Blogs

Although this week doesn’t leave me with the most to report for my blog, it has probably been the busiest so far. After creating and testing more pieces of platinum deposited titanium dioxide, I have come closer to finding an optimum loading. So far my optimum loading has come while depositing platinum with a 0.0125 mM concentration of potassium hexachloroplatinate, which improved the performance in the degradation of
Caffeine 58 percent.

So I have successfully setup a pump-solution-through-column system.
I have done couple experiments, and the glass-packed column seems to be behaving similarly as not-packed column. The magnitude of absolute phase shift increased, probably because there is less electrolytes present in the column as the glass beads are taking large portion of volume in the column. 

Here is a graph that shows this trend:

This week I mostly counted M. rubra from lugol samples. I tried doing a pcr once or twice but it failed to work. My two samples that were sent for sequencing turned out to be nothing. I went sampling thursday again and collected samples. This time, we tried more efficient approaches to using the mesh, but it still took us a long time to filter the water through the mesh. I tried to retape my sampler because the red markings are fading more and more everytime I use it. So, I tried to remark the depths with bright tape, but that was a failure.

This week has mostly been about debugging the program.  In its current state, the .m file of my code just for the graphical user interface is just a little over 900 lines long.  That means 900 opportunities for the code to glitch on me.  Most of the glitches were due to my errors:  letting loops run too long or using specialized function for the first time.  I think I must have gotten a good percentage of the error messages in the Matlab dictionary this week.  There's still a few issues  with the code, but it's basically functional as a beta version.

Hi again!  This week was filled with preparation for the ASE Family Night, as well as frustration due to bizarre lab results and delay of receiving an enzyme used in my PCRs.

Home, Is What You're Looking For...

We are currently at CR-15 doing a second cast.  It is ~1430 LT and we are hoping to be in the estuary looking for a rendevous with Lydie at ~1800.  We will be picking her up via RHIB from the boat ramp near the Rogue Brewery.  I hope tempatation hasn't gotten the handle on her by then.

This week was extremely stressful! Towards the beginning of the week I was making great progress on my survey. I had developed strong questions, and continued with my research. I was then working on recreating graphs and maps that focused on where the problem is. I also researched how Quinault actually tests for fecal contamination. It is a complex process, but basically the following tests are done; a Systematic Random Sampling, field sampling, and laboratory methods. This part of the week was great, and then I needed to e-mail Joe who works over in Quinault.

 This week was a short one for me in Beaverton. I had free reign to the PCR machine since many of the graduate students were out on the research cruise in Newport, OR to collect samples. I was able to run ITS and 28S PCR program. This was very nice since the 28S PCR program runs 35 cycles totaling 4 hour and 30 min program!

 This week was an unproductive week because I got sick, and I stay at home. But, during those days I worked with my final paper and my final presentation. Today I can go to CMOP, I worked with the mean, min, max and the standard deviation of the difference between CT13 and Thermister13.

I hope next week will be a productive week that covers this week too!