Blogs

SO far we have been doing research on our own and the past couple of days have been taking some time to get used to. I like doing the research about the questions Antonio and Grant are giving us because it gives me a better inside to Oceanography in general. The only topic that has been confusing to me is the Wind Driven Circulation, that stuff is very complex. 8-) I have just finished the paper on the wind driven stuff and I think with the help of a lot of people I have gotten what it is. I hope to learn a lot more in my summer here. (:

This is my first week as an intern at CMOP and man im still trying to get the hang of this. I'm not used to this much learning but im gonna keep trying to get this right. i enjoyed writing the paper on what CMOP means to me because it gave me a chance to express how i feel and how i think. I'm excited to work with the other interns and to get some more experience on my belt. next week will be good i can tell.

Hello again everyone!
This is now my 3rd year as a summer intern here at CMOP and I'm glad I'm back. Every year things get better here at CMOP. I remember the first year I was here there were only two high school interns, including myself, last year there were five and now this year there are nine of us.

As of this week I have finished making my final tour of the CMOP stations, and now looking forward on making scripts for retrieving data directly from that database, that way the information displayed at Google Earth is up to date, rather than static. Another accomplishment I have done for the week is making an improved model of the Glider. Rather than 2-d, I decided to make a 3-dimensional figure of it. I used the Google Program “Sketchup” to draw it during my sparetime at the apartment. It is rather neat, especially when it is animated.

This week has gone by fast! I have been purifying the DNA in our samples by preparing a low melting agar gel, running the samples and then cutting out the DNA bans to purify them. Although I did encounter a problem on the second day when the final product did not turn out, this method has worked well. With the gel purified extractions I ran 16s and 18s PCR reactions at different dilutions to determine what gave the best result. Overall, the best result was obtained by using twice as much template.

During this sencond week in the lab for me I have really started to understand the whole process by which I will be using the samples I took in Astoria last week.  I have been working closely with Suzanne as she works through the stable isotope probing process on the samples she took in the Esquary in March.  I wasn't here for the earlier portions of the process but I am learning how to isolate the plasmid and check for insert and then send for sequencing at the primate center.

 This has been a busy yet very productive week. Monday was spent amplifying the pseudo-nitzschia PCR samples from last week using. On tuesday Tyler and I ran the samples on a gel. I also attended a lab meeting with Holly, Jon, Mariya, and Tyler where the project goals were discussed. Many of my questions in regard to the project itself were answered and it was relieving to hear that the direction of the final paper is still undetermined. I was just glad to hear that since the overall direction of the project was what I had been previously most confused about.

There is no tab on my week 3 blog for view or edit, so I will continue it here instead.
The 'x' technique described in the previous blog was left for 24 hrs, the oxidation recorded, and then left for another 12 (36hrs total). The following pictures demonstrate the levels after this time period (the blue dots over the 'x' represent oxidatin after 24 hrs):

So today we (Tawnya, Michelle and I) took another (longer) trip to gather water samples. We went up to Washington actually - it took about 2-3 hours to get there give or take (the whole thing took about 8 hours). In addition to getting a hold of four new samples that should help Michelle learn more about the chytrid fungus she's studying, I was introduced to saltwater taffy which is apparently a bit of a coastal candy phenomenon. Anyways, I got some pictures of our sampling adventure:

Here's Michelle carrying a water sample from I believe our second destination:

I ran 52 samples this week, which means a lot of time in the lab. It took me a while to become consistent everyday in naming my files. In the morning it takes me about 45 minutes running tests to make sure the machine is running properly. I hope to have about two more weeks before I'm done running samples and I can dive into all of the data being collected. until then, I'm enjoying my time getting to know the other ASE students and am looking forward to going over to the primate center like last year and meeting the other ASE students working for OHSU.