How the seminar have influenced my career

In the beginning of the academic year I was quite afraid of what I was waiting for me during this abroad experience. To be honest, I had just chosen the biology enterprise and employability module to harness the working hours, as I have a similar module in Brazil. What surprised me was the way the module was taken and how much I could learn from it. It was the most dynamic and exciting module I have ever had!

I really enjoyed the experience of going to seminars related to biological sciences and write about them on a blog, which made me pay more attention to the seminars, and make more research about the subjects covered relating some of them to my reality in Brazil. I learnt about a variety of subjects and from that, I could open my mind to other ideas, as in Brazil, my course (Biotechnology), is more focused on the medical and industrial areas.

🙂

February Workshop: Dragon’s Den

This workshop was the one I found the most interesting! First, because before this module, I had no idea of what “Dragon’s Den” was and I had to make my researches on the topic. Guess what. I caught myself watching watching some episodes on Youtube. I really enjoyed it because it is the type of program that make us look from the point of view the people that will invest on our idea. This is really important because make us think and reflect on what we are going to present and how we are going to do it.

Secondly, because we could “experience it”. We were divided into groups of 6 people and we were challenged to design new enterprise for the museum in the Brambell building or the Botanial Gardens at Treborth.

My group decided to pitch the idea of improving the Museum. We worked very well together (an important lesson to learn) and everyone had space to voice their ideas and opinions and I also could learn about how planning is important when starting a business.

Assignment: Creating my CV

On this assignment we had to find an advertised job in the biology sector and write a CV and a cover letter as if we were truly applying for it. I found it quite interesting because made me think of what I was doing wrong when applying for a job. Before that, I had no idea of what is really relevant to put on a CV. Fill blank pages of a CV was a big challenge for me, because I didn’t have so many experience, and by concluding this seminar I could learn three basic and important things:

• Detach my studies: skills and knowledge (which is the main attractive of young professionals)
• The CV need a good presentation: clear text and aesthetically well presented.
• Honesty

I realised that the secret of a good CV is not in the quantity of lines it will have. The important is to call attention of who will select the candidate to be called for an interview.

March Post – The Hitch-hikers Guide to Urban Forestry

This month we had the presence of Tim Hall who graduated in Forestry at Bangor University to talk about Urban Forestry. To be honest, I have never thought about who takes care and manage urban forests. I just thought that trees were there because they grown there because they were. I knew that Urban Forestry exists, what I didn’t know is that it was not about only planting trees in the streets, gardens and squares, creating green areas for recreation and protection of particular green areas. In this talk, I learned that urban forestry has also to achieve ornamental purposes, micro climate improvement, decrease pollution, and others.

Tim told us that Urban Forestry has a vital importance, mainly in the biggest centres. The benefits provided by it are usually classified as ecological, economic and social benefits.

Ecological benefits are related to microclimate improvement. With a larger green area, the temperature is lower, avoiding the heat islands effect that are formed quickly in large cities. Usually, this effect is formed by the huge amount of concrete, a lack of green areas and by the pollution level (mostly caused by vehicles that circulates in the cities).   The trees and other plants intersect, reflects, absorb and transmit solar radiation, improving air temperature and quality. This reduces energy use as well. Trees also increase wind speed and atmosphere humidity, refreshing the cities.  Trees in urban environment also have a considerable potential of removing pollutant  gas particles in the atmosphere. Some trees can filter polluting chemicals such as sulfur dioxide, ozone and fluor. Other quality that can be attributed to trees is that they can decrease the level of noise found in big cities caused by traffic that psychologically and physically affects people.

 

The economics and social effects refer to the promotion of the cities. Being tourist attraction when some streets, neighbourhoods or small cities can be known by the trees they have. Also there is  a property valuation near leafy streets. The use of energy is reduced also because of the shadows of the trees. To these attributes, is associated social contributions, that can be defined as human physical and mental health, recreation options and an increase of the value of a property.

An important benefit Ii think it is important to highlight is the opportunity of environmental education for the population: people can learn about the environment by seen the clear difference between forested areas and built-up areas. I can say this by myself because I live in the centre of my city in Brazil with lot of forested area in the neighbourhood which makes me feel better and more concious about the nature in some way… 🙂

 

Corredor da Vitória, Salvador, Brazil – My neighbourhood

 

As always, I made some research about urban forestry in Brazil. I found out that São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, has 968,3 km² of forestry area (about 9 times bigger than the territorial area of Paris), without counting the metropolitan region (2.209 km² of urban area – almost two times the territorial area of New York). So, the city presents a lot of programs of urban forestry like Pomar Project, which has the initiative of planting flowers and fruit trees on the Pinheiros River bank aiming make transforms them in a garden with 14km of extension with native species.

It is important to remember that in order that urban forestry fulfil its hole it is necessary an investment, as well as any other public service. And by high investment destined to urban forestry, the trees a public property. While most of the public goods depreciates over time, the value of the trees increase since the of planting until their maturity.

 

December Workshop: Careers Cafe

On this workshop we were privileged with the presence of five ex-Bangor students presenting what happened on their careers since they left the University.

The first to speak was Dr Ross Piper, a Zoologist who now is author and TV presenter. He first graduate in Bangor University and went on to a PhD in insect ecology at Leeds University. Like me, Ross was not sure about what to do after graduating. The only thing he knew was his passion for Zoology (which I thought very clear, by listening to this talk). I particularly liked his talk most because he could transmit us the idea that if we have an interest on something, we have to pursued whatever it takes. After he aring his talk, I got curious and interesting on watching him in Wild Burma Natures Lost Kingdom. I really liked, even though I am not a Zoology student, and I don’t have interesting on following the academic career, because inspires me seeing people who really loves their jobs and do it with passion and enthusiasm. In this link you can see an interesting video of Ross presenting Wild Burma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE_JbmsSU8w

Ross Piper fillming in Burma. (thecomet.net)

 

After we heard Cherry Shacklady who is now a head of Biology in Friars School. Cherry studied Molecular Biology at Bangor and realised she wanted to be a teacher after helping students. We could see, as long as she described her career that we need to have enthusiasmand do researches about the job we intent to apply.

We next heard about Nia Jones who graduated in Zoology with marine biology in 2003 and now works as a marine conservation officer at the North Wales Wild Life Trust. Likely most of the students who are graduating, she didn’t know what to do so she went on a master degree in Ecology in which she get involved in volunteer work. I found her talk quite interesting because I really want to volunteer this year, during my studies abroad, because I do believe by volunteering we not only help on the work itself but we also learn how to deal with people, sense of responsibility, and care for the others. Besides that, at the level of recognition, I think that volunteering is much more well seen when compared to paid jobs while graduating.  Nia also advised us to give our best in any work, volunteering or not.

Naomi Willis graduated in Chemistry at Bangor University and went on to a PhD in Biology. Now she works as a healthy care scientist at Welsh Water. In her talk, she told us about the importance of getting into a graduate scheme to grow as professional.

Last to speak was Imogen German who graduated in Biology in 2007. In all the talks, I identified myself more with hers. More because of, like me, I could see that she likes to travel and learn from different countries. Now she is teaching at the Uni and doing a PhD. Her advise for us was to not lose enthusiasm while looking for job and build a career.

I found this workshop really interesting because one of the best ways to learn is to listen to advises given from people who have more experience than us. Also, I could learn more about the opportunities that students have here in the UK which is quite different from the opportunities we have in Brazil. I am looking forward to put in practise what I am learning here.

November Workshop: Interview Skils

In November happened the first of a series of workshops offered in the module. I found it very interesting, first of all because it was very interactive as the class were divided into groups of 4 people. Second, because I could simulate how I would act on a job interview (in English!).

The questions were general and quite expected for a job interview, as we saw on previous lectures. Here are some similar examples:

Are you the best person for this job?

Describe a difficult experience at work and how you handled it.

Do you prefer to work alone or on a team?

How do you handle pressure?

How would you describe yourself?

One thing about these questions that is important to point is that even though we all know they can be asked, in the interview seems that the answers run away. We stay nervous, anxious and begin to sweat. Also funny because we were all simulating.

Job Interview

As all the four participants of the group were the interviewer and the interviewee, we all could point the mistakes we thought our colleagues were making and have a feedback of our mistakes as well. Another interesting thing I have observed is that most of the mistakes I noticed on my colleagues answers, like nervousness, anxiety and agitation, I presented as well. This made me think that I will have to prepare myself more the next time I face a job interview (even when simulating one).

After this part, we received a test to see what kind of member we would be in a team. My results showed that I am a Company worker, followed by a Shaper.

And, to finish the workshop, the last step was to organize emails into an order of importance.

I really found this workshop very interesting and useful, and for sure I will use what I’ve learned there to find I job in the near future!

February Post – Model species Daphnia: a genome for the environment

This month, one of the interesting seminar we had was given by Professor John Colbourne, the current Chair of Environmental Genomics from the University of Birmingham. He talked about the use of Daphnia as a model system for studies in environmental genomics. I found it quite interesting mostly because I had no idea that such an apparently simple organism had some characteristics that made it a very important genius for studies related to ecotoxicity, being used to evaluate and monitor water quality.

I decided to talk about this lecture because it made me think of how the water quality control in my country (Brazil) is performed. I have to confess that took some time for me to get used to drink tap water while living here in the UK because we don’t have this habit there. Even though the water that reaches households undergo treatment, on its ways to our houses it gets dirty, so we have to use purification methods such as water filters.

Central Laboratory of EMBRAPA, the company which controls water quality in Bahia, Brazil.

A similar problem happened in California in 2009, as John pointed out in the beginning of the lecture. The households tap water were tainted with over 6.000 industrial compounds in the water supplies due to a massive improvements in technology, specially manufactured. According to John, only 7% of these compounds were ever tested for toxicity. He says that at the moment, the toxicity tests are based on science of the 19s which uses mammalian model system as to study the possible effects of those compounds in humans, which is a method that is very expensive and take a long time slow in providing results.

Tainted Tap Water, California 2009

A solution for this issue was the creation of Tox21, a research program that “pool federal resources and expertise to screen thousands of chemicals for potential toxicity, using screening data to predict the potential toxicity of chemicals and developing a cost-effective approach for prioritizing the thousands of chemicals that need toxicity testing” (http://epa.gov/ncct/Tox21/). They use alternative animal models for test, such as Daphnia.

Daphnia (or waterflea) are small crustaceans that live in a variety of aquatic ecosystems that servers as food for small fishes and consumes algae. Daphnias have a range of characteristics that make them important to ecological and toxicological studies. They are very well adapted to their environments being able to live from acid swamps to freshwater lakes, they can switch between sexual and clonal reproduction (which allows constant genetic background) in response to environmental conditions, change morphologicaly (in response to predators) and in abiotic environmental they have the ability to rise haemoglobin levels (“blood makers”). However, what I found most interesting about them is that they produce resting eggs that can survive dormant for 700 years, and as John said, we can “literally see evolution happening at a genetic level”. Daphnias also have the largest number of genes ever recorded in animal genome (2 million bases with more than 31.000 genes and many of them unknown and new to science). By exposing the Daphnia to a sample of water and extract its RNA, it is possible to know what is in that water. This make toxicological tests costs cheaper and faster.

Daphnia pulex

This lecture also made me think about of how such small animals can provide to us such big answers. This is one of the most incredible things a think about science.

My opinion in some blogs… [comments]

Red Squirrels X Grey Squirrels: http://bsue53.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/landscape-scale-grey-squirrel-control-lessons-from-the-uk/comment-page-1/#comment-1

About Chester Zoo: http://bsue4b.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/chester-zoos-mission-by-mark-pilgrim/comment-page-1/#comment-4

November Post – Beaver Reintroduction in Wales

On the 22th October seminar ministered by Professor Dr Adrian Jones, we could have an idea about the Welsh Beaver Project. This project investigate the “feasibility of bringing wild beaver (Castor fiber) back to Wales”. I found quite interesting because, as I am not a Zoology (or related area) student, I was not aware about the beaver situation (extinction) much less that there were projects interesting on its reintroduction in some areas. My interesting on attending on this lecture was because I wanted to be convinced about the benefits of reintroducing an specie that has been already extinct in an area wondering to know if I would find the reasons given plausible, as I believe that extinction is an natural process that can occur in all life history.

As beaver restore wetland eco-systems and produce a network of enriched riparian habitats, they play an important role as a keystone specie. Known for building dams, canals, and lodges (homes), beavers are the second-largest rodent in the world (after the capybara) and the largest in Europe. They are mainly aquatic and nocturnal and can be underwater for up to 15 minutes. Their colonies create one or more dams to provide still, deep water to protect against predators, and to float food and building material. As was shown in the seminar, beaver has been extinct by human for their fur, meat and castoreum. As they are not aggressive, they were easy prey to hunters this, associated to their hight value meant, lead to its extinction in most Europe extension. By the 20th century, only 8 small populations remained on mainland Europe, holding about 1200 beaver (Ruairidh Campbell et al, 2007). The reintroduction of these animals in Europe have been extensively throughout their natural range in the period from 1922, and introduction continuous in a number part of Europe (Halley, 2003).

Beaver

The process of reintroduction involves unpredictable variables. It is human pretense or ingenuity want to bring back extinct species without a study or consequences of this reintroduction. The reintroduction had to considerate the ecologic conditions of an environment and the interaction between the extinct specie with the actual ones. When a specie that was extinct for a long time is reintroduced, the ecosystem can suffer. In the case of beavers, their dams, ponds and wetlands can have a cumulative effect in slowing water flow through catchments (Grasse, 1951) and the effects that they have on habitats and species are subjects of many studies. Their reintroduction effects also the instream wood debris, increasing it, the water quality, flow and temperature– help mitigating the negative effects of extreme flow conditions – and fish movement, although they are very unlikely to cause the extinction of any fish specie in Wales.

Beaver reintroduction also have economic impact. According to Jones, Beaver activities help to manage riparian and wetland sites and the benefits include food amelioration, sediment and pollution reduction. The beaver presence could provide benefits to local economies.

After watching the lecture, I realized that the reintroduction of an extinct specie can bring benefits for an area, but only if there is many ecological studies to avoid unexpected results.

October Post – Murky Waters: phosphorous mitigation to control fresh water eutrophication

Eutrophication is the process by which a body of water acquires a high concentration of nutrients (nitrogen, N, and phosphorus, P) promoting excessive growth of algae. As the algae die and decompose, high levels of organic matter and the decomposing organisms deplete the water of available oxygen, causing the death of other organisms, such as fish (Art, 1993).

               Eutrophication is a natural, slow-aging process for a water body, but human activity like intensive agriculture or population pressure greatly speeds it up. When nutrients that comes from domestic and industrial effluents are deposited in large quantities, occurs the production of sharp deterioration of rivers, lakes, reservoirs and coastal waters, causing numerous direct and indirect effects on aquatic biodiversity. Furthermore, eutrophication commits the multiple uses of water resources and surface and groundwater, causing substantial losses for the local and regional economy.

Among many nutrients, studies has demonstrated that Phosphorus (P) is the main nutrient responsible for eutrophication. Due to that, over the last years, mitigating P has been adopted as the major water parting management tool to control freshwater eutrophication. P can come into freshwater from point sources (e.g., sewage) and from non-point sources (e.g., agricultural runoff; residential runoff). Decreasing external loading (point) has proven easier to deal than reducing internal point (non-point). This happens because recycling P from bottom sediments can cause problems on the water quality, and the ecosystem recovery after P remediation can be complex. In some studies, phosphorus-based treatment have not delivered ecological improvements in some lakes. It is also important to understand the causes of the time lags in water quality associating it with Legacy P.

Legacy P is the surplus P derived from past land use activities that is stored in soils and sediments and re-released as the P storage capacity becomes gradually saturated, or after a change in land use, land management, or effluent management (Kleinman et al., 2011). These association may be one explanation of why indeed point-source controls is failing to yield the expected improvements in river water quality.

It is necessary to understand the complete process (causes and development) of eutrophication to control it. Also it is necessary carefully evaluate the management solutions to be used in the mitigation and remediation of eutrophication. Although they are very expensive, I believe that conventional wastewater treatment systems are adequate.

Often the nature can be a reflection of the society. Eutrophication is an example also in a careless manner that people deal with their waste and also with the inappropriate application of land use. So it is interesting that everyone is aware of ecological problems like this and do their part so that there will be a reduction of pollution of freshwater improving aquatic quality.