Happy St. Patricks day everyone! This is your ultra special St. Patrick’s day themed blog! ... Don’t believe me?... well, OK, it’s actually not St. Patrick’s day themed. How in the world could I blog about St. Patrick’s day. I don’t even know who he is... it’s kinda like St. Valentine’s day, or Flag day or something... why is it even there? I suppose St. Patrick’s day does have a historical background that we know about, but historians aren’t even sure who St. Valentine really was. He must have been pretty awesome though...
Well there’s one thing I do know. We celebrate Irish culture on this day by eating Irish food, buying green hats and chocolate coins, pinching people, and dying the Chicago river green. I bet the Irish people in America really appreciate that. It probably reminds them of home, you know? Where the rivers are green and everybody has a pet leprechaun.
Ok, I’ll stop hating on St. Patrick’s day now... They don’t really celebrate it in Germany, which makes sense. They don’t celebrate Pi day either, which makes me sad...
In other news, I did stuff recently...
Neue Praktikum!
I am finally working again. After a long and relatively pointless few months visiting classes at the University, and then a month of doing literally nothing, I finally have started working at the Forest Genetics department in Göttingen. I started on the 1st of March, so I’ve been here for a couple weeks already, and I’m enjoying it quite a bit. I spend most of my time just learning about the different methods and concepts that I need to know to have an idea of just what it is that I am doing, and then when there is some lab work that needs to be done, I help or watch, or they let me do it while they watch. It’s not terribly exciting, but I find it really interesting. If you find sciency things terribly boring go ahead and skip the next part. I’ll let you know when you can start reading again.
Forest genetics: I honestly had no idea what it was, I just applied for it randomly because I needed to do something and it looked strange and obscure. Well, it is. So I guess I got what I wanted. The main objective of most of the research here has to do ecology, but the research is done through genetics. We study diversity within populations of trees and among populations of trees, and by diversity I mean the genetic diversity of certain species. For instance if we wanted to study the diversity among populations, we would take samples from a specific species of tree near Göttingen and compare them with other samples from other areas in Germany. Some people are even doing studies that compare samples throughout Europe. These studies are mostly funded by the EU.
What does does it mean when I say “we study genetic diversity” you might ask. Well this means that I am looking at the DNA of the tree, and comparing it with the DNA of other trees and measuring how many differences there are between the two. A single difference between genomes is called a “polymorphism,” and there are usually tons and tons of polymorphisms between individuals, too many to count by hand every time. In order to study diversity effectively we need to compare small parts of the genome, which involves copying DNA in vitro using process called PCR. Through this process we end up with a large number of identical, but much smaller pieces of DNA.This basic technique is used in many fields of study, because it allows us to study the genome without actually having to know the exact sequence. In forest genetics we can compare the small cut outs of DNA and identify differences within one species, because each individual would have a different DNA “fingerprint,” and thereby we can quantify genetic diversity within or among populations of plants. The more different the fingerprints are the more diversity there is. In forensics this technique would be use to genetically “fingerprint” a human individual and compare it to the samples found at the crime scene. They also use this method to identify family members, because your DNA fingerprint would be very similar to your family’s, or even to map out similarities among species and find out which ones share common ancestors.
IF YOU FOUND THIS BORING, YOU CAN START READING NOW. So basically I’m learning techniques that I will be able to apply if my path of study relates to genetics in any way at all, so it’s pretty practical. Most of the work is just working with pipettes and moving very small amounts of liquid around, haha.
CeBIT, Köln, und Karneval!
If you are reading this you probably know that a couple weekends ago I had a lot of things going on at once. I spent Saturday with my friend in Hannover at the CeBIT computer convention. It’s one of the biggest ones in Europe and is mostly for companies to display new products and for business to get their business done, but there was quite a bit for the average person as well. I got to see some 3D TVs and 3D computers, as well as the 3DS, which was cool. There was a couple of nifty computer programs being displayed, and then there was a big PC computer gaming worldwide tournament, where we watched the finals of the Starcraft 2 tournament. The games were really exciting and it was definitely worth it considering Hannover is so close to where I live.
After CeBIT we went back to Ebergötzen to take part in the small Karneval celebration going on there. We got in our costumes (pictures available on facebook), and spent the evening drinking beer and listening to German Karneval songs that get stuck in your head very easily, just like any other German celebration pretty much. There was also some dances put on by three different groups. One was a more traditional can-can type thing, and one was a hip-hop dance group, and, I mean those two had some good looking girls in it, but it was nothing compared to the grand finale. The last dance group is the Over-50 soccer team. A bunch of middle aged men dressed in skimpy women’s clothing and wigs came out and gave us a show, which was just ridiculous. It was so funny, especially since my host dad was one of them, haha.
The weekend doesn’t end there though, oh no. Early Sunday morning we headed out to Köln, the biggest place to celebrate Karneval in Germany. We spent Sunday night in Bonn catching up with the other people in the program that were there and got up early to head to Köln and see the parade. That Monday was “Rosenmontag” which is the most important day of Karneval. There is a huge parade in Cologne on this day, and it was a must-see. The parade started at 11:11 and we saw a large chunk of it. We spent a lot of time watching on a corner in a huge crowd of people dressed in costumes like us. As the floats go by they throw candy at you, and you try and catch it. The candy isn’t crappy bubble gum and tootsie rolls either. This stuff is legit chocolate and gummies. Good stuff, but after 4 hours of watching the parade and discovering that it wasn’t even half way over, we decided to head back. We really wanted to eat dinner, because none of us had had lunch, and all the restaurants in Cologne were either full, or too expensive, so we went back to Bonn. We hung out for the rest of the evening and went to a club for a while, and then eventually fell asleep at 3 a.m. or so Tuesday morning. Zac and I woke up early to head back to Göttingen, and spent most of the day traveling, and relaxing, because the next morning we both had to work. Overall it was a great weekend, I had a fantastic time, although I was exhausted afterwards.
Ende
Well that’s it for now. I can’t say I did much except for that. Last weekend I had a spontaneous trip to Marburg, another university town about an hour and a half away. It was pretty cool, there’s basically a castle on top of a huge hill, where most of the old part of town is. We took an elevator to get up there, which was pretty nifty. It’s a very quaint and pretty town with typical German Fachwerkhäuser and small, cobblestone alleys.
To close I’d like to ask you to pray for those that are victims to a terrible natural disaster in Japan. There are many families that have been left heart broken and traumatized by the events of this week. I want to pray to give those families strength and faith, and that no further damage will be done by the nuclear disaster, which I’m sure is reminding many of the older people of the horrors they experienced as a young child from Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And on that depressing note, I will close.
Skez
