When a scientist makes a discovery or completes an experiment, they communicate their results by publishing a paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. This peer-review process can be quite challenging, involving months of back-and-forth editing, new analyses, and potentially rejection. These peer reviewers are usually experts in the same field as the author, and provide critical feedback to improve the […]
Building an IEC Fusion Reactor
This may sound crazy, but it’s been my dream to build a nuclear reactor since I was a kid. I started college as a physics major, but switched when I discovered biology. Now that I’m working in the UPS Physics Department, the stars have aligned and I finally have an opportunity build a fusor! What’s a fusor, you ask? It’s […]
Designing a 3D-printed flow chamber
I’m working on a small, water-tight chamber to measure how flow affects feeding kinematics in Vorticella, a single-celled protist that adheres to surfaces. There are some real design constraints, namely that it must be small enough to accommodate the relatively short (10mm) working distance of the objective lens we’re using. I designed a prototype in Solidworks. The clear interrogation area […]