This is the website and portfolio of Hana Kucera. To find out a bit about me, please visit my About page. I am currently in the process of finishing up my thesis, therefore I have let the blog portion of this website languish. I intend to update once things settle down with the thesis, but in the mean time, to find out more about me, please browse the links in the left side bar, read down through some of my previous posts, or download my CV.

Half way through Biology 1622 – Microbes: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, I invited a doctor from the UNB Student Health Centre to come and give a talk about sexually transmitted infections (STIs). I asked students to read this pamphlet and come prepared with four questions each to ask the doctor. With well over 50 students in class that day, there was a huge number of questions. Since we didn’t get to them all, I summarized them and tried to answer as many as I could in the next class. As with so many aspects of teaching this class, I was pleasantly surprised. I appreciated the thoughtfulness and frankness of their questions.  I went through the questions, edited them for minor typos (but left the wording as is in most cases) and organized them into a few broad categories. I thought people would be interested in seeing what the students wanted to know about. These students represent all year levels (first through fourth) and are not science majors.

Here are their questions:

Prevalence:
What is the most common STI:
        Among University students?
        In New Brunswick?
        In Canada?

How prevalent are STIs among:
        High school students?
        Over someone’s entire life?
        In Canada generally?
Why does it seem that most of these infections occur in individuals aged 15-24?
Is Chlamydia the most prevalent because it is often asymptomatic?
Are all STIs on the rise or just Chlamydia?

Treatment
Antibiotics
What kind of antibiotics are used to cure infections?
Are antibiotics the most common treatment for STIs?
Are there many/any side effects to the antibiotics taken for STIs?
With the misuse of antibiotics, what is the likelihood that STIs will become resistant?
Since Chlamydia and Gonorrhea have similar symptoms and are both bacteria, does the same antibiotic kill them both? What is the difference between the two?
If someone wanted to get treated with antibiotics can it lead to other STIs?

General treatment questions
How treatable are STIs?
Which STIs are curable?
What is the most curable STI?
Which STI is the easiest to treat? Hardest?
Are there STIs that can not be cured? What happens in that case?
Why is there no cure for herpes yet?
Is there a stage at which treatment is most effective or times when it is ineffective to treat an STI?
Why is it so difficult to combat STIs compared to colds and other infections?
What is a culture swab?

Sex and risk factors in transmission
General inquiries about transmission
Once you get an STI and are cured, can you get it again?
Why are STIs so contagious in comparison to other infections?
Does your risk for STIs decrease or increase with age?
What can women do to avoid passing on an STI to their babies? (Assuming the woman is already infected.)
Are some people immune to STIs?
Even with protection, you can still get HPV, is there anyway to reduce chances of infection?
Can you get an STI from a toilet seat? If so which ones?
Can STIs be transferred by sharing cigarettes?

Questions about sex and not having sex
Can STIs be spread without having sex?
How many of these infections can be passed on by means other than sexual contact?
Can STIs be transferred through oral sex?
How do “crabs” get started?
Can someone still have sexual intercourse after being infected with an STI?
In the pamphlet it suggests to “skip” kissing when dating to avoid infection. Is there a more practical way to avoid infection without skipping kissing?

Social, behavioural and emotional factors
Checkups
Is it recommended that someone who does not consider him/herself highly sexually active get a check up?
How often should you be checked?

STIs and everyday life
Is it shameful to have an STI?
If you have cold sores, does that mean you have herpes and need to tell all of your partners?
Can you have a “normal” sex life and never acquire an STI?
Is there a relationship between being dirty and getting lice/scabbies?
If you have chronic hepatitis B does that mean you can never consume alcohol again?
What if you have regular hepatitis B and the 6 month healing process has passed?
If me and my partner went for STI testing and we are both negative do we still need to use condoms?
If you have sex with someone and are unknowingly carrying an STI and you pass it on to them, can they sue you? If you get annual STI tests, does this make a difference?
Where can I get additional information on campus?
Why have we just recently started hearing about HPV more?
How much does the knowledge of STIs affect the decisions of people in their choice to have sex?
When people know more about these infections do they take sex more seriously?
As knowledge of STIs spreads do you notice any declines in certain infections?
What is the most common misconception about STIs?

Emerging or new STIs
What STIs other than the ones we mentioned in lecture are there?
Have any new STIs emerged in the last five years?
Is it possible that there are more STIs out there that just haven’t been discovered yet?
Can new STIs just appear through time?
Have there always been STIs or have they become a greater concern now than in the past?
Are there any newly discovered STIs?

Signs and symptoms
What is the difference between an infection and a disease?
When it comes to infections that cause discharge, does the discharge occur anytime or only during sex?
What are some of the signs and symptoms of having contracted HPV?
Are all genital warts and sores painful or are some barely sore at all?
How serious are warts and sores?
How long can you be infected before you feel sick?
Does gonorrhea give a green discharge?

Causes and Effects
What causes herpes?
Does herpes go away?
Are yeast infections considered STIs?
Can men get yeast infections? If so, is it common?
What is the difference between Hepatitis B and C?
How many different STIs can occur in a person? Can two infections occur at once?
How long does it take for syphilis to affect the brain?
How does syphilis cause damage to the heart, brain etc.?

Risks associated with STIs
Do all STIs cause infertility if not treated?
How do STIs lead to infertility in people?
How long does it take for Chlamydia to affect your fertility if you are asymptomatic and it could be inside you for a long time?
Aside from spreading infections to others, what are health risks associated with STIs?
What are some health complications of HPV?
By contracting any of these STIs, can it be a precursor to cancer?
What are the major health risk for Gonorrhea?
What are the long term effects of STIs left untreated?
Can any of the STIs mentioned in the pamphlet cause or lead to death?
Which STIs can cause death?

HIV
How can you estimate that 30% of the population has AIDS/HIV and are unaware?
How does HIV destroy people’s immune systems?
Can HIV be spread through saliva?
Why is there no cure for AIDS?
I have heard of someone who was “healed” from HIV (white blood cell count became normal). How is this possible?
Is there ever going to be a cure for AIDS? Are researchers taking many steps today in helping prevent this disease?
Is unprotected intercourse the most common way of contracting HIV/AIDS?
Why is it so hard to develop a vaccine for HIV?
How long does it take to get HIV test results back?
Do we know how and where the HIV virus originated from?
Are gay men more likely to get AIDS or is that a myth left over from the 1980s?

Prevention methods
Barrier methods
What is a dental dam?
What is a female condom?
What is the difference between a female condom and a diaphragm?
If you are allergic to latex, are there other types of condoms that are available?
Do the female and male condom have the same effectiveness or is one better at protecting you from STIs than another?
Is spermicidal lubricant effective?
What are your chances of getting an STI when you use a condom?
Do condoms prevent all forms of STIs?

Vaccines
When were vaccines developed for HPV and Hepatitis B and have there been any long term studies of side effects?
Are there any vaccines that prevent STIs?
Are there any risks with the new Gardasil vaccine since it is so new? What about long term side effects?
Is it true that Gardasil is causing harm to the body?
If you have are in a monogamous relationship, is there still a point in getting the HPV vaccine?
Is there any method to prevent men from getting HPV? Any treatments?

STI testing
Since the symptoms of several STIs are similar, how can doctors know which one you have?
Which STIs are tested for when a Pap is administered?
Why is testing not done usually for males for the STI trichomonas?
Why don’t I get blood tests done when I get a Pap done?
What happens when there are abnormal cells in the Pap? What is the next step?
Why is testing not done usually for males for the STI trichomonas?
If you are young, can you get tested without your parents knowing?
How are STIs tested for?
Do STI tests cost money?
Posted in Teaching ]]> http://teachmescience.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/student-questions-about-sexually-transmitted-infections/feed/ 2 teachmescience http://teachmescience.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/a-little-twitter-success-story-pink-shirt-day/ http://teachmescience.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/a-little-twitter-success-story-pink-shirt-day/#comments Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:53:45 +0000 Hana http://teachmescience.wordpress.com/?p=42 ]]> Recently, I’ve started to spend more time interacting and learning on Twitter. Twitter is starting to catch on in a big way; if you want a quick summary, check out David Pogue’s recent New York Times article.

I see Twitter as a way of sharing ideas and resources with people with whom I have something in common, namely a passion for science and education (and a few other fun things). I alluded to some of the benefits I’ve gleaned from Twitter in a previous post and since then, as my network has grown, I’ve had folks share lesson plans, interesting science stories, online resources and even movie recommendations and recipes! I’m happy to say that I’ve contributed a bit to the community as well. I’ve passed on lesson plans of my own, reviewed and commented on people’s educational projects and promoted a few resources. This brings me to Pink Shirt Day. 

Pink Shirt Day is a Canadian campaign aimed at stopping bullying. It’s got a neat history and is really starting to take off this year, its second year.  Having seen and felt the damage that bullying does, both personally and while working with children as a camp counselor,  I’ll be proud to wear a pink shirt on February 25, 2009.

This year when the Pink Shirt Campaign advertising started, I posted the link on Twitter. A few people “Retweeted” and some got in touch with me. One of my Twitter buds, Terri Johnson (known as @terri_science  on Twitter) saw the link and got her school involved! Since this is a largely Canadian campaign, it was fantastic that Terri, who lives and works in Missouri, brought her school on board. Another Twitter friend, Jacques Cool, (also known as @zecool) who works with the Department of Education here in New Brunswick also saw the post, and is striving to bring the campaign to the Francophone schools that he works with.

I was astounded how less than 140 characters sent out among millions of tweets can lead to real impacts! Previous to this experience, I had a formula that I applied if I was passionate about something and wanted to make a difference.  It went something like this:

Step 1: Be passionate about something. 

Step 2: Come up with a good idea or project to promote the thing you’re passionate about.

Step 3: Think, organize, plan. Come up with a realistic way to motivate people to your cause, figure out what resources you’ll need, make a plan on how to execute your idea.

Step 4: Recruit others who are also passionate about your idea to help you.

Step 5: Fundraise, gain supporters, gather resources.

Step 6: Work hard.

Step 7: Success!

Step 8: Tell more people and hope they take on a similar project.

Eight totally worthwhile steps to making your passion a real, working project. I’ve done this in the past and found every step very rewarding. The folks over at the Pink Shirt Day Campaign, lead largely by Christy Clark, are making a real difference and are probably applying a similar formula. My Twitter experience with Pink Shirt Day feels like an incredibly helpful leap to the success step: 

Step 1: Be passionate: Bullying must be stopped!

Step 2: Find people who are doing something to make a difference: I thank those two high school students who had the great idea, and also the Pink Shirt Day campaign folks for putting in the hard work.

Step 3: Share idea on Twitter. Idea catches on, more passionate people make a difference in their community.

Step 4: Success!

I am deeply thankful for the incredible folks that make Pink Shirt Day happen, both at the campaign organization level and at each school or business where it takes place. I wanted to point out the power of Twitter as a means of connecting people. All I did was tweet a link to the campaign website followed by my own declaration to wear a pink shirt on February 25. The wonderful folks on Twitter did the rest.

Today was the introductory lecture in my first year non-majors Biology class. The course is called, “Microbes, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. As part of my first class I handed out a survey to get a feel for students’ understanding of microbes before the course starts. I included questions such as “What are some differences between viruses and bacteria?”, “What causes food poisoning?” and “What causes colds”.  The answers I got were varied and interesting. 

The last two questions on the survey were most enlightening, because I can use them to direct the course content. Here are the questions. Below each question are all of the answers that I received.

Name one disease that you would like to have more knowledge about.

• Kidney diseases
• Celiac
• Cystic Fibrosis
• Strep Throat
• The Plague
• Leprosy
• Cancer (18 students)
• (Leukemia)
• The Flu (5 students)
• The common cold (why is there no cure?)
• Sexually Transmitted Infections
• AIDS (5 students)
• Diabetes
• Flesh eating disease (2 students)
• Scarlet Fever
• SARS
• Bird Flu (2 students)

There were 50 surveys returned. I’m impressed and interested by the answers. Cancer is such a huge interest and concern. I had already planned a lecture on it (even though it is not a microbial disease), so I’m glad to see that so many students want to know about it. There are other non-microbial diseases listed, quite a few, so maybe some time spent on microbial v.s. non-microbial diseases may be worthwhile. Here’s the other question:

Please write down a question that you hope to get the answer to during this course.

• How many disease-causing organisms exist?
• How do epidemics break out and how do they die out?
• More about food poisoning
• What is a microbe? (2 Students)
• What is the difference between bacteria and viruses?
• How do we treat microbes in our life?
• How cancer develops in the human body
• Best ways to keep from getting sick
• Why aren’t viruses treatable?
• Is microbiology an important factor to the human body?
• The evolution of microorganisms contrasted to the evolution of macroorganisms such as animals.
• What is the first microorganism?
• Is there a cure for some of the most known diseases? (e.g. Cancer and diabetes?)
• With all the scientific knowledge that exists, why is there no cure for cancer and AIDS?
• How to prevent illness effectively
• What is the news about the death gene and how does it relate to cancer and chronic health disease?
• What causes cancer and why can’t it be combated completely
• How is birdflu going to wipe out the world?
• Are anti-bacterias [sic] good for us, or should we just allow bacteria to be naturally developed/destroyed (ex. Hand anti-bacteria).
• How do organisms cause disease?
• Why microbes are important and what is the benefits of studying them?

Wow! What a great list! Several of these topics are already in the lecture plan, but it is great to know that the students are interested. Others, I’ll have to look into. I’ll try to answer all of them before the semester finishes.

I realize it has been ages since I’ve posted anything here. I’ve been keeping myself busy! I’m now hard at work preparing lectures for my upcoming course. I’ll be teaching non-science first year undergraduates all about microbes.  Balancing this with research has taken up most of my time and brain power, so I’ve let this space languish a bit. I did want to share some highlights from the past few months, however.

Summer Collecting

The summer was a blast! The summer student that I was working with generated an impressive data set, and learned to analyze the data. He’s applying for medical school now while he finishes his final year of undergraduate. I pretty sure that this exposure to research gave him a few new insights into opportunities and career paths in science.  We took one day out of the lab schedule to take all of the undergraduate summer students in the lab down to the seashore to see the seaweeds in situ. 

The field day was one of the highlights of the summer. Seaweeds are notoriously difficult to identify in the field, but seeing them through the fresh eyes of students made us grad students realize that even though we might not be able to put Latin names on every species of branched red alga, we actually do know our stuff! I was also impressed at how eager all the students were to find and identify the seaweeds that they were working on. Here are some photos from that day.

This is the mid-low intertidal zone, and the tide pool has lots of kelp in it!

It was a beautiful day, with a bit of fog. It is days like this that remind us how much we love the work we do!

I also went on two collecting trips, one to Quadra and Cortes Islands in British Columbia. Here, I collected the red algae Porphyra. There are about 20 species of this genus in BC and it is better known as nori, the seaweed that is used as a wrap for sushi. The goal of my project is to develop a molecular tool to distinguish among the species. I also travelled the coast of Nova Scotia this summer, where we stumbled on some pretty amazing collecting sites, and nearly got eaten by black flies. Here are a few photos from those trips.

On Cortes Island, pressing Porphyra specimens

In this photo, I’m preparing to press some specimens onto herbarium paper. This preserves the seaweed for future analysis. A small sample is taken and dried in silica gel to be later used in DNA analysis.

Here are a few photos from Nova Scotia.

Peggy's Cove Intertidal Zone

Collecting in an estuary

My first publication

The other highlight of the last few months has been the publication of my first scientific article. The research that I did during my first two years in graduate school came out in September in the journal Botany (formerly known as the Canadian Journal of Botany). The paper is called “Assigning morphological variants of Fucus (Fucales, Phaeophyceae) in Canadian waters to recognized species using DNA barcoding” and can be found here. 

The here and now

As I mentioned, I’m currently working on lecture material as well as research. While this is keeping me busy, I’m keeping in touch with Web 2.0 things by becoming more active on Twitter.  This microblog website has already lead to one major international collaboration, and several smaller but also very useful connections. I’ll be the education project partner in a new multilingual education website for children, but this is so new that I can’t mention details just yet. In smaller collaborations, I’ve shared resources with educators, and made connections with people across the world. This tool has opened many new doors for me, so I recommend you check it out! 

The future of this blog

While I had hopes for weekly updates when I started this blog, I think occasional updates are more realistic. I’m looking forward to sharing my experiences as a first-time sessional instructor next term.

Having attended all of these conferences, and just having returned from my most favourite one, got me to thinking. What are the purposes of conferences in general? How much do the purposes of science conferences and outreach/education conferences overlap and how are they different?

Let’s start with science conferences. My first thought is that these exist as a forum for scientists to share information. To prepare for a conference, scientists will think about some complete (or near complete) piece of research they’ve been working on, and then develop either an oral presentation with visuals (a pretty standard PowerPoint presentation), or a visual presentation in the form of a poster. Usually, these presentations are packed with as much information as possible. I think it is in the nature of scientists to want to be complete and detailed, even if this is, at times, at the sacrifice of effective communication. As a beginning graduate student I found conferences overwhelming because of the amount of information I felt barraged with.  Now, after a bit of experience, I can take in information much in the same way I read papers. Skim the abstract, go for the talks that look interesting and relevant, and when listening to a talk, watch for the main points. It is important for me not to get exhausted so that I can make the most of what I am hearing. So what do I walk away with in the end? Sometimes, I get ideas for new research directions, or a few small details provided someone studying a related topic are very useful in understanding my own work. 

How about outreach conferences? Exchanging information is still high on the list here, but there is something that happens at these conferences that is much different than science conferences — an emphasis on experience, feeling and collaboration. In many presentations, the audience is asked to participate: get out of their chairs, move around, talk to other participants, and most importantly, contribute to the content of the presentation. When I am asked to contribute to content, I not only get a sense of ownership and belonging with the presentation, but I am more likely to retain the information provided by others, because I can see how my ideas fit into a larger context. Furthermore, being part of a group working together and being creative motivates me more than anything else. Invariably, I come away from science outreach conferences with renewed enthusiasm for the work I do.

A common thread of all conferences is that I come home feeling like I have a fresh perspective on the work that I do, new contacts for people who I can work with in the future, and an overall feeling of motivation.

Over the last few days, we’ve been working together to edit and align sequence data. This involves interpreting the output of the most high-tech piece of equipment in our lab (the automated sequencer), and making judgement calls in cases where the machine can’t do it for us.  Just to quickly boil things down, the sequencer reads fluorescently labeled DNA to output a graph from which we read the sequence. (A fairly good summary can be found here.) For various reasons, including that this technique is not perfect at matching sequence peaks to the correct nucleotide, we have to manually edit the sequences.  Now that we’ve practiced a bit together, and I’m sure the summer student can do this on his own. He’s pretty happy about that too, since he is interested in learning about data analysis, and this is the first step.  

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be heading into the field again, this time for about a week, and following that, I’ll be attending the Let’s Talk Science Partnership Program National Conference.  This means that the summer student will be on his own while I’m away. There are lots of other people in the lab, so he can ask questions whenever he needs to, but I think it will be great for him to work independently while I’m away. I’ve found that some of my most memorable learning experiences in science have been times when I’ve had to figure things out on my own. We had a chat today, and I feel confident that he’s going to have a productive time while I’m gone.

We’ll be working together to develop a suitable marker (short bit of DNA) to use for DNA barcoding. We’ve got 100 samples of green seaweed (such as Ulva), extracting the DNA and then sequencing three specific regions of the genome to evaluate which will be the best for distinguishing species. The project comes with lots of challenges because the one marker that has worked for animals, and most other seaweeds doesn’t work for green seaweeds. This means that we’re treading on new territory, and while that is an exciting part of science, it can also be difficult because experiments don’t always work, so there are not always positive results to keep you motivated.

This is my second summer mentoring an undergraduate, and having been an undergraduate working with a grad student myself in the past, I think there are several factors such as effective communication and mutual respect that lead to successful cooperation, and a positive experience.  

I’ve started this mentorship (and my previous one), by sitting down with the student and asking what his goals for the summer are.  This is good for me to know so that we can tailor his lab experiences accordingly.  This summer, learning data analysis and bioinformatics are high on the list. Great! I find this stuff fun too, so we can spend time editing sequence data and learning about BOLD.  I also try to check in and discuss goals again throughout the summer, because I found that when I was an undergrad summer student, my perspectives and goals changed rapidly as I learned more.  I want students that I work with to feel that goals, and our definition of success, can be continually updated throughout the summer.  What I haven’t done, and I think I should, is communicate my goals and expectations. Of course, communication needs to go both ways.

At times during my undergraduate (like during interviews for the co-op work placement program) I felt, well, I’m not sure the exact word, maybe: under-appreciated.  I knew that I had lots of enthusiasm and could learn quickly despite not having experience, and so when interviewers, or employers wouldn’t trust me with things “too difficult/too complicated/too important for a undergraduate”, I was disappointed.  In my fourth year, I found a supervisor for an independent studies project who was completely different – he challenged me to choose my own research questions and approaches, and come to my own conclusions, yet he was always willing to provide guidance.  For me, this was the perfect balance of independence and freedom to develop critical thinking skills while not leaving me abandoned with no guidance at all.  For students that I work with, I want to cultivate a sense of trust, so that the students know that I value their work, I will challenge them to learn as much as they can, but I always be there to provide help. How will I get this balance right? Surely, some people prefer more guidance than others, so how will I know when to give advice, how much direction to give, or when to just be silent and allow things to run their course (mistakes and all)? I think I’ll just start at some arbitrary level of guidance, perhaps at a level that I might have liked, then talk to the student about how that’s working and take it from there. Signs of frustration are usually pretty easy to pick up on, so these types of cues will help me gauge my level of interaction. 

I’m looking forward to the next few months. I’m sure that I’ll learn more about being a better mentor, teacher and co-worker and it will be neat to see the learning and development of the student too. More updates to come.

This lesson has been successfully executed in Grades 6 all the way to Grade 12. Personally, I’ve only done it with Grades 8 and up, but some volunteers at LTSPP have had success at Grades 6 and 7. The general idea is that you take fresh or frozen and defrosted bananas, grind them up using a blender, and then use a combination of some common household materials to extract and see the DNA. The one chemical that I usually get from campus is ethanol. I have heard, however, that rubbing alcohol can be substituted and the results are not as good, but it still works. 

As a possible extension, I’d suggest trying the same procedure on other fruits or on vegetables.I have tried spinach once, and it didn’t work – but you may have different results. Discussion of the scientific method, how experiments are designed, use of controls and so on would fit well here. The lesson plan also mentions an enrichment activity which involves using the genetic code to decode messages. Some messages to be decoded can be found here. Usually, I get the student to make lines after every third nucleotide letter in the decoding activity, and then place the one-letter protein code above each the three-letter codons.  The protein letters then spell out the messages. (I don’t worry about 5′-3′ vs 3′-5′, transcription, and translation specifically during this activity, but this could be added easily if you wanted.  I also encourage you to make up your own messages.) If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.