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Showing posts from July, 2015

MoDRN day 5--research platform presentations

Our group discovered just what we expected.  Many companies market their products as green with labeling etc without actually having been held to any green standards.  The only products that have been tested to meet green chemistry standards are those with the EPA safer choice label. So this last day of MoDRN at Baylor University was great.  All the groups worked on their platform presentations that morning and presented after lunch.  As far as the findings go, they were very interesting and unpredictable between product groups.  We found that the insect repellent marketed as green was indeed less toxic,  however, in the case of body wash green marketing did not exactly mean less toxic (to D.magna) For example, we showed these two examples of product marketing and asked the audience to pick which one they would buy if they were looking for a green product.  Everyone chose Simple Green, however, Odoban actually has the EPA safer choice logo meaning that it has been tested and hel

MoDRN HS research project Day 4

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So I will start today by reiterating how much of a blubbering goof I am. To begin with, I broke the salad tongs at lunch, apparently I do not know my own strength.  Then after halfway filling my soup bowl I dropped my entire bowl upside down back into the soup serving bowl...my true colors are showing!  Then to top it all off--today I rocked a new Hawaiian style maxi dress that my husband picked up for me yesterday.  I did a double take in the mirror this morning and briefly thought the cut was kinda weird so I threw a cardigan over it and went about my day.  It was only after spending a full day with normal, legitimate, intellectual people that I realized I had gone ALL DAY with my fabulous new dress ON BACKWARDS!  Needless to say I AM RIDICULOUS! Now, on with the science! Just For FUN! Adult Daphnia in beakers So today we began with a lecture over poster presentation and then had about 2 hours to begin working on data input using EXCEL and generating our platform presentati

MoDERN HS Teacher Workshop days 1-3

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So it hit me today in lab that I should be blogging about my experiences with MoDRN at Baylor University.  I am 3 days in but I will try to cover days 1-3 here and henceforth blog daily. So back in the 2014 school year I applied for the MoDRN teacher lab experience and research opportunity with Baylor University, Yale and 2 schools out of Washington.  I was chosen for the program and started this Monday July 6, 2015. Of course I can't just do something like this program gracefully and/or at 100% so for good measure I went ahead and sprained my ankle Thursday after the last day of ECHS at La Vega.  So I've been hopping around all week.  It honestly, other than being an annoyance, hasn't caused any issues for me. Monday was spent predominately on paper work and background lectures with Dr. Brooks from the Environmental Science dept at Baylor.  Tuesday we began again with a short lecture and were divided up into our lab groups and assigned to our PhD students.  The jist of