Dr. Carberry and I discussed findings of my lit reviews from  week 1 and decided to narrow down a search to two things specifically to see if we could find a gap in studies being done about STEM and RET programs and professional development with a connection to leadership/mentorship.  I was particularly interested in researching these aspects because as a science teacher in the middle school setting, I have been very frustrated with the lack of hands on science professional development, PD, offered within my district.  Not only that but so much curriculum emphasis is centered around math, reading, and writing with a neglect to science as a whole.  We still have text books from 2003, Foss kits that are outdated and have VCR tapes for instructions, and a complete lack of rigorous and meaningful standards.  I first looked at the US vs the globe and unfortunately the US is significantly behind in the science and math readiness race.  No surprise to anyone.  I still have 6th graders who cannot multiple 8×7, how am I supposed to teach more complex math within my science classroom?  “To be competitive, the US has to bolster the nation’s STEM work force” (nea.org).  UMM ya! STEM isn’t even offered in most schools, science is rarely even taught at the elementary level yet it is in everything that we do, in everything that exists.    I then went further to look at teachers and experience and education and how this ties into their ability to be effective.  Interestingly enough, “highly skilled math/science teachers is not the norm” (stemeducation.org).  There is an argument that teachers are poorly prepared when you look at primary vs secondary educators. I can tell this just from conversations I have had with Chay and Richard who are both secondary teachers.  What they do in their classes is completely foreign to me yet my goal is to prepare my kids for their curriculum? EEK.  “Most colleges and universities require two math college level courses for a degree in elementary education, there is no central curriculum standards, and teacher preparation is chaotic, incoherent, and uncoordinated” (stemeducation.org).  I then paused to think about my own personal experience and wow…. this research is true for me.  To be an elementary education major, you weren’t required to get into the rigorous subject of math and complete cross curricular lessons as it is advised.  The curriculums even at my current  school are somewhat scattered and the grade level’s standards build somewhat but not enough to challenge my kids.   I think 6th science is harder than 7th.   I felt prepared to write a lesson and do logistical things and teach independent subjects sure, but the standards for learning are different now.  6th graders now learn geometry when for me that was something I did in 10th grade.  Overall it is difficult as an educator to keep up with the pacing and the rigor especially when there is a lack of resources or professional development that can help  in a classroom.  I love RET programs for this very reason but this isn’t the norm.  Most districts cannot offer such things which is why Dr. Carberry and myself want to maybe look into offering PD opportunities so that other science teachers get that exposure and can take STEM or just engineering back into their classrooms.

So, overall I am still in the process of really exploring the route I want to take and the connection I want to make but I have been utterly fascinated to read these lit studies.

Greetings everyone!

My 2nd week was not as long as the 1st week but it’s still packed with a lot of information.  Let me start with the applications on these polyvalent phages to water treatment if in case you are wondering.

Applications

a)  These viruses (polyvalent phages) can target bacteria that have shown resistance to antibiotics.  This type of biological control could be used in remediating problems in the water such as bacteria-induced corrosion of pipes.

b)  Conjugated or immobilized polyvalent phages could be used to effectively infect problematic bacteria in a biofilm.  The immobilization could be engineered (e.g. using magnetic nanoparticles) to enhance the delivery system and target these problematic bacteria.

The phages studied in the lab have been tested on the following bacterial hosts; Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, and Salmonella typhimurium.   These bacteria are known to be prevalent in wastewater.  I am thinking of using the E. coli for the lesson that I have thought last week.   The results of the different investigations about polyvalent phages can lead to a system where we don’t need to use antibiotics or chemicals anymore in treating wastewater.  So it is really a promising endeavor!

In the lab, we continued the experimentation last week using the different dilutions of phages and bacteria to find a good result of viral plaques for isolation.  The 50 uL (undiluted) and 100 uL of phage showed the best result so far.   Dr. Yu suggested to also try 100 uL and 200 uL of bacteria to create a better bacterial lawn and compare the results.

I also happened to have a short chat with another visiting scholar from Brazil since her project is also on polyvalent phages.  She mentioned the method called “Drop Spot Test” where it works like the antibiotic test on bacteria where you can see a circular zone of inhibition.  In this test, you can drop a 10 uL of phage solution and see the plaque formation after 24 hours.  I think it was such a very cool idea for a lesson.  Although this is just a qualitative test but students can really see effects of viral lytic infection.   Productive conversations to different people can really bring a lot of valuable information most of the time! I just need to try this myself using resources that are available in the classroom (e.g nutrient agar and phage and bacteria purchased from vendors like Carolina Biological and others)  and see if it works.

As for the enzyme laccase, since we finished the immobilization last week, we wanted to find out if the sample has been completely immobilized by measuring its activity using the plate reader.  Once this done, we can proceed with the testing of the effectivity of the enzyme when it comes to its ability to oxidize the methyl green dye, a representative of the dyes that are commonly found in wastewater from the textile industry.  And oh, since the nanoparticles used to immobilized the enzyme is magnetic (Silica-coated magnetic nanoparticles), we don’t need to centrifuge the sample to obtain the supernatant fluid, we just used a Neodymium single disc magnet to bring the enzyme down to the bottom of the eppendorf tube, pretty cool huh! 🙂

I will never forget this part of the experiment because I did something wrong to Yolanda’s magnet (huhuhu!) Don’t ever underestimate the power of the neodymium magnets.  I accidentally placed it  at around 6 to 8 inches away from another magnet that is thicker and oh boy, the disc magnet was drawn to the bigger one and it cut into half.  I felt so guilty that I felt like I have to replaced it so I went online, searched for it on amazon and ordered one 🙂  Charge to experience.  You learn as you go! No regrets though 🙂  Stay tune for week 3!

Dear Diary,

What a week it has been!  I’m still working with FoMD (Fouling of Membrane Distillation) and I had two computer programs fighting over me.

We were able to work out all the kinks that FoMD was displaying last week.  FoMD is now running like the dream experiment that I knew it was.  In fact, FoMD has become so reliable that I can now set it up to run throughout the night and when I return in the morning FoMD greets me with some rather thrilling data.  Usually by the time I get in, FoMD has already crashed a couple of hours earlier due to all that saltiness coating the membrane but FoMD keeps on trying to pass water through the membrane.  I’m pretty sure FoMD will do anything to make me happy…Maybe I’ll get FoMD to do a bank heist for me.

Well, Diary, I guess I should talk a little about the data that FoMD is producing for me.  We’ve been starting with a water/salt concentration that is two times the starting concentration; one times concentration is approximately 1.2 kg of salt per liter of water.  By starting at two times this it makes sure FoMD will crash in a timely manner and before too much water is lost to evaporation.  As expected, FoMD consistently crashes around 2.8x the initial concentration meaning there is too much salt on FoMD’s membrane to effectively remove water from the briny mixture.  But bless its heart, FoMD keeps on chugging along and continues to remove water throughout the night.

When not working with FoMD I am working on computer programs to determine when different ions will precipitate out of the briny liquid based on concentration amount.  There are two different programs vying for my usage and, Diary, I certainly have felt like the Belle of the ball this week; although the ball is a little decrepit.  The first program is Visual MINTEQ which was originally released in 2010 but it’s had a few version releases or “face-lifts” since then.  The other programing competing for my attention is MINTEQA2 which was originally released around 1991, hasn’t had a face-lift since 2006, and cannot run on anything newer than Windows XP (yes, I said “newer than”).  Visual MINTEQ was created using the MINTEQA2 program to have a much cleaner interface and run on newer computers.  In the computer world, both of these programs are extremely old and it feels like I have both Michael Douglas (Visual MINTEQ) and Kirk Douglas (MINTEQA2) fighting over me.  The reason I had to use both programs was because Visual MINTEQ, while nice and clean, is only programmed to produce reliable data up to a maximum temperature of 40^oC and I need to produce data for water at 65^oC.  MINTEQA2 can create data reliable up to a simulated temperature of 100^oC but is run through the MS-DOS screen which requires you to know exactly what you need to know a bunch of keywords to run the program since it doesn’t have an actual interface.  If you don’t know what to type there is fortunately several documents that combine to create a 200-page manual with some conflicting information and some completely incorrect information.  On top of that, the final data is displayed using notebook and also requires the manual to understand what you are looking at.

As the Belle of this program ball I certainly did have my choice of inferiorities to choose from.  I decided to put the same simulated data into both programs at 20^oC, 40^oC, and 65^oC to compare how their answers changed as Visual MINTEQ got out of its reliable range.  After comparing the data, I had my The Bachelor moment and I gave a rose to … [COMERCIAL BREAK] … And now back to The Bachelor: Scientific Computer Programs edition… I gave a rose to Visual MINTEQ.  It turns out Visual MINTEQ is still reliable enough at the necessary 65^oC and I’m a sucker for a clean interface.

Now Visual MINTEQ and I can create graphs of the percentage of ions dissolved in water as the salt concentration increases.  I am also working with FoMD at the same time so as long as the two don’t find out about each other everything should continue smoothly.

Until next week, Diary – Chay.

The highlight of my first week as an RET was a tour of the Chandler Water Plant. My mentor, Dr. Sinha Shahnawaz, was going there to find a location for one of his other water quality projects and thought it would be beneficial for me to see how a water treatment plant works. He was right. The tour gave me the background and implications for the THM project I am working on, it gave me a chance to ask a lot of basic questions (thank you Vickie, Anupa, and Chris for your patient answers), we obtained a few gallons of unprocessed raw water for future experiments, and we got the current processing parameters to replicate.

This is a settling pond.  The design minimizes turbulence so denser solid pieces (floc) sink to the bottom.  About 30 million gallons flow through this pond every day.

They add Alum (aluminum sulfate) and polymer directly into the pipe so it rapidly mixes with the water creating floc with what we want removed from water.

The tanks on the right are filled with salt water.  Inside this building, Chandler uses the salt water to create chlorine (bleach) using electrolysis.

The concrete pillars mark the location of the underground tank holding the clean drinking water ready to be sent to Chandler residents.

Richard

Hello All!

I was assigned into Dr. Alvarez’s lab under the mentorship of Dr. Pingfeng Yu to work on Poyvalent Phages with the assistance of Dr. Chu, a visiting scholar from China whose expertise is also on polyvalent phages.  I could go to either of them depending on who is available in the lab.  I was also introduced to different researchers and visiting scholars and had a chance to speak to them about their projects.    In addition to polyvalent phages, I got interested with the work of Yolanda Moldes, a visiting scholar from Spain because she is working on remediating emerging pollutants in wastewater using the enzyme laccase.  This really sparked my interest because I want to know how enzymes work in removing pollutants in the water such as dyes, BPAs and other compounds that are known to be endocrine disruptors. I asked her if she could show me the process of the investigation and graciously said ‘yes’ to my request but my primary investigation is on polyvalent phages.

Viruses that infect bacteria are called phages or bacteriophages.  Usually, a phage is specific to its host, however there are times when one phage could infect multiple strains of bacteria (hosts) hence they are called polyvalent phages. The phages used in the lab were isolated from a wastewater treatment facility in Houston.  The isolation of the phage(s) is not part of my investigation, instead my task is to characterize these phages as they infect a certain host by understanding the compounds released by each species of bacteria as they lysed due to viral infection.  What these compounds are and how we can detect them are the challenges that I need to face throughout the course of the investigation with the assistance of my mentors.

This week, I learned the following;

a)  inoculating bacteria

b)  culturing phages (I learned that you need two layers of agar, a fixed agar and a soft agar on top where bacteria grow and create a bacterial lawn.  The agar used was LB. The phage or phages will infect these bacteria and form viral plaques – zone of infected cells which can be visibly seen as clear circular structures in the bacterial lawn).  This part of the lab is an initial idea of a lesson that I could write to show lytic infection of viruses since I haven’t come across a lab on lytic infection so far.

c) diluting the concentration of bacteria and phages using the 10-fold serial dilution method.  A good review for me since I don’t really do this much in my own lab.

d)  perfecting my pipetting skills (Pipettors of different volumes are just one of my best buddies in the lab.  I did a lot of pipetting throughout the week that I think I’m becoming like a pro on this! lol!)

The goal of the first week is to determine the best phage to bacteria ratio which could produce good size of viral plaques where we can isolate a phage for purification.  This wasn’t attained the first day so we kept modifying our volumes and dilutions throughout the week.

e) immobilizing the enzyme laccase using magnetic nanoparticles (with Yolanda’s assistance, I was able to observe the process of immobilizing enzyme using the nanoparticles.  It was a complicated process which I think can’t be done in my school lab, but I will continue to explore and maybe bring this investigation in my classroom.  Several researches showed that enzyme immobilization is more stable and more effective in catalyzing reactions than those free ones. Now, I am thinking if there is a simpler way to immobilize this enzyme but still using nanoparticles that can be done in the classroom lab, my hopes are high!)

It feels like my week was really packed.  I had plenty of take aways and I love every moment of it.This is why lab immersion stands out as an avenue for professional growth because you experience the process itself including failures.  I am excited of the remaining weeks to come!!!

Sorry for the delay! Weeks 1&2 have been filled with my knowledge of literary studies that are specifically centered around RET and STEM education in the classroom. My goal these two weeks has been to do as much reading as possible about RET programs and how they have benefitted teachers nationwide.  I have also learned and explored different ways of teaching for example “The Legacy Cycle” which sounded incredibly intriguing because it is a combination of the scientific method inquiry that I would teach my kids but it exercises inquiry based learning as well which I will be honest is tougher to pull off due to lack of resources and support.  Through much research I am seeing a bigger and bigger gap between the need for IBL and the actual implementation of it.  RET programs help to close that gap because it gives teachers such a great opportunity to get into labs and create lessons with engineering in mind, programs that school districts cannot pay for, professional development that is sorely lacking in most states, AZ namely one of them.  I have been trying to find a “gap” in the research; what types of studies have barely been done when it comes to teachers and STEM and professional development and how it really affects teaching.  An interesting quote from one lit. study was that there are “barely any studies that have examined teacher’s development as scientists.” This could be a great study to for this internship.   I am also wanting to learn ways to find a topic that closes the gap with qualitative and quantitative results.  This is also an area where I am weak as in 6th grade, that is tough to teach my students but how valuable it is.  I have multiple areas in my teaching where this internship can sharpen my skills and I can take back so many ideas.   Week one was really my search and seeking information and gaining knowledge.

Week two has become more specific.  I met with my mentor last Monday to go over so much of the research I had done.  Our goal of that meeting was to narrow down the information and then kick off my second week with learning more about that information.  We decided I would look into  STEM and professional development opportunities for teachers, its frequency, programs that exist, etc.  The information I have read about this has been compelling as most sources say that the US is hardly competitive worldwide, we lack innovation in the classrooms mostly due to students not getting enough rigorous lessons but also the gap of teachers and their education.  Math and science skills are lacking as a whole for most elementary school teachers which poses a huge problem because of kids aren’t getting that foundational knowledge, their interest or capability in STEM work is limited.  How can RET help this problem?  Do internships like this help us as teachers to go back to your classrooms and feel more compelled to teach a STEM or IBL lesson? I have plenty more to read and research and analyze.  Friday our plan to meet again and further dissect the readings I have done so that my idea is more concrete.

Here’s to week three. I will let you know 🙂

Hello Everyone!

This week in my lab, I FINALLY finished the 132 MB and freshwater samples. UVs were taken from each of the samples and compared. Visually, it was easy to see that the Zn MOFs and Zn MNP were quick to clean up the water. Analytically, it was discovered that all Zr MOFs and MNPs actually absorbed ions and became supersaturated. Co on the other hand, did an excellent job of cleaning the water samples. Yesterday we started the synthesis of a new NP, a Bi-Metallic ZIF. Using Zn, Co, and 2MI, we will create an MNP bonded to graphene oxide (GO). With the results from the UV spectrometer- Zn and Co cleaned the water best- we were able to deduce that a new MNP could be created with Zn and Co as the primary metals. In essence, these NPs should clean the water much better together than just alone. Today, we will continue and finish synthesizing the chemicals and we will leave them in the oven over the weekend to keep the reaction going. Updates and pictures to follow!

As I was getting ready to submit my update I noticed that I had posting to my own blog and not this one.  Below is the link to my blog page where I have been posting throughout the week.

http://rb58.blogs.rice.edu

However, here is my weekly update:

The second week is all gone and so much left to do.  In the lab we have continued to search for chelators that can bind to TiO2, but they must remain in suspension in order to develop a quantifiable colorimetric detection of TiO2 in aqueous solutions.  Several chelates/ligands have displayed some promise.  Now we are examining the stability of the ligands by manipulating the pH.  It has been a tedious process, however, I could not think of anything else I would like to be doing over the summer.

As for my lesson, I have found a topic.  It is based on the chelating properties of certain plants (specifically cilantro)and how they can be used in the water purification process.   Attempting to establish a lesson relating to water purification, chelates, and green chemistry.  Cross-referenced on teachengineering.com and a lesson like this has not been developed.  Took it a step further and searched on the American Chemical Society education website and the same result.  Next step is to align the lesson objective to the Next Gen Standards and the State Standards.  Until next time!  Hope all is well for everyone else.