Episode 26: Reflecting upon the finale

The pat week was a wild ride. After giving another practice presentation on Monday, submitting my final paper on Thursday, and delivering my final presentation on Friday, I completed AP Research, and the AP Capstone project. Here's a link to my slides. And here's a link to my paper. I can't thank my friends and family enough for showing up during the presentation. There was a lot pressure going into my presentation, but I managed to pull through. I crushed my presentation. Even the CEO of BASIS praised me for my presentation.

Me shortly after giving my presentation, greeting GG and Sergio

I'd like to shout out my 2 mentors, Mrs. Haag and Dr. Ozkan. Mrs. Haag guided me through the process and kept me on track when I'd get behind or encounter errors. Every week something went wrong, I'd be extremely anxious. And when I went in for my meetings, she'd find a way to fix the error or help me rearrange my schedule to ease that anxiety. My expert advisor, Dr. Ozkan, helped understand and grasp the concepts of protein folding, and conserved regions. Without her, completing the project would be impossible. Also a mini shout out to my grad student mentors, who helped me iron out the computational errors in my project.

Shout out to my mentors

The overall lesson I've learned from research is that planning is king. A theme common across AP Seminar and AP Research is the use of outlines. In other classes whenever a large paper was due, the responsibility to plan and outline the paper was on us. That's not a bad thing because in college the responsibility will lie with the student, but I never really grasped proper outlining techniques. After taking the AP Capstone program, I finally understand how to create a proper outline. We learned to integrate sources and structure our paper before actually writing it. The actual creation and writing of the paper is not as important as the argument and sources backing the paper.

As a debater and proficient public speaker, I thought communicating my research would be an easy task. But Mrs. Haag can tell you that the early drafts of my paper assumed too much knowledge and probably didn't make much sense to the average reader. I learned that providing background on topics as technical as protein folding is integral to the reader's understanding. Given my previous experience in communication, I purposely chose a highly technical topic to challenge myself. Now I have the groundwork laid down in case I have to pitch anything out of the box to someone in the future.

Anyone reading my first draft

But don't let the previous experience in debate fool you, my presentation skills may have been on par, but my slides and script were not. After 4 Seminar presentations and a giant Research presentation, I have finally managed to create decent presentations. With minimal words on the slides and lots of pictures I learned how to convey my message to the audience.

The most important take away for me is to be confident. If anyone told me that I'd be writing a 30 page paper in Research two years ago, I'd respond with I am not taking that class. But I realized that I can write academic papers and I am capable of pursuing my interests.

Peace out

Episode 25: Finalizing Perfection

Hi guys,
I'm back and the journey almost over. I took my last mock with the sole purpose of giving my AP Human Geography teacher more spending cash for his honeymoon this summer. If I get a 5 on the AP, I can say that his lunch in Barbados was on me. This past week I gave two practice presentations.

When Mrs. Haag saw my discussion slides

The first practice presentation was surprisingly good. I came in at 7am to practice my script for an hour or two (not because I had to drop my sister off at 7am). Personally, I felt the presentation was a bit shaky and I was not completely in control of my script. The slides were a bit rough (clip art of gears and word clouds were not bright decisions). But Mrs. Haag said I did a decent job of conveying the technicalities and intricacies of my complex work in an engaging way. In addition, my hypothesis was unclear as I did not properly explain that my paper was exploratory in nature. The big pitfall of my presentation was the discussion section, I needed to link it back to my hypothesis to properly finish the presentation. I needed to familiarize myself with the slides and overhaul the discussion section.

The second presentation that occurred on Saturday gave me more insight into the overall significance and following of my paper. I realized that I needed to frame the paper in terms of flexibility relating to function for the audience to understand the discussion section. Also there were still some dodgy slides in my second presentation. I still left the word clouds in there for some reason, and the centering on some slides were awful. I think I had poor eyesight when creating those slides.

Overall, I feel that I have fixed the problems associated with slides. All my slides are animated and simple to follow,  while also conveying a decent amount of information. On the other hand, I plan to introduce flexibility relating to function much earlier in the presentation to assist the audience. Additionally, my discussion section has been cleaned up. Unfortunately, I have quick turnaround and I give my final practice presentation to Mrs. Haag on Monday. I plan to continue practicing and give my presentation to a friend during the remainder of the week.

Till next week,
Ashwath V.

P.S. Don't beep beep like a sheep.

Episode 24: 1 man, 1 paper, 1 presentation

The college season is over and I have more time to stress out about AP Research now. The past few days were pretty rough, but bouncing back is a sign of resilience so here I go. Also I got on the front page of the BASIS August Gazette for April Fool's (ps Rick and Morty Season 3 Episode 1 was leaked April Fools (mini meme of the week))

Me heading into the final two weeks

Anyway the assignment for this week is to discuss ideal PowerPoints. The ideal PowerPoint will guide the listener and clarify abstract concepts with simple slides. The ideal presenter will interact with those slides and explain things concisely. The slides themselves should have a very few amount of words, clear diagrams, and should not distract the reader. In fact the presenter and presentation must be in sync to a T. If there is a slide that is not interacted with, it's useless. My slides have come a long way to the point they are now. Certain slides have reached their perfection, while others are clearly lacking. Currently, I'd say I have 2:1 ratio of perfect to not so perfect slides. I feel really confident about my graph slide because I professionally animated that one.

In comparison to my AP Seminar style presentations, the research presentation focuses on the primary research aspect a lot more than the lit review. As such, fewer sources are discussed in AP Research. The context and purpose of the AP Research style are centered around your primary research, rather than around your argument like AP Seminar. Students are forced to engage with their hands on research.

My rehearsal plan includes memorizing the topics of each slide, and developing transitions to memorize as well, but the rest will be conversational. My strat will be taking those points in my mind and discuss my research with the crowd. Practicing is something I do alone usually because I need to be comfortable with the presentation before I recite it to someone else. I'll do it daily (probably like 2 sessions) before I have it nailed down. Then my next step is to do it blindfolded, or something ridiculous like that to ease my nerves and solidify my knowledge on the topic. To top it all off I'll prob join a research gang prep session and practice my presentation with the boys before I ship it off to the April 14th deadline.

Till next week,
Ashwath

Episode 23: Scripting and Sliding

It's been an exciting week, of research. The editing got intense this week with revised papers. Everyone had to go the extra mile to give good feedback. Sad to see some teams NCAA bracket, Calais Campbell is gone from the Cardinals. Also the presentation is in 2 weeks, so that's creeping up on us.

The meme of the week is an old one, Supa Hot Fire. It is a character in a series of satrical YouTube videos, parodying battle rap. The videos consist of rapper Supa Hot Fire battling multiple rappers. The videos revolve around the crowd biasing around Supa Hot, overreacting to the extreme when he finishes his verse. Here's an example.

This week we were tasked with slides and scripts, and understanding the presentation rubric.

The first rubric row talks about the research question and the reasoning behind it. Being worth only 3, it is not a hard row to knock out of the park. I feel like my script adequately responded to this row. Row two is about the implications and limitations of my results. By conveying my results and discussing significance, implications, and limitations, I can attain the 6 points here. It is important to notice that the lit review has very little importance in this section, and that my focus should be on the methods and results.

The third row connects the hypothesis from the lit review to the conclusion arrived by the paper. I need to explain what I thought at first, what I arrived at in the conclusion, and what from my findings confirmed the hypothesis or not. Using Swint-Kruse as my hypothesis and initial thoughts will help me out in the presentation. I did a decent job of row 3 when arriving at my question and discussion. At a meager 3 points the row should not be difficult to achieve.

Now row four is my battle ground. The ability to present, speaking style, and presentation tools give this row a 6 point evaluation. As a veteran debater and public speaker, running my ideas past in a confident presentable way is not very difficult. My slides are simple and easy to understand.

I placed a lot of confidence in my ability to explain the graphs. It will be a lot easy to point and interact with tables and graphs as opposed to explaining things in a painstaking manner in my paper.

Till next week,

Ashwath V.

Episode 22: Revisiting a Paper

After my last MUN conference at ASU, I actually managed to win best delegate or first place on my committee PEMEX as the Undersecretary of Hydrocarbons for the Ministry of Energy. It was a lot of fun, we even took over the Mexican government. But I still don't know what college I'm going to, and that's not a fun reality to be living in.

The person I was representing

I am currently editing my paper, and the discussion section seems to be the thorn in my side (more like a gaping hole in my torso). The general feedback from my 2 peers was that my literature review provided significance and a decent background on my paper, but there needs to be a slight cleaning up of connections between using Lac1, folding mechanisms, and the actual research question. In addition I need to justify my gap more effectively. The methods section was relatively simple, there's only one real problem: technical terms. Looking back at it, I have defined only half the terms, and the terms I do define are often defined late. The results section was a worse version of this, as I basically hit the reader with a ton of technical jargon out of the gate. The visualization description was highly subjective, and I need to figure out how to phrase it in a more concrete way. The discussion interpreted the results, and completely forgot about the literature review, significance, and basically anything the reader would care about. I wrote it as if I was just publishing this for my peers in the biophysics field. I need to link the discussion to the lit review and tie the whole paper together.

As stated above, my strengths lie in the lit review and the results sections, and my weaknesses are technical terms, methods, and discussion. The main thing I'd like readers to search for is technical unclear terms, as I have lived in this paper for months and sometimes cannot convey terms simply.

The presentation for me should be interesting because I know everything about this paper, and frankly I explain things better while speaking over writing. My figures are exciting to discuss because I can physically point at them and identify regions etc... What I am nervous about is lapsing into technical jargon. My paper already uses a lot of diagrams, and it will be simpler to explain these in the presentation. 15 minutes will be a challenge, but I can always work around a time limit, and as technical as my project sounds, compared to other projects the amount of terms is smaller and more manageable.

The meme of this week is 322. 322 is term representing throwing a game. It originates from a Dota 2 match where professional player solo threw the game after making a bet against himself. The game score ended 3-22.

Episode 21: GRAPHS ARE IN

3D Models of the Chimera and 1efa

It's been a weird week, but I got the wheels back on the bus. I finally got my data back and my analysis back. The graphs are in and so are the structures. This week I was tasked with completing the paper! However, I only just got the results back this Sunday! I also have an extremely limited knowledge of what any of the DFI regions mean! Put those three things together and we now realize that I am very far behind. But if there's one thing I know about myself, the work will be done.

The comparison based on solely DFI values

The name of the game is finish the results and discussion section in time for peer editing this Wednesday. I am going to meet with Professor Ozkan this Monday. I will comprehend what the covariance matrix is, what it did, and how I got this graph (I have a general understanding, but if there was ever a time to clear up misunderstandings with the one person who knows it best, now would be that time). The second step is the discussion. I am not exactly a graduate student majoring in Physics, so identifying the specific interactions between amino acids will be difficult for me (I can generalize and explain them). Dr. Ozkan and I will go through the protein and basically identify the "hooks" and "nonconserved" structures. The other papers I have looked at are highly specific and very brief in their discussion. I will try to expand upon that style and interpret my results.

A brief look at my data shows that both the chimera is lower in DFI when compared with Lac1 at the DNA binding sequences (indicating less flexibility) and more flexible in the nonconserved regions of the body. In general it seems that the body of the protein is affected by the changing of nonconserved regions.

Overall, I feel rather good about the direction my paper is going in. Hopefully the paper is completed by the middle of this week for editing. The strengths of my paper lie in the literature review and my baby birding (editing). The biggest weakness on the other hand is my technical language and my unwritten sections.

The meme of the week is Scott Sterling, an unfortunate soccer player who gets pegged in the face multiple times. He does block all the penalties though. Check it out here.

Episode 20: Discussion and MUN

This week I attended a Model United Nations conference where I was Venezuela working with the Security Council on issues such as the South China Sea and Syria. It was a double team event, so I had a partner. His name was Amaan. I basically did all the talking, and Amaan did the writing.

When you hate the errors in CPUs holding you back

In terms of my research,  I am still waiting on my min12 results. The final step is just not coming together for whatever reason. Hopefully I can get it fixed in a timely manner. In preparation of a late arrival, I will write a results section based on the Lac1 data I have prepared. JUST KIDDING I JUST CHECKED IT AND I HAVE THE RESULTS BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For the topic of this blog post, I was tasked with analyzing the discussion sections of my discipline. The three papers I decided to look at were Subdividing Repressor Function: DNA Binding Affinity, Selectivity, and Allostery Can Be Altered by Amino Acid Substitution of Nonconserved Residues in a LacI/GalR Homologue, The Role of Conformational Dynamics and Allostery in the Disease Development of Human Ferritin, and Rheostats and Toggle Switches for Modulating Protein Function.

The first paper delved into the evidence by analyzing the flexibility of the linker region of Lac1. It talked about locking, binding affinity, and overall 3D descriptions. Then the writers moved into more theoretical extrapolations about reverse evolution. It seems to analyze the effects of their trials to each of the 3 regions of Lac1. It may be easier to explain if I walk through all 3 sections of a chimera in a similar fashion. But even after that it talks about future applications like Protein Engineering and in Vivo and in Vitro Functions. These really hook the reader, so it will be useful to add the analysis in.

The second paper was very focused on the use of DFI. The discussion was heavily linked to the DFI evaluations. I think I should try to combine the DFI analysis from the second paper with the extrapolations from the first.

Finally the third paper was extraordinarily technical in its discussions. Similarly to paper one, it did look into several different extrapolations. But the literature was so technical that the average reader would get lost in trying to understand the reading.

So my discussion section will focus on the DFI for each of the three protein regions first with 3D protein descriptions, then it will delve into the implications for the analysis.

And before I leave, let me hit you with the To Be Continued meme. It basically stops a situation right and the climax, leaving you wanting more. The origin is from the Jojo's Bizarre adventure cliffhangers. Check a compilation out here.