Post-Thanksgiving

Another thanksgiving break has come and gone. And to think it's the last one I'll have as an undergrad. It was a nice break, with lots of good food (though too much sugary stuff). I did homework, of course (I had too much not to), but it was at a relatively leisurely pace. I didn't sit around like a bum and do nothing, but it was definitely relaxing, despite having work to do. And even though I didn't finish anything, I don't feel particularly stressed by due dates right now. Though I completely forgot about both the biochem take home test and the lab poster. But it's still not going to be anything like the two weeks before break were. Those were nuts.

So biochem lab today was...surprising. We were supposed to test the inhibition of tyrosinase with a water based sunscreen. Well, the sunscreen was lotion, and even though it was water based, it wasn't water soluble. The cuvette was very cloudy when the sunscreen was added, and we spent over an hour testing different concentrations and lamenting our "failed" experimental design. Meg came up with an "apple assay" idea that we could do as an alternative (slice up an apple and apply sunscreen, comparing it to various controls), and Dr. Kuhlman suggested that if we let the cuvettes sit for 3 minutes, centrifuge them, and then take an absorbance value we could still get a line (albeit with only two points, as opposed to the data-point-every-5-seconds-for-3-minutes line we would get taking the reaction rate progress like we did for thiourea). So with two sort of shaky ideas, we decided to do them both and compare them. And while neither worked as well as we would have liked, the results were consistent between the two, and they were NOT what we expected! Basically, one of the ingredients in the sunscreen was a tyrosinase inhibitor (which is the reason we tested it in the first place). The sunscreen seemed to ENHANCE tyrosinase activity for both the apple assay and the more quantitative enzyme assay. So my theory is that one of the ingredients is a tyrosinase enhancer, and its effect is stronger than the inhibition, and essentially this would allow people to tan more quickly while still being protected from UV radiation. We just don't know if there is such an ingredient in this product. But essentially we now have interesting results from two creative experiments, when we thought that we'd have nothing. And our poster should end up being cool.

I should probably mention that I FINISHED MY SENIOR RESEARCH!!!! Turned the three copies in on Monday, and now I don't have to worry about it anymore. It'll be interesting to get the comments from my readers (Dr. Homan, Dr. Schultz, and Dr. Spieles), but for now I can focus on my remaining three classes.

And now it's bed time. I love getting to bed before midnight :)

Diversity forum

Yesterday we were scheduled to have a forum on the recent acts of racism and homophobia on campus from 11:30 to 1:30. I suppose "recent" isn't exactly the right word though, as this has been happening since well before I came to Denison. It's just been very much a big topic recently. It was surprising at first, since I hadn't really witnessed most of what was being discussed. But this is probably just because I have my group of friends, who are good people, that I hang out with and probably about 5% of the campus comprises the douchebags responsible for everything. And it probably occurs mostly in areas that I tend not to frequent (ie Shorney). Anyways, the point is 2 hours of our academic day were supposed to be completely shut down in order for the entire campus to discuss the issue in Mitchell. We were put into small discussion groups and then there was supposed to be 20 minutes of open mic where people could come up and talk about what their groups discussed. Students rebelled in response to this time limit, and faculty and staff largely supported them (Dr. Kuhlman, who was representing the faculty, did at least). The librarian said that as far as she was concerned the library was closed until every last person who wanted to talk got a chance to talk. Well, the forum didn't end until after 8. That's more than 8 hours. And a decent portion of the campus stayed the whole time (a couple hundred). I'm not going to go into what was said, because quite frankly there was a lot of it. And I'm writing this post before physics, which I have to go to in a couple of minutes. Quiz and all. Plus I'm still sort of processing it all. A lot of people gave very emotional speeches, and it definitely gave me something to think about. I'm sure it will be a huge topic of discussion on campus in the coming weeks, and I don't think that the issue will go away for anyone who is currently attending Denison. I think that this will have an affect on the freshmen which will last even up until their senior year, and if the changes that were discussed begin to come about in the next year or two, students who do not yet attend Denison will be affected by this as well.