Finals done!

At the UCSB we live in a quarter system, i.e. there are no semester as most German universities structure their academic year, but quarters the year is divided into. This week was the last week of the fall quarter, so the final examinations were written. But unlike most German examinations, the graduate courses have a "take-home-final", so you get for example 24h for this homework. There's nearly no written 2-3h examination any more (that's the "undergraduate level of testing").

 

Comparison of the image of a cell nucleus once with a confocal microscope (left) and once including light form all heights (right). wikipedia

However, somehow I was lucky, and had "only" two presentations and one report to turn in. That was even the week before the finals' week :) So I've got more time to focus on research and next week I will get training on the confocal microscope which is a vital instrument in Biophysics: You can travel through your sample and focus on "slices". Often this microscope is combined with a fluorescent microscope so that only certain, dyed parts are illuminated and light from other slices (which are not in focus) is not included in the image.