Past research has shown that motion effects experienced in vehicles, including vibration, heat, noise, and air quality, can affect soldier performance. I supported two experiments that involved research of soldier performance during military operations on the move. The first experiment was conducted in an enclosed, moving HMMWV (High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, commonly called a Humvee.) I assisted in data collection for this experiment. The soldier’s task was to use driving simulation software and identify targets; in other words, he was driving a “virtual,” simulated vehicle, while actually riding in another real vehicle. My job was to sit in the enclosed part of the HMMWV with the soldier and record targets as the soldier identified them. I also assisted in data reduction.

The second experiment involved cursor control device use in a moving vehicle. Try to imagine what it would be like to use your desktop mouse in a vehicle that was going over all types of terrain. This is what we were interested in – how is performance on computer tasks affected by motion. I helped in planning the experiment by researching various cursor control devices and by deter

mining what tasks would be used to test those devices in the moving vehicle.

Military operations and vehicles of the future will involve more people doing work while on the move, especially computer-based work. It is important to know how soldiers will react to this movement, and how their performance will be affected by their physical conditions. This research will contribute to the design of future military systems.

One thing that I never realized before coming to ARL is how long the research process actually takes in the “real world.” Also, scientists test more than one variable at a time! In the seventh grade, all of our experiments are set up to only have one independent variable and one dependent variable. But out in the “real world” it is sometimes impractical to think that way.

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For this internship, I completed work in the field and in the office at Versar, Inc. My field research was conducted in stream sites in Frederick, MD and Towson, MD. At these stream sites, I worked with scientists from Versar, Inc. and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to collect data for the Maryland Biological Stream Survey (MBSS). Versar, Inc. is an environmental consulting firm located in Columbia, MD. At this office, I reviewed the field data we collected with the scientists working there, and worked on a paper about the effectiveness of public outreach techniques for the county of Frederick.

The MBSS is a project through DNR and the US Environmental Protection Agency that assesses the health of Maryland’s streams through a variety of collected data. Scientists visit hundreds of stream sites each year to collect data on Maryland’s streams. More specifically, data is collected on water quality (e.g., nutrients, acidity, dissolved oxygen, and water temperature), physical habitat (e.g., riparian zones, wood in streams, channelization, bank stability, overall habitat quality), and aquatic life (e.g., reptiles, amphibians, fish, benthic macroinvertebrates, and index of biotic integrity). The index of biotic integrity is an important tool for summarizing the health of streams and combines data of benthic macroinvertebrates and fish. The findings of MBSS are intended for access by a variety of people, including the general public, resource managers, and land use planners. My role in this research was to provide extra help collecting the data and to learn how this project could be applied to school curricula.

Frederick County has a research contract with Versar, Inc. and asked for more research information on effective outreach techniques that they can apply. I researched what techniques, if any, had proven to change local residents’ attitudes and behaviors towards environmental issues. I also looked for the effect of changes in environmental behaviors on actual environmental conditions. I

found that the public preferred gaining knowledge and information through media sources, but that knowledge alone did not necessarily impact behavior change. Instead, actual experiences with and in the environment - termed “intensive training” - were proven to lead to behavior change. Very little research has been done on the effects of behavior change on the environment, but a few studies have shown positive improvements to the environment after successful public outreach techniques.

This internship experience has several applications to education. Local research data from the MBSS could be used in classrooms to understand the health of local streams. Schools could also participate in monitoring and restoring local streams based on both data from the MBSS and their own collected data. My research on effective public outreach techniques can be applied to education to help understand how to help students change their behaviors to more environmentally friendly actions. This internship has been a good personal experience to me in that I have had a variety of experiences that I can apply as an educator.

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I interned for 8 weeks at the National Institute on Drug Abuse located at the Johns Hopkins Bayview campus in Baltimore City. I joined the research lab of Dr. William Freed, which is part of the division of cellular neurobiology, and worked under the direct supervision of Dr. Joseph Sanchez.

There are a number of neurodegenerative diseases that plague an ever-increasing part of our population. One possible way to treat diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s is to replace the neurons that no longer function [and therefore do not produce certain neurotransmitters] with transplanted neurons that can produce them. However, transplant studies have had very limited success in humans, and researchers are still developing optimal animal models for the technique.

The goal of my summer project was to characterize a cell line made from the brain of embryonic rats, and if it proved suitable, to pass this cell line on for transplant studies in rats. I had to become proficient at several new laboratory skills to accomplish this task. These included tissue-culturing techniques, immunofluoresence assays, and Western blots.

Our results showed that after starvation, this cell line became more neuronal in character. This was shown through the change in transcription patterns of several key protein products: the increase in tubulin, a neuronal marker, with the consequent decrease in Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein, a non-neuronal marker [after starvation]

Our results also showed that this cell line had the potential for success in transplant studies because of protein products that increased after starvation. The increase in Tyrosine Hydroxylase indicates the cell line could be used to study Parkinson’s because this protein product leads to the production of Dopamine, the neurotransmitter whose concentration severely decreases in Parkinson’s patients. The increase in Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase (GAD 65

and 67), indicates the cell line could be used to study epilepsy because this protein product leads to the production of GABA, the neurotransmitter whose concentration severely decreases in patients with seizures.

The work that I did at NIDA was extremely fulfilling from a scientific standpoint and definitely eye-opening for a teacher who has been out of the lab for quite a while. Thankfully, my mentor was extremely informative and even showed me simple activities I could do with my students that tied in with our research. I know that I made a tie between the research laboratory and the classroom that will benefit my students in many ways. Whether it be through a guest lecture or a trip to the lab, I know my students will be just as excited as I to learn about the interesting work done at NIDA.

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Research site: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Earth Observatory Team

Mentor: David Herring, Terra Mission Science Writer

Earth Observatory Chief Editor

What is the first thought that comes to your mind when you hear or see the word NASA? Is it a star, the moon, the sun, an astronaut, a spaceship? Nevertheless, whatever comes to mind is of huge proportion and justifiably so.

The NASA structure is made up of 11 sites and dozens of other related sites. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where I conducted my eight weeks of research, is of great magnitude. Located just outside of Washington, DC in Greenbelt, Maryland, Goddard is home to the nation's largest organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to learning and sharing their knowledge of the Earth, solar system, and universe. The mission of the Goddard Space Flight Center is to expand knowledge on the Earth and its environment, the solar system, and the universe through observations from space.

During my eight weeks at Goddard, I worked with the Earth Observatory Team. Earth Observatory is a website with the purpose to provide a freely-accessible publication on the Internet where the public can obtain new satellite imagery and scientific information about our Earth. The real benefit is that the site is useful to public media and educators.

Working with another Maryland Educators’ Summer Research Program intern, Emma Goff, and an intern/teacher from Johns Hopkins, our goal was to create classroom useful lessons to be published on the Earth Observatory Website. Sounds easy enough, right? Here is the catch: we were to use the Image Composite Editor Tool to design the lessons for middle and high school students. The ICE tool, as us NASA people like to call it, is designed to be an easy first step into the realm of Earth system science, image processing, data analysis, and satellite remote sensing. ICE is a java applet with several modes for analyzing remote sensing data, including color image composites with multiple wavelengths, display of time series, mathematical functions between multiple datasets, and analysis tools such as scatter plots and histograms. The ICE tool is still a work in progress and is easy for an undergraduate and above, though not impossible for middle and high school students. Our challenge was creating lessons around this tool to make it easy for our target audience.

After eight weeks at Goddard, we each had come up with our own lessons from areas of interest that we hand picked ourselves. My lesson was on the Urban Heat Island Effect. Urban areas with high concentrations of buildings, roads and other artificial surfaces retain heat, which leads to warmer surrounding temperatures and creates heat islands. Rising warm air, promoted by the increased heat, may help produce clouds that result in more rainfall around cities. My lesson used satellite imagery from the city of Houston.

I would like to thank David Herring and the entire Earth Observatory Team for their guidance, support, and patience. My experience at NASA will never be forgotten!

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I was employed as a teacher intern at Goddard Space Flight Center located in Greenbelt, MD from June 23, 2003 to August 18, 2003. The position involved creating a series of web-based lessons associated with the Earth Observatory site that is maintained by NASA.

One of the missions there at Greenbelt is to make the data collected by some of its satellites more available to the public. Each day, satellites high above the Earth’s surface collect a myriad of information about the earth such as cloud cover, ozone levels, land and sea surface temperatures, and chlorophyll and nutrient levels in the oceans. By collecting such data, earth scientists are able to make predictions about such process as melting ice caps, climate changes, sea level variations and many other dynamic changes that are occurring on Earth. These predictions also come with possible solutions for some of the problems arising from some of these changes.

One way to help the public become aware of these problems and solutions is through the use of the Earth Observatory web site. Two colleagues and myself created lessons dealing with the deforestation in Bolivia, Urban heat islands, and the electromagnetic spectrum. NASA hopes that these lessons will help students become more aware of some of the problems facing the Earth. The lessons allow students to come up with some possible solutions to some of Earth’s problems. NASA believes that by educating the public about what is happening on and around the Earth, people will be able to make informed decisions concerning the use of the Earth and its environments.

I view the time I spent as NASA as valuable. I plan to use the lessons created plus some existing ones in my classroom this year. These lessons will be yet another tool in making students aware of some of the problems facing them as they become responsible citizens. I feel that if students are going to be deciding how the Earth’s surfaces are to be used, they need to understand what impact (if any) those decisions will have on the land and life forms associated with these surfaces.

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Human parents have long desired the ability to predetermine the gender of their offspring. Although humans cannot do this, recent research shows that females in at least some bird species have some control over the gender of embryos in eggs that they lay. Because one cannot tell the gender of baby birds from their appearance (they have no external sex organs), this discovery came after researchers developed methods for sexing birds by examining samples of their DNA.

Current research on “sex manipulation” in birds is focused on discovering which species do this and why, i.e., how it increases the number of breeding offspring that they produce (the evolutionary “goal” of all organisms). My project, done with Dr. Scott Johnson in Biology, asked whether females of the house wren, a small common songbird, controlled the gender of their offspring. More specifically, we asked whether parent females were purposely putting female embryos in the last of the 7-8 eggs that they lay. In house wrens, last-laid eggs hatch 24-48 hours later than the rest of the eggs in the clutch. As a result, last-hatched chicks are always younger and smaller than nestmates and are out-competed by their siblings for food that parents bring to nests. Last-laid, last-hatched chicks grow slowly and remain small and scrawny throughout their life. Our hypothesis was that if females “knew” in advance that a specific offspring was going to be small and scrawny, they should make that offspring a female. This is because males of the species fight vigorously over territories and a small, scrawny male may never get a territory and breed. However, females, even if undersized still could breed.

Dr. Johnson conducts his research on a population of house wrens breeding in northern Wyoming. I spent June and July in Wyoming, working 7 days a week (unfortunately, wrens do not take weekends or holidays off, so we didn’t either). The goal of the field work was to obtain DNA from as many last-laid, last-hatched chicks as possible. Our first task was to identify the last-laid egg in each nest of about 75 nests. During egg-laying, we visited all nests daily and numbered each new egg with a felt tip pen. Then, to identify the chick from the last laid egg, we checked each nest 3-5 times daily after hatching began to determine which chicks came from which eggs. We marked chicks individually by clipping different toenails. When chicks were 7 days old, we took take a sample of their blood to extract DNA. Blood samples were then transported to TU for analysis in the lab of Dr. Brian Masters. Results thus far provide no evidence that last-laid eggs usually produce female offspring. The sex ratio appears to be 1:1.

In my biology classes, I place strong emphasis on having students thoroughly understand the concepts of natural selection and adaptation, as these concepts are the foundation of all of biology. Thus, I was especially pleased to be involved in research that was testing for adaptive behavior in animals, with a hypothesis based on the principles of natural selection. In the classroom, after I have completed a unit on adaptation and natural selection, it is my intent to have students apply what they have learned by formulating hypotheses as to when and why animals should manipulate the gender of their offspring to maximize their number of descendents. I will also relate my research experience to students

My summer research experience was all one might expect when doing “real” science. The fieldwork itself was not difficult, but the timing of the nest checks, particularly during hatching, was critical. Getting from nest to nest quickly and efficiently was very important. As with any field project, weather plays a role in your ability to “get the job done”. At times heavy rain would prevent me from getting to a nest in time to determine which egg the nestlings came from. Realizing that the data for that nest was lost and that all the time that had been invested up to that point was now for naught, was very frustrating. Many other things, too may to list here, can and do go wrong in the field. The rewards come in knowing that I met the challenges, dealt with the frustrations and got the work done.

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Maryland Breeding Bird Atlas Project of Kent County

Kristopher Jensen

This summer I was engaged by the Washington College Center for the Environment and Society, under the direction of Wayne H. Bell, Ph.D., to gather data for the Maryland Breeding Bird Atlas Project (BBA). The Center is located in Chestertown, Kent County, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Along with four other interns from various institutions, my duties included gathering data in the field, entering the data into two database systems, and developing a poster project of our summer activities.

This is the second year of a five-year project directed by the Maryland Ornithological Society (MOS) geared to updating the twenty-year old Atlas of Breeding Birds of Maryland and the District of Columbia (1980-87, C.S. Robbins and E.A.T. Blom, pub. 1996). Birds are dependent upon specific habitats for breeding and are an excellent macro-indicator of changes in the environment. The data from the first survey can be compared to the present survey. An evaluation can be made as to the success of present conservation activities and can also point to areas of future conservation effort.

For the purpose of the survey, Maryland and the District of Columbia are divided into 239 quadrangles, and further subdivided into “blocks” according to USGS topographical maps. Each block is approximately ten square miles. My field-work activities consisted of visiting thirteen of these “blocks” in Kent County at specified intervals to observe and record breeding activities of extant bird populations. I recorded the data based on specific behaviors such as nest building, birds holding territory, rearing of young, and/or fledged young. My office duties involved data entry into the Center’s database for educational purposes and Dr. Bell’s research, and entry of final data into the MOS database held at the Patuxent National Wildlife Center website. Finally, I worked with the other interns to create a poster exhibit of our activities.

The opportunity to be involved in field research allowed me to get re-acquainted with the importance of scientific observation

based on prescribed guidelines. I also was reminded of the need for collaboration and the fact that the scientific method is always generating new questions as it attempts to answer those previously posed (e.g. “How does West Nile affect our results”?).

I hope to use this experience to bring the use of first-hand observation and real data to my students, and connect middle school ecology and evolution curriculum directly to Maryland’s environmental research. I also rekindled a life-long interest in ornithology and have “adopted” two quarter-blocks in the county in which I reside to collect data for the duration of the five-year study, thereby using myself as a model for my students of how one can live with science and be an active participant in the scientific process.

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I began my research on June 25, 2003 at the National Institute on Drug Abuse located on the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Campus in Baltimore, MD. I had two different projects to complete. The first project was a behavioral study originated by Dr. Jonathan Katz. The on-going research is to try to find a drug that acts like cocaine but is not cocaine to be administered to cocaine abusers in rehabilitation clinics. The derivative drug needs to provide the drug abuser the dopamine spike but also allow the drug abuser to maintain a "normal" and productive lifestyle. The experiment involved six rats that were already trained to recognize the difference between cocaine and saline solutions. Depending on which lever the rats pushed, the rats’ choices indicated their preference for the derivative drug. For this experiment, I had to learn how to pick up the rats and then inject them with cocaine, saline, or a test drug using a syringe needle. I also had to learn how to set up for the experiment on the computer, so the computer could analyze the data from that day’s experiment. I then had to enter the data into a special computer program to create a graph of all of the data from all of the days’ experiments for a test drug.

The second experiment involved micro-dialysis. Rats had probes attached to their brain that would collect brain fluid, which was siphoned into collection tubes to be drawn up by a syringe and injected into the High Performance Liquid Chromotography instrument (HPLC) to be analyzed. This type of experiment would take all day. I had to collect the brain fluid from the collection tubes every ten minutes from the rats and inject the samples into the HPLC to be analyzed so that the printer could print out the peaks of the brain fluid. Once the rats were determined to have stable dopamine spikes, the rats would be injected by a derivative drug of cocaine to see how the drug affects the dopamine levels in the brain. The experiment specifically looked at the caudate, shell, nucleus accumbens, and the core regions of the brain.

As I was working on these experiments, I started to think about the number of people on drugs and then started to think about my students. I realized that I could apply my experience at NIDA to the classroom by having my students learn what drug abuse is, how it occurs, and what the drugs really do to the brain. Many students believe that drugs do not alter their brain in any way, and I would like to correct that misconception. I will begin my drug abuse unit by using the National Institute of Health's curriculum on the Brain and the Drugs. I will specifically focus on cocaine and then follow up with an extension activity where the students will research the most abused drugs, and then students will need to present their projects to their fellow classmates.

It took me a while to adjust to picking up the rats and then injecting them with a solution. I was afraid that rats might bite me because they do not like to be held and then be injected by a sharp object. I finally got used them and they finally got used to me during my last week at the internship. I learned so much from this internship and will feel even better when I teach the drug abuse unit to my students in the classroom. I enjoyed working in a laboratory and will never forget this summer's internship.

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Sensors capable of detecting biological and chemical weapons, decaying human corpses, and deteriorating bridges are in our near future thanks to the ongoing research at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. Sensors are not new. The technology has been around for over a decade. What is new is the method of creating these sensors and the possible applications.

I spent my summer working with George Murray at JHU-APL trying to create a chloride ion-selective electrode that would function in extremely basic solutions. The research was heavily rooted in the concepts of organic (polymer) chemistry and electrochemistry. I created the sensor using molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) and tested the sensor at varying pH levels.

Upon successful completion of the sensor, a paper will be published and the sensor itself will be used by the Maryland Department of Highways in their bridges. As cement deteriorates, it gives of chloride ions. Knowing this, the highway department can monitor the stability of its bridges using our sensor.

I hope to relate this research experience to my students in the coming year. I have gained valuable insight into the research process that I can share with aspiring scientists, and hopefully the connections I have made through the scientists at APL will last into the future and enable me to put students into their labs in coming summers.

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This summer I completed an internship at the American Red Cross Jerome H. Holland Laboratory for the Biomedical Sciences located in Rockville, Maryland. I worked in the Department of Immunology, which investigates the role of T cells and B cells in regulating responsiveness to self and nonself. The long-term goal of the department’s research is to control undesirable immune responses in autoimmune diseases, transfusions, and gene therapy.

Prior to my own research, scientists at the lab isolated a gene in the MS4a family, a large multi-gene family of proteins involved in signal transduction and calcium regulation within T cells. The isolated gene, known as MS4a4B, and its two closest family members, MS4a4C and 4D, have similar amino acid sequences.

The goal of my research was to clone 4C and 4D sequences to test whether they bind to the same antibody as 4B, thereby establishing how closely related the three genes are in function. The first step towards reproducing many identical copies of the same genes was to design primers for the two sequences, which would signal when to begin and end DNA replication so that only the targeted sequences were reproduced.

The target DNA was replicated through a process known as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), which allowed for exponential amplification of the sequences. After amplifying the target DNA, I ran some of the PCR products on a gel to verify that the sequences I produced were the right sizes. I then extracted the recombinant DNA from the gel and cloned it into a retroviral vector, putting the DNA in a form in which it could be replicated and expressed. I then inserted the vector containing the DNA into phoenix cells through a process known as transfection. The phoenix cells inserted the DNA into virus particles, which were then secreted into T cells.

The final step in the research, which I did not have time to implement, is actually running the antibody-staining tests. This study could lead to further understanding of the MS4a family and the differentiation of the functions of its closest family members. Understanding how these genes function may lead to developments in the treatment of autoimmune diseases.

I enjoyed my experience at the lab this summer. The work I completed was challenging, yet rewarding. I experienced what it is like to be a real scientist. I learned about many technical procedures, including PCR reactions, gel electrophoresis, transformations, and transfections. I gradually became more comfortable and efficient in implementing these procedures as time went on.

Although I did learn many scientific concepts and techniques, the most important thing I learned first hand from my research experience that I will take with me into the classroom is that communication is essential for learning and growth to occur. During the last week of my internship, I came to realize that all along, I had been using the wrong DNA-binding columns to purify my DNA samples, which would explain why my product yields were so low. I had assumed that all the columns were the same, and therefore did not think to ask which columns to use. At the same time, the scientists I worked with did not think to tell me which columns to use because it was so basic an understanding for them that they assumed I shared their knowledge.

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Kennedy and Parks (2000), in their review of the literature of science education, have determined that it is important for educators at all levels to ensure that the delivery of science instruction is meaningful and relative to the world in which we live. Additionally they recommend increased science study among elementary level teachers.  Recognizing that the importance of science and science study is not emphasized in schools particularly in the elementary grades, we participated in the Maryland Educators’ Summer Research Program in an effort to expand our knowledge base, bolster our confidence, and ensure that our science instruction was lacking neither content nor enthusiasm.

Our summer research project with Dr. Barry Margulies in the Biology Department at Towson University began with an intense crash course designed to provide us with the background information we would need in order to understand the science behind our research project: finding the ligand for the orphan UL33 G-protein coupled receptor of Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV). We were instructed in mini courses of cell biology, immunology, microbiology, molecular biology, and virology. In addition to the mini courses, our introduction to the project included reading current publications, speaking with other researchers in the field of virology, and reviewing the literature of not only our research interest, but also of projects that paralleled our target project. We met regularly with the rest of the members of the lab to discuss our progress (or lack thereof) and to propose new methods to attack our research question.

The experiments conducted in our research project included isolating cell membranes by creating micelles of cell surface membranes, infecting human foreskin fibroblasts through cell culture, and performing a time course of UL33 expression. In order to find the UL33 ligand, the cell membranes containing the UL33 G-protein coupled receptor were biotinylated, immunoprecipitated with an anti-UL33 antibody, and a Western blot was run to determine if we had identified the protein of interest.

In our nine weeks in the lab, we learned many aspects of research, the hardest lesson being that nine weeks of research and hard work does not always produce publishable results. Our experiment was re-worked several times, and we were not able to successfully identify the UL33 G-protein coupled receptor during our tenure in the Towson University Herpesvirus Laboratory.

Although we were not able to answer the research question we undertook this summer, we were able to make some connections between laboratory research and how to teach science better. Some of our conclusions were that research is a time consuming process and that it does not always provide instant gratification. We learned that a great deal of effort, care, and vigilance goes into any research. Careless errors may set the research back substantially. We learned that immediate success is unreasonable to expect. In examining our project, we discovered that the research hypothesis is not static; hypotheses and experiments need to be changed based on the results acquired. As novice researchers we came to realize that mistakes are inevitable, but always provide an opportunity to learn and may provide new insight into the research question.

Using what we learned in the research lab we designed research questions for both elementary and secondary students to explore during summer academic science programs.

Both groups of students spent a great deal of preparation time and experienced both success and failure in terms of proposed hypotheses for two different research questions. However, all students learned that scientific research is a process that is more than a series of steps that are listed in a textbook. The summer research experience provided us with an unequivocal opportunity to learn more about real world applications of science. We will be able to incorporate scientific inquiry not only in our science curriculum instruction, but also in other interactions with school-aged students.

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I spent the summer of 2003 working with the Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, MD with their Environmental Sensing team. The basic goal of this team is to design devices that will detect biological and chemical hazards facing soldiers in the field. The projects with which I most closely worked utilize a physical property known as Raman scattering, which involves the way molecules interact with light. When the molecules are close to certain surfaces of coinage metals like gold and silver, the effect becomes more pronounced, and it earns a new name, Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering.

Phase one of the project was finishing as I entered the internship. Dr. Troy Alexander was able to show strong evidence that SERS is a viable option for environmental sensors. For example, he showed that spores of several species of bacteria produced consistent SERS “fingerprints,” but that they were unique enough to distinguish between similar strains of the same bacteria. Dr. Jay Pendell Jones is working to find a method for utilizing SERS that is cheap, portable enough to be carried by a soldier, and effective at analyzing the amount as well as the type of hazard present.

I worked most closely with Dr. Pendell Jones, helping him try several methods for creating SERS-ready surfaces. The process started with Dr. Pendell Jones brainstorming an idea to try. Next, I would create some chemical mixture in the lab, manipulating whatever variable (pH, proportions, etc.) that was necessary. These samples were put into a machine that determines its absorption spectrum (high tech way of telling what color it is), and if it was right, we could shoot a laser at it and see if SERS happened. By the end of the summer, we had eliminated several possibilities. Although we did not find the ideal procedure by the end of the summer, my work was able to speed up the investigation.

Over the course of a summer, I was able to participate in real scientific investigation, and it was invigorating. I worked on smaller scales than my mind normally comprehends, and I contributed a small part to a large, very important project. I feel confident that I will be able to give students a more realistic perception of what careers in science involve, and just how rewarding they can be.

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This summer, I worked for the Cooperative Oxford Laboratory as an Intern for the Maryland Educators’ Summer Research Program. This lab is operated through the cooperative efforts of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It is located in Oxford, Maryland. I worked with the personnel in the Wildlife Health division of DNR. My responsibilities included responding to sea turtle and marine mammal strandings, gathering blood samples from colonial nesting birds, and responding to fish kill events.

Responding to a marine mammal or sea turtle stranding required that I gather information about the condition, physical characteristics, and tissue samples. A full necropsy would also be performed. Using this information, the stranding coordinator determined a cause of death for the animal. On occasion, only a possible cause of death could be indicated. My work with the sea turtle tagging required sea legs. Pound netters on the Chesapeake Bay would call and let DNR know they had an incidental catch of a sea turtle. Responding to this call required that physical characteristics regarding the turtle be recorded. Blood was taken and several blood smears made. A tissue sample was collected and preserved for genetic studies. Finally two different types of tags were applied. A metal, numbered pinch tag was applied to each flipper. A PIT tag was applied under the skin in one flipper.

I also participated in Ocean Awareness week in Ocean City, MD and Lewes, DE. This is an outreach sponsored by the National Aquarium in Baltimore. During one day of the outreach, I spoke with individuals who visited the Ocean City Convention Center regarding marine mammals and sea turtles. The second day of the outreach was spent at the harbor in Lewes, DE. The purpose was to educate the public about marine mammal and sea turtle observation laws.

When fieldwork was not being done, I worked on a stranding guide for sea turtles, a brochure about whales, and a brochure about sea turtles. Though this project was not finished when I left to return to teaching, I feel it was a solid start. I hope new interns to DNR will find this helpful, as there had been no guide for sea turtle strandings for DNR.

In the course of teaching this school year and in the future, I plan to have students evaluate recovery plans for several endangered species. Each student group will be required to read a recovery plan for an animal and summarize their findings in a brochure. These brochures will be made available to the public by placing them in the school and public libraries. I hope students will begin to see how protection laws help save wildlife, and why this is important to do. I want the public to understand the hazards humans present to the animals in the wild by activities they take for granted like recreational boating and even swimming. I also plan to continue assisting as needed with the Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

Overall, it was a learning experience. I am interested to see if the stranding numbers for this year have been reduced in the state of Maryland and Nation wide. I have shared images of the necropsies performed with out human and animal physiology teacher. She will be using them in conjunction with her teaching. If asked if I choose to repeat this summer experience my answer will be a definite yes. I enjoyed learning many of the blood collection techniques and how to perform the necropsies. Though many necropsies were smelly to say the least, it was a good review of anatomy and will greatly assist a fellow colleague.