I want to thank all of the people in my lab for being so helpful, nice, and just good people to be around. Thanks also to Dr. Peretz and Dr. Crider for giving me the opportunity to have this great experience this summer. Last of all, I would like to thank all of the other EXPer's (if that's a thing) for writing about what they have been doing this summer too and giving me something good to read throughout the summer. See you all soon!

Katie Entry #5: Last Week in Lab

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, but these past few weeks have been hectic!

During my last week in the lab, I tried transduction again using the phage lysate that I had made the previous week to move the mutant regions from two cold-sensitive mutant S. aureus strains to the wild type S. aureus strain.  However, this time I used a different protocol which included more bacteria and a longer incubation period.  Fortunately, more bacteria colonies grew on the plates containing erythromycin.  Next, I grew these colonies in liquid media at different temperatures, took their ODs every hour, and calculated the doubling time of each colony at each temperature to determine if the resulting colonies showed cold sensitivity similar to the mutant strains. For the first few days, the colonies did not exhibit any cold-sensitivity.  Later in the week, the colonies tested showed moderately impaired growth in cold conditions, but they were not as cold-sensitive as the original two mutant strains. 

Throughout the week, I also worked on my final presentation that I would give at the end of the week on all of the work that I had done during the past six weeks. While working on the powerpoint, I went through my lab notebook and read a ton of primary research articles (which luckily I had a lot of practice with from EXP class) to highlight background information, what I had done, my results, and what was left to do.  I was a little nervous going into the presentation because I had an hour to talk, but it ended up going pretty well and there were a lot of questions and discussion so I didn't end up talking for the whole time.  It was really interesting to see how everyone in the lab confers and figures things out together. We also had pizza and an ice cream party on my last day in the lab, which was really fun.  

Overall, I had an incredible time in the Cheung Lab.  I learned so much about microbiology, lab technique, and research skills and everyone in the lab was so welcoming and nice. I had an amazing experience and I can't wait to hear about everyone else's lab when school starts.