Second Semester

Yay, a new post! Sorry about not posting anything for a while. The end of the semester/Christmas/beginning of the semester kind of threw me off. All I have to say about my long winter break is that I am glad it is over and I’m back in school. I love to be busy, especially busy with biochemistry!


This semester I am taking two classes and a few seminars (I am sitting in on a class trying to learn Java too). The two classes that I am taking are physical biochemistry and a structural biochemistry course. The two seminars I am taking are the Biochemistry (departmental) seminar and SBB (Structural Biochemistry and Biophysics). Speaking of SBB, I have decided to affiliate with SBB since my dissertation research will likely be in, well, structural biology and biophysics! All this really means is that the Department of Biochemistry will award me my degree and I will get a certificate from SBB.


Also, I am currently in my third and final (thank goodness) rotation. In the beginning of March I will have to choose a lab that I want to join. The rotation that I am in now does NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) of macromolecules (big molecules or proteins to the layperson). In there I am learning magic (a.k.a linear algebra and complex math; i.e. imaginary numbers) so I can do some computer programming for the lab. All I can say is math is SO COOL! Without math we would all still be naked, running around Africa (When watching the monkeys in Washington DC, seems like we’d be better off naked in Africa).


The weather here has been erratic. In January, we were enjoying sunshine and 60s. However, the last two weeks have been cold and rainy/slushy and even snowy (albeit, nothing like what my brother, Shane, has got up in northern VA).
Mostly it has been cold and rainy; cold enough it should be snowing but its not.


Its entirely to late so I shell leave you with my ‘quote of the post:’


“It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.“
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) English philosopher and mathematician.

Thanksgiving

I am now done with all my classes so I can write a post about Thanksgiving break. I didn’t know what I was going to do for the break until about a week before. Shane and his family decided to stay home for Thanksgiving rather than head up to Maine. So, I decided to head up to northern Virginia. However, I had a very difficult time trying to find a ride up there; I had already secured a ride home with someone in my ward. I have an awesome roommate who sent out a massive email trying to find someone going up to DC and she got a bite, I got a ride! Just like a miracle! :)

It was a GREAT Thanksgiving break! I wet up there on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and stayed until Sunday. I spent a little time on a final paper but it was mostly a very relaxing weekend. We mostly hung out on Tuesday and Wednesday doing whatever; watching movies, playing video games, sword fighting (contact me for further details), etc. Thanksgiving was good; we had about 25 people there. Tyler Moselle and his girlfriend came, it was great to see Tyler again and to meet hi girlfriend! They are great! Other than that, the rest of the people were families from the ward and the sister missionaries. We had lots of yummy food; turkey, stuffing, cranberries, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, pie, etc. It was a fabulous dinner! We then went to see 'The Blind Side.' AWESOME movie; I highly recommend it!

Friday was really fun; we went to a Christmas tree farm. It is right by Shane’s house so the drive wasn’t like the drive’s we took to get Christmas trees in Utah. Luckily, Katie took a lot of pictures; so I’ll tell the story with the pictures.

The Christmas tree farm was up on a hill. This is looking out, off the hill.

The Family

Which tree...?

Mike cut the tree down.

We took turns pulling the tree.

The employees than put the tree on a big shaker to get rid of dead needles.

They then wrapped the tree up.
It was a great day!

We then went home and put the tree up and decorated it.

That was pretty much the weekend. Great time with great people!

Walkingg to My Lab

This morning I had a very interesting walk to my lab. As I was about to descend some stairs, I noticed two policemen interrogating a guy on a park bench. As I got closer to the scene, it became rather obvious that the man had decided to stay the night on the bench. From the looks of it, he had a very late night of drinking and had not yet slept off the affects of the alcohol. I had to chuckle as I walked by and heard him struggling to answer the officers' questions. I must stress that this is very atypical of Duke. Or perhaps it isn't and the good officers just had a late morning. :) Either way, it added quality entertainment to a rather mundane walk across campus.

Second Rotation

I attempted to upload a picture but couldn't...sorry :(

I have finally started my second rotation. I was supposed to start it about two weeks ago but I had to wait for my post-doc mentor to finish up his dissertation. I didn’t mind the time off as I had most my time occupied with plenty of class related activities. The rest of my time was filled with writing three essays for an NSF (National Science Foundation) fellowship application. This NSF fellowship is kind of a big deal; in all I’d be getting a tad over $120,000 over three years (not all at once and not directly to me). In my second rotation I am trying to redesign a protein so that it will bind a new molecule. So currently I am spending a lot of time looking at this protein to possibly add a modification that will allow the protein to bind the new molecule. Ok, enough science.


I went to my first Duke Basketball game. Even though it was an exhibition game, the arena was full. It will be fun for the season to begin! Duke Football is currently on a three game winning streak and have an ocerall record of 5-3. The new coach is doing AWESOME in his second year! Keep your eye on Bluedevil football; they may surprise you.


I have found that I am horrible with names, which I kind of already knew. It is extra pronounced in my church. Unlike Utah, here I only see the people in my ward for a few hours on Sunday. It has been quite embarrassing to forget someone’s name when you know you’ve asked them twice already. I am learning name slowly. The ward here is awesome! An interesting fact: most of the grad students in the ward went to undergrad either at BYU or USU. I have yet to meet an Utah alum. ‘


There you have it; my life, in order from Monday to Sunday; school, sports, and church.

Hi folks! Bradley here (yes, Bradley is my name not Brad; see my birth certificate for further details) reporting on the goings on in his life.

Last week marked the official date that my second rotation was to begin. Despite this fact I spent all of last week in the Richardson lab (where I did my first rotation). I have a second rotation lab just no project. I did not mind this because I am super busy with classes. In two of my classes I am reading two papers for each class a day and in another class one paper a day. That comes out to be 12 papers a week. These are scientific articles so you can't just quickly read the paper and expect to understand them. You have to really pay attention to what you are reading. So it takes a lot of time.

I went to a Duke Basketball team scrimmage which was a prep rally too. it was really fun. Even though I had been inside Cameron Indoor Stadium, quite a historic venue, I never realized how small it was.

Anyway, that is all I have unless you want to read about the molecular mechanism behind allostery. The Aggies did win their second game of the season, way to go! I would like to thank TCU, they did a great job destroying, dismantling, and otherwise embarrassing BYU. I only wish the slaughter would have been on TV (stupid Mountain West Conference, grrr!!)

Last week The Richardson lab moved into a new space. Since the space is so radical I have decided to share a few pictures. Here they are:My work station.

Conference

So this weekend I went to visit Shane's (my bro) and his Family. I got a ride up to Washington with other students that also go to Duke and Shane picked me up on the Mall. We had a lazy weekend sitting around the house, just what I wanted.

Saturday we went to watch my nephew's, Mike's, football game. Mike was injured and couldn't play. The Tuesday before Mike's jaw had a tragic collision with his Brother's, Nick's, knee during a front yard football scrimmage. He had to have surgery to fix two fractures. His jaw is wired shut for a month and he has to have nothing but liquids for six weeks. It's tough but he's a trooper.

We then went to the Priesthood session of General Conference. It was an awesome session with great talks. I love that the Lord has provided a way for us to learn and grow. It makes me so happy!

Sunday we watched conference while Becky was so kind to give everyone a foot massage with her oils. Thanks Becky, it felt great! Sadly I had to go home Sunday evening despite the fact that I have fall break and, therefore, have no class Monday of Tuesday. The bright side is that I can get my homework done!

I hope all of you are doing great. Drop me a line and let me know.

Duke Basketball Season Ticket Campout

So this last weekend I attended the well established tradition of Duke Basketball Season Ticket Campout. For those who are not acquainted, allow me to give background info. Basketball at Duke is s HUGE deal. Duke is consistently ranked in the top ten teams in the nation. The venue for home games is Cameron Indoor Stadium. It holds less than 10,000 spectators. It is, arguably, the toughest place for an opposing team to get a win. The student spectators are affectionately referred to as the ‘Cameron Crazies.’ As you can imagine, acquiring tickets at such a venue is not an easy task.

Duke, like other schools with great basketball traditions, has a lottery system to attain tickets for their graduate and professional students. This was implemented in attempts to make it fair, but not easy, to get tickets. Unlike other schools you have to endure a 36 hour campout to even get your name in the lottery! This is known as the Duke Basketball Season Ticket Campout.

A few weeks before the campout, everyone who wants to participate must register online. The campout starts at 7PM Friday and ends at 7AM Sunday. We were allowed to set up our tents Thursday afternoon. We had to check in by 7PM Friday. We claimed a spot Thursday by setting up our tents. That was the easy part. Getting to our spot Friday was fairly difficult. Some people opted to bring U-Hauls to sleep in rather than tents. Now how many people are we talking? Well over 2,000! Traffic was a nightmare, U-Hauls everywhere, we weren’t allowed to unload anywhere near the site, and it was hot and humid. We had a lot of food and two coolers; one of which could easily be used to hide a body (that had all the beer). We had to haul those for about a mile.

Once we were settled we checked in and they explained how the campout worked. We were not to leave and to ensure that we didn’t they held roll call at very random times; we had no idea when it was going to happen. The way it worked is a siren would go off and then everyone, a 2,000 plus, had to join their line, designated by last name. They were about 15 different lines. They then checked your name off surprisingly fast. If you had not checked in within ten minutes of the siren going off you had officially missed the check in.

The first check in was not until about 11PM. Then there were a few more until after 2AM. The check ins started up before 6AM and were very random throughout the day. They again did check ins until after 2AM Sunday morning. They then called us at 5AM and told us to begin the end of the campout. They had us clean up EVERYTHING before they would let us know the results of the lottery. We had to take all our gear to our cars. We also had to have all trash put in the dumpster. We were not done until 8 at which point we got into our lines. We went up individually and were told if our names were put in the lottery and if we were selected to buy tickets.

So there is how the lottery went. The rest of it was a HUGE 36 hour party. Complete with copious amounts of alcohol and loud music. There was very little sleeping. The girl’s basketball team came to visit the first night. We all went to listen to them. The second night was a real treat. The men’s basketball team came, even Coach Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K)! He is a legend! He currently is the head coach of the USA Olympic Basketball Team. He, along with his team, won Gold in Beijing in 2008. He explained some changes at Cameron and how we should act as fans (be loud and irritate the opponent). He then took questions. Let me say I’m glad I didn’t ask him a stupid question; he doesn’t like those! Suffice it to say he came across as very arrogant and surprisingly rude. The arrogance I don’t mind, he has accomplished a lot (not that that’s an excuse). But the rudeness I could go without.

To wrap it up I won tickets! We had a group of five, three of us won tickets (we beat the odds; there were only 700 tickets). We will divvy up the ticket and the cost thereof between the five of us.

There you have it. It is now entirely too late. I will say Good Night! GO BLUEDEVILS!!

Here are some pictures.