Final Exam Week Approaches

The spring semester is coming to an end, and I realize that taking too many classes doesn’t work for me. One reason was that I didn’t get to spend that much time with my kids this part of the year. For example, the only time I saw my oldest son was at night when he was sleeping or in the morning heading off to school. I spent most of my time at school, I felt like I ate, slept, and worked at the campus. Although it did payoff in the end, the grades I got were acceptable before the final exam results. Good Luck to all fellow interns for exam week. I look forward to next semester in the fall, and plan to work on a car to broader my knowledge in repairing things like Fix-It-Felix, Jr.

 

Figure 1. The picture shows the Scantron form in action for a exam. Again good luck to the lab interns who have final exams.

On the other hand, my knowledge around the bio department is more of a natural reaction. For instance, I can walk into the lab and mix, autoclave, and pour media; moreover, I can prepare sterilize test tubes, sample and inoculate plates, and count CFU’s if I have previous incubated plates from the previous days of sampling. It seems like a lot in one day, but it is a natural outcome due to the hours put into the internship. If I had time to do something else after the project, I would autoclave bio waste of the biohazard bags, help Kim setup labs or disassemble labs, wash dishes, or other tedious work. I know I used the word “tedious,” but I meant tiresome and not boring like the definition. The constant pace of pouring three hundred plates of TSA liquid would be the meaning of the word “tedious” in my sentence above

I have sampled this week the Handicap buttons, lab work benches, and the classroom Apple IPads. I thought the handicap buttons would have more CFU’s, but the result showed that the inside bathroom buttons were mostly contaminated. The sun beaming down on the campus could be another reason for low counts on the handicap buttons. The UV rays can disrupt their DNA which it codes for their function as a microbe. Furthermore, the temperature for the week of Phoenix, AZ has been an average of 93°F for the past three days. Thus, the temperature converted to Celsius is 33.3° C. In conclusion, bacteria want moisture, warmth, and nutrients; they existed more in the bathroom because the moisture from maybe completely dried hands and locked in moisture from the outside temperature. The air outside is dry and the sun hitting the handicap door maybe messed with the results. The updated bar graph below in Figure 2 show them in order from highest to lowest.

Figure 2. It looks like the lab workbenches of the DB building are less in CFU's. Thus, the highest is still drinking fountains, and soap dispensers came in second. In conclusion, outside objects in Arizona seem like they pose likely no harm for contacting or gaining transient flora on the hands.

Don't Kill My Vibe

I found a useful website known as Khan Academy, and it has thousands of sorted videos for students. For instance, I needed a quick review of chapters in organic chemistry and this site had videos in order of concepts, and it was easy to navigate. I hope this information is useful to other students. In other words, I think visual learners like me would find this tip really helpful other than reading a whole chapter before a quiz or test. Furthermore, the videos are no longer than 12 minutes. There is no catch or some type of fee to pay, so just hit the “Learn” link to open more options.

https://www.khanacademy.org/

            The soap dispenser in the bathrooms was sampled in a total of forty. I, also, recorded in my journal what genders was being sampled from. Luckily, I had an even split of twenty women and twenty men. Thus, I made a graph of the dirtiest soap dispensers of men vs. women. Maybe somebody in the lab can pursue this project of soap dispensers between men and women. Overall, the soap dispenser took second place of the average CFU’s with drinking fountains still being first. I sampled this week the door handle of bathrooms around campus, and they came in second. Bathroom door handles knocked soap dispenser beneath it. Figure 1 shows the updated graph of fomites. Figure 2 shows the soap dispensers between men and women.

Figure 1. The standard deviation seems high on both the drinking fountain and bathroom door handles. I still look forward to adding more place or objects to sample in the future.

Figure 2. The men in the blue seem just slightly above the women in the red. The button to dispense the foamy soap was sampled and nothing else.

            I notice that maybe men are just a little more covered in microbes than women. I notice in one of my microbiology labs that since I’m just sampling without identifying the colonies. It can be that the colonies I grew were resident flora bacteria of the hands. Thus, the removal of transient flora bacteria can be washed off, but the resident flora will just reduce the number of bacteria. The most prevalent bacteria on human skin are Staphylococcus epidermis. This could be an explanation of the colonies growing on the mechanism button of dispensing soap. For example, scrubbing with soap, a pair of hands, and maybe a brush is just moving the resident microbes around and lightly removing them.

         

   I, also, compared the classroom desk of buildings. Figure 3 above show the comparison between mostly all the highly used buildings holding classrooms. Furthermore, I have noticed that after one class another class will be rushed in on some circumstances. Some students bring sanitizing wipes like Lysol, but they only remove about 99.99 % of germs. It specifies that it only removes, basically, only gram positive microbes and not gram negatives or coliforms.

Please Excuse My Absence

I had been sampling and counting plates, since I came in for the first week of this month, but it came to a halt last week when I missed the whole week. It was like a daily routine before my absences in the lab. A tedious workload that has its benefits is considered the duty of student interns.

  I, furthermore, notice that one of my flaws in the Bio department (dept.) is pouring plates for TSA media. For instance, Josh, Jose, and I poured plates and took one solidified plate from each batch that each person had made and let it sit above the window niche. The next days showed that I had colonies of growth, and Jose was second for growth. I believe that my plate had growth in only one day, and Jose was about 2-3 days of growth. Matt asked, “If I was talking or taking breaks from pouring?” and this gave the idea that I should start pouring in the filtered hood. In other words, I lack the skill of pouring media. The video below shows how to simply pour media in the lab, but I don’t believe we drop antibiotics or x-gal into the hot liquid.

 

The most exciting target for those weeks was soap dispenser buttons in the bathrooms. Also, the desk that student sit at during lecture was sampled. I walked around the campus of the English dept., math dept., and chemistry dept. for sampling. I would have to admit I saw a few instructors from the bio dept. all over campus like Rosati and other instructors who know of my project. I’m, basically, pushing a cart around with a miniature orange biohazard trash container, sterile swabs, and test tubes. I still get stares like in the elevators and other places where I’m swabbing, but I ensure that I’m pursuing a project or experiment.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t accepted to the Estrella Mountain Conference in May. The second week of this month was a total failure for my internship because I was absent throughout the week. I did, however, attended my scheduled classes to keep up with my grades. I have updated my graph of my project and it looks like the soap dispensers were, also, high in average colony counts.

Figure 1. The graph needs to have more bars of objects, and it will look more professional. Hopefully, I will have more places to sample.

 I read from an online source that this more traditional dispenser is preferred because of its easy foaming germ-killing power. It, also, dispenses 1,700 times. Thus, it can serve a range from 300-850 people depending on the number of dispensing during hand washing techniques. This is a huge area of transferring microbes because you would think that the soap from hand contact and water would lower the count in that area. My educated guess is that dirty hands with either resident flora or transient flora make contact with the button, and no further cleaning techniques are pursued on the buttons around campus. Thus, the accumulation of microbes occur with more transfers.