Blogs

All my research to this point has been fairly scattered in terms of the techniques and methods I have been focusing on. This week I took stock of what I have done, presented my findings to my mentor, and decided where to go from here. Going forward I will primarily be working on creating a combination electromagnet and nanoiron particle sensor, as well as studying the resistivity of nanoiron solutions. I'm really looking forward to the sensor project, as it shows promise and will consist of some pretty neat engineering.

Because my mentor had been in and out of town, we haven't had adequate time to train me on my project's required techniques. But this week we finally got to really get started on things.

The Corvallis trip was well worth it. If not just experiencing American Dream's pizza (thanks again Michelle for the itp), what I learned and experienced with Yvette was amazing.

I can’t believe I’m already halfway through. When I started this week Jim had a side project for me to do while we were waiting for the supplies for the electrode to arrive. My project was to determine if various forms of nano-iron were reactive with the probe compound and if so to determine the kinetics of each reaction.

I spent this week at the OSU campus, working with Zanna Chase. There, Zanna showed me how to measure zinc concentrations using fluorescence. At first, we had some trouble using the fluorometer; it was giving us inconsistent numbers and varied significantly depending on how much sample we ran through the machine. Eventually, we decided that it wasn't working to put the sample through the machine using a syringe, so we switched to using a peristaltic pump to get a continuous flow. That seemed to work a lot better.

I can't believe that it's been five weeks and my internship here is already half over! I feel like I'm just starting to get into the swing of things.

The Ocean Observatories camp gave students the opportunity to work with professional research scientists and explore the inner workings of one of the world’s leading ocean observatories: SATURN.

The Glider Workshop was taught in Astoria as part of the Ocean Observatories Camp.

Overall this week has been very successful! I have prepared the two samples from the peak of the red tide Myrionecta rubra bloom from 2007 and 2008 for cloning. They were sent to the primate center this morning to be sequenced! I am very anxious to see the results next week!

This week has been a little off given the fact that my computer caught a virus. Luckily, I saved my work, but I still haven't really progressed since last week. While my computer was getting fixed I wrote a bunch of pseudo code, outlined my mid-term presentation, and re-evaluated the data. The code I wrote validates the user's input for the time range of the data. I also wrote code for the flagging method.

After returning on tuesday from the holiday weekend I have been busy just trying to catch up with my work. Since Tyler and I have begun branching off to work on our own individual projects I have spent most of the week working independently diluting solutions and running PCR reactions on various cDNA cruise samples using different gene primers.