White Pine

One of the greatest things about Logan, Utah is the proximity to nature. Almost everything I could every need from nature is within 30 minutes of an hour's drive. There is hiking trails, marshlands, lakes, rivers, mountain pines, desert sagebrush, open fields and dense forests, to name a few. One such place is roughly 45 minutes away, northeast through Logan Canyon. White Pine is one of the best places I have every enjoyed being.

Upon arriving at Tony's Grove, one much pay to park overnight (grrrr, but necessary), and unload the overnight backpacking equipment, fishing pole included! After locking up, the trail head to White Pine is off to the east, and roughly four short miles later you arrive at the final decent, overlooking a small lake tucked away in what almost feels like a crater (even though it’s not).  The campsites are cozy and relatively close to the lake, which is fed by a small spring of ice cold fresh water. An hour after setting up camp and getting a dinner fire going, you might find yourself opening a spicy, savory, scrumdiddlyumptious, tin foil dinner. Fifteen minutes later, stuffed to the neck with deliciousness, you might find yourself crazing something sweet, crunchy, and melty! Yes melty is a word, created by Taco Bell and added to Webster's in 2007, as acknowledged by the reliable website theonion.com.

In ordered to indulge your newfound craving, you must use you knowledge from biology (got to use it somewhere right?) to find a rigid Aspen branch, roughly 3 feet long with a fork at the end (some fashioning required via your pocket knife). Now be careful, don't burn the gooey part of your treat whilst roasting it, slow and steady wins this race. After carefully sandwiching your mallow and Reese's peanut butter cup between your honey flavored graham crackers, carefully place your creation on a warm rock near the fire for one minute to add the final touch, melty goodness.

Having been stuffed to the brim with savory deliciousness, topped with sweet melty goodness, breathing in pine and smoke (since it always finds you, no matter where you sit around the fire), you should find yourself exhausted and ready for a warm sleeping bag. Waking up in the morning can be very interesting, ranging from nothing excited to thinking there is a bear outside your tent! In reality, what you might find are a few cows, rummaging through your camp fire where you left the remains of your tin foil dinner. Now, off to the best part, poking around the lake with your trusty fishing pole in pursuit of the pinkest Brook Trout you may ever find for breakfast.

Having fished for a few hours, enjoying every minute of it, it is time to think about heading home. After packing up, cleaning camp and leaving it more natural than you found it, you find yourself thinking of things you could have left at home as you climb up the switchbacks. Eventually, you should turn around to take in the view of the valley one last time before leisurely walking the four miles back to your car. As you drive away, you might find yourself realizing that you want to stay, and not go back to the crazy reality of school, work and bills. As you pull in to home, you realize that everything will be just fine, because you can always go back to nature and there is a hot shower waiting for you inside.

Eating in the Lab

I for one am opposed to a work space where one cannot enjoy both food and work. Our lab is a radioactive zone, and thus, cannot have food in it. Is there active radiation traveling through the air in our lab all the time? Absolutely not, there is nothing to be afraid of. However, when people are actively performing experiments, contamination of food stuffs is plausible. For this reason, the radiation safety departments have determined over the years that consuming food that has the potential for radioactive exposure is just not a good idea!

So, why post about this? Because our work stations are in the radioactive laboratory! If it isn't safe for food to be in the lab, what makes it safe for us? My desk is right next to the radioactive workspace! Shouldn't the radiation safety committees also disallowed personal work stations in radioactive zones also? Now, having been trained to be qualified to use the radioactive substances we need to use in our lab, I understand that the danger to us is close to zero. What I really want, is a personal work space provided to me that I can eat lunch at, or have a drink at, while I am hard at work! Lacking this, I have found myself being gossiped about upon finding a suitable space to both work and eat at the same time.

Doesn't seem like much, and maybe it shouldn't matter, but being able to use my time as I see fit is important to me, and I shouldn't have to worry about being slandered by people for doing so. After all, we do live in America, right?

Like a Scientist: Boiling Eggs

This week's Food Chemistry laboratory was directed at determining an optimal boiling condition for the everyday chicken egg. I learned several things during the course of this lab, and would impart that knowledge to you now.

First, the proper way to boil an egg in general, is by placing the egg in the cool/room temperature water before you begin to boil, as opposed to boiling water first, then dropping the eggs in. This reduces the rate of expansion of the proteins and fats inside the egg, thus reducing the cracking potential of the shell during boiling.

Second, reducing the boiling time to as short as possible yields less smelly eggs. As eggs boil, cystine residues on protein in the albumin (egg white) react with hydrogen to form hydrogen sulfide. Some of the hydrogen sulfide travels towards the yolk, mostly stopping at the yolk membrane and collecting as a greyish green substance observed after peeling the eggs and removing the egg white. Reducing the boiling time reduces the amount of gas produced, thus giving off less hydrogen sulfide gas, and less stink!

Third, boiling in salt water reduces streamers generated at cracks in the egg shell and reduces the amount of hydrogen sulfide that accumulates on the egg yolk. A plausible explanation for reduction of the string-like egg white that is sometimes generated at cracks in the egg shell is that the higher salt concentration causes the proteins to coagulate while still in the crack and sealing them if you will. In our lab, one technique to purify a protein is to salt it out, or precipitate it, by increasing the salt concentration. As to why the salt water reduces the amount of hydrogen sulfide on the surface of the egg yolk, I do not know. Perhaps this was a false positive result due to inconsistencies generated by the students in our lab, since two different groups prepared the eggs +/- salt.

Fourth, eggs have an air sac that expands with age, and this can be used to get a general idea of whether an egg is still good or not. The air sac at the fat end of the egg is what causes the flat surface at the bottom of a typical boiled egg. If you pin prick a hole into the shell on the fat end, this flat surface disappears as the air is dispersed by the expanding protein and fat coagulation.

The bottom line: Cook you eggs for the shortest time possible (we boiled for approximately 12 minutes on our shortest time point) in salt water (we used 42g/L, but this is likely a bit excessive), and remember not to boil the water first! Good eating- 

Since everyone seems to be posting on things directly related to their work and/or experiences, I will try to start a topic that may garner some comments. What is life like, as a graduate student, here in Logan, Utah?

For me, life is complicated. I will start by saying that I am very grateful to be here in Logan. It is a beautiful city, which nature wonderfully close by to keep me sane. Things to keep me sane are extremely important, because I have two children (a 4-year-old and a 21-month-old), a wife, and a house to drive me the other direction. I love my family, and they are a blessing in my life. They take a lot of time, but every minute is absolutely worth it. To give some idea of the amount of time spent on family I will try to itemize some of the duties. On average, as the husband, I am in charge of waking/dressing/doing hair roughly once a week, sometimes 3 to 4 times, sometimes none, but this takes about an hour. Our children attend a daycare while my wife and I are at aschool/work, so dropping them off also takes time, of which I only do on days that I get them ready to go, adding an additional 30 minutes. I have chosen to spend the better part of my evening with my family, specifically cooking dinner, have a meal together, cleaning up, watching some TV, playing a board game, reading stories, going for walks (when it's warm enough), and a myriad of other activities. Typically I spend between 3 to 4 hours every night, actively engaged in taking care of and interacting with family. On the weekends, everything is magnified, and the weekend is usually just a long evening, which is great. On the weekend, I typically only spend 3-5 hours on school/work, spending more hours as needed which thankfully is rarely. Add it all up, and I spend roughly 40 hours out of 168 a week dedicated to family, roughly 46 more are dedicated to sleeping (approx. 6.5 hours/night). 

As a graduate student, working towards a Master's degree in Biochemistry, life is also busy. Everyone keeps telling me that life doesn't get any less busy once you graduate and land a real job, but I refuse to believe that until I experience it. I currently spend, on average, between 55 and 60 hours a week on a myriad of activities related to attaining my degree. Listing some they include but are definitely not limited to, working in the lab, attending class, completing homework, training undergraduates, teaching recitations or labs, preparing materials for research dissemination, and discussing current research articles (only a few of which directly relate to my work). Typically I am on campus from 7:00 AM until 5:00 PM (50hours/week), although there is some variation, both earlier and later as classwork/research work dictate.

Working in the lab usually takes most of my time, but the last few weeks have seen a little less of that. I try to put in a minimum of 40 hours actively doing something to progress my research along. Having two classes this semester, one with a lab even, has hindered my ability to work in blocks in the lab. I have found myself spending more than a few hours reading and writing for class that I haven't had to spend in the past. This is good I suppose, since it means I am actually actively learning, but my research progress has suffered because it it. I haven't had to teach this semester, but previous and future semesters have been filled with roughly 15 hours a week of work for lesson prep, delivery, and grading. I enjoy teaching, but again it is a detractor from bench work. I cannot imagine how slow research would have been if I wasn't able to skip teaching this semester, and am grateful for the reprieve. I usually spend 1-3 hours a night reading or completing homework (average maybe 15 hours/week).

Totaling it all up: Family 40, Sleep 46, Work/Class, 50, Homework, 15 = 151 Hours/168. Having forgotten the hour every day for personal hygiene, this leaves me with just 10 hours so work with. Some activities that use this time include personal fitness (both mental and physical), console gaming, reading, and a few hobbies. By now you might see my concern for life staying this busy. Lets just say, life is going to calm down, because I'm in charge of it, and I refuse to not increase my "free time" after graduation.

What would I do with my free time that I can't do now you ask? Well, admittedly, most of my new found free time would be reinvested into family, but it will include more things like camping, taking vacations, four wheeling, bike riding, and many other activities that we do not have sufficient blocks of time for now, nor funding for. So while life may still be full of activity and not couch potatoing (is that a word? it is now), I consider this to be "less busy" since I am spending the time how I see fit, not how school AND work force me to.

How crazy is your life? How does your time add up? What are you going to do to ensure you live your life the way you want to? How do YOU stay sane?

What is the purpose of the Hevel lab?

So.. as as significant blog post that you might be able to respond to, I will share a little background that hopefully is pretty clear on what the Hevel lab over in Widtsoe is all about.

The human body is like a microscopic country. In order to properly function, all the different locations must be able to communicate both globally and locally. Locally cells use signaling pathways to detect and to respond to signals from the body. Passing along a signal can be done chemically in many different ways; one way is by enzymatically adding a small molecule to a protein to alter its function. Many significant physiological pathways, such as DNA repair, signal transduction, and RNA processing are regulated by one such small modification known as arginine methylation, where protein arginine methyltransferases (PRMTs) transfer a small methyl group onto an arginine residue. This transfer can be done three ways; a single CH₃ can be added to form monomethylarginine (MMA), two CH₃ groups can be added to different nitrogens to form symmetric dimethylarginine (SDMA), or two CH₃ groups can be added to the same nitrogen to form asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA). Which product is formed has been observed to be important for either activating or repressing the ability of a cell to use certain pieces of its DNA. Understanding how PRMT1 targets its substrate(s) lends vital information for drug development, often based on block the enzymes ability to perform a key step in the pathway of choice.

Any questions or comments I can answer?