Adventures in Bio science

This week we traveled to the Museum of Transportation to help April sustain her native plant gardens and plots. One the first day we pulled our Bermuda grass. Which has the some of the strongest grass roots I have ever seen! Also on the plot we pulled out foxtail to clear a nice opening to transplant sustainable native plants. At the museum they have grown towards sustainable native plants because they can endure the climate of Missouri weather as well as last through the winter and continue to flower from year to year. It is also important to use native plants because they are good habitats for local wildlife that help promote and save habitats and protection of wildlife. We finished off the day by transplanting beauty berry from the entrance plot to the museum to a cleared out plot. Our second visit we continued to pull out the stubborn Bermuda grass. The Bermuda grasses has a rhizominous root system (mass of roots) meaning the roots grow out of the nodes liking creeping root stalks....

It has been my first full week at BRDG Park and I'm ready to get into the labs and start learning. We have covered the basics of safety and identifying lab equipment and their purposes. It was a bit of a bumpy start with micro pipetting but I think I have mastered the skill. One micro pippeting lab I enjoyed was pipetting colored water and making a picture in the 96 well plate. My first design was the double helix of DNA and I created my own design of a larger scale double helix. I also successfully made my first gel electrophoresis! I worked on pipetting into the small wells as well as pipetting in the wells submerged in buffer solution. All together our work in the lab is off to a great start and excited to try more things in the lab!

On September 13 I attended the Parkway Partners barbecue. Being my first networking event I was kind of nervous and not sure what to expect, nonetheless it was an awesome experience to meet other Spark! students and business professionals. One of the partners I met was Jay Titchen and his wife Jan. They own McGuire Furniture Rental and Sales business in Maryland Heights. They were super interesting to talk with because of the variety of career choices they made. Each career they chose at first is completely different from what they are doing now. It seems like everyone pushes students to choose one career path and work around it slightly. However, out their in the professional world it is so much different! Even when I briefly talked to Dr. Marty and his wife they encouraged to find what we like and continue to try new things. Overall, the Parkway Partners event was super beneficial in putting my networking skills to test and learning from experienced professionals.

Over the past weekend my mom, friend Kate, and I went to the Festival of Nations in Tower Grove Park. The past few years I noticed the festival was conscious of waste and promoted recycling and composting of food materials. This year I was determined to see how the festival was doing their part to not only make awareness of new cultures but also the environment. Scattered around the park where waste stations with large yellow compost bins as well as recycling cans but only a few trash cans. This made me wonder what their intentions where for recycling and compost. Each year they set a goal to reduce waste and increase recycling. This year their goal was to recycle 60% of their waste to reduce waster going into the area landfills. Since, the start of the festival in 2011 they have diverted 36.8 tons of waste from landfills. That's all lot of waste they choose to recycle! It's encouraging to see how the festival and vendors all took steps in protecting our environment and also sh...