higgs

Day 2 REU

What a long day. First thing in the morning we had our quiz. We did it in teams and my team fucking rocked it. We had 70 points when the other teams had 20 and -10. They thought it was funny that we got all anxious about a test that they turned in to a game. I was not nearly as amused. Like we don't have enough stress on our shoulders.

After the test each prof came in and talked about their research and how the REU students that are working with them are going to be contributing to it. They were all really interesting projects and I would have been stoked to be a part of any of them. I can't remember them all but there were one's dealing with agricultural pests and their control by invasive fire ants. One on the development of species specific pesticides to kill those very fire ants. Groups looking at how bacteria effect the development of flies on a dead body at a crime scene. One working on how mitocides effect fertility in queens and drones bee colonies. And of course me working on dna barcoding the kissing bug so that we can track what species of kissing bug transmits different strains of T. cruzi. Also in my lab is Lee who is working on a really amazing opportunity. She is getting access to some very rare whooping crane blood to test it for hemoparasites. There are only 300 of these birds left in the wild so it is pretty amazing that they are letting an undergrad be the one to analyze the coveted blood samples.
After they dismissed us Lee and I decided to try to walk to the store to pick up some bowls and what not. Her phone got us lost and we ended up walking to the next town over about 3 miles in flipflops. By the time we realized that the store was too far to walk to she had blisters and didn't want to walk home. Long story short we ended up waiting for half an hour for someone to come and pick us up. They were on their way to olive garden so we went with them. The we finally made it to the store we were walking to in the first place.