A Reflection on My Work as an Intern

My Research in Science internship has been a great personal achievement this year. I have been privileged to learn from graduate students and a mentor who thoroughly enjoy their work at the RPI Lighting Research Center. Not only have I seen the way a lab works but I have also seen first hand that passion and diligence from each scientist helps a lab operate at its full potential. Brittany, the graduate student I worked with, diligently worked on experiments that occurred at very late hours of the night but never complained because the results were exciting, constructive, and worth it! Every week, I sat down with Brittany to look over the results of an experiment, which I may have helped set up the week before. Over time the results of how computer, iPad, television, and Smartphone light affects sleep added up to really interesting and informative conclusions. I learned that computers, especially those without dimming switches, affected melatonin levels the most, while HD TVs and Smartphones surprisingly did not affect melatonin levels as greatly as I believed to begin with. I think a main accomplishment for me was bringing all that I learned together to see, overall, how melatonin levels are influenced by a spectrum of different lights. Looking at my poster, I felt really good about how much I had learned in an area I knew little of before my internship. I’m excited that the information learned in the lab is helping people live healthier lifestyles. I’m really glad to have been integrated into such a current project! I think the most challenging part of this internship was not being able to see the experiments in person. This was chiefly an issue because the experiments were done at late hours of the night due to the increase of melatonin levels, then, needed for measurement. I think the most important thing for a future intern to keep in mind is that a lab is made up of many scientists, who work together for a common goal. So, don’t be discouraged if you cannot be part of every aspect of the lab because in the end even taking a small part in the experiments makes a big difference!

Light and Other Hormones!

04/23
Today I helped label test tubes with Brittany, but it still proved to be a really interesting session because Brittany explained all about what the test tubes were going to be used for! Since the light and melatonin experiments are pretty much finished up, they are starting new projects involving the relationships between other hormones and light! Brittany told me all about how these test tubes were going to hold blood samples tested for levels in ghrelin, a hormone which controls and limits you're feelings of hunger. They are going to start a test, over the summer, to see whether interrupting peoples' sleep cycles with light affects their ghrelin levels throughout the day. There are studies which suggest that ghrelin levels decrease if people do not get enough sleep. So people eat more if they don't get enough sleep because their ghrelin levels are not high enough to tell their brain and body that they are satisfied. The lab is also going to compare people who wake up when it's dark out versus when it's light out and how their ghrelin levels are affected that way too! I found these experiment ideas really interesting because I do feel like I don't get enough sleep when I wake up when it's dark out even if I get a good amount of sleep. Without light to stimulate the senses, I feel more groggy! I never really thought about how light could affect hormones other than melatonin, so I will definitely do more research on these ideas!

Virtual Light and Design!

04/16

Hi guys! There wasn't a lot going on in the lab last week because the graduate students were working on their theses and class work. But Brittany (the graduate student I work with) did show me what she was working on in her Light and Design class, and it involves some really interesting assignments! Brittany and her class went to New Jersey to a retirement development. This development hoped to use more sustainable light sources to light their streets and recreation center. So the class set up a virtual establishment, simulating the development's rooms and streets. They used a special computer program that provided models of the room and tested different light sources to see which ones provided the most light while being more sustainable! The most sustainable lights are LED lights, which last longer and provide more light around a room. Brittany showed me the model she made of a lamppost on the street outside one of the buildings. She could measure the illumiance it provided and could bring factors like distance from street, aging of the lamppost, and weather into play to see how well that lamp could provide light while using less energy over time! It was really cool to see the use of light to help the environment and I loved how hands on the class was in helping other facilities! 

No Internship Today

04/09
Hi guys! Since it was long weekend I didn't have my internship this Monday. Look for a new post next week! 

More Pupil Dilation Measurements!

04/02
Today I work on measuring more pupil dilations under red light again! Just the same kinds of measurements I did in my previous post!
Here are some more photos with the equipment I use. I really like doing these measurements because I get to see how different people's eyes react to light, which can tell us a lot about how much melatonin is suppressed in the bodies. We can apply these findings to their ethnicity and eye color and connect hypotheses about melatonin suppression and, say, dark-colored eyes. The melatonin levels of people with dark-colored eyes are said to be more affected by light than the levels of those with light-colored eyes. I like to compare these hypotheses to my work!
Below is how I measure a pupil; the measuring tool tells me millimeters, which I then compare to the ruler underneath the eye.
My math is show in photo #2. This person has a pupil size of 5.97mm. That pupil is a little on the large side; a very common measurement is just 4-5mm.

  

Calculating Pupil Dilation!

On Monday, I had some fun applying math to how light affects the pupils! My previous post shows a photo that they took of my pupils under red light. During this session, I printed 90 photos of different subjects' pupils under brighter and darker red light! Then I measured each pupil to see whether the brightness in light affected the dilation.
In each photo they hold a ruler up to the subject's eye in order for comparison once the photo is printed. -So, I took the distance of the pupil (D, what I'm looking for) and divided it by the measurement on the ruler in mm of the pupil. So, for example, if the measurement was 6mm then D/6.
-Then I set the fraction equal to the special 3D measurement (I used a special measuring tool that the lab had created) of the pupil over the special 3D measurement of the ruler. So, for example, D/6 = 59.78/60.92 (usually the 3D measurements are not very far away from each other).
-Then I solved for D, which, in this case, would be ~5.88! So 5.88 is the measurement of the pupil! Here's a photo of my work:

Testing Light Eye Wear

Hi guys! This week we mostly were trying to figure out how to set up a video camera for taking images of people's pupil dilations, so there wasn't much going on. But I was able to try on lighted glasses of different colors so that they could test the new camera out! I wore glasses with white, blue, green, and red lights in a dark room and Brittany took photos of my pupils. My eyes hurt the worst when I was wearing the white light glasses, the light was just so bright! I have no idea how subjects of the studies can take it!!!! My pupils must have become pretty small because of the intensity of light but it was hard to see that in the photo that the new camera took. Here's a picture of my eye while wearing red lighted glasses though. My pupils are less dilated while wearing these glasses than while wearing the other glasses because the light is not as intense. These glasses were definitely most comfortable for my eyes. While wearing the red lighted glasses, a subject's melatonin levels will not suppress as greatly as they would while wearing white, blue, or green lighted glasses.  

Exciting New Articles and Theses Presentations!

Hello! I have been looking at a research paper with the graduate student I work with in the lab for the past few weeks. This research paper is all about how the differences in race and eye color may affect the suppression of melatonin levels by light. There have been studies previous to this one which showed that in  patients with seasonal affective disorder, the darker-eyed patients have been significantly more depressed and fatigued than the lighter-eyed patients. There have also been previous studies that suggest Asian people's melatonin levels are less affected by light than Caucasians. I found this so interesting!!!! So I jumped at the chance when Brittany told me we could look into this phenomenon further! We looked at a study that was on the influence of eye colors of Caucasians and Asians on suppression of melatonin levels. Their results showed that in fact, the previous studies were correct; the percentage of suppression of melatonin secretion was significantly larger in light-eyed Caucasians than in dark-eyed Asians. So these results show that eye pigmentation and/or ethnicity affect how much your melatonin levels will be suppressed by light! I'm a dark-eyed Caucasian, so I wonder how my melatonin levels are affected differently!
Also, today I saw a presentation of the two graduation students' theses in the lab! It was so interesting because they are not finished with there theses yet so they got lots of feedback form my mentor and other professors and scientists. Brittany, the graduate student I work with most often, showed the data that I have been discussing about light from phones, computers, and TVs. The other graduate student, Anna, discussed an experiment on the efforts to put LED lights (blue-white lights) in the rooms of patients with Alzheimer's. She did this because more exposure to light during the day would help these patients sleep through the night and not wander at night (which is a common problem with these patients). This would help the caregivers as well as the patients. They are still working on the experiment because it was difficult to expose the patients to a lot of light when they were not in their rooms where the LED lights were installed. It was a very professional presentation and the audience had a lot of smart, specific feedback for the students. One piece of feedback for Anna was to put the LED lights in different places in the room so that the light covers more space. To see what life as a student in the lab as well as life as a scientists there was really interesting. It was a definite highlight of my time at this internship!

The Latest Internship Trip

The graduate student I usually work with was not able to be here last week and not much was going on in the lab so I just labeled test tubes for the TV experiment subjects' saliva. They will be watching a movie in different colored light: the TV's light will be changed from warm colors to cool colors for different subjects. Then we will test the melatonin levels in their saliva to see if the levels decreased or increased as the night progressed.

Also I read an article from my mentor on the impact of light from computer monitors on melatonin levels in college students! I haven't been able to attach the article but it's results were that exposing college students to light from computer screens monitors (delivering 30 lux) for 2 hours will result in small melatonin suppression. The problem was that they thought the computer monitors they were using were delivering less light than they actually were. This complication changed the actual results; the college students were exposed to more light than predicted and so their melatonin levels decreased more. Overall I think that this is a really interesting study because we have to make sure how much light you're exposed to before assuming how much your melatonin levels will decrease. 

iPad Results and The New TV Project

Back from winter break! I came back to my science internship just in time to look over some of the results on how much iPads, looked at while wearing different color glasses, affect your melatonin levels or the hormone that helps you fall asleep. The first results were for people who wore glasses with blue lights attached; they had the greatest decrease in melatonin levels. After that, wearing no glasses and looking at an iPad had the second greatest decrease. Lastly, those who wore orange goggles had a small decrease percentage in melatonin. Looking back on the post before this, I discusses predictions about this experiment and it seems that my hypothesis was correct! Right now, the lab is testing how much wide screen TVs affect melatonin levels so I'll probably learn more about that next week. After looking over results, I helped set up for this TV experiment by labeling test tubes for the subjects' saliva. I learned that the lab also takes the subjects' blood during certain projects because blood samples are more accurate with melatonin levels than saliva samples are.