January Blog!!

To start 2024, we have received great news: Our ticks have arrived!! After struggling to find a provider for ticks, We have obtained 100 lone star ticks to work with!! Using these ticks, our team has finally started experimenting with chemical attractants. First, we held a meeting to discuss how we wanted to start testing. We debated on if we should place all of the attractants into one sealed container, or into individual containers. Each method had side effects we didn't like, but ultimately we decided upon a circle-like field that could be recreated using a 3D printer. We used yeast (positive control), propanoic acid, butanoic acid, lactic acid, hexanoic acid, ammonium bicarbonate, and air (negative control) within these 7 sections. We performed our experiment on 1/24/24 after school, and are currently still waiting on results.

In other news, we've been featured in a Newsday article written by Michael R. Ebert (https://www.newsday.com/long-island/li-life/cold-spring-harbor-lemelson-mit-hcejmv4v). Furthermore, our article with Lloyd Harbor Life has been postponed to publish in March 2024, but we’ve finished writing the article and composing pictures!!Finally, our radio show from December 2023 was broadcast on Saturday, January 27th. (https://soundcloud.com/jvcbroadcasting/spotlight-on-schools-1-27-24-cold-spring-harbor) 

We’ve also started planning for our mid-grant technical review, which is February 6th at 7:00pm. We have 5 stations: Trap (Ryan, Desmond, and Adais), Outreach (Julia, Kelly, and Charlie), Attractant (Katie, Dhanya, and Isabella), Future (Michelle, Keira, and Milan), and Sustainability (Lucas and Sebastian). This is also a great opportunity for us to show off our InvenTeam polo shirts 😎!!  

See you next month!