First international travel and I’m in Cyprus to give a presentation at Xenowac II: Challenges and Solutions related to Xenobiotics and Antimicrobial Resistance in the Framework of Urban Wastewater Reuse. I was very excited to have my presentation accepted as an oral presentation, because I finally had additional antibiotic resistance data (genes) that I felt was important to share. I have more data analysis to perform, but it appears that at The Living Filter site for a sulfonamide resistance gene, the quantities are higher than at a control site (not receiving effluent irrigation nor manure applications). In fact, it looks like this increase in antibiotic resistance genes at the Living Filter may be a long term impact. The site has been used for over 40 years to date, and I have not found research on a long term reuse site like this one. Great information to have. I have other resistance genes that I am analyzing, so will be interesting to see if this trend continues.
Presenting at XENOWAC II
Great conference this year in Tampa, FL. I started it off by taking part in the graduate student leadership conference, which was a wonderful learning and networking experience! Learned about my personality and how it affects not only how I work alone, but how I work with others and how to better work with others! Also, was taught some social etiquette skills to better present myself and leave a better impression when meeting others. We ended the conference with a luncheon with current and upcoming SSSA leaders! I highly recommend this leadership conference for any graduate students attending SSSA in the future!
During the SSSA conference itself, I sat in on some great oral presentations as well as saw some wonderful poster presentations. Sat in on a seminar on how to take better pictures focused on my research to share with others. The last day of the conference, I presented my work that included antibiotic concentrations in soil showing that patterns of how the antibiotics interact with the soil profile and may be mitigating antibiotics from reaching groundwater! Received wonderful feedback, great questions, and second place in the graduate student competition.
Selfie before heading over to the Tampa Convention Center.
View of the Tampa Bay during a Graduate Student Leadership luncheon with SSSA leaders.
Night lights along the Tampa River Walk.
Night lights along the Tampa River Walk.
Seagull with a older docked ship in the background along Tampa River Walk.
Traveled to University of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign campus for the Emerging Contaminants in Aquatic Environments Conference. While the conference was only two days, it was packed full of amazing talks. Had a great time networking with fellow scientists and presenting a poster on my work completed to date at The Living Filter of Penn State.
Also toured University of Illinois’ Sustainable Technology Center where they have an impressive amount of equipment for the analysis of emerging contaminants in the environment and a field site where they are implementing unique ways of removing contaminants from agricultural settings and wastewater treatment plant effluent! Very impressive work and looking forward to trying to forge some collaborations with this center!
Poster presented at the Emerging Contaminants in Aquatic Environments Conference at University of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign
Enjoying the gorgeous scenery at University of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign campus.
I have been negligent with updating this site! A good deal has happened over the summer…so I’m going to list the major events.
- Freeze-drying the third time was a success. Samples were sent to Arizona for analysis, and I have half of the results back, which is very exciting. Finding Ofloxacin down as far as 80 cm!!! Sulfamethoxazole is in the upper 15 cm. Trimethoprim is not found, and Lincomycin is found infrequently.
- Laboratory work has been slow going because of many interruptions due to having to manage the lab myself and dealing with building renovations.
- Our undergraduate researcher, Noelymar Gonzalez, was amazing! She was here for two months. During that time, she was very busy and did a great job of analyzing pH, EC, carbon and nitrogen in the soil samples from The Living Filter. She found some really exciting results comparing soils receiving direct irrigation versus soils on site not receiving direct irrigation with pH being significantly higher in the irrigated soils, EC values being higher in irrigated soils, and carbon/nitrogen being significantly higher in irrigated soils. She gave a wonderful presentation during her last week at Penn State. We are proud of her and are going to miss her!!!
- I attended the American Chemical Society Conference in Philadelphia, PA in late August. I gave an oral presentation entitled “Wastewater Reuse in Agroecosystems: Ground water quality, plant uptake and antibiotic resistance?” The talk was very well-received, and I made numerous contacts with people working in industry as well as other members in the AGRO division. It looks like I might be helping to plan a symposium for next year! Very exciting!
Noelymar Gonzalez learning about the CHNS-O Analyzer for carbon and nitrogen analysis.
Grinding soils to later be analyzed for texture analysis!
DNA extracted from a soil sample!
