Correction

Apparently Eastern Tennessee State is ranked 72 in the country. They did have some pretty solid players although they were outmatched across the board. Apparently this weekend is a mini-tournament to qualify for the National Indoor Tournament in a few weeks in Seattle. OSU plays Miami tomorrow for the bid I am trying to decide if I am going to go. Miami is not as highly ranked as I would have thought (about 70 as well) which is surprising for being a warm school and the amount of talent in the state of Florida.

Buckeye tennis

Taking some time to relax this afternoon and go to my first Buckeye tennis match. The indoor facility is only about a 5 minute drive from my apartment so I thought I would head over to watch their meet today vs Eastern Tennessee. It wasn't a very close meet (OSU is ranked 4th in the country and ETSU is unranked) but it was fun to watch some tennis again. Definitely a good break before I head back into and work on my presentation some more which is sucking my life away. Next Sunday 6th ranked Georgia Bulldogs come to town so hopefully I can study a lot for my Tuesday test beforehand so I can go to the meet AND watch the Superbowl. We shall see however.

9 year old bicycle kick

So Barcelona is known for their famous youth academy called "La Masia" that produced greats like Leo Messi, Xaxi, Iniesta, and many many more. This video of a 9 year old producing a bicycle kick in a youth game just proves that this place will continue to turn out talent. I'm not sure how they do it but whatever approach they take to soccer could be applied to so many more things such as school, music, and other extracurricular activities.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/video/espnfc/video?id=1312831&cc=5901

Snow at the Colony Square Apartments

Can't see the enormous flakes in the photo but the snow has really come down today. Traffic on Olentangy River Road was about 25-30 mph on a 45 mph road.

New Star Wars Director?

So recently we found out that Disney bought the rights to the Star Wars franchise and were making 3 more episodes. As a kid I loved Star Wars (nerd yeah I know, deal with it) so I was surprised but happy to hear the news. Today they announced JJ Abrams is going to direct this movie. After a quick google search I realized that JJ Abrams indeed directed many quality movies and television series. He directed "Alias", a great action TV series, "Lost", one of my favorites until it got crazy and I never actally managed to finish the series, "Fringe" which is another freaky TV show, "Revolution" which is a new hit series that I personally liked, and numerous movies such as a few of the "Mission Impossible" movies. He also happened to direct the most recent and also the upcoming Star Trek movies. Now the last one was awesome (I saw it at midnight even though I'm not a Star Trek fan and it was awesome) but it is very funny that the Star Trek director is directing Star Wars. Star Trek vs Star Wars was a common lunch table argument back in elementary school and my high school "Pops" concert one year had a "Space" theme where one of the sketches is people dressed as characters from both movies get into an argument at a convention. I streamed "Pops" live on my computer that year I happened to be stuck in a hotel for tennis. Anyway the irony of the situation amused me and I thought I would write about it. Now back to preparing my presentation for Wednesday.

Snow in Columbus

Not much but enough for a photo.

A new low?

Kicking a ball boy? Seriouslyyyyyy
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/video/espnfc/video?id=1310799&cc=5901

Survival of the fittest

So today it is about 10 degrees here in Columbus but as I went over the river to one of my classes I noticed a large group of ducks still in the river. If you can see you will notice large chunks of ice along the shore line of the river (which has also alarmingly decreased in water level again). I'm not sure what these ducks are doing but you would have thought they would have gone home for winter. Also as surprising as this is the ducks still sited in Mirror Lake as thousands of drunk college students jumped into the lake. Please refer to the "Mirror Lake" in November for a refresher.

Pictures of cells

So here are some photos of my preliminary work in my lab. The first photo is a bright-field microscope shot of 293 T cells which are immune cells grown from embryonic kidney tissue that are good for transfection (infection) studies such as the one we are doing in the Wu lab.
 

The second photo is a fluorescence microscope photo of 293 T cells that were not infected with a virus. The virus contains a gene called GFP that produces a protein that glows green so you know when cells have been infected and you can thus measure the level of infectivity. Photo 2 is a negative control (was not infected) and thus it accurately shows no green proteins.

 

 This photo contains cells that have been infected and as you can readily see some of them are glowing green. After this we put the cells through a machine to see the infectivity rate and we go from there.

 I thought these photos were kind of cool looking and a good chance to give everyone a very basic idea of what I am doing here. Hope you enjoyed!

Important life lesson

Always good to challenge yourself by putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation and seeing how you handle it. I think it is important to regularly challenge your own beliefs as well and so you do not become ignorant. In addition, you might just learn something new that will open your eyes.