Week one round up!

Jessica Leigh Dobson / / Uncategorized

I thought it would be easier to do a post summarising the first week, but it turns out we’ve packed quite a bit in to the week so prepare yourself for an essay! (Sorry… Although there are some pretty pictures to keep you going!)

Having not been in the labs for a few weeks I was excited to get going, and I have not been disappointed.
Monday morning started fairly slowly, but it was useful to see “behind the scenes” and the get hands on experience making up different agars which admittedly I had taken for granted previously – it is surprisingly difficult to hold a stack of agar plates and fill them up! It was also great to get some time on the microscopes and not feel pressured to be done with them quickly due to other people waiting to use them. I actually think I know what all the knobs do now and can confidently set one up and see more than my own eyelashes.

Tuesday involved filling in paperwork such as risk assessments and ethics forms – both took more consideration than I thought… Everything is a risk!

Wednesday I came in feeling excited as I knew we’d be practicing different techniques which I really want to get to grips with and be able to do in my sleep before the end of my summer project. But first we needed some samples to work from so my group went for a wander and piled in to a restroom armed with swabs and Ringers solution in my handbag.
We took two sets of swabs – one for rolling the swab directly on to the agar and one for making a serial dilution in hope of finding the best method to give us a workable number of bacteria (turns out we’re going with neither – membrane filtration is the way forward for us!). What is great about this experience is that it gives us the opportunity to learn from our mistakes. One lesson I’ve definitely learnt so far is that pipetting 1ml of solution on to an agar plate is far too much (10 times too much – whoops!).  We dried the plates the best we could before incubating at 37 degrees overnight.

Thursday morning came around quickly and I was desperate to see how our first set of plates turned out considering our little mishap during preparation. Surprisingly our attempt at salvaging our plates (using the very technical way of shaking off excess to help them dry, as close to the Bunsen flame as possible!) actually worked and we did see some results:
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One thing I really wanted to learn to do well through this experience was streak plating so, using one of the samples from earlier I attempted it and again I left the lab excited to see the results the next morning.

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Friday morning success! I was happy with the results, but, ever keen to improve I tried again, this time on selective agars and I’m looking forward to seeing the fruits of my labour, similar I expect to how my mother felt waiting to see me perform in my first nativity play.

As we thought it would be best to make our agar fresh Monday morning, I gave Gram staining a go as I want to make the most of all the time we’ve been given.  I will admit I let out an audible squeal of delight as the image came in to focus!

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I’m also excited as Monday morning is the start of my groups finely tuned and tweaked project.  We’ll be making agars and swabbing toilets to our hearts content and I for one, am very excited about what the week is going to bring!

There are several fantastic things about the summer…

Mary Lee Harper / / Uncategorized

There are several fantastic things about the summer labs:

1. I am working with people I know from my course, so we can help each other out and learn together from our mistakes. Trial and error is essential in the learning process in my opinion.

2. We have time to make mistakes. During the 3 hours we typically have in labs in the week, we have a brief window of time in which we have to work around other students, so we can’t afford to make too many mistakes. However during summer labs we have the entire day to repeat and correct our mistakes, or scrap it altogether and start over. This doesn’t mean we can or should be careless, but there is less pressure which ensures we are more likely to be successful in the first place. There are about 15 of us in the labs and we are each doing something different so we don’t have to wait around as much.

3. We can practice whatever we like. We have studied microbiology techniques a couple of times this year but over summer we can repeat everything over and over until we can “do it in our sleep”.

4. We have learned how to fill out a risk assessment properly and to consider absolutely everything and anything that can go wrong to minimize any potential risks.

Some of the techniques I have practiced this week include:
gram staining
aseptic technique
spread plating
membrane filtration
pour plating
making agar
microscopy
swabbing
making ringers solution
fiber analysis
pipette usage

As well as the above we have been taught about the various kinds of agar and what will grow on them, how to isolate growth of desired bacteria and culturing said bacteria.

We have come up with a hypothesis for our project as well. So not only have we practiced invaluable skills that will help us over the coming years but we are also able to design and carry out a project that we are interested in. I have been thinking of additional projects since December and now I am finally able to do them!

We have a busy day on Monday as we will be making agar and starting our project in earnest, carrying out field work which is very enjoyable. Last week we were able to do a preliminary trial of our experiment in order to test different methods of collecting samples. We were able to see which was the best way to culture bacteria, and the best way to collect the samples. We found that spread plates are definitely not the way forward for the work we are doing. However rolling the swab straight onto agar and using membrane filtration was very useful.

DAY 1

14580455 / / Uncategorized

I was so so so nervous to start this experience as I didn’t know what to expect! However, working in partners boosted my confidence and quickly I realised I had no reason to be so nervous. There was also a really chilled atmosphere around the lab which put me at ease 🙂

My favourite part of the day was looking at fibres under microscopes, but unfortunately, I didn’t analyse the pubes – I had the privilege of beard, yak and camel hair instead!

I’m really looking forward to the rest of the week; learning  basic microscopic techniques (I am in dire need of a recap) and focusing on my fibre  based project with Sam – gotta love a bit of velcro!

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First Day

Alicia Sims / / Uncategorized

Yesterday was the first day of my 5 week lab experience. For the next 5 weeks I will be doing a SLSSS research project, looking at the impact of cohabitation on the similarity of colonisation of Staphylococcus spp. on skin and the impact this might have on the spread of MRSA. But yesterday we started by going over basic micro skills, which was lucky since I had forgotten everything!

I can’t wait to get started on my project, if I ever get these forms filled in!

Lets see if this post works I have…

Mary Lee Harper / / Uncategorized

Lets see if this post works. I have been attempting to post for over a week now and for some reason it disappears when I click on ‘post it’. Most frustrating. Well we have had our first day in the lab we got to practice making agar which will come in very handy for our upcoming project. We made up ringers solution and got to use the electronic pipette which saved us a heap of time!

I also got to have a crack at basic fibre analysis which I hadn’t tried before. As a crazy cat lady I chose to examine cat fur. Setting up the slide graticule was more difficult than I remembered so I will need to have a little practice at that.

Today was spent doing the risk assessment it was similar to ones I have completed before but I still left a couple of blank spots. I have planed with my friends what we will be doing this summer and have a few suggestions to discuss tomorrow.

Day 1

Rebecca Louise Ward / / Uncategorized

When I was first asked to keep a blog while doing my summer internship, I thought it would be easy. But as it turns out, I have once again proved to myself that I can’t use technology. So, if  you’re wondering why my picture is of my forehead, it’s because I have no idea what i’m doing.

Our first day was pretty slow. We went over basic microbiology techniques, like making up agar, as well as doing some basic fibre analysis with microscopes. I couldn’t for the life of me remember how to set up the microscope for Kohler illumination, but I think I winged it ok. I will have to brush up before next time. Now we all get the veritable thrill of risk assessments and ethics forms.

All in all day 1 has been very beneficial, I’m looking forward to seeing what more I can gain from this summer experience…. and shredding it on the lab ukulele.

Research governance

Nicola / / Uncategorized

So if you’ve not done any kind of research project before, I suspect you’re going to be completely blown away by how long everything takes and how much you have to do before you can actually get anywhere with getting your hands dirty. When you walk into a lab for a practical, equipment and consumables have been ordered, paperwork has been photocopied, solutions and stocks have been prepared for you to work with, and the administration for ensuring your health and safety has all been done for you. When you’re doing your own data collection, all of those parts, normally carried out by your administrators, finance managers, technicians and academics, all becomes your responsibility. This is known as ‘research governance’.

On the first day, I will be teaching you how to make up stock solutions and agars and how to keep the lab clean and tidy – the technicians will not sweep in and dispose of your dirty tips and wash out your glass bottles this summer. You may be surprised by how much effort it takes to keep on top of this.

Also during that first day, while the solutions are autoclaving (it takes three hours, so we have some time to kill), I’ll be talking to you all individually, or in small groups, helping you plan the project you are going to carry out and what you will need to put in place to ensure it happens safely and ethically. This means carrying out ethics approval and risk assessment to ensure you will be safe while working, and planning your methodology to make sure we have all the equipment and consumables you need already available to us, (otherwise we will have to do some ordering).

By the end of the first day, you should have a clear plan in your lab books for the summer (don’t forget to bring a hard backed note book specifically for this work!). That means on the Tuesday, (when I can’t be in the lab, which means you can’t because you haven’t carried out the risk assessment!), you can spend the day filling out the paperwork to make sure that from Wednesday we are properly covered in the context of research governance.

This is the experience that I want you to get this summer. Being blunt, the data collection bit is the easy part, and won’t really teach you much at all – the techniques you will be using have all been taught to you in the past through practicals. I will have succeeded in making your summer experience a useful one if you walk away thinking ‘wow, if only I knew then what I know now’. It is these experiences that will make you a good scientist, and will put you in the best position for your future studies.

Another Monday morning and my inbox is full…

Nicola / / Uncategorized

Another Monday morning, and my inbox is full of emails to tackle ahead of the new week! One of those emails is from Student Opportunities which explains how I get you enrolled on the campus jobs system so that you can work outreach events over the summer. I will soon be emailing your names over to them so they can send you the paperwork you need to complete in order to apply for jobs. Don’t forget that once you are on the system you can also work open days in the new academic year, so make sure you get the forms processed asap!

Summer outreach activities

Nicola / / Uncategorized

Outreach is a really important part of my life, and of course it is also part of my job! I have been doing outreach in one form or another since I started at the University in 2003, and my involvement has only grown since then. I started with a few school visits as part of a recruitment drive for the Forensic Science degree, and it has now grown into multiple annual local school events and talks and activities around the county and even the country for the Women’s Institute (WI), University of the Third Age (U3A) and Graduate Women’s groups.

Outreach is so important as it plays a fundamental role in demystifying science for the general public. We hear too much these days about a lack of belief in ‘experts’ and a lot of that has to do with scientists standing up and saying incomprehensible information in technical jargon that is supposed to scare or intimidate people. For me, there is nothing better than the ‘lightbulb moment’, which is what drives me every day as an educator, and good outreach can ensure that we can get our message out simply and effectively, and from there it can spread further.

This summer, as always, I have signed up for and booked in a large number of outreach events, and while I will be involved in them all, I also need support to ensure they run smoothly. For them to work effectively I need passionate, dedicated and hardworking helpers who believe, as I do, that outreach is one of the most important things that scientists can do. If that is you, then I will look forward to working with you. The process for signing up is relatively long-winded, and will involve having right to work checks, completion of information regarding payment, applications for roles and possibly job interviews, but I will try and ensure that any of those who are keen and fit the profile will get a chance to have at least some of the opportunities.

When I know the process I shall add the information here, so keep a lookout, and of course, make sure you blog about your experiences doing the outreach!
Nicola

Welcome back!

Nicola / / Uncategorized

It’s been a while since this has been updated as last year we couldn’t have our standard summer experience because the science building was being renovated.  But we’re back on track this year, and should have lots of exciting research to share.  Some of those joining us will also be carrying on throughout the next academic year on their final year projects, so I’m hoping they’ll keep us updated here as well.  Remember that this is an informal process and should be used to share all of your experiences, good and bad, and do comment on others posts if you have any ideas and suggestions.