I did at least one good thing today. I went to the biannual VASE dinner meeting. VASE is the Vermont Academy of science and engineering. A couple of years ago my friends and I helped create a science Santa program that made small grants to schools to buy science equipment hands-on experimentation. At tonight's meeting we got to meet some of the recipient students and teachers from those first awards. It was so much fun.
We had kids learning about mechanics by using mobile kinects
When school built an underwater open Remote submersible. Very cool
This team made bio batteries that used anaerobic bacteria to generate electricity. I never seen such a thing
Erin two old friends there. Howard and Dale both retired IBM fellows. Only guy we are missing was Dave h
Is grace talking to one of the teachers Dana about her biodiesel program up in Swanton.
We also had a great program from Burlington high school on using genetic analysis to determine whether sushi was the type of fish it was labeled and whether camel meat bought an local markets wasn't indeed camel. The kids got the samples and then used the PCR device that we help them amplify the genetic material .they then did gellm electrophoresces and sent the gels in for analysis. You'll Be happy to know that the camel was correct as marked. but the sushi not so fast. One of the pieces of salmon tested was indeed salmon but one of the other ones was something called largemouth Brem.
We also inducted to new members I didn't get the first gentleman's name but he did a fascinating talk on climate and biodiversity and evolution. One fact stuck out from his talk. He said that if you go to any forest in the world and you were to measure the weight of all of the animals there except the ants and compare them against just the ants the biomass of the ants would always be more. Think about it !
Our other inductee was prof DubAlie fromt he biochemstry program at uvm.she gave a fascinating talk on xray crytalography. She was one of the first to use the techinique to determine the molecular shape of dna polymerase.. How cool is that
Ok.. Back to work.. More tomorrow..
Nite all, note sam
-me
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