Category: My Personal Learning

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LMRT/May 23th-29th

Through May 24th-29th we were head back to Koh Seh to continue our research and this probably the last trip of this year. It was nice to be back at Koh Seh serene environment, met old friends created new friends, etc.

During this trip, Kep ocean was heavily destroyed by the illegal fishing and mostly from trawling that caused a lot of seagrasses wash up by the shore and caused the visibility to be really bad. Because of the visibility really bad, we didn’t get to do any underwater survey. However, we took this time wisely to practice the dolphin survey, building cluster, clean up the island, and work on our presentations that we going to present about Cambodia ocean in Malaysia on 23th of June.

Even though we didn’t get to do any underwater survey but we get to do the underwater fun dive. We most of the time get to dive in front of the island where the water is shallow and a lot of coral which it makes the visibility there better than the survey site and good enough to do dive. It was a really fun dive, we got to see many seahorses, but what makes me excited the most was me finding an octopus hiding in a shell.

As explained above, we also get to do a dolphin survey. So the survey was divided into 4 teams and rotate in every 30 minutes. It was quite difficult to do a real dolphin survey because it was hard to note down the information while dolphin is still moving. We saw a lot of dolphins probably more than 5 group of dolphin and more than 50 dolphins counted.

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Mondulkiri Youth Camp

From April 2nd to the 6th, I was attending a youth camp in Mondulkiri that was run by the World Renew organization. It was a three days workshop with 68 participants came from four different provinces and Liger.

On the first day of the workshop, we got to learn about Nutrition. We learned about the three groups of food, the nutrient that our body needs daily, and many types of vegetables and fruits that contain difference nutrient. This was one of my favorite topics to learn because then I can take that information that I’ve learned to cook healthier food for my apartment mate. On the same day, we also got to learn about democracy leadership. There are three types of democracy leadership: autocratic, laissez-faire, and democratic. Autocratic is a type of leadership skill where leader tell their member what to do. Laissez-faire is when leader tell their member what to do or let them do the thing they want. Democratic is when the leader asks the member to give a voice of their ideas.   

On the second day, we got to learn about immigration in Cambodia. Many Cambodian moves to another country for many reasons: study, job, new home, family issue etc. We learned how to move to another country safely because many Cambodian immigrants were having issues in the foreign country after they move there.

On the third day was a special day for us because we got to lead the workshop. In the morning, I and the other three students including another eight students from the four provinces were doing a workshop on drugs. The workshop goes so well, the student has learned a lot from our activities while also have fun with it. At last, we got to show our educational short film and let them let create their own performance about drugs to perform to other students. In the afternoon, we also got to lead a workshop run by another group of Liger student about AIDS and HIV.  

One of my favorite highlights was at night of the last day. We got to see the performance from the Bunong people about the dance and music. We all really enjoyed this time, I got to dance, other people got to dance and we also got to take a photo together with the Bunong performer. After that, we had a campfire to finish the day.

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Women in STEM | Esther Lederberg

In physics class, we had a project to write an article about any female scientist. My article is about Esther Lederberg.

Esther Lederberg born on December 18, 1922, The Bronx, New York City, United States. She was an American microbiologist and a pioneer of bacterial genetics. Notable contributions include the discovery of the bacteriophage, the transfer of genes between bacteria by specialized transduction, the development of replica plating, and the discovery of the bacterial fertility factor F (F plasmid).

 A child of the Great Depression, her lunch was often a piece of bread topped by the juice of a squeezed tomato. She attended Evander Childs High School in Bronx and graduating at the age of 16. In College, Esther Lederberg initially want to study French or literature, but she switched her field of study to biochemistry against the recommendation of her teachers, who felt women struggled to get a career in the sciences.

She received a bachelor’s degree in genetics in 1942 at the age of 20 in New York City’s Hunter College. After graduating from Hunter, Esther Lederberg went to work as a research assistant to Alexander Hollaender at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Later she had published her first work in genetics. She entered a master’s program in genetics and later finished her master’s degree in 1946 at Stanford University. Esther Lederberg next went to the University of Wisconsin to pursue a doctorate degree. She completes her doctorate under the supervision of R. A. Brink, in 1950.

As Esther Lederberg got her PhD, she had made a lot of achievement to contribute to microbiology and genetics. She was the discovery of bacteriophage, a virus that infects E. Coli bacteria. Eventually devised the first successful implementation of replica plating with Joshua Lederberg, and helped discover and understand the genetic mechanisms of specialized transduction. This contributions laid the foundation for much of the genetics work done in the latter half of the twentieth century. In 1959, Esther Lederberg returned to Stanford. She remained at Stanford for the balance of her research career, founding and directing the Plasmid Reference Center (PRC) at the Stanford School of medicine from 1976 to 1986.  

Even though, Esther Lederberg was a scientist, she had still faced with many significant challenges as she was a woman scientist in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1966 Lederberg was excluded from writing a chapter in the book of “Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology”. According to the science historian Prina Abir-Am, her exclusion was “Incomprehensible” because of her important discoveries in bacteriophage genetics. Abir-Am attributed her exclusion in part to the sexism that prevailed during the 1960s. She has not been credited with as much of the credit as she really deserved.

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Night Insect Investigation

 

If you are book reader you might have this experience where you turn on the lamp at night to read books and of course you might not be able to read for a long time because all those annoying insect come towed the lamp, you, and your book. If you spend much time at night you will see some of the insect attracted to the street light, house light, or campfire flame. But why are they attracted to the light? Are they attracted to heat of the lights, or the light it self? By reading my report you will know why night insects attracted to light.

Link To My Report

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Sea Festival

On the 23th through the 24th of December, I and the other 11 students went to Kep to participate the 6th sea festival. It was a really big event there, there are so many sports to play like biking, running, boxing, swimming, volley ball, Frisbee and more. Not just sport that is hosted at the event, there are so many more stations that are selling or trying to promote their product. Even though, they’re so many things to do there, we decided to only participate in Frisbee because Frisbee is new to Cambodia and therefor, we want to promote it

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We work with the Swa Ultimate Cambodia and divided the people into four small teams and compete together to find the winner. On the first day, we are just trying to promote Frisbee by doing a friendly match together and at the same time, trying to interact with people and asking them to play. Something that is also fun on the trip, but not hosted by the event was trying to find places to eat, there are one time that we end up eating dinner around 11:30 pm.

On the second day, the real game had come. My team played pretty well and we haven’t lost any, but in the last game we play to find the last two teams to play final, we lost. Even though we lost the game and can’t get to the final, we still have fun and enjoy the game. It was a great experience with amazing people at the amazing event.

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LMRT – Third Adventure

On November 16th through 19th, The LMRT was down to Koh Seh again to improve our diving and survey skills. This particular trip was focused on practicing on fish survey and doing a substrate identification exam. Diver are very lazy, they kick super slow just like a turtle walking on land. But doing this fish survey is the god of laziness, we need to kick much more slower than a normal diver, around 1.5 – 1.7 meter per minute. Personally for my first dive to practice the fish survey was super confusing and difficult. We need to responsible for many things and that’s was too much for us. Also to swim super slow was the most difficult for me because it’s uncomfortable and it’s also my first time to do it. But as time past, we were always getting better. On the fourth dive of practicing the fish survey we all done fantastic, our speed was on the right track, we took a lot of information and I even saw a super tiny octopus that was like one centimeter or even smaller than that while focusing on the speed. I’ve got a good eye right? Not just we have done a really good job or the practicing fish survey, but we also pass the substrate identification exam. We are waiting to do our real survey!

Photo of me checking out the grouper in the art official reef.

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Investigation

I am really interested in learning Biology, so I decided to do an investigation about Kidneys to see how it work and what its job in our body. I spend a lot of time studying in the book and online to get the background information about the kidney. It was wonderful to learn about the kidneys and what surprised me is this, kidneys is pretty crazy it can hold about 22% of our entire blood supply of any time. Kidney can filter about 1 liter of blood in one minute that mean 500 ml per minute in each kidney (there are two kidneys in our body). There are five liters of blood in our body that mean in five minutes all of our blood will pass through our kidney, so in one day our blood will filter in our kidney for about 288 times, that is crazy!

 On the left is the experiment water and at the right is the clean water.

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Timeline of White Building

White Building is one the most interesting and historical building in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The White Building was designed and built in 1963  by Lu Ban Hap, a Cambodian architecture, and Vladimir Bodiansky a Russian engineer. This historical building was located in the center of Phnom Penh and was demolished in the summer of 2017 to make room for a modern facility built by the Arakawa company. Because this building is really interesting and have many histories under it, I have designed and 3D print the building to show how it looks like. Moreover, because of the building have six different buildings attached together, I had paint and design the individual building to show what it happen in each time.

 

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PSAT Practice Test

On October 14th, 2017, I and the other 49 Liger senior students attended the first Liger PSAT test. I was quite worry about the test because I know it’s going to be hard but however, it just for practice. I get to see how the test was like so it’s going to benefit me because I can get prepare and make my own strategy to complete the test with quality. After I complete the PSAT test I also get feedback from the test of what I should practice more to maximize my score. For the real SAT test In the next one and a half years, I think I can get ready to do well one my test.

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Liger Marine Research Team (LMRT)

I’ve been chosen with the other seven students to be the Liger Marine Research Team (LMRT). We are really passionate in studying marine research and protecting our ocean. In order to do the marine research, we need to know how to dive properly, we had worked really hard during our summer break to study the dive course. However, in order to do research, we need to have the budget to go to our search site, buying equipment, and such more. We had submitted a three year grant to a foundation, requested a budget of $15,610 and they have accepted our grant. We were really excited for the grant and hoping we use this money well to protect our marine ecosystems, educate our people, and follow our passion. For our marine research project, we will focus on three different types of survey, fish, invertebrate, and substrate. On the 28th of September, 2017 we went to Koh Seh, where our research location is, and we stayed there for about 5 days. We’ve there to do our open water diving course, and learning new skills of scuba diving. It was a bit difficult for the first time because we are new to this, however, our effort pay off. We are now certified as an open water diver. We will visit the island every month for one weekend. In the next three years of our research, we hope that we can educate people about the importance of the ocean and help to protect it.