WOOHOO!

Even more spit.

I haven't spoken about spit in a while and I thought it time to remedy that. In case you're new here, part of my PhD research involves collecting saliva to assess particular hormones released when people are distressed (because I stress them out - muah ha ha haaaa). In case you're not new, well sorry you're having to read about this again!

Not my actual samples, but it kinda looks like this [via].

Yesterday I finally ran the assays for the rest of my samples. I've been waiting a while for this as it's supposed to be my last study of my PhD. Unfortunately it's taken over a year to get to this point, as for some reason watching a distressing film and spitting into a tube does not seem to be a popular experiment to volunteer for. In case you are very grossed out at this point, I will mention that the samples all get irradiated to kill any germs and we still wear gloves anyway. So no touching of spit actually occurs. Also to make sure I don't gross you out I definitely won't talk about all the FLOATIES in the samples...

... err anyway. Now I'm a bit nervous to actually run the statistics - what if it doesn't work? It has been my plan to finish my thesis by November 12 (AKA arrgh-no-more-scholarship-must-hand-in-dreaded-thesis-day). However if my experiment is a total dud I instead will have to run another one or two experiments, taking my PhD into mid next year. I do not particularly care for that option.

Either way I will keep you all updated since I'm sure you're all dying to know what I've found in people's spit.

P.S. Totally unrelated to this post, something quite unexpected happened - I was voted the Featured Blogger for August over at 20SB! Thank you so much to the people who voted for me, I really appreciate it. An extra special thanks goes to Little Missy Me who nominated me: you're awesome! :)

Where have you been young lady!?

scolding old lady from here

Well firstly, thank you for calling me 'young'. Sometimes I feel quite old at 26, so it's nice to be called that (don't scoff older people). Secondly, don't be concerned, the rumours aren't true: I did not actually turn into a zombie and I haven't been roaming the streets in search of brains ever since. The fairly boring truth is that our internet at home has had a lot of issues of late (still dodgy unfortunately), and I've been trying to be studious at uni and not write blog posts when I'm supposed to be PhD-ing.

So just a little bit of a recap on what I've been up to of late, based on three areas...

Science: Well, unfortunately still nobody has been signing up for my experiments. I suspect it's due to all the strict preparation requirements to give a saliva sample to test for cortisol; you must wake up between 6am and 8am, can't have had alcohol 12 hours prior to the experiment, can't have had caffeine a few hours before either, can't have eaten in the last hour, can't be on most types of medication, can't be a smoker... etc. The waking up between 6am and 8am would be my biggest problem along with the no caffeine, so even I wouldn't participate in my experiment! I'm hoping at the beginning of next semester when all the keen beans (i.e., nerds) are excited about experiments, I will get more participants. In the mean time I've just been trying to write papers and parts of my thesis.

Spouses: I only have one of those, but things are going good! It's actually our one year wedding anniversary on Sunday - woohoo! Our main celebration was actually when we went to the Blue Mountains a few weeks ago, but we're still going to have a small celebration this weekend by going out to dinner Saturday, and some sort of outing Sunday (we're thinking the zoo). Since the first year is traditionally supposed to be paper, I have made a present which I will show you after my Husband's seen it. 

Silliness: Not too much in the way of silliness lately. At least on a large scale. You'll be happy to know I still manage to fit in a small amount of silliness into each day. Or if I can't manage it, sometimes Husband contributes which is nice - not that long ago he decided to show me he could jump backwards down the stairs (our apartment is at the top of three flights of stairs). I, more concerned than impressed, yelled out "don't" and at that exact moment he went tumbling down. Thankfully no trips to the hospital were required, just a slightly bruised ego.

Well there you have it. 

 

What have I missed/what have YOU been up to lately? 

Not a very good post.

Well, in that it's really only a few bits and pieces of what I've been up to, instead of a particular story. So imagine we're catching up for a coffee (or sugarfree energy drink) and you have asked me: what's been going on lately? 

Unfortunately, nobody has yet signed up for my experiment which is a bit of a bummer. I suspended it for half of last semester to sort out biohazard issues, but now they're all fine it'd be nice if people wanted to actually do my experiment! In the mean time, I've been working on statistics and writing up my second paper (and kind of ignoring for now my first paper that needs re-working due to being rejected) which I'm finding interesting at least.

I finished reading the book The Passage. I feel this is worth mentioning, as firstly it was a really interesting book, and secondly because I was so enthralled by it that it took over a few of my days so I wasn't doing much else in that time! I'm looking forward to the second and third parts of the series.

Finally, my tax return came in on Saturday and so I bought an iPad 2! It is pretty. I am planning to do a post shortly on some really cool science/nerdy apps that I have come across.

So pretty...

Well now I should probably get back to work! Sorry for the lack of posts lately peeps, but stay tuned :)

My Experiment Worked!

...well kind of. I haven't finished collecting data yet (stupid saliva being a biohazard delaying my experiment), but since I have to present what I've got so far at the conference in NY I've had to analyse it already.

Professor Frink, my favourite nerd

And things actually happened! While you might expect that when you have a reasonable idea, and test it, that it should work out as expected, this actually happens a lot less than you'd think. Then you have to set out to look for why things didn't happen how you wanted. So for this to work is very exciting (well for me at least). In short (see here for longer explanation of my experiment), people that experienced a greater cortisol (stress hormone) change following watching a film, were more likely to have false memories of the film a week later. Also, those who experienced a greater cortisol change were also more likely to report more distress symptoms in the following week too. HOORAY! Well, not hooray for people having distress symptoms (nothing too bad don't worry), but considering I thought they'd be related and they are, I'm very happy. Hopefully that made sense and you can see why I'm excited.

Or you can see why I'm a giant nerd.

More spit please.

[via]

For those of you who couldn't get enough of it last time, I'm going to talk about spit again. So as a brief recap, in my experiment I collect spit from participants as a way of assessing whether they are stressed or not (more detail here). What I didn't tell you last time however, is that in Australia, saliva is considered a Risk Level 2 BIOHAZARD (insert suspenseful music and shrieking here). This means that a lot of extra precautions need to be considered when collecting it, and analysing it. So yet again I have to trek out to another uni for help analysing the samples after they've been irradiated (by using an ominous sounding thing called the cobalt cave), which I'm doing on Tuesday.

The funny thing is, anyone can spit on the ground (although it's generally frowned upon), but put spit in a tube at a university and it's a biohazard. I also had to go to biosafety course to learn about GERMS. Now, I was a bit of a germophobe in the past, but I was able to get over it mostly - I do catch public transport after all. However it is back with a vengeance baby.

Don't worry germ toys, we're still cool though.

Seriously WHEN is somebody buying me these!? You can get them HERE.

Crazy week - over.

So the long and super busy week I was quite worried about is finally finished. I had to give a two-hour lecture (my first lecture ever!) from 6pm - 8pm Wed night, get up much earlier than usual to go to Spit Camp the next day (today), and somehow in this week also fit time to prepare for said lecture, teach my regular tutorial classes, do experiments, work on papers, and see students anxious about a soon-to-be-due assignment. You can imagine why me thinking about all this was getting me a bit frazzled. 

ELISA

What ended up happening though, was that I gave myself permission to work only on the things that were immediately important this week. This meant no experimenting, and no paper writing. I ended up being a lot less stressed, and I have to say that it really ended up being an enjoyable week. Yes, I was nervous about the lecture, and spent a huge amount of time preparing for it, but that preparation paid off I think. Although it finished a bit early (which I doubt the students were all that sad about), I found it fun and the students said nice things about it. You end up feeling very important when everyone is listening to you and thinking you're an expert on something (if only they knew...)! My tutorials turned out to be fine, and actually quite amusing. Also, while I was not looking forward to getting up early and finding my way to a foreign university - SPIT CAMP WAS GREAT! The other attendees said it was fantastic and we all learned a lot. I felt very science-y learning this technique for my cortisol analysis - it's called Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay - how science-y does that sound (yes I do know it's actually a very commonly used technique and many people learn it in undergrad, but why must you always try to bring me down man?). Another plus of the day: morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea (caaaaake) was all catered. Free food always impresses the PhD students!

Additionally, I have to give mad-props (is that even how you say that!?) to Husband for being so understanding this week, and doing extra cooking and cleaning while I fell into an exhausted heap each night.

I know all my PhD work is waiting for me next week, but I have the Easter long weekend to look forward to before that! YAY! 

P.S. Unfortunately I gave up on my no-caffeine attempt for a couple of days... but it was justified I feel.

SPIT.

The current experiment I am conducting involves looking at susceptibility to false memories after viewing a stressful or neutral film. One of the variables I'm interested in looking at is the hormone cortisol, which gets released into the body when a person is stressed. The short version of one of my hypotheses is that since excessive cortisol levels can impair memories, if people are more stressed and release more cortisol they might have worse memories for some aspects of the film. This may make them more likely to accept false information about the film into their memories, which I'm going to implant - muah ha ha haaaaa.

spit collection supplies from here

What this means though, is I need to collect saliva samples to run analyses to look for differences in cortisol levels. This IS as gross as it sounds. Participants spit down straws into tubes, and I store them in the fridge until I can freeze them for later analysis. You'll be happy to know I wear gloves. The most disgusting part is definitely the spit noises! Oh and floaties.

What I am excited about though - is spit camp. This is a whole day where you get to learn the saliva analysis techniques and even get to test your own sample. It was initially suggested by one of my associate supervisors that I go to one in Europe while I was there on my honeymoon. The sad thing is I actually considered it - luckily my primary supervisor told me not to! So instead I have worked on one being organised here in Sydney, and it is next week! It will be a very long day - 9am to 5pm at Macquarie Uni, but I really am looking forward to it. :)

I told you I'm a giant nerd!