Week Seven

This week, I will be preparing for surgeries and experimentation. Additionally, I will conduct record-keeping. In regard to the retrospective clinical study, I am actively pursuing a modified procedure.

On-Site Experimentation: 

Surgeries and experimentation take place as normal again this week. Please see Week Three and Week Five for further details regarding preparation for surgery and experimentation. Specifically, my primary responsibility this week is to clean the thermogradient with ethanol and chart the location and quantity of the rat defecation, which is an indicator of stress levels. 

This week, as experiments take place, I will be completing records on the newly arrived rats, including the timeline set in place for them. As they arrived on March 21, 2016, their handling begins on March 22, with a datalogger surgery on March 23, followed by a recovery period and then their experiment in the thermogradient. In preparation for surgeries, I autoclaved glassware and surgical tools.

We expect to conclude experimentation next month and begin data analysis, so more to follow regarding our findings.

Retrospective Clinical Study:

During our retrospective clinical study, I was given a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with all of the patient case IDs and the relative GPS coordinates where they were injured. The GPS coordinates are very important in determining if the patient was in an urban or rural area, which has an effect on solar irradiation. As some GPS coordinates were missing, Dr. Romanovsky has asked that I revise all of the GPS coordinates, to ensure their accuracy. For some cases, the trauma registry only has county or city, so for these cases, I use judgement of whether the patient was likely in a rural or urban setting. As these cases have been selected from Arizona, this is relatively easy; for example, if a patient was injured in Maricopa County (the fourth-most populated county in the United State), I presume they were in an urban setting.

While this approach may be not be the most precise, it is sufficient for our calculations. As of now, I am still processing GPS coordinates into our database. After this, I can begin redoing the calculations.