It's Finally the Weekend!

I finally remembered to bring my camera to class today so I have a few photos to share!

Anyways, this morning's lecture was mainly about depression with a touch of mania. I thought it was interesting that depression, like schizophrenia,tends to run in families. Also, I liked how Dr. J mentioned the signs of this disorder in college students, such as social isolation, dropping grades, and acting out misery since we will all be going to college soon and if we know the signs, maybe we can help someone out.

After the lecture, my discussion group talked about the ending of The Quiet Room and what we thought about the movie, "A Beautiful Mind," we watched yesterday. I thought it was funny how after talking about schizophrenia for the majority of the week, several of us started questioning ourselves and wondering if we really had this disorder and had hallucinations.

Once discussion time was over, the entire class came back together to hear Dr. J's lecture on intelligence. Actually, it wasn't a lecture, but instead he asked all of us what components we thought made up intelligence. Surprisingly, our list was pretty close when compared to the list made by researchers.

I love this class! And I know I made the right choice in choosing this subject to learn about this summer. Although some of the subjects we talk about are a bit depressing at times, the topics are so interesting to learn about and I'm considering psychology as a possible major.

After lunch, I met with my presentation group and we actually finished our PowerPoint today! I was surprised and thought we would need another day to finish, but I'm relieved we got everything done since I know this will be a busy weekend. Then, I went with Joseph to meet up with Gina, Meuy, Cynthia, and Karen (our friend from Texas!) to watch "Transformers" (which I highly recommend!) since it was Karen's birthday today. We then stopped by my room to surprise the birthday girl with an ice cream cake.

I must get to sleep now since tomorrow is going to be a long day! I can't wait to go to Boston, visit the colleges, and meet up with the two other ILC Brown students.

My Days

Today, i woke up at 7:46, before my alarm clock even went off. Then, i showered, brushed my teeth, and went to meet dennis for breakfast at 8:23. we walked up to the vw, where i had a mixture of cheerios and lucky charms (cheerios are too boring and lucky charms are too sweet.) Then, i walked over to the biomedical building, and went down the elevator to the first floor, to room 112d, where my morning laboratory session meets. As soon as i got into the lab, i put my stuff down at my bench, next to my lab partner Aidan, and walked down into the basement to fill my bucket with ice.

In the lab, we were running a gel electrophoresis, which is the separation of DNA fragments through an agarose gel.
First, we mixed calf thymus DNA with a buffer containing SAM. then, we filled our eppendorf tubes with this mixture, distilled water, and EcoRI methylase, which locates EcoR1 sites, and places a methyl group in the middle of the sequence. This prevents the EcoRI (a restriction endonuclease) from reading the genetic code. We incubated this mixture at 37 degrees celcius for twenty minutes, and then added EcoRI to some of the tubes. to the others, we added HindIII. we incubated this mixture at thirty seven degrees celcius for twenty minutes also. Meanwhile, we set up our gels. to do this, we melted agarose in an oven, and then mixed in four microliters of ethydium bromide (which is a mutagen, thus requiring extreme care). we poured this mxture into our gel tray, which contained a small comb, and then let the gel sit for ten minutes so that it would harden. Finally, we covered the gel with TE buffer. Once our DNA mixture was done incubating, we added loading die, which not only adds visibility, but also weighs down the sample, forcing it to stay in the holes left by the comb. finally, using a micropipette, we insert ten microliters of each of our six solutions into the holes. Then, we connected the whole thing to a power source, and ran a current through the gel at 127 volts. Because DNA is negatively charged, it flows towards the cathode. Because the gel is a viscous permeable substance, the smaller pieces of dna have an easier time moving through the gel. this seperated the pieces of dna by size. we left this hooked up for about an hour, and when we finished, we removed the gel from the loading dock, and placed it into a uv photographing booth. DNA absorbs the UV light, but because ethydiuym brtomide is a planer molecule, it has imbedded itself into the DNA. Thus, the light absorbed by the DNA is transfered to the ethydium bromide, which releases visible orange light, then, we photographed this, which allowed us to determine the number of base pairs in each dna area, based on how many centimeters it had travelled. The purpose of this lab was to show the effects of the methylase on the restriction endonuclease. tubes which contained the methylase showed that the DNA had not been cleaved, while tubes without it showed multiple bands of dna of different lengths, which shows the dna molecule has been cleaved,

After we finished this, we broke for lunch, where i again met dennis. I had a hamburger with tobasco sauce, lettuce, tomato, and provolone cheese, on a white bun. In addition to this, i had a glass of minute made cranberry juice mixed with minute made orange juice, and a cup of soft serve, whipped cream, multicolored sprinkles, and a waffle cone. When i finished this, i went to the lecture hall where we briefly asked each other for our names, because we were having a quiz on the names and faces of people in our class.

In Addition, the professor gave a brief description of the cloning and dna splicing activities we will do next week. After class, i turned in the weeks assignments (three lab reports) and the name quiz, in addition to a quiz based on the the weeks labs. When the rest of the clss left, i stayed behind to talk to the professor because i've been having a lot of trouble with the class. She was extremely helpful, and went over some of the basics that i was confused about, and spent about half an hour explaining them to me. finally, because i still didn't understand everything, she gave me an introduction to biology text book which i could study over the weekend to help me catch up. She is so helpful!

when i finished talking to Jody, i walked back to my dorm room to change because it had started raining again. also, i had a brief conversation with my mother, who was worried about me because i didn't call last night. (I didn't call because i accidently fell asleep for the night at 8:30. (this is also why i didn't blog yesterday. Sorry!)) Then, i went to Gina's room to get the laundry detergent. I hate doing laundry, especially because it costs money in the dorms. After this, Courtney and i walked over to the bus stop to go to the mall, which is where i am now.

Tonight, we are going to watch transformers two, IM SO EXCITED. we were going to watch it in imax, but unfortunately, the seats are all sold out. what a bummer. When we get back from the movie, we are going to go to the decades dance in the keeney quad, It should be fun, but we are unsure how to dress, since none of us brought clothes for it.

Then tomorrow, its off to Boston!

Until then,
Joseph Young

Thursday and Friday

Yesterday was such a busy day, so I wasn't even able to blog. But today I got it covered. During class we discussed some articles we read the previous night about New Deal Liberalism and the Charlie Chaplin film we watched. We talked about why the FBI, especially Hoover were so engaged in Chaplin's life and how they spent a huge portion of their time watching his every move and trying to prove that he was a communist.

After this great discussion, our teacher treated us to some Ben & Jerry's ice cream which myself and a few other of my classmates politely declined. As soon as we stepped foot out of Ben & Jerry's, the sun miraculously appeared. :) Finally!

We returned to class and watched 4 short cartoons about capitalism and how "America is the finest place in the world to live in." When the films ended we talked about them and the suspicions and anxieties about capitalism and big businesses before and after WWI and WWII.

Today in class we talked about how enviormental concerns actually began in the late 40s and not in the 60s. We watched Grapes of Wrath and discussed whether or not the film would have gotten the same criticism as Monsieur Verdoux if it would have been released in the late 40s or 50s.

I can't wait until tomorrow and Sunday! I will able to see Harvard, MIT and all the other wonderful colleges and possibly be able to meet Ms. Ruth Simmons. This will definitely be a great weekend.

Bones continued....

Today we learned about the Skeletal System and Joint cagtegories. Some students also presented their inquisitions. We finished up on learning about joints and we had to pick out a bone to draw and label which is due Tuesday.... Monday we will be taking a CPR class and we will be visiting students who are working on research projects and and interviewing them that should be fun!
We got a box full of bones and we had to identify the different parts of each bone and what type of hinge it has like a ball and socket or saddle. My group finished two hours before class was over because instead of socializing we got right away into doing our work! :)
Since our Dean T was not able to stay with us for the afternoon the TA's ran the lab. So since the whole class finished an hour early they let us go.
Today there was also a social event going on (a dance) I went to go have some fun and take a little break from all the studying.

A Sunny Day!

After so many days of clouds and rain, we finally had a sunny day here in Providence!

Well, today in class we watched the movie "A Beautiful Mind" in class. It's about John Nash, who developed schizophrenia while studying at Princeton University. As Mercedes said, he starts believing he is encoding messages for the government and must protect himself against the Russian spies. I think watching this movie really helped understand what people with this disorder go through everyday. I watched this movie during my foundations class when I was a freshman, but when I watched it again this time, more aspects of the movie made sense. I never really knew about this disorder, so after reading The Quiet Room and listening to Dr. J's lectures about it, I seemed to understand so much more about everything - his movements and his hallucinations.

After finishing lunch, I got straight to work on my week's reading reflection paper. We were supposed to write a 2-page paper about our reading and I found this fairly easy since we've talked about the book so much. It was actually a bit hard to limit what I was going to write about.

In addition to writing my paper, I also read the study I mentioned earlier The Power of Conformity since my group will be planning out our presentation tomorrow during lunch. I found the study very interesting. Basically, one must have seven "participants" who were actually allies of the experimenter and one actual participant. The subjects would be shown one card with a single line and another card with three lines of different lengths. Each person would then be asked to identify which out of the three lines is the same length as the standard line. Everyone answers in a line with the actual participant at the end of the line. For the first two trials, everyone will give the same, obvious answer. However, during the next trial, the first participants will choose the wrong line in order to see how the last person will answer. Surprisingly, to me anyways, around 75% went along with the group's wrong answer! I can't wait to talk to my group and find out how we are going to present out topic in our 25-minute time slot.

Now, I'm going to try to read a bit for my homework since I know this will be an extremely busy weekend. And I can't wait!

Gross Domestic Product

In econ today, we talked about how economists calculate GDP, the total income of a nation. In fact, while for workers, income might be how much they make, for a nation's economy, the "income" must be equal to the expenditures in order for an equal and balanced market to exist. Also, GDP only takes into account the income and expenditures that take place using the nation's resources. It's divided into Consumption, Investment, Government Purchases, and Net Exports; Net Exports is the #Imports - #Exports. So if Sally was buying an American made car, the amount of money she pays goes into the Consumption part of the equation. However, if she bought a car in America that was built in Japan, whatever the cost it took to ship the car over goes into Net Exports and the rest into Consumption.

The thing about GDP is that it doesn't tell us anything about quality of life nor the quality of anything for that matter. It merely tells us how much a country is worth based on the market value of its goods and services. However, GDP may rise over the years due to inflation, so there are actually two types of GDP; Real GDP and Nominal GDP. Nominal GDP is the "normal" way of looking at GDP. It only looks at the current year and calculates it using prices and quantities from the current year. On the other hand, Real GDP is a better way of comparing GDP across years of production.

If say I calculated the GDP for 2004. If I wanted to calculate the real GDP of 2005. I would use the prices that were in 2004 but use the quantities that were produced in 2005. That way, I can see how the change in production changed prices.

Two topics trended throughout the day. SAT scores in the morning and Michael Jackson's passing away in the afternoon, which eclipsed the news of Farrah Fawcett's death. It was fascinating to see how fast the news spread to everyone during dinner, jumping from table to table. Maybe I should have joined the Human Behavior class that they offered here!

In any case, our teacher let us know about a presentation that we're doing at the end of the course on an economic topic of our choosing. I decided to look into Water Privatization in 3rd world countries. What led me to it was the idea that water is getting scarce in parts of the world and the realization that wars are being fought over rights to wells. It's something that I want to know more about.

I'm looking forward to seeing some colleges this weekend!

Oh, What "A Beautiful Mind"

First of all, I have to clarify what I said in my last blogs about my admiration for Steven, Lori's brother. I do not admire him for bailing out, I admire that he was the only one who took the initiative to try to understand the psychology behind schizophrenia so he could help his sister. I admire him for at least trying although he did not go through with it all the way but that is because his sister, Lori, did not want him to see the horror that goes on inside the psychiatric hospital. Steven, himself, could not stand to see people suffer. There is so much more to the book. I highly recommend it. It is called "The Quiet Room" by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett for those who are interested in reading it. I would love to talk about the book but there is so much information packed inside that I cannot condense it all into one blog.

Now, get ready for my day! I woke up later than usual, 8: 40 or so. Then I found out that I have to do laundry soon because my clothes are piling up on the floor-in my closet. While looking through my clothes, I regretted not bringing more sweaters and pants because it is really cold here, except for the sunshine that we have today. Then I looked at the weather to determine the weather for the rest of the week. After that, I washed up and got dressed to go eat breakfast. I am starting to get tired of the variety for breakfast but breakfast is the most important meal of the day so I ate a bagel and some potato wedges. Afterward, we walked to class and this time, we had to go to a different classroom than the one we are usually in. This is because we were going to watch a movie called "A Beautiful Mind," and Dr.J suggested that room 106 was more suitable for movie watching. Therefore we sat down anxious for the secrets of the movie to unravel as the professor pushed the release button for the curtains to come gradually down, shading the windows from the rising sunlight. This took about 30 seconds or so and I watched in amazement and wonder what else is there in this room that I have never seen before. Then the projector screen came tumbling down and stopped. It was a really big projector screen, bigger than the ones we have at school. Then we waited for him to dim the lights and turn on the movie.

The movie started out with a guy name John Nash who is in his freshmen year at Princeton University through a special scholarship (something something Carnegie Scholarship). Then he meets his roommate Charles, who stumbled into the room drunk and disoriented while John was busy studying. Then it shows how John is always busy studying and trying to solve these problems that I found to be really intricate and difficult. There was a scene when John wanted to kill himself by banging his head on the window and then his roommate tried to stop him. His roommate then pushed the window with such an incredible amount of force that it flew out the window and crashed on the ground by the luscious green grass while two students were walking by. John and Charles started laughing hysterically as the two students looked up in confusion. After he graduated from Princeton University after resolving Adam Smith's theory, he became a professor. He was well-respected and liked on and off campus. Then on a visit to the Pentagon, he met a mysterious man who calls himself Parcher. Parcher asked John to work for the government as an undercover agent and they implanted a secret code on his arm which requires a black light to see it. John's job is to decode the mysterious message of the Soviet Union. And so the movie goes on about how he is a great professor and well known throughout. He finally finds a woman who he likes and eventually marries her and start their own family. However, one night, John gets paranoid and his rage is set off so his wife calls the doctor and they take him in the hospital. John accuses them as the Soviet Union who have discovered his secret and are planning to take him away.

The problem in this picture is that John was hallucinating. Records show that he never had a roommate name Charles nor did he ever work for the government as a spy. His wife had called him and signed him into the psychiatric hospital because he was schizophrenic. They had to explain to him that he was schizophrenic and all of this is just a delusion. John tried to show them proof that he actually works for the government by digging into his arm where he had "seen" them implant the numbers to keep track of him but it was not there. Therefore he had to take medication to help his hallucinations go away. Basically the movie goes on from there. He finally gets better but he never did stop seeing things. He learned to control them and eventually was able to live an almost normal life. After he got a bit better, he started working at Princeton, doing his work in the library. He raised his status from a worker in the library to a well-known and respected professor. John even received a Nobel prize and to this day, he still walks to campus.

The movie ended at 12:38 but class was not suppose to end until 1:00. So Dr.J decided to tell us more about John Nash. He mentioned that the real John Nash's life was not as smooth as portrayed in the movie. Instead, his wife divorced him and he started experimenting with his sexuality. Then we got out of class at 12:45, 15 minutes earlier than usual. We dreaded walking down the flight of stairs although it was a flight of stairs less than usual. Then we trudged downhill to the Verney Woolley where we slid our Brown identification card to open the door and walked on the blue mat to the interior of the cafeteria. Then we went through another round of sliding our cards to get lunch. Today, I was deciding between pasta and burgers. I was trying to be a vegetarian for day but I could not resist the burgers so I went to make my burger.

First I took the bun and split it in between the cut. After that, I picked up the juiciest looking burger on the tray and settled it on top of the bottom bun. Then I used the plastic black tongs to pick up two pieces of lettuce and gently laid it on top of the burger. I examined the cheese to see if it was American or Kraft singles but I failed at that. I picked it up anyways and decided I should of put the cheese on before the lettuce and so I remade my burger. The tomatoes were screaming my name but I did not know if I was craving tomatoes or not but I decided I wanted to be healthy so I slid two slices of pre-cut tomatoes onto my pile. Then I cuddled up my burger by placing the top bun over it after squeezing ketchup on it. And so we went to eat outside because it was a nice bright sunny day. It feels so good to walk out and feel the warm breeze sweeping over me.

Then I decided to work on my final reaction paper for class. I spent a good hour contemplating about what to write because Dr.J had asked for it to be less than two pages and to reflect on the book. It was extremely difficult to narrow down the topics that I wanted to discuss so I spent a good 25 minutes thinking about the main topics of the book. Finally, I decided that I will mainly focus on the affect Lori's schizophrenia had on her family as a whole instead of just Lori. Then I finished typing up my paper by 6:03 and started walking to the dining hall with Courtney. While walking past the Maddock Alumni building, a random stranger walking past by hollered out "Hey you guys! Did you find out that Michael Jackson died?" Then everywhere around us, we heard talk about his death. People walked around in denial that the "king of pop" is longer no more.

After dinner, we went back up to the lounge where we studied for a bit and I sent my final reaction paper in to Dr.J. I then decided what shall I blog about and here I am to blog about my exciting day. The best part of today was probably watching the movie. I learned so much from it and by the end of the movie, I decided I want to meet John Nash. When I finally figured out what I wanted to blog about, I walked down the five flights of stairs and into to my room I entered. So here I am blogging.

Now that I reflect on my day, I found out that I had quite some time on my hands. I had finished my reading early started on my reaction paper right away. I am really adjusting to the college life. I predict that in the future, I would be walking long distances and climbing up to 55 steps on the stairs. Oh well, it will be a great daily workout.

Since I do not want to be burdened with homework and a 83 page of reading, I shall start reading now.

A Beautiful Mind

Today in class we watched an interesting movie on a very smart man named John Nash. He developed schizophrenia soon after graduate school, he was extremely intelligent so it was really depressing. I feel that he handled the illness a whole lot better than Lori from the book handled her situation, but that's probably because her situation was far worse. That's pretty much all we did in class, we moved to a really nice room to watch movies and our professor explained our up coming projects a little bit more. Then we were off to lunch.

We did not do much after lunch besides laundry and a lot of walking back and forth. I spent most of the night working on my homework and bonding with my roommate. I'm really excited to go to Boston again on Saturday, I can't wait to actually finish our tour at Harvard and explore MIT. I hope you all enjoy the rest of your day.

Bones & Cartilage....

Bone and cartilage is what I learned about today....I was completely confused in class today yet again. It seem like I understand what we talk about every other day. How sad. I hope I understand what we talk about tomorrow.

I also did not have enough time to finish my lab... :(
So I will have to go to the basement sometime and finish my drawing on crushed bone.
One would think that two hours would be enough, but apparently not.

Today I took in a LOT of information.
We talked about Hyaline cartilage(matrix,collagen, perichondrion,chodrogenic cells,chondrocytes, chodroblasts, and histogenesis), Elastic cartilage, Fibro cartilage, bones (matrix, hydroxyapatite, vascular supply, volkmann's canal, haversian canals, peristeum, and endosteum), Bone cells (osteogenic cells, osteoblasts, osteocyte, and osteoclasts), Types of classifications, Histogenesis, Histophysiology, and joints.

We had a lecture of all of this in the morning which also continued for another hour in the afternoon then we went on to the lab in which we saw developing long spongy bone and crushes bone under the microscope and again had to draw and label what we learned. We also took a miny quiz in which we do not get graded on, but are review from yesterday. Out of six questions I got two wrong! Its great to know that most of the information stuck on!

I will also never look at Chiclets and ti die the same way ever again....Chiclets remind me of simple cuboidal epithelia and ti die reminds me of bone cells!


Big shocker! I finally got around to researching Androgen Insesitivity Syndrome and I found out that it is a set of disorders of sex development caused by mutations of the gene encoding the androgen receptor. The nature of the resulting problem varies according to the structure and sensitivity of the abnormal receptor. A person with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome has a female external appearance despite a 46XY karyotype and undescended testes, a condition termed "testicular feminization" in the past.

Goodnight,
Carla Ramirez

A BEAUTIFUL MIND

This was the movie that the Introduction to Psychology class saw today. This movie was based on the true story of John Nash whom developed schizophrenia at the age of thirty. It was a very beautiful movie that showed Nash's life before, during, and after his major stage of schizophrenia. He was a very smart man whom did not like wasting time in class and learning something everyone already new, instead he focused his time in developing new theories. Later in his life because of the schizophrenia he believed he was working under over for the U.S. government to help with preventing attacks from the Soviet Union. In the end his wife finds him behaving weirdly and his schizophrenia is unfolded . He fought through it a went back to his normal life that he went on to winning a Nobel prize. It was a real tear jerker at the end with his happy ending. It was a very interesting film to watch because we got to see a different development of schizophrenia from the one in the book I was reading the Quiet Room.

Also yesterday I attended a college Q&A for girls with Courtney and Meuy.I asked a couple of questions and they were thoroughly answered. I learned why the RA s had chosen to come to Brown and most of them said because of the open curriculum. Also they shared with us how they went about the transition from high school to college. they agreed that everyone learned to manage time and classes at there own pace. and that the part of the transition was that one has to realize you can not be part of every class and every activity. Learning to manage classes and activities is a part of college experience. I found all the answers very helpful and informative.If I have time later this week I will attend a different college session.
Mercedes Montelongo