RTI

Cameron Day 4 – “I love the smell of black carbon in the morning!”

– said no one ever.

Hello friends!

As you may have guessed (or not) from the title, today was mainly focused on testing the EMCs. We started after a quick job receiving and shipping a few items in Bay 3 (or section 3) of the building, and then returned to our normal station in bay 4 to meet with mr. J. Lynn Davis and Andrew Dart to discuss what they do at RTI. I also got to meet up with Emily and her guide, Phillip Durham, who seemed to be a pretty cool dude.

After lunch, we started working with the EMCs again. As the main person testing the filters (with my guide providing aid if needed), I got to light the kerosene lamp needed to produce the black carbon smoke, which was fun. The not so fun part ended up being blowing out the flame, because you get a big whiff of black carbon too. Do you know what that smells like? Imagine eating a box of chalk. It’s roughly the same feeling.

Being the main on that also means you get a lot of black carbon on you as well. Say goodbye to clean hands, folks. That’s a pipe dream.

Anyways, we got through a ton of tests today, and (despite screwing up several tests), we’re almost done with the work. I’ve think I may have gotten the nickname butterfingers at one point… Anyway, we expect to finish tomorrow, so wish us luck, please!

So, without further ado, Butterfingers signing off!

Micelle, Surfactants, and Nanoparticles – Oh my!

DLS example graph for Emily

Light Diffraction Data from a sample – for tips on what this means please browse the links below…

FAQ – ELS Overview         An_Introduction_to_DLS in 30 Minutes

There is never a shortage of things to do at RTI! Though the day started a little slow with some light reading (by the way the Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by Sam Kean is a great read), once it started moving it never quite stopped. We continued some lab work from yesterday. First we ran samples (made from surfacant, chromium, and polymer) through a sonicator. A sonicator uses audio submerged in water to break up aggravated particles. Then we used a centrifuge to separate particles to the bottom. Next, came the fun part of syringing the solution into a curved cell to be put into a dynamic light scattering machine (or DLS). Surfacants are bipolar substances, which kinda look like tadpoles under a microscope, with a hydrophobic and hydrophilic end. Sometimes surfactants aggregate and form micelles, which are simply aggravated surfacant molecules in a colloid (a colloid is a mixture with insoluble substance microscopically dispersed). These micelles are spherical in shape with the hydrophobic tails facing towards the center. This brings us to the CMC (critical micelle concentration), which is the concentration of surfacants above which micelles form and all additional sufucants form micelles. THis is relevant information because when running the samples through the DLS the graphs will be erratic if the pH induced the formation of micelles and the size vary greatly. The purpose of an DLS machine is to track nano particles and the relative size of particles. One we reached lunch I got to sit in on the YP lunch presentations (that’s young professionals – man these people like their acronyms!). The presentations serve to bring people at RTI together to practice presenting their findings to a group in part to share their findings with other departments and to also give those with less established careers to have the experience of presenting. I heard a lecture on mapping the innovation process and the iterative cycles of learning and focus, fluorescent carbon nano particles found in coffee and fruit juices (presented by the one and only Phil Durham), and idea generation in relation to energy technology development. We then spent the remainder of the day continuing the study and learning about polymers. Yay!

 

Cameron Day 3 – the Mystics of Optical Density

It’s… Get ready for it, HUMPDAY!!!!!

Anyways, hi friends!

Cameron again. I hope everyone is enjoying their week so far. Mine has been especially fabulous, and we started a new activity in preparation for the main project. Yesterday, I cleaned filters and put them in their proper placement. Today I tested the optical density of each, which is where we place them into a machine and run them through the color spectrum, recording how much light gets through. Hers a picture of the machine:


Jason McNeill (in the picture above) was my guide during this activity, and it was quite interesting utilizing the software. Despite several technical difficulties, I ended up processing all 50 plates in time for Jason to check their weights using a very, very picky machine. It took 15 minutes for just one filter at one point!

After helping out Jason, Mrs. Michelle took me to meet Andrew Dart, where we discussed some of the finer points of his machine. This machine, as it so happened to be, was the one we used for ECMs, and is picture below along with Andrew.


Andrew built both this and the extremely complicated machine hidden behind the one we used. It’s pretty awesome! He also works on the fireman project I discussed in my first post. Pretty cool, right? Not to mention he looks kind of like Sherlock from Masterpiece Mysteries…

Anyway, that’s pretty much everything for today.

Happy Humpday everyone!

Cameron L.

Dynamic Light Scattering

Today I researched dynamic light scattering and zeta potential. Changing the pH adjusts the charge of the particles and prevent aggravation to increase shelf-life. Ideally, all the particles will act as separate particles and not join together as conglomerates. The pH can induce a charge formation because the negatively charged particles will repel each other (as can surfactants and legions). I spent some of my own time learning about dynamic light scattering before participating in the experiment. Basically, it’s a way of determining size distribution of small particles or polymers in suspension in a solution. A laser is shot through a sample scatters lights of the particles and is collected by a photomultplier, and the resulting image is collected like static on a television. The speckled pattern can be analyzed to find patterns and trends. By the way, this is all based on Brownian motion, the idea that random motion of particles suspended in a gas or solution. Then, I participated in the testing of some of these samples before attending a lunch seminar on biometrics and policy. The lecture was very interesting study on stress in police officers in Durham (right after the famous Veil of Darkness Study conducted by RTI to test police officer bias) using high tech versions of fit bits. The emphasis was on the intervention of stress in this field in the future, based on the collected data. Directly afterward, I attended a conference call about the upcoming HIV project being presented on Thursday. To end the day, my pipetting skills were put to the test. I pipetted many test tubes with a buffer solution I mixed and diluted. Not only did I get to pick the music while doing so (sorry for the abundance of Train Phil), but I also had the opportunity to learn some more about excel in the process!

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Lean mean pipetting machine!

First Day, Fun Day

What a whirlwind! The day started with a crash course of RTI with Dr.Rothrock, and the “ambassador of Emily”, Mr.Phil Durham. RTI was the first research center in North Carolina, which came from a push to keep local intellectuals in North Carolina after college graduation. Since it’s creation in 1958, RTI has acted as a means to innovate the world through science as an “in between” non-profit for university and industry. There are many facets to the research including policy, social science, statistics, economics, biology and chemistry. Phil Durham is a biochemist, specializing in particles, and is part of the team working on a major HIV prevention research project. Additionally, he is working on an aerosol powder to target Tuberculosis at its source – the lungs. But there is a wide range of projects occurring at RTI simultaneously. Dr.Rothrock (head of the HIV project) is also part of an NIH evaluation, as well as worked on a recent vaginal ring project. By the end of the day I helped work on the HIV prevention experiment, measuring the absorbency of light in a photometer. I even ran my own test and graphed it against a blank buffer sample to view the resulting trend!

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Learning about light absorbency!

RTI Powerpoint: 2016 April Clinton Health

Excell Spreadsheet of Collected Data: Copy of Copy of EEL Dilution 8 5-23-16 Graph

Copy of EEL Dilution 8 5-23-16

Cameron L. Day 2

Hello all!

Today started off similar to how yesterday ended, as we redid five tests on the ECMs for accuracy.  I just realized I never actually figured out what “ECM” means, but here’s a picture of what I’m talking about:

Without filter

Filter pieces

With filter

After finishing, we went to a biometrics presentation, where they gave us free food (boo-yah) for lunch. The presentation was pretty interesting, especially when he started discussing physiology. I also happened to see my peer, Emily Lane, there as well.

After the presentation, we headed back to start working on placing various filters in plastic containers so they could equilibrate. After blowing them with nitrogen gas, we placed labels and filters in them. However, a 125 take a long time… Almost 3 hours, in fact. Guess what took up the rest of my afternoon?

Here are some pictures of the process:

The filters

Checking for dirt

Placing in container


Sealing container

Hope you enjoyed this post,

Cameron L.

Cameron’s Excellent RTI Adventure

Hey all!

Cameron here (of course?). So here’s how my first day has gone. I met Mrs. Michelle, as shown in my earlier post, before I had an intro session about the program. After the session, we went on a tour of the building, meeting several of her coworkers along the way and we were also promised a demonstration of one of their experiments, where they test the effectiveness of firefighter gear. Sounds cool, right? Well, the guy actually has to stand, in the gear, and exercize in various positions for 30 minutes, all the while being in a wind tunnel with Fluorescent aerosol flown around. Afterwards, they sit in a uv light area while the scientists determine where they need to reinforce the gear. I think it’s awesome they just sit there and glow…

Anyways, after the tour we tested several ECMs by lighting a kerosene lamp and placing them in this thing:


The kerosene lamp is in the right compartment, while the ECMs are in the glass door. They use pumps to take in the smoke, and then we evaluate their efficiency by checking for white lines, which indicate blockages (these are bad, if you don’t realize…). A picture of the graph is below!


After a couple of tests, we left and went to a safety meeting (concerning the department, not me :P), where we met this guy:


This is Mr. Stan Parker, head of security at RTI, and I gotta say… Doesn’t his moustache look awesome?! Literally, I want that moustache when I grow up. Now I only need to grow facial hair…

Other than his awesome moustache, Stan Parker is also pretty nice, and has some very interesting, if not fun, stories.

After meeting Mr. Parker, we went to lunch, had a delicious cheeseburger and fries (I know what I’m eating for my two weeks!) and then headed back to the office to continue working with the ECMs. After a ton more tests (all of which were perfect, if I do say so myself), I was offered the chance to try it by myself. Mine vs. the master’s is below.

The Master (above)

Mine (above)

They’re pretty close, right? The control (left) has a palm tree-like blockage, and the test (right) is ideal (as in, no blockage) for both. A job well done, if I do say so myself.

After receiving a delivery containing more ECMs, the day ended. Tomorrow, we go back to testing them. I hope you enjoyed my post!

Thanks,

Cameron L.