July 3rd/tomorrow is Day 12 (last day) of data collection… just in time for the July 4th holiday!  My plan is to not work  at the university on Friday; however, I will work on the poster’s overall layout at home.  After the last Friday group meeting , I decided to add a short intro on the poster about the biochemistry of amino acids & peptides to explain how they self-assemble into nanofibers of the hydrogels.  Hopefully, everyone has a fun and safe holiday!

Last week was a waiting game for me.  My mentor ordered some new chemicals to try because the last one was not successful.  It ended up taking all the way until Friday to arrive.  This left me with way more “downtime” than I wanted or knew what to do with and also a lot of anxiety over obtaining any sort of results for my poster.   I had to train myself to use the time wisely to work on my abstract and poster.

Now the wait is over!  I have two new chemicals that I am testing this week.  Hopefully I will see a greater degree of functionalization with the hBN.  Hope everyone has a successful week!!

I had so much fun seeing everyone’s labs last week! Everyone’s doing so many different things and working in so many different types of labs. Shout out to Mellie for keeping her selfie game and picture game strong, she was kind enough to send me some pictures from my tour!

On a more scientific note, my mentor was making a virus today! I got to observe the protocol as well as the extra safety precautions that are required in the virus room. Depending on how far along her research is she will make a virus. The virus she used is the lenti virus, that she modified. The lenti virus is part of the HIV family and is used to facilitate integration of transfer plasmid sequences into host cells. They use this method more so, because it takes less time and is equally effective as other methods. ( I don’t think I’ll get to this level in my research, but I was very thrilled to see the process!)

Hope everyone has a great week and a Happy 4th of July! We’re half way done guys! Times going by soooo quickly! Happy Learning!

The El Paso desalination plant is the largest inland plant in the world and uses reverse osmosis to pressurize water to pass through several layers of fine membrane formed by wrapping hundreds of feet around a small inner tube.  There is a lot of energy spent in creating the high pressure system, hence the need for improvements using nanotechnology.  They have 5 pumps currently being used, each with its own section of pressurized membrane bound pipes and the capacity to expand to a 6th pump.   Because the membranes function somewhat slower after several weeks of use, 1 or 2 sections of membranes are offline at a time to remove the biofilm by flushing with water for a week.  Thus, there are always between 1 to 3 of the pumps offline at a time, depending on water usage.  The salt concentrate formed during filtration is collected and piped 22 miles northwest to White Sands where it is gravity feed down into an underground slate bed there, perfect to absorb the salt.  The  El Paso desalination plant can produce up to 27.5 million gallons of of clean permeate water daily.

We visited the desalination plant on Wednesday. Although I’ve been there before multiple times, I still  learned something new! I didn’t know that street names in downtown El Paso were named after paths travelers took to specific towns and cities (San Antonio, San Francisco, etc.).

While the ceramic project is on the back burner, I worked with my mentor on another project assigned by my PI. We used silver nitrate and sodium chloride to see what the minimum amount of molecules put together would be visible by the naked eye.

We made solutions for both using DI water and using decreasing amounts of particles (diluting it by reducing the amount of sodium chloride and silver nitrate by putting them in 9 mL of DI water).

There was a lot of math involved (calculating Molarity of each) and we’ll be looking at our results today!

Have you noticed the squirrels at Rice University are very social? I was standing at the bus stop with my friend, Ollie (Pictured above). He was very kind and asked me if I had any food. Of course, I did not because I ate it all. He told me that everyone feeds the squirrels at Rice University. So, I guess he told him.  What experiences have you had with the Rice squirrels?

What a whirlwind this has been!! Are we already on Week 4?! Is it ONLY two weeks left?!!? Where has the time gone??

Anyway, my week 3 is relatively short! I unfortunately got sick and had to stay home for a few days out of the week, BUT I definitely got the inside scoop of what I missed (and also couldn’t miss out: the water treatment plant!).

As for what I missed in the lab: when I came back, we prepared samples for cultures to plate this week! This is great news, as this means our SEM images are GREAT and we are getting more results. The phages are attaching to the bacteria appropriately and they are being loaded correctly! We are going to now adjust the phage size and see if we can “fish” these little guys out before my internship ends!

In this collage, I took a picture of the filters/membranes that they have! I thought this was pretty cool because I never really saw the filter as a “big picture” kind of thing! The different “hair” size are for input/output and to help filter the water better.

The picture with all the different faucets is how they obtain sample water from various sources (ponds, lakes, sewage) and directly below, is their nice, pretty lab where they test for water purity.

We got to see the actual plant afterwards (the last row), with the massive cell membrane tubes, different pipes/valves, as well as the plant itself. This was my first time ever going to a water treatment plant, so the whole thing was pretty neat! I did not realize the many, many components that went into cleaning a large amount of water.

Good morning!

On Friday we completed a site visit to the Sugarland Water Treatment plant. This is my 4th water treatment plant visit but this is the first plant that I have visited that is not a traditional plant. Here they use membranes to clean the water. They have about 65000 tubes within a single cartridge and no matter over 6 microns can enter or the tubes will become clogged. Due to this they can also not use polymers in any of the treatment as it will also clog the system. Something different they also do is that instead of using chlorine gas they use bleach; even though it is less effective and degrades more rapidly. This is because they are located right next to high school and they thought it would be nice to NOT poison the children. They recently entered the “best tasting water” competition and won runner up! They still claim they have the best tasting water in the country because the water treatment plant that won is actually located in Ontario, Canada. They are consistently checking their water quality at every step of the process and are below the national maximum  standards for coli forms, nitrates, and phosphates. They will be doubling the capacity of their plant in the next few years and are looking forward to producing 100% of their water from surface water. They are currently running ahead of schedule as they currently use 60% surface water; which is a standard they did not need to meet until 2025. While the plant manager ( who gave the tour) spoke an excessive amount of jargon it was a great field trip! If I was allowed to take field trips at my school I would definitely bring my students here.

On Friday we went to Sugarland’s water treatment facility and learned a ton about large scale water purification! I’m used to seeing a small scale in my lab, it was so cool to see a giant version. We got to take a tour of all of the components of the plant, as well as sit in a presentation informing us of the parts we cannot see. My favorite part was when we went to the sludge tank where all the organic material was converted into a solid, then pumped out of the system. I have a picture below!

I learned so much about what goes into making the water we drink safe, and I definitely have a greater appreciation for the clean water we have access to. If I can get permission from my principal, I think this would make a great field trip for my students when we get to our surface and groundwater unit. Thank you for the opportunity to take this field trip!

Ah, the joy and frustration of original ideas. Below you can see video of our test run. The quote for our cell flow through reactor was $600, but my mentor worked with an in-house engineer to fabricate it for $70- DIY! Still waiting to see if we produced an actual biofilm.

Flow cell reactor