Research and a small side project

This week continued to be more research on my project and application or practical skills.  I began to refine my experimental plan for studying the photodegredation of metformin, but experimentation will wait until the methodology for analyzing the concentration with HPLC has been refined further. Right now, I am beginning a related side project that will study the effect of different chemicals (including metformin and guanylurea) on the growth of C.vulgaris, a type of phytoplankton. Currently, I am monitoring the growth of a control population, to determine the length of the mid exponential phase of growth and exposure time of the chemicals.

In addition, Tuesday and Wednesday morning were spent attending a data analysis seminar. This seminar taught us more about the sheer amount of data being produced every day, as well as the importance of processing data to be clear and understandable. Especially, we learned that 3D pie charts have no function that could not be achieved by a 2 dimensional one containing the same data. There was also a focus on making our projects understandable, by developing a short introduction we could adapt to suit our audience. Overall, the presentation was fairly useful, giving an understanding of data that I didn’t have before, and enhancing my understanding of the results produced by researchers.

In the coming week, I will continue to monitor the growth of the phytoplankton, hopefully beginning exposure tests later in the week.