Presentations, Day 2

Tamara: "Structural Basis for Resistance to Ribosomal Antibiotics"

Claudia: "MoS2 Nanoparticles by Concentrated Irradiation"

Eszter: "The Role of L1-CAM in Colorectal Cancer Metastasis"

Dan: "Connecting Molecular Devices to the Outside World: Permanent Top Contacts in Metal-Molecules-Semiconductor Structures"

Tess: "Signal Design of Biological Sonar: Frequency Modulated Calls vs. Ultra-Wideband Clicks"

Ari: "Automorphic Forms and Tate's Thesis"

Alissa: "Gene Regulation of Orthopedia: a Homeodomain-Containing Protein Necessary for Neuronal Specification and Differentiation in the Hypothalamus"

Stephen: "Self-Assembly of Perylene Diimides: A Novel Tool in Solar Energy Conversion"

Jordan: "Finding Explicit Integrable Systems of Differential Equations"

Tanmay: "Three-Dimensional Structure of the Helical T-Complex in A. tumefaciens" 

Zvonimir: "Alteration in the Retrograde Transport Protein Composition Upon Nerve Injury"

Andrew: "Assays of Light-Dependent Hydrogen Evolution in Aqueous Cultures of Micro-Algae, Wild Type and Mutant Strains of Cyanobacteria"

Daniela: "Immunomodulation of Experimental Autoimmune Encephalitis by Copaxone"

Ari's last slide

Jonathan in a tree afterwards.

Day 63 - Day of rest?

As usual, my once-weekly chance to sleep late again fell on Saturday. I had no plans and didn't intend to make any, so there was no reason to get up. After breakfast, some brief blogging, and checking my e-mail, I showered and got dressed, and headed out of Clore. My destination: work, excitingly. Since I'll be missing a day during my final week and it's getting to be crunch time, I wanted to take the chance to get as much done as possible.

I was expecting to find Noa in, but instead found Patro, again. He was working on Matlab homework exercizes as he made some samples, and I just sat and processed images. For five hours. I didn't get up, or eat, or anything except listen to Kenna and measure distances in ImageJ. How I did this I don't know, but, magically, I am again, and hopefully permanently, DONE with all the images I have and plan to use! It's truly wonderful.

Once I arrived at this landmark point, I tore myself away from the screen and left Perlman. I was hungry, and learned that a group was heading out for dinner soon, so I stashed my stuff and chilled for a bit until everyone was back from the gym and showered. David, a Weizmann student, was having a large picnic outside to celebrate having been in Israel for a whole year, so I mingled with Ivonne, Maria Magdalena, Claudia, and Yovav outside and tasted a few of the many cakes which kept appearing among the other food. The picnic was really chill; music was playing as people sprawled on blankets on the lawn in front of Clore or tossed a frisbee (and later an American football, which puzzled me as no Americans were present) around. Claudia took an amazing picture of Maria Magdalena and I both making characteristic "Becca" faces, an image which I hope makes it to facebook.

Soon, though, Maciej, Onur and I joined Tanmay, Clay and Zvonimir at Hertzl Bar. I had a huge craving for meat, so got the hamburger, which is an ambitious undertaking. Onur and Maciej did the same, while the others had puny little sandwiches at the next table. They planned on seeing the Batman movie (again, for Tanmay and Zvonimir, but for the first time for Clay), and so went back to Clore to get ready and such. The three of us lingered a bit over coffee. Maciej and Onur suggested something I'd been contemplating for a while: asking the waitress whether the place had any of the coffee cups and saucers with an image of Hertzl for sale. Unfortunately, we learned they didn't have enough to sell any. Sadness.

After finishing our beverages we headed back to the dorm. I decided not to tag along to see The Dark Knight again, mostly because it was hot out and I didn't feel like walking. Maciej and I hung around at the picnic, which was still in full swing. I got a chance to catch up with Dan about his trip to Portugal with his family, and we had a discussion as to what defines cute (in his words, a large head-to-body size ratio: i.e. an iPod plugged into a TV = cute). During this discussion we also discovered that there was a cooler of liquid nitrogen at this picnic (how dorky and scientist-like). It had to be gotten rid of, so we made frozen treats out of the remainder of the picnic desserts. The frozen chocolate truffle was particularly delicious.

Eventually it got too hot to stay outside, and I kind of needed my computer adapter, which I had lent to Jordan but couldn't get back because neither Jordan nor Joel were around or in their room. When I mentioned this to Dan, though, he reminded me that his room adjoins theirs, so he helped me break in through the bathroom and get it back. I noticed some juggling pins on his floor, and of course made him show me his mad skills. He did the whole under-leg tossing thing, and other fancy stuff, and it turns out he attended a juggling conference here earlier this summer. Very cool. I had him give me some tips for starting out, but pins have always eluded me so after a few minutes and marginal improvement I called it quits.

Newly armed with my adapter, I went back to my room to grab my computer, and hung out in the lobby for a bit, chatting and blogging. Eventually I decided it was bed time, but who else was entering Clore as I went downstairs but Stephen and Ari! I made them come talk to me in my room where the air conditioning was actually effective, and Oren, Joel and Jordan came in and out periodically as Stephen and Ari told me about their weekends in Jerusalem, which had contained a few overlapping events (like Shabbat lunch). We all got tired at around the same time, though, so I kicked them all out and went to bed.

As promised, here are pictures of the Bahai Gardens. Enjoy!

Day 25 - Radially symmetric invertebrates

Work today was spent mostly processing images, adding the data to my growing excel file, and adjusting the plots to include the new points. The trends I'm seeing aren't changing shape, but the standard deviations are becoming smaller, which is nice. Yay for large sample sizes!

Exciting things today included lunch with XiaoMeng, her friend, and Asaf at San Martin and the math department cookie break, which I crashed because my eyes were starting to water from all the image examination. I went to Ran's cubicle at 3:25, then headed over to the lounge with him at 3:30. Apparently there was no hot water for the coffee or tea, but Jonathan had gone up a floor to get hot water for his tea, so he slurped it extremely loudly for the entire half hour I was there in an effort to inspire jealousy in the other warm drink seekers. I went back to my building to get my camera, then came back to Ran's cubicle room to record the contrasting images displayed below. Before leaving, he gave me a gift: a small porcelain figure of a fighter in purple robes wielding a yellow bat. His explanation was that he used to have twelve, 6 on either side, but someone took one from the other side so I was helping him re-achieve symmetry. I said I'd borrow it for the summer, for my unadorned desk.

After work, I went back to Clore to grab a bathing suit and towel, then met everyone in the San Martin parking lot. We all got on a bus for our first official KKISS trip, to the beach at Ashdod, also a huge port city. I sat next to Erin on the way there, which made for some interesting, and rather politically charged, conversation. We got there in about a half hour, and after helping deposit all the food in a central location, most of us headed to the nearby beach and took a dip. The water was warm and there were waves, but there was trash in the water, and many of us received minor jellyfish stings (except Claudia, whose sting was slightly worse than minor). I swam with Lisa and learned the basics of her life story, and helped prevent her from exiting the water with makeup dripping down her face. We got out and everyone photographed the group and the sunset. I met and chatted with Maria, a relatively new member of our program, after we examined a huge jellyfish which had washed up on shore. Finally, we headed back to the food, where Greta was finishing the grilling.

We ate pita, salad, cold cuts and grilled hot dogs as we dried off. Greta had told us this would be a "light meal," but most of us were stuffed by the time she brought out the fruit and marshmallows. Someone had assembled a pile of dry wood on the other side of the beach before we arrived, which was then lit as soon as darkness fell. Many of us headed over to the bonfire to dry off and attempt to roast the marshmallows. The latter task proved challenging, but eventually we rigged a system by which we insterted our small wooden skewers into the tip of a much longer piece of scrap wood, so that the marshmallow could reach the fire without the person wielding it having to get too close to the fire.

Eventually we headed back, grabbed the leftover food and dry goods, and packed up the bus. I sat with Lisa on the way back. When we got back to campus and unpacked the bus, I noticed that the driver had a bed and clothesline underneath the bus. Innnnteresting.

We walked back to Clore and as everyone wanted to shower, there was quite a backup. I hung out with Stephen and Jonathan as they got ready to go out; I was still undecided as to whether I'd join. Alissa and I watched the remainder of the Germany/Turkey game, and she decided to go to bed. I showered and was on my way out of Clore when I ran into Stephen on his way back. We decided to get an ice cream, and at the convenience store struck up what ended up being an hour-long conversation, in Hebrew, with another patron. The best part, though, was that I think I understood a good portion of it! Eventually, I reached the point where I was tired enough that I had to leave. As soon as I got back to my room I went to bed.

The whiteboard in the cubicle next to Ran's:

observe the math content

Ran's whiteboard:

observe the pirate ship, mountains, desert island, and pokemon

Left to right:

Tamara, Ivonne, Lisa, Anya, Andre, Claudia, and Maria Magdalena

Jonathan, before the application of the idea to use a longer stick

Ari and Zvonomir

Tamara, Joel, Lisa and Alissa

Erin with the spare meat some random dude gave us

Day 18 - Start at the very beginning

Today marks the second consecutive day I've arrived at work after 9 am. It is glorious thing. I think from now on, I will only mention notable things about work, as I find myself using the same words every day.

Ok, now that that's settled, something notable happened! At 11 am Dikla came in and told us a talk was about to begin and there weren't enough people there. XiaoMeng and I were the only ones sitting in the office, but she had a meeting elsewhere, so I decided to go alone. The speaker was someone from Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, and he talked about a whole bunch of stuff, from solid state fuel cells to sensors, all in the context of microelectronics. To be quite honest, I don't even need the "science" tags, because it was way over my head, too. But even if it had been at a manageabl level, it still would have been relatively unexciting.

For lunch I met everyone in the square again, but this time the group had expanded to include someone from Clay's lab, Lior, and Tamara. We went to San Martin, the meat cafeteria where you can load as much on your plate as you can fit (which results in some interesting food sculptures). We ran into Claudia and Maria Magdalena in line, and Lisa and Dan (physics) joined our table after a while.

< .science >

After lunch, at 2 pm XiaoMeng and I headed over to Wolfson (the microscopy building) to add another coating to the TEM grids. This time it was a carbon layer, which conducts and therefore prevents the electrons from becoming trapped in the sample and causing charging. The apparatus consisted of a bell jar, a carbon filament holder, and a stage. XiaoMeng vented the cahmber, placed the grids (still on paper from the polymer coating) on the stage and strategically and scientifically weighted down the paper edges with old metal nuts. She then replaced the carbon filament from a roll of filament, tightened it, and resealed the chamber. After venting, she ran a current through the filament, instantly vaporizing the center of it. The chamber immediately dispersed the carbon evenly throughout it, effectively depositing a thin carbon coating over the polymer on the grids.

As with anything that sounds awesome (like vaporization), this was rather anticlimactic. In one second it was done, then she vented the chamber once more. As I told her, I always get excited for this stuff and then am sort of sad when it's not an epic, visible reaction. Once in p-chem lab, we did bomb calorimetry. Literally we're exploding a bomb of our sample, multiple times, so I expected movement, or a visible quiver or muffled boom, but all we got was a little red LED light to tell us it was over. Needless to say, I was incredibly disappointed.

< / science >

As I walked back to the lab, I pondered the most recent plot I had constructed of my data. Something was really bugging me about a very clear trend that was present, so I resolved to check exactly what I had done to create it. After looking at it for a minute, I reached the unhappy conclusion that the trend was completely a product of my automated measurement method. And then, being as anal as I am, I decided that the only way to show this for sure would be to recreate all of the data by hand and see if the trend remained. So basically, I started over again, this time taking manual measurements.

After about 3 hours I realized what time it was and left work. I had hypothetical plans to go bouldering with Anna, a girl from New York City who I had met at the top-roping gym on Sunday. I called her and we arranged to meet at the Tel Aviv train station nearest to the gym. In the kitchen back at the dorm, I invited Ari and Jonathan to accompany me. After pondering it for a bit, they both decided to come! We caught the 7:38 train from Rehovot, arriving at the Hahagana station in Tel Aviv at 8:00. Anna called me to tell me she was running late and would meet us there, so we started walking without her.

It was an interesting part of town, so I was glad I had recruited others to accompany me on the walk. About 15 minutes later we found it, with the help of my hand-drawn map (which of course I had printed, in color, at work and then intelligently left on my desk). When we paid to get in, there was no change, so the man behind the counter recorded his debts to us and we went in. The guys both changed into shorts, I put on my shoes, then I helped them try to find matching shoes to borrow from the large bin of them. Then I gave them a brief introduction to bouldering and we began.

They both knocked off the V0s relatively easily, but the V1s were more challenging. As we climbed I gave them a few pointers and occasionally demonstrated some moves. Both of them got very pumped pretty quickly, so I advised that they slow down. Soon, Anna called me to ask if she was nearby. I went outside and it turned out she was walking towards me from the other side of the street, so she successfully found us. She was dressed for a party at synagogue, though, so she changed and began to climb with us. She and I climb at almost exactly the same level, so it was really great to tackle the problems together. She told me the best advice she had gotten out of a climbing course once: try to be as quiet as possible with your feet. I really like thinking about it that way!

We climbed literally until the place closed, then walked back to the train station and waited a bit for the train to Rehovot (Anna is staying there, too). On the platform we met an Israeli girl our age who had recently returned from a year's stay in New Jersey! We sat with her and chatted all the way to Rehovot. She went to learn English, is the oldest of 13 children, and was recently accepted to an architecture program in Israel. When we got to Rehovot we exchanged phone numbers, so maybe we'll see her again!

As we walked back towards Weizmann, Anna redirected us to her friend Shaun's house. We met and drank some water, then headed out to the pub on Hertzel for a late dinner. Anna is obsessed with edamame, so we had some as an apetizer. After the meal we all parted ways, and just before Ari, Jonathan and I entered Clore, something icky fell from the sky onto my shoulder. Its identity remains unknown but Jonathan was kind enough to remove it.

Ari went to bed, but I showed Jonathan and Stephen (who was still awake!) The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks (see my feeds, on the sidebar of this page), which is really amusing and which you should all check out, before going to bed myself.

Since you've all been suffering, enjoy a picture of the varied reactions of Jonathan and Anna to a french-fry machine on the train platform in Tel Aviv...