Junior University of Florida 20 Years Pre-med

"I just finished my sophomore year as a pre-medical microbiology major at the University of Florida. My research topic was "Tropical Cyclones in the Western Pacific". My greatest accomplishment was climbing to the very top of the Great Wall site the tour guides took us to (in 2nd place I might add). Don't wimp out and just climb up the first flight of stairs or so, you know you're tough if you make it to the end of the line. Further I find it my duty as decent human being to advise you to drink beer-in-a-bag on a regular basis. It's the ultimate pre-party beverage at 1 yuan a pop (12.5 US cents) not to mention it is absolutely delicious. On a Friday night I regularly down 8 yuan of product before even entering a bar making me the most hardcore person on the planet, and anyone who says differently is lying. For this reason and this reason alone Qingdao is much much better than Dalian no matter what they say. You can find it just about anywhere with locations right outside of Gate 4 and a bit down the hill from Gate 1. Weekends are pretty decent here, I highly recommend the Jazz Club and Feeling Club. You can actually hold conversations at the Jazz Club and hear decent music as everyone is European and the Feeling Club has a hydraulic dance floor with amazing techno (pick yourself up a Red-Star magazine to get the Chinese characters for these locations to show taxi drivers). On to the reason you’re actually here: the research. In Qingdao you’ll generally be doing a lot of analysis on the computer. So if you can handle being in an office for most of your day then your set. Topics are relatively interesting, I would advise that you pick a topic similar to your field of study since I felt a bit overwhelmed as a biology major doing research in meteorology. The actual work isn’t too grueling as long as you don’t actually work for 8 solid hours every day. Give yourself breaks or you’ll go insane locked up in an office by yourself for that amount of time. My mentor was very intelligent and helpful when it came to figuring out my project. She was also a nice lady in general as is just about everyone here. All around a good experience and highly recommended, you’ll have a fantastic time."

Tropical cyclone Fengshen formed in the tropical pacific on 7/15 00:00 UT. It became a category 5 storm over the ocean and subsequently weakened to a tropical storm as it approached China’s Shandong province. Only minor quantities of rain fell over Shandong but significantly more fell further north in Jing Jin Tang. The general purpose of this research is to account for the difference in rainfall totals between these regions. To accomplish this two regions of interest were established: eastern Shandong and Jing Jin Tang. Equal geographic areas in each region were selected and rainfall data gathered from weather stations in each respective region. Plots of the rainfall in each region clearly indicated a steep rainfall gradient between the two areas. Next, seven climatic data files were downloaded from the Climatic Diagnostics Center for use in analysis by GRADS software. These data files were then analyzed by superimposing multiple data sets and discerning conditional differences between each region of interest. As a result of these analyses, several possibilities stood out. The most likely reason for the exceptional rainfall in Jing Jin Tang appears to be related to the baroclinic development of the cyclone late in its life. Stronger, moister upward w currents in Jing Jin Tang also had an impact. Lastly, greater temperature and moisture advection in Jing Jin Tang also played roles. In future work it is essential that these factors be analyzed.