The topic of today’s study was Art, Science, and Nature. We began in the auditorium listening to a lecture about the Six Degrees of Separation. In this presentation, Leonardo de Caprio/da Vinci was connected to Barrack Obama after only 6 steps. These presentations ranged from the introduction of “vaults” and nanobots to Michael Jackson performing his hit, “Thriller”! Jackson, who has recently passed away, was said to have taken a type of drug that had a side effect of slowing the heart rate [leading to his death]. The presentation had an interesting theme to it, and learning about how Da Vinci and Michael Jackson alike, had incorporated both science and art in their lives was pretty interesting.
After the lecture, we all separated into our groups and were taken on lab tours! (: the first lab that Group Z went to was that of Dr. Fuyu Tamanoi & Dr. Jie Lu.
There we were shown pictures of the shadows of cells taken using a Holographic LUCAS [PICTURE]. Cells would be sandwiched and then illuminated which at that point would then get a picture taken. I thought that this invention was pretty awesome in that a normal cell phone or video camera is capable of projecting the shadow of a cell without even requiring a high-cost device. (:
We also visited another lab where we viewed breast cancer cells. Dr. Aydogan Ozcan & Sungkyu Seo showed us the cells up close through a light microscope [stained green] and they described how scientists all over the world were still searching for a cure for the disease but now incorporating nanotechnology. I thought that it was an intriguing spectacle to see these cells stained bright green and in a lab :D.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/cell-phone-prototype-of-lensless-77054.aspx
http://www.photonics.com/Content/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=36533
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_4_1X_What_is_breast_cancer_5.asp
http://kidshealth.org/kid/grownup/conditions/breast_cancer.html