S-STEM/TRAIN Scholar Jasmine Patricio

Hey everyone I hope you are all doing well and have been having a good semester so far. I miss Phoenix college so much and everyone who was involved in the stem program. University and Community College are the without  a doubt such different environments. As midterms are just days away the stress and anxiety are all coming in at once and the pressure to graduate within my goal are coming to a reality. My day starts of with going to Tempe Campus to taking the shuttle, which I have to admit has been my best- friend during this semester and will continue being my best friend for the following two years. I go from Tempe Campus to West Campus to Downtown Campus to finally head home. My biggest achievement while being a ASU has been able to keep up with my professors and being able to stay on track, regarding being in a whole different environment. I am currently interning with Dr. Beth who also Daisy is a part of. Everyone in the lab was extremely welcoming and helped me distinguis...

CONGRATS to Samantha & Ibrahim for winning the Arizona- Nevada state conference. The Trip was really fun yet really exhausting. It was my first time ever traveling to Nevada and it couldn't have been any better. I hope to do this experience once more. Thank You Josh and Matt who have been nothing but a great mentors and have been opening up doors for each individual and have been amazing role models.

This week in the Lab room each intern went to ASU West Campus for poster presentations. Though I was pretty upset that the wrong poster was printed out cause I had worked so much on my new and improved poster. But no matter which poster or not was printed "the show must go on". So I presented what I had on my poster as if it was my new one. I got the opportunity to talk to Beth who has a project on micro plastics at ASU West, and share my ideas with her. With the help of Amanda Chapman I will find ways to reach out to Beth and see if there are any opportunities left in her lab . 

This week in lab I finally finished transferring all Plastics 1-6 that were exposed to Tempe Town Water Lake on PIA media and TSA plates to detect any growth. Some plastics had just black mold growing on the PIA plate which I am still not sure if there was any Pseudomonas growing on the plates. The media had a weird smell to it, almost like a strong really smelly wet mold smell to it. The nexts steps would be to run a Gram stain identification to first figure out if they are Gram- Negative or Gram- positive bacteria.

    This week in lab I have done my first test of the microplastic and the Tempe Town Lake water. Huge shoutout to Ibrahim for helping me and showing me the steps of how to set up PIA plate. We only did SPI 1 as a sample run on the plate to see if any pseudonus would grow on the plate. We also did a TSA plate to see if any bacteria would grow and what we could determine from it. This week what I have also done is a TSA plate on the Tempe Town Lake water. I did the lawn method and streaking method on the TSA plates which then will be inoculated in a 36 C. I will be doing the PIA and TSA run for all 1-6 plastics and see if any of them show any growth. Also what I will be doing is doing gram stains and see how the bacteria may be shaped all.

March 26, 2018 ( Day 21). This is the last week that the tea pods will be in the light incubator, and this will be the first month completion of the teapods. So far what has happened is that the water has drastically changed color. It went from a clear water color to a dusty brown color. What has also happened is that the tea pods first were all hanging on from the chain and had rust growing on them, then after a week the chains broke and all the tea pods sinked to the bottom, where they continued to grow rust on the surface of the teapods. What also started growing on the teapods is what seems like maybe fungus growing on top of the rust or the teapods still. I will start writing a protocol for this project and figuring out the next steps that will be needing to be run by this experiment as well.

(March 19, 2018) Hey everyone welcome back! Hope everyone had a great Spring Break and got the rest that we all needed. The second I got into lab today I went to check on the the microplastic that have been sitting in the light incubator with the Tempe Water only to find that the chains had broken and they all sunked down. Which is very interesting because the they are designed for resistance in water. Also in the beginning Plastic 5 was the one that was floating the whole week and over spring break it seems like even plastic 5 sunk down but now plastic 2 is the one that is floating. I still have 17 more days till I could run some test on the plastic,but for the meanwhile I will be doing some research on biodegradation and the process of lake cleanings and the chemicals that could perhaps be put in the lakes.