3/16/2017: Week 5 – Painting Madness
Hello again, everyone!
As promised, here is my Week 5 post. I'll be talking a lot about what I did on the ranch and in the lab, but for Week 5, there's something special I have to address first.
VENTURE MADNESS
Invest Southwest's Venture Madness is an event in which startups across Arizona compete for money based on their innovativeness and potential impact. It started with 64 companies, and after two rounds of online voting, this number was narrowed down to 16, of which AniCell was one. These 16 companies were then invited to the Venture Madness event to compete for the top prizes through live presentations.
The whole top 16 event was actually three days long, and I wasn't there for all of it, but I was able to attend the final day, when I found out AniCell had made it into the top four! Going to the event was very exciting, as I've never been to formal business events like this, and I even got to hear the CEO of Reddit speak. The final day of the event consisted of presentations by each of the top four companies, followed by an intense (business focused) question and answer session for the top two. Listening to the presentations and discovering all the different things startups were doing was very interesting. In the end, AniCell ended up getting 2nd place in the competition! For achieving this, AniCell won $5000 dollars as well as a potential deal with important investors in Arizona. Needless to say, I was very excited at this point!
The winner of the competition was a company called CleanRouter, which created a product that allows the user to easily regulate internet access on any devices on a certain WiFi network. For example, parents can easily track what their children are doing on the internet and block certain types of content. Additionally, if anyone is interested, here is a link to the application AniCell initially submitted for this competition:
http://investsouthwest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/AniCell-Biotech-LLC-App.pdf
LIFE ON THE RANCH
Time for the ranch segment of this post! Unlike last week, this week consisted of a lot of new experiences.
First, was painting! Yes, painting! Now that Cheyenne is gone, we'll be getting two mini horses. These strange adult horses are only the size of a large dog, and because of this, they can fit through the railings of the stables we have on the ranch. Therefore, we had to clean and paint some boards to nail up around the railings and create a mini horse proof stable. I'll have a picture of the finished stable in my Week 6 post (since we didn't actually finish), but here's a picture of me painting one of the boards.
Also, here's a picture that kind of shows the idea of what I talked about above.
Other than the painting (which took forever), we gave Lansdowne a bath and helped unload all the Venture Madness presentation stuff from Mr. Ames' truck. Also, due to a strange spate of coincidences and sheer luck, Nikash killed a lizard (not exactly a good thing, as we found out), so we made sure to give it a proper burial.
Lansdowne is still being stubborn about giving birth, but I'll make sure to keep you all updated on her status. And that sums it up for the ranch portion of this week's post.
BACK TO THE LAB AGAIN
During Week 5, we repeated a lot of the procedures from before (especially now that another horse had given birth). A lot of time on Wednesday was spent processing and drying out more amnion, as well as properly storing the dry amnion from Week 4. Other than working with the amnion, we also added a different antibiotic to the old cells (from Lil) because as we saw in the Week 4, they were super dirty. I'll reveal the effects of adding this antibiotic (Gentamycin) in my Week 6 post.
On Thursday, we did some more work with the amnion, but spent most of our time working with the new amniotic fluid (from Cheyenne). Essentially, we separated the stem cells in the fluid from the rest of the mixture, and I won't go into detail about all this because it's the same thing I described in my Week 3 post (when we were working with Lil's amniotic fluid). This time, though, Dr. Barcelo mainly let us work on our own, and we managed to get through everything without messing up.
Now, for the exciting part. Although we were doing a few things we'd already done before, we did do something completely new. Dr. Barcelo's friend had asked him to test out a liquid nitrogen based mini cell freezer, so we spent a good chunk of time trying to figure it out. The freezer is extremely old, and because we didn't have any sort of instruction manual to work with, we had a difficult time at first.
Step number one, of course, was to get a tank full of liquid nitrogen.
The main nitrogen tank was massive, and it was pretty awesome seeing some spew out as we filled up our more modest sized tank. In case you were wondering, it's every bit as cold as they say it is!
After getting the nitrogen tank hooked up to the freezer, we turned it on and started fiddling with the settings. After about an hour, we finally got it to work as we wished (freezing at the rate we wanted and to the temperature we wanted it to end at). Now that we have it tested and ready to go, during Week 7 or 8, we'll be using it to freeze actual cells. I'll talk more about it when this happens.
It was definitely a busy week in the lab, and I can't wait to share my Week 6 experiences! Thanks for reading, and make sure to always stay tuned. Until next time!
As promised, here is my Week 5 post. I'll be talking a lot about what I did on the ranch and in the lab, but for Week 5, there's something special I have to address first.
VENTURE MADNESS
Invest Southwest's Venture Madness is an event in which startups across Arizona compete for money based on their innovativeness and potential impact. It started with 64 companies, and after two rounds of online voting, this number was narrowed down to 16, of which AniCell was one. These 16 companies were then invited to the Venture Madness event to compete for the top prizes through live presentations.
 |
| Low-Quality Brackets Picture |
The whole top 16 event was actually three days long, and I wasn't there for all of it, but I was able to attend the final day, when I found out AniCell had made it into the top four! Going to the event was very exciting, as I've never been to formal business events like this, and I even got to hear the CEO of Reddit speak. The final day of the event consisted of presentations by each of the top four companies, followed by an intense (business focused) question and answer session for the top two. Listening to the presentations and discovering all the different things startups were doing was very interesting. In the end, AniCell ended up getting 2nd place in the competition! For achieving this, AniCell won $5000 dollars as well as a potential deal with important investors in Arizona. Needless to say, I was very excited at this point!
 |
| Yay! |
The winner of the competition was a company called CleanRouter, which created a product that allows the user to easily regulate internet access on any devices on a certain WiFi network. For example, parents can easily track what their children are doing on the internet and block certain types of content. Additionally, if anyone is interested, here is a link to the application AniCell initially submitted for this competition:
http://investsouthwest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/AniCell-Biotech-LLC-App.pdf
LIFE ON THE RANCH
Time for the ranch segment of this post! Unlike last week, this week consisted of a lot of new experiences.
First, was painting! Yes, painting! Now that Cheyenne is gone, we'll be getting two mini horses. These strange adult horses are only the size of a large dog, and because of this, they can fit through the railings of the stables we have on the ranch. Therefore, we had to clean and paint some boards to nail up around the railings and create a mini horse proof stable. I'll have a picture of the finished stable in my Week 6 post (since we didn't actually finish), but here's a picture of me painting one of the boards.
 |
| Ignore My Messy Hair |
Also, here's a picture that kind of shows the idea of what I talked about above.
 |
| Extremely Rudimentary |
Other than the painting (which took forever), we gave Lansdowne a bath and helped unload all the Venture Madness presentation stuff from Mr. Ames' truck. Also, due to a strange spate of coincidences and sheer luck, Nikash killed a lizard (not exactly a good thing, as we found out), so we made sure to give it a proper burial.
 |
| Sorry |
Lansdowne is still being stubborn about giving birth, but I'll make sure to keep you all updated on her status. And that sums it up for the ranch portion of this week's post.
BACK TO THE LAB AGAIN
During Week 5, we repeated a lot of the procedures from before (especially now that another horse had given birth). A lot of time on Wednesday was spent processing and drying out more amnion, as well as properly storing the dry amnion from Week 4. Other than working with the amnion, we also added a different antibiotic to the old cells (from Lil) because as we saw in the Week 4, they were super dirty. I'll reveal the effects of adding this antibiotic (Gentamycin) in my Week 6 post.
On Thursday, we did some more work with the amnion, but spent most of our time working with the new amniotic fluid (from Cheyenne). Essentially, we separated the stem cells in the fluid from the rest of the mixture, and I won't go into detail about all this because it's the same thing I described in my Week 3 post (when we were working with Lil's amniotic fluid). This time, though, Dr. Barcelo mainly let us work on our own, and we managed to get through everything without messing up.
Now, for the exciting part. Although we were doing a few things we'd already done before, we did do something completely new. Dr. Barcelo's friend had asked him to test out a liquid nitrogen based mini cell freezer, so we spent a good chunk of time trying to figure it out. The freezer is extremely old, and because we didn't have any sort of instruction manual to work with, we had a difficult time at first.
Step number one, of course, was to get a tank full of liquid nitrogen.
 |
| Filling Up on N |
The main nitrogen tank was massive, and it was pretty awesome seeing some spew out as we filled up our more modest sized tank. In case you were wondering, it's every bit as cold as they say it is!
After getting the nitrogen tank hooked up to the freezer, we turned it on and started fiddling with the settings. After about an hour, we finally got it to work as we wished (freezing at the rate we wanted and to the temperature we wanted it to end at). Now that we have it tested and ready to go, during Week 7 or 8, we'll be using it to freeze actual cells. I'll talk more about it when this happens.
 |
| Fiddling with the Freezer |
It was definitely a busy week in the lab, and I can't wait to share my Week 6 experiences! Thanks for reading, and make sure to always stay tuned. Until next time!
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