Down To The Wire

Well, it's now one week before my first funding application is due. The PSA application should be pretty easy to complete and it's my goal to get it finished and off to the Advisor for review today.  Then the big one (EPA) is due a week from Friday!  I haven't really started the meat of that one yet.  I've got all the potatoes finished up, sans whatever changes Advisor wants me to make (which hopefully isn't many).  But 4000 words for a proposal is actually pretty daunting.  I wrote a pretty thourough version of this grant just as an assignment for class and it barely cracked 1000 words! I'm currently debating whether or not to just beef up the methods portion and use the intro I used for my assignment.  That could probably get me to 2000 words.  I just have this fear that the committee will see my proposal and know that it's far under 4000 and immediately not consider funding me because I don't have enough written.  Is that a valid fear? At what point does quantity trump quality?  I additionally feel that it's really important I get this funding because I think if I get it, it will make it harder for the department to get rid of me if I don't do as well as I need to on comps.  Sigh, so many insecurities, not enough time to analyze them all...

Well, I should get to work.  Maybe I'll post some status updates throughout the day.  I've also got an exam to study for and that's a real monkey wrench in my to-do list.  Grr...

Well, I'm Insane...

I think I'm going to collapse with exhaustion by the end of this semester.  I recently received another opportunity to apply for some funding, and dammit, I'm going for it!  This brings my total number of funding applications to 4.

1. Phycological Society of America - Grant in Aid (Due 11/1/2010)
2. EPA/STAR (Due 11/5/2010)
3. Fordham University - Dissertation Expense (Due 11/15/2010)
4. Mianus River Gorge Preserve (Due 12/1/2010)

And as soon as the semester is over, I'll be spending the whole month of January studying for comps.  And then, I can get back to working on publishing my PAM project.  Wow so much to do...so much money to beg for.  I know that the Ph.D. is supposed to be training for being a full-fledged PI, but if so much of a PI's time is taken up with grant writing, then how the hell do they have time for research?  I mean, the actual research is why I got interested in science, not to constantly think of new ways to ask for money.  But I guess that's what grad students are for.  All the more reason that I need to enjoy this time as a grad student and the actual research I get to do!

This is what science and research is all about!

My Favorite Diatom

Well, it's not my favorite favorite, but it's one that interested me for a while.  I remember learning about her in my first algae class, and being disappointed that I didn't get to find one.  But I finally found her in Maine!!

 This is the Mae West diatom!  So named because when it was first described in the first part of the 20th century, they thought it was as curvy as the actress Mae West.  It is in the genus Gomphonema.  I forget the actual species right now, and my notes with that info are in the lab, not at home. 

But isn't she beautiful?  I've still never seen one live. This is a cleaned frustule.  I also have another Mae West that got burnt when the slides were cooking.  I think the burn provides some interesting shadows.

Yay pretty algae!

A Dissertation is Born!

I've finally broken through my mental block and figured out what the hell I'm doing!  Ever since I agreed to do this EPA grant, I knew the basic area that I wanted to focus on, but a specific project has eluded me.  So here's a rough sketch of where I'm going.  Since moving to NYC, I've become very interested in the city's method of water supply.  The whole city of 8million people have their water supplied by a naturally filtered system of aqueducts and reservoirs.  Because the water is naturally filtered by the watershed and reservoirs, the city does not need to use chlorine or other chemical treatments.  Part of keeping the water coming in clean enough to be solely cleaned by natural filtration is making sure the streams in the watersheds that feed into the city are in good health.

Lower New York also has a lot of agriculture; livestock, orchards, and grain fields are all over the lower Hudson Valley.  Many of these agricultural operations have stream that pass through them.  Often times, these streams catch nutrient rich fertilizer runoff from the orchards and fields, and those that pass through livestock properties often have, ahem, "direct" nutrient deposition.  These streams are also often impacted by animals walking through them, disturbing the substrate, and also machines rolling through them maintaining fields.  Agricultural streams are a bit of a consternation for NYC's water supply.  We don't want to decrease agriculture, but city dwellers want clean water...So, what to do...

Using the legislation of the Clean Water Act, the EPA developed a series of Best Management Practices (BMPs) that farmers could implement on any streams running through their property.  BMPs can be as simple as putting a fence between the cows and the stream to as complex as building wetlands and riparian buffer strips between their farms and the stream.   Currently there's been a lot of research looking at how effective individual BMPs are at reducing factors such as sedimentation and nutrient enrichment, and increasing biodiversity and food web connections.  However most studies only last a season.  There have been multiple studies one any one given stream, but not in a meaningful temporal span. As an additional confounding factor, BMPs cost money to the farmers to implement.  But often they don't want to go through the trouble of the paper of applying for government funding, and once they've got a BMP often government busy-bodies want to come on their property to investigate it.  Farmers fear that they will be told that they're not doing it right, have to spend more money on it, allow snoopers on their land, etc. Crazy farmers....

So here's my plan.  Working with people in the know, I'd like to identify agricultural streams that have had BMPs placed on them recently, less recently, not at all, and some pristine non-ag streams, and then follow them for 3 years (how many research summers I have left).  The premise here is that I want to find out how long it takes for a BMP stream to either stabilize or approach something resembling "pristine".  These poor worried farmers don't want the government interfering in their business anymore than they need to, so determining how functional BMP streams are is important for reducing the amount of bothering us nosy scientists need to do.  My ideas are a little haphazard and scatter-brained right now, but I promise they'll become more fully formed in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for listening and I call dibs on this idea!!!!

A Lack of Coffee

I have a problem. It's never really been an issue, I've usually been able to find a way around it. But...I can't study in my home. I've just never been able to do it! The bed is right there, the cats need attention, something needs to be cleaned...it's just too distracting here.

When I was an undergrad, my favorite study haunt was Bear Grounds (UCR). It had lots of delicious coffee, and was next to the mini-mart if I needed some "real" food. There was a constant trickle of people, but it was never too loud, just the right amount of white noise.

At EMU, I would prefer to go off-campus to The Ugly Mug. Man, I miss that place...Coffee, food, music, internet, they had it all! And the coffee was gooooood too. Plus it was just a short walk off campus.

Here in the Bronx....there is nothing like either of these places. Fordham has attempted a coffee shop which is ok, except that the coffee is way over-priced and burnt. There isn't really anything like the Ugly Mug off campus either. The Blend Cafe, again comes close, but their coffee isn't anything better than what I can make at home.

So I'm putting it to anyone out there! Where do you like to go to do work and why? What are the characteristics that make a good office-away-from-home? I could do with some feed back.

It's Been A While

Wow, it's been some time since I wrote an entry! Shows how well the research is going. Currently I'm bogged down in classwork, and don't have a lot of time for research. In an effort to keep this blog from being entirely a bitchfest, and keep it to more of the proactive procrastination I intended it to be, here is a list of all the research things I need to do:

• Have all of my EPA background materials ready to go by 10/12 (self-imposed deadline)
• Have a working draft of actual EPA proposal by 10/25 (self-imposed deadline)
• Finish the stats on what data I did get from the summer, in Systat and SigmaPlot
• Fatty Acid analysis (hopefully soon! I don't know how long they'll last)
  
• CHN analysis (as soon as we get the damn machine)
  
• Diatom and soft algae counts (postponed Spring 2011)

On the bright side, I attended a funding seminar and learned about a grant I can retroactively apply for that should pay for the short diatom course I took this summer!

• Apply for Dissertation Expenses Grant due 11/15

I'm falling into a more regular work pattern now, and the student coffee house being open more regular hours is definitely helping! It's the only place on campus that doesn't burn their coffee :-)

Alright! Deep breath...Off again!