Ashley Anhalt's blog

So there goes the summer!  Time here at CMOP went too fast; it seems like just yesterday I was moving into the apartments down the road from campus and feeling anxious for day one of this internship.  My time here has been packed with science, mathematics, and nonstop fun.

Another busy week has come and gone.  This week was filled with lab work, statistical analysis, field trips, and stress.  I started Monday off by running more water samples through the FlowCAM and further studying their PCA.  We had a lab meeting on Wednesday at which I heard more about other people’s projects and discuss the progress of my project.  On Thursday some of the interns took a trip to Astoria, OR to see the MERTS campus where extensive CMOP field work is done and the research equipment is built.

My seventh week has now come to a close; it is amazing how fast time flies when you’re having fun with science.  With the final stretch of my summer internship right around the corner, this week has been very busy with field trips and lab work.  The week began with a group meeting where we figured out the necessary next steps to take.  It was quite convenient that we had a CMOP trip to Bonneville Dam scheduled for Tuesday because I was able to collect a couple needed water samples.  I then ran these samples though the FlowCAM and established a control set of data.

One more week down and I am now halfway done.  This halfway point seems to relieve some of my stress and yet it puts extra pressure on me to work harder.  I know that I have successfully made it this far and now I have to keep pushing to make the most of my time with CMOP.

Wow, week four already; my time here is just flying by.  This week started with going over my data analysis with one of my mentors.  We compared my analysis with the known composition of the samples themselves to see if there was noticeable agreement.  I also tried to look for seasonal patterns in my statistical analysis of some water samples over about a year’s time.  I have been utilizing my PCA MATLAB code to its fullest and have developed another code which graphically displays the variance, a result of executing PCA

My third week here began with a presentation for my mentors.  Although I was simply presenting my work over the past couple weeks, I was concerned as to how the meeting would go.  It was obvious that I could have articulated myself much better; however, it was important to get into a group discussion regarding my project and this did occur.  Thus, I would say that my presentation was a success and allowed me to learn firsthand the CMOP style for future presentations.  I was given constructive feedback and further instruction for the rest of the week.

This week I have been working with MATLAB implementing principal component analysis (PCA).  I have created a PCA function able to take in data and output figures, which display the relationship between specified components. I have also been given a larger range of data -- and more of it -- so as to better compare my results across the different samples.  With this increase in the amount of data, I hope a more obvious way to compare across samples presents itself.