Week 5

Updates on my two projects.


Sensor project:

This last week was incredibly productive! So the grad student I am working with, developed an arduino code based off of some code that was already accessible online. However with his good understanding of code writing, he altered and added various functions to the code that made it work specifically for our project.  I did't really contribute much in this part of the project, as the programming was over my head. However, once completed, the grad student explained to me how the code worked as a whole and how each line of the code functioned.

Essentially, all the code does is take the amount of breaths taken in 5 seconds and multiplies that           number by 12 giving amount of breaths per minute (as there are 60 seconds in a minute). So every 5 seconds a new breath rate is spit out. Another part of the code is that the last 5 breath rate readings are always averaged. so every 5 seconds an immediate breath rate as well as an average of the last 25 seconds is given. As of right now this information is just fed into a computer but the goal is to get his information on a tiny screen and then stored on a memory chip. 

Following, we constructed a board on which the circuit, a 9V battery, the arduino and the piezo (breath rate sensor) are attached (later the screen and the memory chip will also be added.) We took this setup along with some wires, cables,  and a wave detector, and tested in a real experiment. * And guess what........ It worked essentially FLAWLESSLY.

We put the piezo underneath a anesthetized rat. The rate had a steady breath rate of 48 (and we knew this how? our code and circuit!) and when the rat would be given a slightly higher dose of the drug the heart rate would increase, again seen through out setup. IT was truly incredible to see our project work so well.

So the goal for this week is to assemble a screen and integrate it along with a memory chip into our setup and code. Once that's done we are incredibly close to the final product.

* As this experiment felt with animals, I wasn't able to actively do anything. I primarily, stood back and watched the experiment take its course, all the while enjoying our product. :D


Electrode project:

This project isn't quite as productive as the other one. This one, to me, is also more difficult. So this Wednesday I am meeting someone in the electron microscopy lab again. This time I am bringing the coated electrodes, though to actually see if the coating has stuck to the platinum electrodes. I am having a hard time coating them, tomorrow however I will receive help form another grad student so hopefully I'll have the electrodes in time.



***As my grad student and I have made far more advancements on the breath rate sensor project, I will be primarily focusing on that project in my presentation at the end of the school year, but I will dedicate a fair amount of time to the other one as well. Just in case you were interested. ***

Weeks 3 and 4

Hello!

I am so sorry for not having posted as frequently these last few weeks. However, this is due to the fact that there have been some setbacks:

In research, many instruments are incredibly expensive so labs tend to share some of these instruments. The potentiostat, an instrument that is integral to my experiments, is a good example. Because it is so expensive, the lab I am working in and another lab in the building are sharing it.  This other lab has been using the instrument quite frequently these last 2 weeks, creating some difficulties for the advancement on the coating of platinum electrodes project.

This week however, we will receive the potentiostat again, and I will be able to finally coat the electrodes. Then, on Tuesday or Wednesday I will take these electrodes to an electron microscopy lab in the Chemical Sciences Building and have some scans taken to double check that the electrodes are actually coated.

In addition, either this week or next week I will be able to watch an experiment in which a mouse brain is exposed and some carbon fiber electrodes are inserted. (This isn't directly part of my project, however I think it would be cool to see this happen.)

Over the last two weeks however, Drew and I have made great progress on our sensor project. Here's an update:

• In the last two weeks we have been working on building a circuit (using resistors, capacitors, diodes, wires, etc.) where we tap a sensor and then we can see a spike in a signal on the screen of a signal detector.  All in all we worked about 20 hours just to build a circuit that works properly. Our next goal is to write an arduino code that can read a signal output from the piezo (the sensor) and can store the information. Our goal is to make this completely independent from a big computer. This project will take much longer than the length of my SRP, yet I am thrilled to be a part of its beginning.

      **** I would like to post a picture but the grad student I'm working with said I should't until                                                   

               we've finished. 

In summary:

For the sensor project: The goal for the rest of the project is to get this sensor up and running with just an arduino and no computer. 

For the electrode project: I must coast some electrodes, have someone run electron microscopy on them, and if it is revealed that they really are coated, hopefully in a few weeks these electrodes can be inserted in a mouse/rat brain for testing.  

**** This may not occur until after my SRP because it could become a lengthy process.  

Week 2

Hello Again!

Last week was incredibly exiting! Here's an update on my two projects!

1. Update on my Arduino Project: 

Last week was the first week that I was really able to get my hands dirty with the Arduino. Once I installed all the necessary software, I pulled up a website that had various tutorials and mini projects that were intended for beginners to understand the basics of circuits and programming. One mini project I did, for example, was turning an LED light on an off by pressing a button. Although a simple project like this has no real application to the one I intend on pursuing, it allows me to understand the fundamentals and the basics of how Arduinos work and how they are programmed.

Here are two pictures: 

On the left you can see a project I did, in which you would press a button and the corresponding LED light (red, yellow, or green) would get brighter every time you pressed the button. After 4 presses, however, the LED light goes back to dim.  

On the right are the parts I'm going to use in my project. In the middle you can see the Arduino (greenish-blueish colored thing). To the left of it are some wires, above and below some resistors and capacitors, and in the top right, a USB cable that plugs from your Arduino to the computer. 

     2.  Update on my Polymer Coating Project:

Last week on Tuesday, Richard, the graduate student that I'm working with, discovered that a chemical engineer and biomedical engineer at Cornell University already managed to coat Platinum with this PEDOT:Nafion composite polymer. Although I though that this was going to be a major set back, turns out that this allows us to use these platinum coated electrodes to do more interesting experiments. The professors at Cornell coated platinumm electrodes, however, they didn't put them to use and we are going to attempt to do that. 

On Wednesday, I, with the help of Richard, repeated the experiment outlined in the paper, step by step. First, after multiple stoicheometry calculations, I created a .01 M solution of EDOT. I then placed all my electrodes in the solution and ran a current through the electrodes. Around 200 seconds after the initial current was applied we looked at the chronopotentiometric curves ( Potential/V vs Time) they got and they aligned incredibly well with ours. 

Although this was just a repeat of someone else experiment, it was exiting to know that we could coat platinum and that we can move on to further experiments. 

In the next few weeks I will coat the platinum electrodes and then we will perform some further experiments and then put them to the test. I can't wait to see what we'll see.

See you soon!

P.S. I got my own lab notebook this week, and I won't lie, I feel pretty special.