The BEST Day

Today was one of the best days ever.

I went to Cadarache, a research center for nuclear energy. They are working with zebrafish there and for a moment (well, actually it was for several moments), I really wanted to work with the zebrafish too! I met some of the most capable and intelligent research scientists in Europe that took time out of their day to share their research with me and invite me into their labs.

I had to wait 1 month to get through the security and upon arrival, I had to have my picture taken and a special badge made before I could be driven through the gates into the facility. They also held my passport during the time that I was within the borders of the facility. It was top security, let me tell you. Before entering the labs, I got to dress up in the special clothes for working with radioactive substances. I also got to wear cool shoes. The labs and work done in them were AWESOME. Upon leaving, I had to get scanned by a special radioactivity detector to make sure that I did not get contaminated. It was all very new to me and very interesting.

Tom Hinton is a very good scientist and a very nice man. He told me today that women are smarter than men although men are not too far behind. (I told you that he was a good scientist; he figured out the most important thing- women are smarter than men.) I like him a lot! He also wears an earing in one of his ears that is really cool. On the drive back from Cadarache we talked about research, research, research and dissected all of the reasons for why we love it. It was an amazing conversation and I realized that I really cannot live without research as a part of my life.

The Scientists:
Tom Hinton, already mentioned above.

Stanislav Geras'kin is a Doctor of Sciences, Professor Head of Laboratory of Plant Ecotoxicology at the Russian Institute of Agricultural Radiology and Agroecology. He is a visiting scientist at Cadarache. One thing (out of the many!) that he is doing is studying the effects that Chernobyl has had on the environment. Listening to this was interesting to me since I was born only 100km (~60mi) south of there 2 years after it happened. Our conversation was spoken in 4 languages!! Russian, Ukrainian, English, and French. I am happy to say that learning all of these languages has finally proven to be of some use.

Karin Beaugelin is a french woman that had a wonderful, extremely colorful and well organized poster from which she presented her current project. She is modeling dose of radionuclides to plants and animals and it sounded extremely complicated. She spoke only french so my brain was overwhelmed with the science vocabulary. I learned that uranium is both chemically toxic and radiologically hazardous. I never knew that but I wrote it down so that I will always remember that from now on.

Arnaud Martin is a soil chemist and I understood his work the most because of the work/projects that I have been involved in recently concerning earthworms behavior in nano-spiked soils. Speaking with Arnaud was more like review and I'm glad it was because after Karin fried my brains with dose response curves and radionuclides, I really needed something more... mellow.  Along with studying soils and nanoparticles, Arnaud studies plants and the atmospheric environment surrounding the plants. He also synthesizes Selenium nanoparticles and makes them radioactive. The labs that he took me into were really innovative and there was one in particular that when I stepped into, I felt like I was stepping into a top-science lab from a movie (or something of equivalence). However, it wasn't in a movie; it was real and it was cool.

The most inspiring scientist that I spoke with was Christelle Adam. She is extremely intelligent and is doing numerous experiments all involving zebrafish. She has looked at how radionucleotides effect reproduction, olfaction, BBB, motility, etc, etc.. Her research focuses mainly on uranium uptake; 3H and gamma effects to zebrafish. She has various and numerous ideas for future studies and experiments and is collaborating with other scientists all across Europe. He work is absolutely fascinating!! I did not want to stop hearing about it and I exchanged contact information with her asking her to send me more info on her work. It was that interesting. At this point, her work is more interesting than rocket science!

I also had an opportunity to speak with a PhD student by the name of Starr-light Augustine.  She was born in the US but her family moved to France when she was young. She's french/american. She is working on a theory called Debit Energy Budget Theory in zebrafish. It has both biology and chemistry in it and even include the laws of thermodynamics. It was so fun to talk to someone who is more into biology talk about how important chemistry is in her work. She tied biology and chemistry together very nicely. She let me look at her recently hatched zebrafish under the microscope and try to determine the stage that they were at. It was so much fun because they glowed like diamonds in the sun under the microscope and reflected the light. It was the coolest thing ever. I could not stop looking at them. Also, I guessed the right stage at which they were at and got so excited over it I almost forgot everything that I had learned that day. It is so fascinating what she and Christelle are doing with the zebrafish...

I know that for some of you this doesn't sound like something to be super excited about. But for me, radioecology is something I have never experienced before and I'm so fortunate to have had the privelege of making the aquaintance of it.


Concluding one of the best days of my life and wishing you all the best,

Oksana.

Paris

Hello everybody,

This weekend I went to Paris and I am sooo glad that I did! Thank you Jason and Armand for really pushing me forward and encouraging me to venture out and do so.

Hotel de Ville, Paris. House of the Mayor of Paris.

Cathedrale de Notre Dame.

Musee d'Orsay.

Arc de Triomphe du Carousel

Le Louvre.

Le Louvre Fountains.

Me in front of Arc de Triomphe du Carousel. (This is NOT the Arc de Triomphe, this is the other one in front of Le Louvre.)

Seine River.

Me and Eiffel Tower across the Seine.

Tour Eiffel.

Me and Eiffel. :)

Arc de Triomphe. (I do not know why this picture looks stretched out but I had some troubles incorporating it into the post. I apologize and may try to post another one that looks somewhat more proportional..)

Modern Paris.

More of modern Paris.

This is a fun picture! Me in front of Montemarte, my second favorite thing to see in Paris. The Eiffel Tower taking first place, bien sur!

Montemarte.

Touresty street beneath Montemarte.

Versailles Palace.

Versailles Palace.

Metro.

Me beneath Eiffel Tower.

Well, that is it for now. The internet is extremely slow and it is extremely late here... I hope that you enjoy the pictures!

I will post one or two more times, concluding this blog as my internship concludes here...

A demain.

Oksana

Avignon

Bonjour all,


I forgot to write about Avignon...

Several weeks ago, Armand and Chelle were wonderful and took me to see the city of Avignon.

About the city: Avignon is a city of many different faces. For over a century it was home for the papacy and has been forever crowned by the medieval Palais des Papes and encircled by an ancient city wall and filled in moats. It was a centre of scholarships and artistic excellence. Today this city is very artistic and has a lot of theatre, music, exhibitions, festivals, etc, throughout the year.

History: Avignon was born during the dying phases of the Neolithic period (9000-8000 b.c.). It was a settlement, really, laying in the cradle of the Rocher des Doms. Rocher des Doms is a tall rocky clif that falls steeply into the Rhone River. I did not get a picture of the cliff, but I was on top of it. The view is gorgeous!

Anyway, under Roman rule, Avignon was a port city and then in the 12th century it began to think BIG. Towers were built, a Romanesque catherdral, and the St. Benezet bridge across the Rhone River, along with an ancient wall around the city and moats. In 1306, Clement V (a french pope) moved his court from a turbulent Rome to the quiet and safety of the independent, vatican-owned region around Avignon. This region was called Comtat Venaissin. After Clement V died, the following 6 popes saw no reason to relocate to Rome. The Italians called this the "Babylonian Captivity" and it lasted for 68 years. Scholars, artists, architects, jewellers, weavers.. all flocked to Avignon to find commerce and trade... while Petrarch* sniffed and called it "a sewer". Personally, I think he was wrong.
*Francesco Petrarch was an Italian Renaissance humanist. He is called the Father of Humanism.

Sometime around/after 1370, Gregory XI was pestered by St. Catherine of Siena (who has her own crazy story which I am not going to recite but will say that it is rather interesting and full of soft drama) to move the papacy back to Rome. Shortly after he moved back to Rome, he died and the Romans elected a Roman pope. The French were not about to lose their hold on the reins of power and elected Clement VII asap in Avignon. Now there were 2 popes!! They excommunicated eachother, sparking the Great Schism which lasted for 40 years! The Great Schism ended when all sides agreed on one pope, Martin V, in 1417.

Avignon was papal territory even after the popes returned to Rome. It was far enough away from Rome to escape the Vatican checks and was not under French censorship so it flourished greatly becoming an artistic, religious and great publishing center. It wasn't until 1791 that Avignon was returned to France.

Below are some pictures:

This is the Palais des Papes and to the left is the Cathedrale Notre-Dame-des-Doms (12th century) with its golden statue of the Virgin Mary on the top.

The other half of Palais des Papes. It was too big to fit into one picture.

This is the courtyard from within the Palais des Papes.

This is what used to be the Pope's dining hall.

The Palais is full of all sorts of statues. This is one.

Avignon is a city laden with artistic treasures. This is the Municipal Theatre.

This is a street view.. 

This is cathedrale in Avignon. Unfortunately I forgot the name of it.

This is the interior of the Cathedrale. All of the other cathedrales that I have visited in France look just as elegant as this one on the inside. Most of them have organs that cover an entire wall!!! The organ is not visibile in the picture, just an FYI.

This is the 12th century bridge across the Rhone River. Only part of it remains. It is called Pont Saint-Benezet.

That is all for now, as my internet is extremely slow and uploading pictures is pain in its purest form. As I wrap up my last two weeks in France, I will try to post at least once or twice more about Paris, the nuclear research facility in Cadarache, and my conclusions on the research (maybe).

Once again with tired typing fingers and extremely heavy eyelids, au revoir.

Oksana

Marseille

Hello everyone,

Yesterday I went to Marseille, the oldest city in France. According to Wikipedia, it was founded by the Greeks in 600 BC. The story goes like this:

The day that the band of Phocaean Greeks sailed into the harbor 2600 years ago, was the day that Gyptis (the local chiefs daughter) was supposed to choose a husband. The sea-faring Greeks arrived under the command of a dashing man by the name of Protis and they were invited inland for the feast that was given in honor of Gyptis. Protis apparently fit Gyptis's bill because during the feast she chose him to become her husband. Gyptis, the bride, came with a dowry of land (a hill) close to the Rhone river and that is where the Greeks founded a trading post which later became the port. It was called Massalia. Today it is called Marseille and it is the second most populous city in France after Paris.

In 49 BC, Massalia was beseiged by Julius Caesar. Sometime during this time it is said that Christianity was introduced to Marseille (because of the obvious catacombs and records of Roman martyrs). Credit for evangelisation of Marseille is given to Mary Magdelen and her brother Lazarus.  Anyway, over the years it became France's leading port and in 1720, a ship from Syria arrived in port carrying with it the plague (The Black Death). The plague wiped out ~45,000 citizens of Marseille! Later, Marseille supported the French Revolution and marched on Paris. It was monarchist under the First Empire and then republican under the Second Empire. Under Napoleon III, Algeria became a french department and many Algerians moved to Marseille. New ports were built and shipping increased significantly. The Suez Canal opened up in 1869 and immigrants from Spain, Italy, and Greece poured in abundantly! Marseille still maintains this cosmopolitan population. Life revolves around the Vieux Port (old port) and although Marseille is a coastal city, it is not touristy but on the contrary remains a year-round, hard-working, city that has an extremely lively cultural scene!

Below are some pictures with descriptions. Enjoy!

These are fishing boats in Vieux Port.

More fishing boats and view from the port.

Below is another image of Vieux Port.. it is HUGE and has THOUSANDS of boats.

On a ferry ride to Il d'If, this is the Chateau d'If, the prison where Monte Cristo was imprisoned from the story, The Count of Monte Cristo. Yes, it is real.

View of Marseille from Chateau d'If. The body of water is the Mediterranean Sea. I dipped my feet into it!!

This is me with my skirt flying in the wind. Behind me is Marseille and I am standing at the top of Chateau d'If.

Below is my Algerian friend, Fouzia, and me on the Med. Sea.

Mediterranean Sea. What can I say? It's gorgeous!Sailboat and Marseille.

I had to put this picture of the Seagull up because I had to wait like 10 minutes for the Seagull to cooperate and appear photogenic (without hiding it's head under it's wing).

This is Fouzia at the Pizza joint that we ate at.

C'est moi!

 This is me strolling along...

That's all for now! I apologize if the captions are off from the pictures but I am unable to control the formatting... eh, computers!

Always,

Oksana

FRIENDS at LAST!!

Bonjour, all!

This past week has flown by at the speed of light!! (That is 299,792,458 m/s!) I have met so many new people and made some great friends. I feel as if I have also fallen in love with Aix-en-Provence. It is a wonderful feeling and with each passing day, I do not want to leave this place. With a car and AC, I would stay here without a second thought to it! The only drawback is that Aix-en-Provence is the most expensive city to live in after Paris. We all know how that can go...

Each and every person that I have befriended (or has befriended me) has greatly enriched my life through sharing knowledge and sharing their life experiences with me. I would like to tell you about each one of these people.

My friends: One of the first people that befriended me was a young man by the name of Fabrice. He is an engineering student who is finishing his Ph.D here at the lab that I am in. He is fun and outgoing and loves to ask millions of questions about the U.S. and the culture and the food and the movies and the music. He has had many opportunities to go to different countries for various internships and he has shared a lot of his experiences with me. He has even been to New Zealand! How cool is that? His girlfriend is dutch and lives in Amsterdam, Holland, so he goes there every weekend to spend time with her. He has widened my horizons by answering all of my questions about the countries that he has been too. He has also brought me back some sweets from Holland just so I can broaden my scope of gastronomie. I went hiking up the big Montagne St. Victoire with him this past week. It was a huffer and a puffer hike, let me tell you! But the views were gorgeous!!

Fouzia is a girl that I met at the bus stop where I wait for my bus to CEREGE every morning. One day I was sitting at the bus stop, reading a book and waiting for the bus when she walked up and sat down next to me. She was reading a newspaper with a screaming headline about the World Cup. She pointed to the headlines started talking to me in french about the French football (soccer) team. I kind of nodded and smiled and said an occasional "oui, oui" or simply "aaha.. oui" just to be polite and because I only understood like every 3rd word. So that is how we met and our first discussion was about the World Cup. There was something unique about this encounter because where in the world do you find two GIRLS talking about the WORLD CUP? We have become really good friends and she greets me with the french kiss on both cheeks every morning. I feel rather french when I am greeted in this authentic french fashion.  She is from Algeria and she is finishing her masters in computer sciences. She has shared with me the story of her religion and her home country, both of which are fascinating because they are so different from what I am used to.

Filip de la Pologne (as I like to call him) is a young man that I met at the bus stop next to my apartment. We had both waited for approximately half an hour and the bus still hadn't come. I knew that it would come eventually because it always comes sooner or later. However, he had just arrived in Aix and had no idea so he spoke first and asked when in the world it would come. I answered with "hopefully today". I discovered that he is from Poland and is doing historical research in the Aix-in-Provence library in centre ville. He is finishing his masters in history and is also working on his second bachelors degree in Arabic. He wears black-rimmed glasses and seems to be the artsy-fartsy kind of person. I do not mean that in any deragatory manner. He can speak polish, english, french, arabic and UKRAINIAN!!! Today I had a conversation with him in which we utilized 3 of those languages. It never ceases to amaze me how the human brain can grasp so many different languages all at the same time. The entire time I was trasitioning from one to the second to the third (and grasping the fourth, Polish), I felt as if it were just one language. A part of me now wants to devote my life to studying the two major areas of the brain that are responsible for linguistic skills: Broca's area & Wernicke's area. But that is biology, a topic I prefer not to associate myself with.

My most recent friend I made this past week. I met him on the bus on my way to CEREGE. Usually, on my bus rides to CEREGE, I either read books (all of the books that I have not been able to read during the past 3 years of my life because of school, school, school!) or talk to Fouzia. A lot of the people read books on the bus, and I (because I am somewhat nosy) always try to read the title of the book and see if it matches the person. It's weird, I know, but I do it anyway. Over the past few weeks I have noticed that everyone who was reading a book, was reading it in french except for one young man. I had sat within close proximity to see that he was reading an english novel, like me. This past week, Fouzia and I were not able to find seats next to eachother so I sat down in the first seat that was open. I opened up my book and began to read. I glanced over at the book that the young man was reading next to me when lo and behold, it was the english reader! We struck up a conversation about english books and have become friends since then. I wish I could tell you his name, but I don't know it. It escapes my mind. He is, however, one of the smartest boys that I have ever met in my life. He lived in Ireland for one year, working in the hospital, and learning how to speak english while doing an internship. Then he lived in Germany for one year studying physics and doing research and learning the German language. Impressive. Now he is finishing his masters in physical engineering, here in France. When he inquired about what kind of research I do, I briefly summarized and explained about the TiO2 nanoparticles in cements. He listened and then dissected the mechanisms and distinct properties of TiO2 and how photocatalysis occurs. He basically summarized what I had spent 3 days reading in scientific articles and various journals. I was thoroughly impressed. He then proceeded to cross disciplines and tie in the dreaded biological perspective of my research project. I told him that I don't specialize in biology and that in my universe, biology just doesn't exist. And if it does, then I avoid it as best as I can; like the bubonic plague (which I must say, is caused by a gram negative bacterium that is called Yersinia pestis). So he brought in my beloved chemistry and asked complex and intelligent questions pertaining to it, like the physicochemical aspects of the research. I knew there were smart people in the world, but he is probably the smartest person my age that I have ever met!! I am honored to have crossed paths with someone who will no doubt accomplish something great in the future. With extremely bright young people like him blossoming today, we have nothing to worry about concerning tomorrow.

Christine Hendren is a Ph.D student that I met very briefly this past week. She is a student from DUKE University. She just got married and she and her husband touched base at CEREGE for a couple of days before heading to the beautiful Alpes for their honeymoon. Ooohlala! Although our meeting was very brief, I am super excited about having met her. We have exchanged contact details for potential future collaboration as she has done some work with sediments and silver and her results looked promising and would be great to continue with in future research studies.

I have many more "friends" that I work with, but as they are all my seniors and are well advanced in their careers, I like to think of them as my mentors. Marie-Ange is the Ph.D student with whom I am working on the cement research. She is tall and thin and beautiful and is a very logical girl. Perrine is an engineer/research scientist who has helped me in numerous ways and has pointed me in the right direction many times throughout my experiments. Jerome is the research scientist whom I like to think of as the Thinking Cap. He is petit in size but his brain contains massive amounts of knowledge in it. He has been wonderful in helping me see the big picture of my research and in providing intellectual advice. And Armand has been extremely nice to me, as always. I thank him the most for being like a father (in all aspects) away from home and for letting me use his office.

There are so many more people that I can think of and would like to share with you but my eyelids are extremely heavy and I am rather sleep deprived today. I shall try to put up a post tomorrow with some pictures. However, no promises, as I have yet to discover what sort of adventure awaits for me in the day of tomorrow!

Au revoir,
Oksana.