A very good place to start....
When I started attending Radford University I had no idea that research was something possible, much less what it really meant. I came to RU as a nursing major, but in my after taking my Anatomy & Physiology class I fell in love. I was AMAZED at how the human body worked and I actually missed taking the class once it was over.
In an unwillingness to let go of that passion, I changed my major to Biology, and began attending Ecophysiology lab meetings and paper discussions. At those paper discussions I learned about endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which are chemicals that disturb your natural endocrine system function and because very interested. The endocrine system is an amazing system, that still holds many secrets to be found, and I hope to explore them.
When I first attended these paper discussions, I felt very intimidated. I had never read a scientific paper before and I still remember trudging through my first paper about BPA in baby mouse brains, and yes, I read every word of the methodology. Despite the difficulty, I was hooked. I kept going through scientific literature, going from paper to paper just reading what I was interested in. It's a special kind of freedom.
During this time I learned various lab techniques. I helped take care of birds, snakes, and aquatic turtles. I learned how to bleed birds and run an ELISA. At the end of my first semester as a Biology Major, one EDC in the literature caught my attention. It was called trenbolone and it's a synthetic androgen used to "beef" up beef cattle. Unfortunately, they've found that trenbolone is "leaking" into the environment into freshwater environments. After reading about trenbolone, I found there were some gaps in the knowledge about this EDC and decided to design my own experiment to fill those gap. See about my research experience here.
In an unwillingness to let go of that passion, I changed my major to Biology, and began attending Ecophysiology lab meetings and paper discussions. At those paper discussions I learned about endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which are chemicals that disturb your natural endocrine system function and because very interested. The endocrine system is an amazing system, that still holds many secrets to be found, and I hope to explore them.
When I first attended these paper discussions, I felt very intimidated. I had never read a scientific paper before and I still remember trudging through my first paper about BPA in baby mouse brains, and yes, I read every word of the methodology. Despite the difficulty, I was hooked. I kept going through scientific literature, going from paper to paper just reading what I was interested in. It's a special kind of freedom.
During this time I learned various lab techniques. I helped take care of birds, snakes, and aquatic turtles. I learned how to bleed birds and run an ELISA. At the end of my first semester as a Biology Major, one EDC in the literature caught my attention. It was called trenbolone and it's a synthetic androgen used to "beef" up beef cattle. Unfortunately, they've found that trenbolone is "leaking" into the environment into freshwater environments. After reading about trenbolone, I found there were some gaps in the knowledge about this EDC and decided to design my own experiment to fill those gap. See about my research experience here.