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Downloadable Proceedings of Workshop and Lecture Series #4 Date: July 28,2008
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Proceedings of HCS Workshop & Lecture Series # 4
July 30, 2008
On Wednesday, July 30, 2008, the fourth installment of the Harlem Children Society (HCS) Summer Internship Weekly Seminar Series was held in the lecture hall in Uris Auditorium of Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University. HCS Senior Staff Intern & Operations Associate, Sheveen Greene, welcomed the students, and took care of housekeeping matters, including further discussion of the recently rolled-out email address system for all students in the program as a means of all internal communication.
Immediately following, student presentations began. Abby El-Shafei, HCS Class of 2007, and a student at George Washington Carver High School, opened the student presentations with her talk entitled “The Synthesis of a Highly Functionalized Oxazole.” Abby has been doing her research at St. Johns University under the mentorship of Dr. Victor Cesare. She first defined an oxazole as a heterocyclic organic compound with a five-member ring molecular structure composed of 3 carbon atoms, 1 oxygen atom, and 1 nitrogen atom. Her research is geared towards determining what effect a Nitro group would have on the oxazole yield. Abby explained that although the un-substituted parent oxazole ring is not found in nature, it is a key building block found in many natural products, pharmaceuticals, and synthetic intermediates. Thus a high yielding, simple synthesis of functionalized oxazoles would be beneficial to the pharmaceutical industry.
Using a molecular diagram, Abby first illustrated a previously reported oxazole synthesis, which she used as a guideline for her research, and then the reaction to synthesize the oxazole precursor (N-protected amino acid). In her research, Abby added a different N-protected group called a para nitro phenyl group, which produced a 45% yield. The acid precursor and oxazole structure were both confirmed by IR, NMR, and GCMS as the results. As for the future, Abby spoke about changing groups around the oxazole ring, for example, an amino acid group, and therefore, make it more beneficial.
Following Abby’s post-presentation Q&A, the second presentation of the day featured two students who had just returned from the SMART/REIS program at University of New Hampshire, and had done their research under the mentorship of Dr. Subhash Minocha. The students, Monique Honeyghan, a student at Bronx Health Science High School, and Delfija Pantovic, a student at Legacy Schools for Integrated Studies, are both HCS Class of 2008. Their lab work centered around a project entitled, “Gene Transfer Into Plant Cells Using the Gene Gun.”
The stated objective was to introduce blue genes into the cells of poplar plants that would fluoresce. The poplar plant was selected based on its rapid growth. The procedure involved first cleaning the DNA to isolate the blue gene, then coating it with pure gold (nontoxic) particles. Using lab photographs as documentation of the process, the students furnished a narrative of how they had put the material in a rupture disk, then into a Petri dish, and put it inside a chamber containing the pressure-control gene gun mechanism. At the time the rupture disk exploded, the material went through a stopping screen, which allowed only the genes to be transferred. Though there was not enough time for the students to observe the growth of the plants containing the blue gene, the point of their experiment was to work through a process used to genetically modify plants, e.g., foods for human consumption.
In the third student presentation of the day, Lena Mei, HCS Class of 2007, of Manhattan Hunter Science High School, Savita Ramlall, HCS Class of 2006, of Clara Barton High School, and Rasheeda Abdullah, HCS Class of 2008, also of Clara Barton High School, presented their current work under the mentorship of Dr. Gerry Moore and Paul Harwood at Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) entitled, “BBG: Improving and Editing the Interactive Keys.”
The students prefaced their current research discussion by recapping their July 11th presentation, in which they had detailed expanding the work being done on a plant classification computer program with identification and synopsizing capabilities known as interactive keys. Their particular mission had been to add pictures of plant specimens to the interactive keys to enhance identification function.
They also recapped their prior work in the BBG Herbarium, a cold room that preserves dried plant specimens from The New York Metropolitan area and plants from around the world. Their work had been focused on collecting specimens, recording relevant data (locality, date, collector, etc.), drying and mounting them on heavy acid free paper, and then freezing them (to destroy insects and other pests). Then they put specimens in the Herbarium to preserve them as archives to be checked periodically for insect damage and reorganization. Additionally, they had worked on a seed index, involving a worldwide seed exchange.
Currently, their work involves invasive protocol, and transferring related plant information from older format into more current format in the database. The students must carefully transfer the information to ensure the integrity of the data on invasive plant species and the area where they had been found/identified. This information will be added to the interactive keys, which would expand the data to include herbaceous plants as well as woody plants.
Lena, Savita, and Rasheeda also spoke about their research related to the rubus species, aka, blackberry plants. The students collected information, which involved going through each species of the genus, and assembled distribution maps for their mentor, Dr. Gerry Moore, who is writing about rubus for “Flora of North America,” a research project that seeks to describe all plant species in North America. In the future, the students spoke about their desire to further expand the interactive keys to include invasive species and all rubus species.
At this point in the lecture, Sheveen Greene and HCS staffer Kathy Houng, addressed the students concerning details and registration for the upcoming HCS Science Boat Cruise on August 7th. Designed to be the summer’s HCS social event, the students, their parents, and mentors, will enjoy a sunset cruise featuring a “Science and Society Showcase.”
Next on the agenda, the students participating in the HCS sister program in Monterrey, Mexico addressed the HCS New York students via live teleconference. Initially, the Supervisor of the HCS program and Interdisciplinary Academic Director at the Center for Innovation in Learning at ITESM (Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores), Dr. María Elena Morín García spoke. She allowed all the HCS students in Mexico to introduce themselves as well as mention their particular research interest.
At this point, HCS students in Mexico and New York shared presentations with one another. The first of these was “Localizacion y Posicion de Chips de RFID,” presented by Jose Antonio de Obeso, associated with microchips implanted in humans and/or animals. Jose first addressed the issue of locational discrepancy and determining the necessity of an antenna and signal system. Jose's stated objectives were to find the relationship between x and y coordinates of the A and B areas of the chip, to find the approximated figures of the polygons of the function. Additionally, Jose designed a simulation program to determine how RFID chips work.
In a second presentation, “Bacterial Transformation With the Gene of GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein),” Monterrey student Rolando Gonzalez, first stated his hypothesis to determine which bacterial cell has neither any type of bioluminescence to emit green fluorescence nor any way of expressing the GFP Gene. Rolando’s procedure involved electroporation, i.e., electric current as a means to open pores/channels and facilitate the plasmid introduction to bacteria. In the process of gel electrophoresis, he next amplified the bacteria sample, using enzymes and electrophoresis gel to calculate the size of the plasmid. Rolando’s conclusion was that the bacteria had accepted and replicated the plasmid during binary fission, and that fragment sizes had been correct.
Gerard Gutierrez, in yet a third presentation from Mexico, discussed “Traffic Modeling.” A study in regulating automobile traffic patterns, it implemented three different types of points of view/analysis methods: microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic. The microscopic view involves individual reaction of each agent and control/timing for each vehicle. The mesoscopic model employs mechanical statistics to articulate itself, and the macroscopic model involves the grander scheme, e.g., a global set of vehicles. In connection, the student discussed the Na-Sch rules governing traffic modeling based on the principle of modifications of the user-controlled vs. random semaphore. Gerard’s conclusion was that neither the random nor user-controlled semaphore disallowed the speed of a vehicle to reach its maximum, thus making little or no difference in terms of vehicle speed.
Deshaundra Johnson, HCS Class of 2005, and a junior at City College, and Oluwanifemi Mabayoje, HCS Class of 2008, and a student at Bronx Health Science High School, presented their work, “Gene Transfer Into Bacteria.” These two students had also just returned from the SMART/REIS program at University of New Hampshire, having done their research under the mentorship of Dr. Subhash Minocha. Similar to two other presentations of the day, the goal of the students’ experiment was to transfer green fluorescent protein (GFP) into E-coli bacteria. They first gave a bit of background on both, explaining that GFP is a protein found in jellyfish that, when transferred into an organism, would make it fluoresce. E-coli are bacteria found in the intestinal tract.
The students’ procedure involved first labeling one micro test tube –pGLO and another +pGLO. Using a sterile pipette, they transferred 250µ of transformation liquid into both tubes. The tubes were then put on ice. They the used sterile loops to put a colony of bacteria (E. coli) into each tube. Next, they used a sterile pipette to transfer 10µ of plasmid DNA solution into the +pGLO tube only. Then, both tubes were iced for exactly 10 minutes, and transferred directly from the ice bath into the water bath for exactly 50 seconds. Both tubes were put back on ice for 2 minutes, and a pipette was used to transfer 250µ of LB broth into both tubes. Both tubes were incubated for ten minutes at room temperature, then tapped to mix. A pipette was used to transfer 100µ of liquid from the +pGLO tube into the LB/Amp/Ara. Using another pipette, the liquid was transferred from –pGLO tube into LB/Amp plate. With a new sterile loop, the liquid was spread around evenly on the plates, then put in a 37ºC incubator until the next day.
Apparently, the students did not achieve the desired result, most likely because of human error during the process. However, they did say that other undergraduate students in the lab who had done the same experiment found that on the +pGLO plate, the bacteria grew and fluoresced under UV light and on the –pGLO plate, no growth had been observed.
Dr. Sat Bhattacharya, President and CEO of Harlem Children Society, then took the podium to address the students both in New York and in Mexico. He asked that the Monterrey students again introduce themselves, and in his remarks, he said to them, “You are really breaking the barriers in science.”
The next, and last student presentation from Monterrey by Jose Alfredo, dealt with “Paramagnetic Materials for Enzyme Mobilization.” His research was based on the importance of enzymes and their manipulations. Jose explained his procedure and conclusions in connection with this project.
The final student presentation, “Behavioral Studies of Barn Owls,” was a reprise by Deshaundra Johnson. She had done this research in summer 2007 under the mentorship of Dr. Joseph Louis Peña in the Department of Neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Deshaundra’s motivation in this project was to decode the brain pathway of human hearing by studying the mechanism of the barn owl.
Deshaundra first described barn owls, explaining the importance of hearing to owls, and how this sense is critical to finding prey. She asked if owls were domesticated, then would their hearing be domesticated, i.e., diminished in any way. Deshaundra proposed to determine the answer to this question by observing and analyzing performance of her barn owl subjects.
She first shared related studies that had been used in her review before she proceeded, then explained her goal to analyze nocturnal activities, and determine the difference, if any, in the hearing of domestic versus wild owls. By installing an infrared camera in each cage, she was able to record nocturnal activities for data collection. In the future, Deshaundra plans to work with a greater number of owls, as she studied three domesticated and one wild owl in this experiment. She concluded with remarks about what she had observed in terms of the owls’ behavior during her experiment.
At this point, the group in Monterrey signed off, and Dr. Sat introduced the New York group to Prof. Debbie Cordonnier of Ryder and Princeton Universities, who presented her talk, “The Composition of a Social Science Report (APA).” Prof. Cordonnier set out each of the components of the scientific research paper, providing details, illustrations, and helpful tips on the elements, title, summary/abstract, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion. Further she went into great detail providing examples of primary and secondary research reference sources in essentially all scientific disciplines.
Besides also touching on the seriousness and what constitutes plagiarism, Professor Cordonnier also reviewed a book entitled, “Made to Stick.” Written by Dan and Chip Heath, the book explores what makes an idea stick. In connection, she delved into an acronym developed by these writers, known as SUCCESS, each letter of which refers to the elements that do make an idea stick according to their analysis: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories.
Dr. Sat then approached the podium to address the students on their “Science and Society” presentation preparation for the upcoming boat cruise. The meeting closed with the initial distribution of student scholarship monies.
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