Blogs

This will be my last week at CMOP. I had a great time working here with amazing people. I thank my frontline mentor for all the support he gave me and the other interns. I want to also thank my senior mentor Antonio Baptista for his time in letting us present our work to him and giving use really good feedback. Last but not least, I thank Karen Wegner for all the help and for checking up on us and making sure we were doing okay. All the CMOP staff were really nice to all of us.

After 8 weeks, I am done working at CMOP. I can hardly believe how much I have learned. It seems crazy that just a few months ago, I didn't know what an ETM was, or a salt wedge, or anything about estuaries for that matter. Now, I like to think that I know how they work and why they are important. My learning was not limited to estuaries. Working here taught me valubal presentation and computer skills.

I finished out last week with a practice presentation to my lab group. It went really well, and I got some great feedback which will, hopefully, make my presentation much better. Other than that, this week will be spent finishing up my final paper and making minor changes on my powerpoint :) I cannot believe that this internship is basically over...

One week to go! I can’t believe the summer has gone by so fast. I really feel comfortable here. Hmmmm, graduate school? Hahaha! No really, I know people, feel comfortable visiting other labs, getting coffee. Anne (Anne’s Deli) and I are buds. I see her without fail everyday around 9:00 am. And without fail when I ask for a none fat 16 oz. latte she always replies, “ok, 1 low fat 16 oz. latte”. I love it!

Just two more weeks!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I have yet to start on my paper or presentation yet, and I have yet to come up with just what exactly I'll be writing or presenting about (don't worry Vanessa, I'll be ready when the time rolls around). Hopefully, by some miracle, I'll make a brilliant breakthrough in mny research, come up with the perfect electrode configuration, and then quickly characterize the biogenic MnO2 to find out how the signals differ from the synthetic MnO2. (all in two weeks)

I have returned from the research cruise on the Wecoma. It was a tremendous experience working with Byron Crump and the rest of the team. Plus you couldn't ask for a better crew then those aboard the Wecoma. Here are a few things I learned about what the Wecoma provides you and what supplies you should bring:

Provided

1. Meals (3 squares a day) plus coffee, tea, candy, and ice cream
2. Bedding, pillow, and towels (feel free to bring your own)
3. Washing machines and dryers; soap is available.
4. Television, DVD player and large library of DVD's.
5. Books 6. Ping Pong Table (be ready for Capt. Rick's killer game)
7. Internet connections
8. Computer with Internet connection and games

After eight weeks I certainly have learned a lot about fluorescence and fluorescent whitening agents. I have not however figured out whether or not they are in my cotton samples from the estuary. I'm almost done running all my samples from the cruise on the fluorometer. We found out soaking them in water gives best fluorescent signal, but its hard to tell what the signal is. I could make a equally convincing stories from my data that they are in the river and that they are not. I've definitely come up with more questions about fluorescent whitening agents than I can resolve in two weeks.

"Skiing"

This week in lab, we made a few changes our faithful test. Before, we added 200 µL of the sample and 2100 µL of distilled water but now we removed to distilled water and add 2300 µL of sample. From this, we found the maximum value the LWCC could reach. So, we also change the concentration of the secondary standard from 0.1mM to 0.05mM. Though we ran out of downstream Willamette River sample, the upstream Willamette River sample looked promising. It turned brown when placed in methanol!!!! Acetaminophen doesn’t turn brown, but p-aminophenol; the main breakdown product of acetaminophen; does. We intend on testing these samples for p-aminophenol as well. For this week’s Brown Bag discussion, we didn’t have a speaker so Vanessa Green spoke to us about our final presentation dates and going on a one day cruise.

We finally decided on a stopping point for the application since we ran into that huge problem with the BlastSeq function. We also m et with Dave my senior scientist to discuss the final paper and presentation. He was really helpful in clarifying all the things that need to be covered in the paper. We also divided up the paper in parts and set deadlines as to when I should have each part completed. This was a wonderful idea because I have the tendency to procrastinate!!!

The model is done! I added both the Reproduction and Rescale functions and can actually start doing some experiments next week. So that is pretty exciting. If I have enough time, I'd like to get some graphical output going that I could show at the final presentation (less than two weeks away, this summer has flown by!)