Life cracks me up sometimes. I’m putting formulas into excel, just puttering along at a good pace, when one cell, G37, to be exact, decides it wants to be different. So I type the formula and press enter. What does the cell say? Instead of the 44.9somethingsomething I expected, I see “FALSE.” Teehee! It really did make me chuckle. It’s stated so strongly. Not “error” or anything of the like. No. “FALSE.” In all caps. I love it. It’s as if excel was jumping onto the bandwagon of saying, “This is false!” instead of only “this is true.” Thank you, excel!

Also, yesterday I had to go to the cold room again (!). But guess what? I didn’t find a light switch, but I did find a door stop. Cool. The sheep brain bucket is history! It’s the little things, I tell you, that can be so beautiful in life. You’ve just gotta learn to recognize them. I hope your day is full of reminders of God’s goodness today. Have a good one!

-katie

Oooh! HE'S the one to watch out for!

It's sad that it took me this long to catch you all up on this, but I did indeed attend a lawn mower race the same weekend of the Burlington trip. Actually, I should just describe the whole day. To begin with, Bianca, Yami, Rachel and I walked to the Methodist Church in town. We were a couple of minutes late, unfortunately, but little did we know--that made NO difference at all. The announcement segment of their service lasted quite literally 35 minutes. I wish I could say I was exaggerating. But I'm not. Not at all. Wow. The choir of 8, also, was entertaining in the wrong way. I had to force the reverence at some points. Which is never a great place to be. But if you had only seen, and heard what I experienced that morning. Wow. I don't think I'll ever forget. But enough of that! On to the lawn mower races!

We circled around the town of Lisbon, New York a few times before stumbling upon it: a large field. Only one thing was different--there was quite a crowd of trucks, Oldsmobiles, and other vehicles pulled into the grass. So we followed the dirt and gravel road to the entrance. And then realized we needed cash to get in. Eeek! I had no idea we would have to pay for this event. So funny. It was, in a way, worth it, however.

We found a spot on one of the two bleacher segments that had been pulled alongside a track driven on the grass that was roped off with classic yellow caution tape. Our attention was immediately drawn to the wood sawing competition going on. These fierce competitors would fire up their chainsaws, set it on the ground, still on, and then kneel, hand on wood and head on hand. The count off was given and they would spring up with amazing vigor. GZZZZZZRRRR GZZZRRRRR GZZZZRRRR...three large chunks of wood go plummeting to the ground. And only one man can be victorious. And that wasn't even the main event. Get excited.

The lawn mower races were hilarious. Each racer had a team there with them, and their commentaries were priceless. It was like watching NASCAR, I would suppose, except for, wait. These are lawn mowers. The title is just one example of some of the things we heard from behind us. Some of the slogans on team shirts shouldn't be repeated. I was definitely plunged into "North Country" culture, yet again. In all, though, it was worth the five dollars just to have such an experience. I only wish that I could describe it more robustly.

Bianca and I at the races...

Ladies and Gentlemen, here they come!

Above is the best picture I got of the wood-chopping...you can see the saws and the wood blocks awaiting their demise!

Better Late Than Never...Burlington!

I'm finally going to write a bit about our trip to Burlington, Vermont. Vermont is gorgeous. I was thoroughly impressed. And I understand their state quarter more now, too. Bonus. If you see it, give it a second look--it's a person in the middle of the amazing maple tree tapping process used to make the delicious maple syrup that the area's known for. I respect that! Here is some of our group on the ferry to get from New York state to VT. It was cold, in case you couldn't tell. In the picture with me is Eileen, Samantha (who both go to Clarkson year round), and Yami. Fun people. They're making my summer fun. :)

Now, we keep our priorities straight here in the REU program. So the first thing we did was go to the Ben and Jerry's Factory outside of Burlington. I have never been quite so excited to see the women's sign for the bathroom--check it out. I want one for my bathroom at home. So cool. Though it might not be a good idea to bring that cone any further. ha!

The tour was actually rather lame--they were only cleaning, not making ice cream by the time we got to the manufacturing room. So we just watched some ridiculous video about how they make the ice cream. But I still don't feel like I know that much about it. Alas.
Bianca and I are being goons:

I am a much bigger fan of Ben and Jerry's ice cream now, though, so I think in all they succeeded in their goal. I'm definitely going to have to frequent our Birmingham Ben and Jerry's a bit more. :)

This road sign is priceless. I don't even think I need to explain why. Only in Vermont!

Next we toured a Wood Gasification Plant. And a composting facility. At the former, I was basically confused the whole time. The tour guide spoke in mostly abbreviations of an engineering nature. So I just donned the hard hat and enjoyed the views. So industrial! This sort of thing makes me glad I'm a biologist, not an engineer. Props to all of you out there than thrive on this stuff. That's wonderful. As for me, I'll stick to the woods and enzymes and such.

The rest of the weekend was free for us, so we hit downtown. Here's the shore of Lake Champlain. It's absolutely breathtaking with the mountains on the opposing shore. I was also pleased to hear that there's a Loch Ness monster type of story here in Vermont as well. There just may be a large creature affectionately named "Champ" swimming in these waters. Please try to maintain your composure. I know it's frightening.

The Burlington Jazz Festival was going on. You know what that means--free music, wonderful people watching, and one very happy Katie. This particular window displayed a wonderful combination of stellar things. Love it.

The city was beautiful, with many cute restaurants, coffee shops, and cafes. This is church street, where they had a block party on Friday night. The band was more of a Latin/ salsa band as opposed to jazz, but hey! That was really fun! We joined the many others in dancing on the street. Good times.

Apartment-mate love:

Shortly after this picture, we went down to the shore, watched the rest of the sunset, and danced on the rocks to the oldies tunes being played by a surprisingly untalented band in a tent further down the shore. The singing was rough. But that just made it more fun.

Friday night, we slept in tents in the backyard of one of Eileen's friends. So college! It rained, but we all stayed fairly dry. Saturday morning, Erin Fick, a friend from Samford, met me at a fabulous breakfast cafe, where we enjoyed chocolate croissants. It was wonderful to catch up with her. In all, the weekend was really, really fun. It certainly beat two more days of being in the lab!

A Potsdam Weekend

Hey.

This weekend, has been, to use one of my favorite phrases, an adventure. I ate at the "Bagelry" in town (pizza bagel and chocolate chip cookie of epic proportions--yum!), hiked a mountain, and read tons about making businesses sustainable. Today I walked 2 miles to a church, which, I will say, I really enjoyed. It was refreshing. Then I rode, along with 6 other people, yes, 6, in a Honda CR-V to the grocery store, Price Chopper, bought out the store of Mexican food, and then cooked all day and into the evening. The whole REU group then joined us for a true feast, and I'm still quite stuffed from it. I will try my very best to write more and add pictures of the weekend tomorrow, but I thought a short description would do for now. Till later, then-

Katie

Physics and Chemistry???

Well, today was an experience.

First, I got to recalculate, for the 4th time, a mapping model of the shoal I'm working on. I was beginning to think that it was a lost cause...but in the end it pulled out! We now know an *almost* precise value for the amount of water that's over the shoal at any given moment of the day. Cool!

Secondly, I had the pleasure of assembling a 1977 flowmeter. This deserves a bit of background info--I'm terrible at working, well, things. I've never been particularly gifted at putting things together/ logic/ simple operational skills that some people come by naturally. Give me some math or science concept, and I'll go to town, but simple machines and contraptions can truly get the best of me. Ha. So picture me in the lab, with a musty wooden box with about 50 different pieces of metally/ bolt/ wire/ battery-ish stuff. The only experience I could compare it to is either building circuits in physics 2 lab (not my favorite, as you may guess) or a frustrated father on Christmas morning with a new, complex toy. It turns out that the manual, which reeked, by the way, was basically useless. It had one picture of the device put together, but the parts were minuscule, and it was impossible to tell what went where. I worked with this meter for about 2 1/2 hours. I got pretty frustrated at some points. However, about halfway through, Derick, a grad student in the lab, started playing Phoenix on the stereo. It was perfect at the time. Little things make such a difference! Eventually, I got it more or less working, except that you have to apply approximately 5 pounds of pressure on the battery to make the system work. That's going to be fairly difficult on the boat tomorrow, as I'll also be holding a 2m steel rod in the water, timing some sort of time interval, and counting the rotations of the wheel in the meantime (given that the battery is indeed working.)

So tomorrow, we go out on the boat (given that Dr. Twiss doesn't get sick--he wasn't feeling well! There's a nasty cold going around here.) and try my beloved flowmeter out. But we're also trying several other methods of tracking the water flow and velocity, and let's just say that I'm not crystal clear on how exactly I'm going to transform our measurements into meaningful tracks of the water flow. So I would appreciate your prayers for tomorrow! As I was leaving the lab today, Dr. Twiss was explaining that my project is really more physics and chemisty than anything else. I think my thoughts about that escaped to my face--oops! I'm just hoping that I manage to comprehend everything that I'm responsible for by the end of the summer. Anyhow, it's been anything but boring here.

On a completely unrelated note, a friend took me to the new "Price Chopper" (a grocery store) tonight, and I now have several important things: 1.) pancake supplies to last for quite a while, including butterscotch chips, which are a personal favorite add-in. The Pancake parties will continue! 2.) exciting ingredients to make real food--like casseroles and stuff! Fancy! 3.) most importantly, they had Ben and Jerry's ice cream buy one, get one free. So I have some delicious ice cream to cool down the scorching days. Wait a second...scorching? Maybe I'm fudging a bit on that. No pun intended! (get it? get it? ta hut!)

I hope you are all doing well and I appreciate your prayers!

More of Life in Science Lab...

Hi!

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged—sorry! (For all of you loyal blog-checkers out there.) Lots of wonderful things have happened since last I wrote here, but first I must throw in an anecdote from lab today, which is, yet again, where I find myself at this very moment. I’m waiting to test my water samples for their phosphorus content. I have been since 8:30, and it will be around 10:45 before I get started. I’m getting very good at finding interesting, but still somewhat studious-looking, things to do at my desk. It’s a fine art, I tell you.

Anyway, here’s my random tidbit from life in a science lab: today I’m going to tell you about the cold room. The cold room is one of my least favorite places to go in the Science Center, mainly, I would think, because it is a refrigerator big enough to walk in, and to keep things that in former days could walk in as well (only animals! Don’t get too crazy on me!). The smell that smacks into you with a solid front, like a pungent, cold, brick wall, is not quite pleasant. In fact, the only thing that can help you understand this smell is to think back to your high school biology class days. Remember the frogs, once you were well into the process, and their smell had fully infiltrated the classroom? You’ve got it. There’s our smell. The smell, however, isn’t the only disturbing part of the cold room. I can’t find the light switch in the cold room to save my life. I’ve looked everywhere. I found one switch, but it looks surprisingly industrial and connects to a complicated looking box. Unlike most of my peers here, I am most certainly not an engineer, and I don’t want to mess with that box. So what do I do? I prop open the door with a small bucket that’s near the door while I venture in to obtain my water samples. Today, as I was replacing the bucket upon its twin after propping open the door, I noticed a sliver of green tape on the lid. A label. What did the label say? “Sheep brain.”

Yummy. Thank you, biology. I’m going to go wash my hands. ;)

Enjoy the VT!

Today was a great day. It seems that real, tangible things to do come in waves (no pun intended! ha!). The day after I go to the river, there's plenty to do. And today I learned how to test for Silicate levels in the water. Yesterday, however, I was at a loss. I completed a simple task to determine the surface area and volume of my shoal, and after that, I couldn't come up with much to do. Ahh, such is life.

Today we had our second official project event, this time a presentation. We all got together in a (windowless) seminar room to present our objectives, hypotheses, and research methods. I was a-ok with this whole idea until I noticed a visitor in the room. And this visitor had an interesting, urm, piece of cargo. It turns out that one of the professors of public speaking decided to come along to video tape our presentations and offer suggestions. This, combined with the other students and one of our REU sponsors, Dr. Andresscu, made the room a bit tense. The gig went down without a hitch, however. Except that we ran over by about 30 minutes. It's a bit grueling to listen to 2 1/2 hours of people trying to explain their analytical chemistry research projects. (There are only 2 biology students: the rest are chemistry or engineering. If you know me at all, you know how I feel about chemistry and engineering. ha!) Also, the professors offered immediate feedback to each of us when we finished. I suppose it's good to hear, but a bit of a buffer would always be appreciated. I was convinced to view the whole experience as positive, however, when the speech professor asked me on the way out if I had much experience with public speaking. My gut reaction: "oh snap. was I that bad?" But when I told her that I'm forced to get up and talk fairly regularly, her reply was encouraging. She said she could tell that I'm not a newbie--that's always a good sign!

Tomorrow we head to Burlington, Vermont to tour Ben and Jerry's, a water treatment plant, a wood gasification plant, and a composting system. And then I'm checking out the jazz festival that's going on all weekend--it should be great! I've heard good things about Burlington. And as one of the grad students in my lab says, I hope to enjoy "the VT." Hooray for upstate NY lingo!

A Typical Day in 176B

Ok. So this is it: my science blog. Here is my desk in Science Center (which is unfortunately two full words) 176B. If you've seen my Facebook album, you've already seen this--sorry!

Now add in this little detail: toshi's perpetual presence smack in the middle of that desk. Indeed, that is the exact habitat that I find myself in right now. A typical day involves calculating the information that I found on the boat. So let me catch you up to date on my project.

My whole goal is to figure out if this shoal, which is an underwater island, in the St. Lawrence River can in any way be responsible (even partially) for the decrease in phytoplankton population that has already been discovered as the river progresses from the headwaters of Lake Ontario.

We (and by we I mean my advisor, Dr. Twiss, who is a limnologist and has been studying this for a few years now) think that the shoals could be contributing to the loss because there are lots of plants on the shoal. Our fancy name for these plants is "SAV", or submerged aquatic vegetation. These plants could 1.) be altering the water chemistry in some way that inhibits phytoplankton functioning, 2.) be using up the nutrients, like phosphorus, that phytoplankton need to survive, and 3.)be providing more surface area and thus more available homes for little grazing creatures that eat our phytoplankton. These creatures could be insect larvae, mussels, or zooplankton.

So there we have it! With that in mind, our goal is to figure out as much as we possibly can about this shoal. Not much information is out there about this area of the river, because it's an international section between Canada and the U.S. (thus why I end up going to Canada often when I go out on the boat :D).

So...today, actually, I'm using bathymethic maps to determine the surface area and volume of the shoal, and we're going to use GPS drogues and labeled oranges (no joke!) to figure out the velocity and path of the water flow over the shoal. We're also sending down trap like things (called ponar dredges, officially) throughout the summer to see what types of plants are common on the shoal. And we'll be able to measure these plants and see how they progress through the summer--we expect the phytoplankton populations to drop as the summer goes on and the plants get bigger.

We're also collecting water samples at 10 stations on each day we go out. When we do that, I sit in the little cabin of our boat with a rack-ish thing with open, plastic beakers magnitized to the top. I connect the rack to a vacuum, and I put different size filters (tiny, round little slivers of science!) in the beakers. Then I pour certain amounts of the collected river water into the beakers and let the vacuum do its work. When the filtering is complete, I carefully slide off the little filters, which now hold different sizes of plankton, and plunge the filter into a test tube of 90% acetone. These little tubes can't see the sun once the filter is in them, or the phytoplankton die. So it's like a game to shove the filter in the tube, pop on the cap, and stick the tube in the tube rack under a black, sun-ray eliminating bag as fast as you can. Anyhow, I do this for each of the ten stations. It takes about 2 hours, minimum. Crazy!

Apart from this, we also collect samples to analyze the nutrients in the water: I'm going to be comparing levels of phosphorus, nitrate, and silicate.

Each of these collections we do on the boat have a corresponding analysis in the lab, so a busy day in lab is when I'm actually measuring what I collected on the boat the day before.

Other than that, I'm going to do a little mini-experiment that will allow phytoplankton to grow in the same container as a plant, but the plant will be in a filter that only allows its chemicals to get through. In other words, I'll be able to tell if it's the little critters on the plants or the plants' chemical effects that are making it hard for the phytoplankton to thrive.

If you're still with me, congratulations! I'm impressed! I probably wouldn't have read all of that if I were you.

So there we have it. And days in lab like today, without any actual processes to carry out, are interesting. I just kinda have to make myself productive. However, the REU program requires quite a few presentations, and my second one is this Wednesday. So I'm busying myself with making the power point that I'll present then, and I'm also trying to make sense of the data I have from last Thursday. This being said, I end up in that chair above for a LONG time. My day is technically supposed to be 8 hours long, so I feel like I should stay at least that amount of time.

I have come up with methods to cope. These include: 1.)actually going back to my apartment for lunch rather than packing my lunch in the morning and eating it in the hallway outside of the lab. My apartment is close, and that lets me eat with my friends for lunch as well. This is good. 2.) Whenever I go get some water or go to the bathroom, I walk back outside rather than through the halls. It's my little break! Although today it's been awkward, because there are two guys doing some sort of study on blue jays just outside the building. They've got this little platform set up with some bird food on top. To add to this, they have two cameras on the platform, and they're sitting outside in camping chairs watching the platform. Enter Katie, dazed by the sun but grateful for the outdoor air. Funny. So I will be in their video of the platform every once in a while. I hope that's not a problem! And I hope I'm not scaring away the blue jays! I sure don't want to be responsible for ruining their summer research! (Which is rather humorous, if you ask me, to begin with. But I'm sure I don't know the whole story. ;) )

So anyhow, now you know about my everyday life. And the science, for those of you that care.

I hope this is at least remotely interesting to some of you, but if not, it's not a huge problem--it's only been the result of a little fraction of my time in 176B. :D

Make Way for the Dairy Princess!

I am so sorry that I'm a terrible blogger. It's been a while! Though if you have facebook, you should check out my last album--it basically includes everything but this weekend. I will take a moment, though, to tell you about the Dairy Princess Festival in Canton. I haven't really felt as immersed in the "North Country" culture as I did today. For an introduction, let me just post this photo:

This was rural, upstate New York at its best. I have never seen so many tractors in one place at one time. I was fascinated by their idea of a parade: anything that's big, noisy, and has a large engine should definitely line up and drive down the street. One poor little boy, cosy in his stroller in front of me, was scared by the honking and sirens of the big trucks. Let's just say that he was rather traumatized for a large majority of the parade. Poor kid! But he got lots of candy, so that's good!

We also stopped into a folk art store on the way to the festival, and the eclectic blend held therein was nothing short of fascinating. All of my mental powers are stumped when I consider reasons that someone would really spend a rather hefty amount of money on the handmade pin cushions and tree fungus carvings that the store had to offer. Yes, you read that correctly, Tree fungus. Though I will say that one of the fungi had a very intricate carving of a chipmonk, and I was briefly tempted until I 1.) pictured my stuffed bag on the way up here and 2.) saw the $38.00 price tag. Eek! Furthermore, the artisians at the festival itself were intruguing as well. Most tents had a collection of yard-sale/ flee market toys, maybe some oddly real looking baby dolls (which, if we're honest with ourselves, are actually creepier looking than they are cute), and some hand-made purses that look similar to the one I made in 7th grade during the sweltering month of July out of pure boredom. Wow.

This being said, there were some wonderful aspects of this festival. Firstly, I got to try maple cotton candy. And when they say "maple" up here, they're darn serious. They literally go into their back yard, tap into the trees, collect the sap, and boil it at home. So that was delicious! There were also tons of cow themed floats on the parade that made me chortle. "Got milk" was paired with other slogans multiple times. For example:

I mean, that is one way to go about it...

There was also a pin with calves to pet. Cowlets, as I would like to call them, are actually really darn cute. They have precious moments eyes. I'm not joking.

Anyway, by far the coolest part of the festival was the fountain. Take a look at this fountain, and you will immediately see why and also probably agree with me.

Is that not the coolest thing? They had tons of rubber duckies swimming around in it! In the top picture, one of my apartment mates, Bianca, my friend Yamiary and I are basking in the gloriousness that is the fountain. I was glad that it had the same effect on them--they were just as excited as I was!

Here's one last picture from the festival...this little girl was just adorable. I couldn't help sneaking a photo. :)

Lastly, I thought I would share this picture of my friend Yamiary and the delicious dinner she made us Friday night. I can't for the life of me remember what the main dish was called, but I'll post it when I do. Yamiary is a fabulous friend. She's always full of joy and kind words. She is from Puerto Rico and is in the process of learning English. It has truly been a joy to help her learn how to say things correctly. Though sometimes we end up going back and forth, because I want her to teach me spanish, too! So the new rule is: if I tell her how to say something correctly in English, she has to tell me how to say it in Spanish. It's great. We're also converse buddies: she has a pair of grey converses that are my size, and I have my black ones here. And I got to introduce her to squirrels, groundhogs, and chocolate chip pancakes, as of this morning. (my only regret about that is that I didn't have real maple syrup to serve. It's really expensive!) Anyway, it's people like her that are making this summer fun.

Thank you for reading all of that! Maybe someday soon I'll actually post about the science that I've been doing. After all, that is what I do for 40 hours a week!

Thanks for praying. I would love prayers about:

1. That I'll get to know people here and that Christ's love would just burst out of me. Most people here are atheists or even anti-religious, so it's quite a different atmosphere than I'm accustomed to. It's proving to be a challenge to really live out what I believe, but it's a wonderful opportunity to just love people who are almost entirely different than me. So pray for a strengthening of my faith, please!

2. That I would persevere in work: 8 hours in a windowless lab, mostly putting in data and analyzing it on the computer, is more grueling than I had imagined. We're not actually going out on the boat as much as I though we would, and many of my lab activities involve repeating the same process, which involves plenty of test tubes, up to 70 times. And I really have never spent SO much time staring at the computer.

3. That I would live for the Lord and not for myself or my comfort.

Thank you so much! I hope your weekend is going well!