Blogs

Once the problem was fixed I needed to test the amount of pH buffer that was needed for the system. This ended up being ±0.03 pH units from the guide pH. This allowed the system leeway so that it did not need to work as hard over a long period of time. From there I helped with starting the biological experimentation. This took the rest of the week, because we kept having problems in the middle of the night since the test took 24 hours. The first time all of the equipment turned off with the timer.

Now that I was once again reacquainted with the pHstat, I continued on with testing for the optimum alkaline reagent concentration for the system. The system was perturbed within an abiotic environment using sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid. Originally I used sodium bicarbonate as the alkaline reagent during testing, however after many different concentrations ranging from 0.05M to 1.1M it was discovered that sodium bicarbonate had a pH threshold.

It has been a year since I was last working as an intern with Rachel Golda at OHSU. During the first week I spent my time becoming reoriented to the lab and my project. Not much had changed since I was last here, so it was fairly easy to go right into working on the project. On the first day my job included making multiple types of media for the algae that I would be using later that week. I made many liters of each so that it would last for a while. Once the media was finished I began the project that week.

Monday morning found me working with one of the pH buffers again. Eventually, Matt told me to titrate the buffer with a 0.25 basic solution and this solved the problem. I also remade the 20 U/ml HRP solution that is used in the H₂O₂ assay. I made up more liquid Lept media and transferred my bacteria from plates to this medium. I left the bacteria to shake overnight.

The week began with the NSF annual site visit on Monday. This was an all day event that I attended with the other interns. It was really nice to hear a broad overview of what CMOP is all about and the research that is being performed throughout the program.

I am really excited about this opportunity to perform research through CMOP. I am interning in Dr. Brad Tebo’s lab. My frontline mentor is Dr. Matthew Jones, a post-doctoral researcher studying manganese cycling in the environment.

Continue extracting data from the PDF to CSV files, this coming week from the Data Water-quality PDF files. Reading all the articles from the first week, understand the data information collected from the Yukon River.

Hello from the pacific northwest! Week number four has come to a close.  I have spent the past week starting to work on my research paper. I finally limited the research paper to three main topics with the help of my mentor, Katie Morrice.  The three main topics is mercury in the enironment, mercury in the food web, and mercury within indigenous population. I am learning how to write an abstract in order to create a research poster for conference season.  My trip is coming up so fast! All my excitement and nerves are in full swing.

07/09/2015 Day 24

I have made time data frames for every year and can now make a yearly graphs of phycoerythrin. I have also been looking into Saturn01 phycho data too. Unfortunately the data is a little funky; there are no different depths and the graph looks very odd. I’ll have to look into this a lot more.

07/08/2015 Day 23

I have figured out how to plot one year at a time. The method is a little complicated but it works. Right now I have only teste it for 2010 at 8.2m but there should be no problem adjusting it to other depths and years. Also Dr. Peterson wants to include data from PE that I have currently been working in but Cyano Watch as well.  This shouldn’t be a problem, but it might take a little longer.