The Island

So I'm stuck on an island for the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, it is is northern Michigan, not Europe, but that's alright. I get to be up here for a class, which is super exciting. But not really, since it's a chemistry class and I'll be stuck inside for like nine hours out of the day. But anyway.

I thought I'd do a bit on myself again, since there's not much to report about Scotland at the moment. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I'm studying biochemistry, and want to continue on after my undergrad to get into professional research of some sort. In order to kick-start my research career (so soon?!) I joined a research lab at school. I'm involved in Alzheimer's research, which is really cool. And bear with me as I explain what I'm working on, as it can be confusing for some. But here it goes.

A little background as Alzheimer's disease. It's a neurological disease, so it attacks the brain. Alzheimer's disease and diseases like it occur due to neuron tangles, which are literally neurons that get balled up with other neurons and mix pathways and such. This is why people with Alzheimer's disease have such trouble with memory. The lab I am in deals with a protein called tau, which has been linked to Alzheimer's disease in many different studies. It's been shown that something goes wrong somewhere in the life cycle of this protein and causes these neurons to tangle. However, where this thing goes wrong is not known. Which is why making a drug to cure or prevent Alzheimer's is so tricky. My lab is working on figuring this out, and we each have different projects dedicated to it.

My project this summer is trying to figure out how these bad versions of tau are degraded, so that we can enhance that degradation pathway. You might be thinking, don't cells just kill themselves if they aren't working right? Sometimes, yes. But with tau, it is almost being overlooked by the protein that labels things for degradation. But explaining that would take a whole different post. So we have this bad version of tau that is causing neurons to become tangled with each other. There are two different degradation pathways that malfunction proteins can take, either the ubiquitin-proteosome system (this is the basic degradation pathway of most proteins and cells and such) or the autophagy system (this usually kicks in with the presence of certain chemicals or proteins). My job is to try to figure out which system will degrade bad tau more efficiently.

To do this, I get to dissect fly larvae, take out their brains, essentially mash them up, and try to get the neurons to grow in cell culture. When these neurons grow in culture (which took me a semester plus to get to happen), we can treat them with different drugs to enhance certain pathways. For this project, we wanted to focus on autophagy, so we chose two drugs - one that enhances autophagy, and one that stops it from occurring. We will then see which treatment causes the most bad tau to go away.

That is a really broad way of putting it, but I hope it's at least somewhat interesting. I'm excited about it anyway! Until next time...

The Countdown Begins!

So it's been a while since my last post, and my family has been bugging me about one so here it goes.

It's officially 1 month until I board the plane to head to Scotland. Exciting, I know. It really doesn't seem like the trip is so close, but it is. I already have two side excursions, which is exciting. I will be heading to the Highlands the second weekend I am there, of course to see the famous Loch Ness. And also get some breathtaking sights, I'm sure. I read that otters and dolphins can sometimes be spotted in the cliffs of the Highlands, so let's hope for some sightings!

The second trip is an excursion to Ireland, partly for the International Relations class I will be taking. I wanted to try and get to Ireland at some point during my stay, so the fact that this is a requirement of the class made things very easy for me. I will only be staying in Ireland for one night, in Belfast, which is the capital of Northern Ireland. I won't get the chance to make it to Dublin, but perhaps another time. Belfast is one of the locations that the Titanic was docked at, so hopefully I can be touristy for a day and check that out.

All in all, this trip is shaping up to be very exciting. Not that it wasn't going to be exciting to begin with, but actually booking these trips makes everything seem real, and not just some idea or concept in my head. Now all I have to do is patiently wait out the next four weeks and I will be on my way! The next few weeks should be fairly busy anyway, so hopefully they'll go by quickly. I can't wait to blog from Scotland! Especially from some cozy cafe somewhere, sipping delicious tea and eating scones. At least one afternoon will have to be spent that way anyway. Until next time...

Loch Ness!

This will be a short post, but there has been news from the Scottish isles! Apparently Apple maps has picked up an image that may be proof of the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland's Loch Ness. Here is a link to the short article along with a picture:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/loch-ness-monster-satellite-pic-sighting-stirs-controversy-article-1.1761909

I'm not saying this really is the Loch Ness Monster, but it would be kind of cool to be able to see something on my trip to Scotland...and it's exciting to know I will get to visit this mysterious place in a few short months! Who knows, maybe I'll get my own sketchy picture of the famous Loch Ness Monster. How exciting!

Growing Up

Growing up is no fun. I know your parents warn you about that when you're little, but until it actually starts happening, you don't believe them. My own epiphany came as I was heading home today for Easter weekend. This summer, I will not come back to live at home. I will stay up at school to do research in the summer. And it suddenly hit me that I may never, truly live at my childhood home again. And that, my friends, is truly terrifying.

I have spent my life, as I'm sure most people have, waiting in anticipation for the next "maturity marker" to arrive. I was anxious for my 13th birthday to arrive, to finally be a teenager. I wished for my 15th birthday, so I could finally learn to drive. I needed my 16th birthday to come, so I could drive by myself and achieve more freedom. My 18th birthday could not come soon enough, so I could graduate and vote and finally be considered an adult. And even now, I'm just waiting to graduate college so I can move on to the next step. Why?

Because society has taught us that something is always better in the future, that the future will bring something new and exciting. This may be true, but the future also brings uncertainty and responsibility. It may bring loneliness, it may bring heartache. It brings trials and tribulation, because we are expected to grow up and out and learn to be independent. It can be a beautiful thing, but it is not always an easy thing. It means leaving things behind. It means change. But it also means learning, it also means growth.

But we don't have to grow up quickly. We don't even have to grow up completely. You can always have those days when you return home, have your mom help you with your laundry, wake up to your dad making crepes for your breakfast. You can go shopping with your mom, play games with your dad, see movies with your family, have your parents pay for things. The difference between childhood and growing up is having the choice to be independent. Sometimes we make the choice for ourselves, and other times life will make the choice. But it will always be there. Until next time...

Scotland Part II

The next step has been completed! My plane ticket to Edinburgh has been purchased! (Thanks to my Dad for searching around for a good one because I didn't know what I was doing). One step closer to the big adventure. With this new development, I thought it would be nice to share some more interesting facts about Scotland.

Scotland has about 790 islands, only 130 of which are inhabited. (Haunted, mythical lands everywhere!) The shortest schedule flight occurs in Scotland, lasting only 1 minute and 14 seconds. Why this is necessary, I have no idea. Scotland boasts the birthplace of golf, at St. Andrews, which I will get to visit this summer. This would be more exciting if I was really into golf, but whatever. It still looks like a gorgeous place to visit. Scotland also boasts the oldest tree in Europe, which has been standing for 3,000 years. It's even rumored that Pontius Pilate was born under this tree and would play around it when he was younger.

Moving on from geography-related topics, the raincoat was invented in Scotland by a Mr. Charles Macintosh, who was actually a chemist. Apparently in Great Britain they still refer to raincoats as "Macs." Other inventions of Scottish men include the television - John Baird - the telephone - Alexander Graham Bell - and even penicillin - Alexander Fleming. The author of one of my favorite book series, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was a Scotsman as well (he wrote the Sherlock Holmes series, for those of you who may not know). Lots of good things apparently come from Scotland!

3 languages are recognized, English, Scots, and Scottish Gaelic. The same number of Scottish people live in Scotland as they do North America, which is really surprising. There are 19 colleges and universities - including the University of Stirling, which is where I will get to study! Scotch, which is thought to be from Scotland, was actually invented in China, and did not reach Scotland until 100 years later. And last but not least, Scotland has the highest proportion of redheads in the world, around 14 percent. This one really isn't surprising, especially thinking of Disney/Pixar's movie Brave.

Well, I hope you feel more educated now. I love learning new things about new places, especially when I get to go there. Just a note, I got most of those facts from www.telegraph.co.uk. Learning things about new places is so exciting! Until next time...

Commentary on Communication

It's really no secret that communication - real, solid communication that is - has fallen on the wayside in the past few years. Phone calls seem to be a thing of the past. Everything can be done through a machine now. No need to hear another person's voice or interact with another human being in any way. Isn't it great?

Not really. What inspired this post is the recent issue with the missing plane from Malaysian airlines. They recently decided that there were no survivors and and sent a TEXT to the families of the people on the plane. They sent them a TEXT MESSAGE. See anything wrong with this picture? Not even a phone call. Not even a letter, or a personal visit from a representative. Not to mention the fact that they had no real evidence that there were no survivors. What the heck is wrong with the world?

Technology has become out of control. Don't get me wrong, technology is great. It's fantastic, really. We can have friends around the world, meet people from new places without going anywhere, share stories and news, share information, share anything. However, it has made everything really impersonal. And that's where the issues come from. I'm sure most of us have heard the quote from Albert Einstein: "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction." Luckily, he never got to see that day. Unluckily, we are all living in that day. And it can only get worse from here.

At what point will we realize that human interaction is what keeps us, well, human? There really is nothing better than sitting down with someone else, in person, sipping some coffee and sharing stories. Nothing will ever beat the feeling of hugging someone you haven't seen in a while, kissing the person you love, or looking into someone's eyes to really see what they are feeling. And it's scary to see how little these things happen sometimes.

Technology has also made us feel as if there is no time for interaction. Everything is so fast, so short now. Together, everyone has traveled from MySpace to blogging to Facebook to YouTube to Instagram to Twitter to Vine to Tumblr. The trend? Everything has gotten shorter. We don't have time for long posts any more, they had to be shortened to 140 characters. We don't have time to view full albums, so just post single pictures at a time so we can look at them. We don't have time to watch long videos, (5 minutes? Woah, way to long) so just make 6 second videos that we can watch. We don't have time to read long blog posts, so just reblog pictures and conversations we can laugh at. We are too impatient, too ready to move on to the next thing to sit down and talk to someone for more than 5 minutes. And that, my friends, is extremely sad. I want us all to try harder to engage in more human interactions, to spend less time worrying about our friends online and spend more time living outside of our gadgets. Until next time...

Scotland Part I

For some reason, today I got overly excited for my upcoming trip to Scotland. In a few short months I will be embarking on my first, independent, international adventure. I've only ever gone out of the country one other time, on my mission trip to Guatemala. That was awesome, but with this trip I will get to be more independent and see the world how and when I want to see it. And it's going to be awesome.

Fun fact about Scotland, number one: their national animal is the unicorn. How awesome is that? A whole country getting behind a fictitious animal. Granted, this is the country that probably makes a lot of tourist money off of good ol' Nessy. In my mind, Scotland seems like a mystical, mysterious, magical place. This land is so old and strange in my mind. There is a part of Scotland called the Shetland and Ornkey islands that literally seem untouched for centuries. And I am super excited to get to explore them and experience life away from, well, pretty much everything.

Scotland, especially those islands I mentioned above, once was the location of some Norse colonies (think Vikings and How to Train Your Dragon-esque culture). This was a polytheistic religion, meaning they believed in many different gods. A few gods of note from this indigenous religion are Odin, Thor, and yes, Loki. They have a creation story similar to that of the Bible, as the first man and woman were formed by the gods. A few of the gods found two trees torn out of the ground and formed the first people from them. Coincidentally, their names were Ask (the man) and Embla (the woman). Remind you of any other people who were the first created?

There is just so much rich history to this land that I am just beginning to research, and it is so exciting. I can't wait to share it with everybody. It will be an adventure of a lifetime. Until next time...