Kakato Scholarship 2018 May‘s Diary

I did a very impressive experiment in May, it was to culture virus in embryo egg.  It was also the first time I saw a chicken embryo in an egg and learned how to differentiate a normal chicken embryo and a one with pathological changes.  I did not include pictures of the embryos because they were quite disturbing, but if anyone is interested, I could attach them afterwards.

Another good experience was to help catch strayed cats in the mountains for ligation in the hospital.  I learned to use a cage trap and even got to see the ligation.

— Chau Sin Lee

This month, I got to work on the chicken embryos in virus practical lessons. I had to inoculate the virus into the egg by punching a hole in the eggshell with a puncher. It took me a bit of time because the eggshell was soft and vulnerable and I had to make a small hole in it. After that, I injected the viral solution into the amniotic cavity of the embryo. A week later, we observed the embryo by removing the shell carefully. Surprisingly, the amniotic fluid of our embryo was green instead of pale yellow. The teaching assistant guessed that it might have been the result of contamination during egg culture.

— Yu Ernest

There is a great array of student societies in NTU, in which I participate the most is the Love Live Society (LLS). Obviously, from the name we can tell that society aims at helping the stray animals through our own ability, bringing them love and warmth.

Recently, I took part in a talk held by LLS and the talk has changed my mind about the stray animal issue. Probably due to the influence of the movie “Twelve Night”, a new animal protection law has passed such that people are now not allowed to euthanize healthy animals. However, the new law incites a huge debate among society. Despite the fact that I am an animal lover, I did not really agree with the new law that could cause huge pressure on the shelters which in turn adversely affects the health and well-being of stray dogs. However, after the talk, I found that we can actually look into the issue in another angle: the pressure built on the shelter can actually become the motivation for the shelter to find more solutions in solving the problem of the excessive amount of stray dogs. For example, they began to cooperate with LLS in doing TNR on the stray animals so as to control their number. In conclusion, I believe everything should be looked at from a different angle instead of making judgments too early. We should always think with our critical thinking, maybe we could gain new insight through this!

— Lau Wun Lam