So the psychophysics thing was actually really annoying yesterday. Jonathan had 15 different sets of pictures, and in each set there were 9 of the same pic, just different quality. My job was to put the sets in order of best quality to worst quality, according to my own opinion. He made me wear these cloth gloves so I wouldn't get fingerprints on the pictures; however, that made it very difficult to grab separate and pic up the pics. After i finished that, it was time for part II. He had 7 books with pictures in it, except each book had a different printing quality. I had to rank the books from 1-5, 1 being unsatisfied and 5 being very satisfied. Basically, all of the pics and books looked the same to me, so I had a difficult time putting them in order and ranking them. But I guess that was the point of the experiment.
So onto today. We went to U of R to visit the interns we showed our lab yesterday. There labs are actually in the part that I though was the hospital, but I guess it makes sense for them to be over there since they are doing Bioengineering. While we waited for someone to come get us, there were poster in the atrium and we got free doughnuts and chapstick. Then their boss brought us to a little conference room and told us a little about the labs the high schoolers work in. His name is Dr. David Pinto, which is funny because I have an Uncle David Pinto that is a nurse at Strong Hospital. Creepy.
After the introduction, we went to a lab that measures head movements. A person sits in a moving chair with sensors on his head and the computer models the movements. Cool.
Then we went to Dr. Pintos lab that works on epilepsy using rat brains. They keep the brains alive in an artificial brain juice with an oxygen bubbler and analyze the brain slices with a fancy microscope and camera.
Then we went onto the weirdest lab of all. They had all types of mice there, even naked mice. (see pic) This lab was studying how sewing shut a mouse's eye makes a certain chemical (?) more abundant in the brain. I really didn't understand that part. Or maybe I don't remember.
But anyways, to make a long story short, they showed us how to harvest a brain from a mouse. Basically, the little fur ball is given something to tranquilize it. Once it doesn't respond to being pinched on the tail, it is taped onto a board and they cut right into its ribcage. Then, the girl brought it over to the sink and shot two syringes full of some chemical into the beating heart to get all the blood out of the body. Wow... but there's more. The head is guillotined off and the brain (which is the size of a bean) is taken out of the head.
Yeah... that was gross, but it's all in the name of science and making discoveries that will benefit the human species one day . This little demonstration reminded me that I had a pet mouse once. I got her for Christmas and named her Annabell after one of my favorite Christmas movies in which a talking cow(Anabell) gives up her voice to a mute boy and is rewarded by Santa by becoming a reindeer. Or something like that. Anyways, it was a cute Christmas movie and I named my pet mouse after that kind cow.
So after we saw the mouse lab, we went to some other labs that have no significant stories attached. At 12 we had pizza and pop. And then we went home. Home as in RIT.
Nicole and I found Dr. Hornak and we gathered some data for him this afternoon. Then we blogged. Yep: that's it. :)
PS I'm not working tomorrow because I have family plans... see you Monday!
So onto today. We went to U of R to visit the interns we showed our lab yesterday. There labs are actually in the part that I though was the hospital, but I guess it makes sense for them to be over there since they are doing Bioengineering. While we waited for someone to come get us, there were poster in the atrium and we got free doughnuts and chapstick. Then their boss brought us to a little conference room and told us a little about the labs the high schoolers work in. His name is Dr. David Pinto, which is funny because I have an Uncle David Pinto that is a nurse at Strong Hospital. Creepy.
After the introduction, we went to a lab that measures head movements. A person sits in a moving chair with sensors on his head and the computer models the movements. Cool.
Then we went to Dr. Pintos lab that works on epilepsy using rat brains. They keep the brains alive in an artificial brain juice with an oxygen bubbler and analyze the brain slices with a fancy microscope and camera.
Then we went onto the weirdest lab of all. They had all types of mice there, even naked mice. (see pic) This lab was studying how sewing shut a mouse's eye makes a certain chemical (?) more abundant in the brain. I really didn't understand that part. Or maybe I don't remember.
But anyways, to make a long story short, they showed us how to harvest a brain from a mouse. Basically, the little fur ball is given something to tranquilize it. Once it doesn't respond to being pinched on the tail, it is taped onto a board and they cut right into its ribcage. Then, the girl brought it over to the sink and shot two syringes full of some chemical into the beating heart to get all the blood out of the body. Wow... but there's more. The head is guillotined off and the brain (which is the size of a bean) is taken out of the head.Yeah... that was gross, but it's all in the name of science and making discoveries that will benefit the human species one day . This little demonstration reminded me that I had a pet mouse once. I got her for Christmas and named her Annabell after one of my favorite Christmas movies in which a talking cow(Anabell) gives up her voice to a mute boy and is rewarded by Santa by becoming a reindeer. Or something like that. Anyways, it was a cute Christmas movie and I named my pet mouse after that kind cow.
So after we saw the mouse lab, we went to some other labs that have no significant stories attached. At 12 we had pizza and pop. And then we went home. Home as in RIT.
Nicole and I found Dr. Hornak and we gathered some data for him this afternoon. Then we blogged. Yep: that's it. :)
PS I'm not working tomorrow because I have family plans... see you Monday!
