Austin Maddox

BIOL 4500

Dr. J. Karpel

December 9, 2016

MY LIFES REFLECTION THROUGH THE SCIENCES

            As I look back through my years at Southern Utah University there have been many fond memories, many of which have revolved around the sciences.  Growing up on a farm I had a pretty good understanding of how life in its many aspects worked, with a broad knowledge in the field of agricultural biology.  When I first entered SUU I had just moved back to Utah from Ft. Sam, TX working as an army medic at San Antonio Medical Center. My interests then were to continue into the medical field and eventually become some sort of Doctor, maybe a surgeon. I enrolled into SUU as a sophomore biology major, with limited knowledge in the life sciences outside of a handful of science courses I had taken at a local community college, life on the farm, and the medical knowledge gained from the army. I really enjoyed practicing medicine and the way the human body worked amazed me. So with my limited experience in the sciences I wanted to learn more, in particular to the health care field. As I started my undergraduate career that sophomore year I remember taking a lot of basic courses but some upper division courses that really intrigued me like microbiology and ecology. These courses may seem complete opposites; one studying organisms invisible to the naked eye, the other looking at the bigger picture. However both of these gave me valuable insights on how we as scientists work and view the world.

Going into my junior year I did extensive research on the mountain pine beetle and its effects on the evergreen forests in Southern Utah. Throughout my research I was able to find that the root cause of the devastation was not the pine beetle but something even smaller. The real tree killer is a mutualistic symbiont to the pine beetle called the blue stain fungus (Grosmannia clavigera). The way it works is the beetle acts as a vector and bores into the tree, once inside the fungus is essentially let out from a special structure in the beetle’s head. The fungus stops sap production and infects the phloem; in doing so the beetle survives, the fungus gets the trees’ nutrients, and sadly the tree dies. My research connected those courses and showed me how something incredibly small such as the micro blue stain fungus can affect things exponentially on an ecologic scale. It enlightened me to how all things are connected in some way or another by a form of science.

Coming into my senior year I have found science to be handy in real life situations. Currently I am doing research on the anticoagulant properties of leech saliva in comparison to current marketed anticoagulant drugs in hopes to create a more potent and effective anticoagulant drug. This would help in many aspects of medical technology. This year I have taken a job at the hospital in the E.R. and have seen many applications of science in everyday things. For example take the physics behind an IV line. The way it works is described by Bernoulli’s principle of hydrodynamics which states: an increase in the speed of a fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in pressure. Currently I am working in the army corps of engineers and the field artillery and have seen many applications of science. When firing artillery rounds there is a science to calculating where your round will land via physics and projectile motion. As an engineer we have built many things such as culverts and bridges as well as blown up things using heavy demolitions. This one time during a firing exercise one of the paladins (mobile artillery piece) got an impregnated tube (round that gets stuck in the tube while firing). To get it out safely we had to use a water impulse charge to push the active round back through the breach as to not blow up everything within a 200 meter radius (rounds explode on contact of high amounts of heat). The water impulse charge was placed using several bags of water (similar to IV bags) some det chord and a blasting cap. The outermost bag acts as a counter-mass while the inner bags act as a battering ram to push the object out. To do this effectively you have to have the same amount of counter-mass as the object you are trying to dislodge. In our situation it worked safely and efficiently and the artillery round was dislodged and fired 3 ft into the ground outside the back of the breach.  

Upon graduation I will commission as an army officer in the corps of engineers so I imagine science will be integrated as a part of my everyday life. Shortly after graduation I will be going into medical school and thus science will play its role too. Simply because science is connected to all things in one form or another and will continue to adapt and evolve to the technology of modern times.