iUTAH Undergraduate iFellows

 

Week 10 Recap

July 18-22, 2016

 

Joydino Beyale

This week I worked with two graduate students from the Utah Water Research Laboratory, Makanzie and Jared.  We went to Park City, Utah and set up an experiment to test the how much nitrate is in the stream and the water quality.  I also been busy taking photos of my project on USU Campus to put into my power point presentaion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heather Bottelberghe

This week is the second to last week of the iFellows program and I am amazed at how much I have accomplished. At the beginning of my internship I was nervous about my lack of skills and experience. But I was wrong to be afraid. My internship has been difficult, but I have overcome challenges on my own this summer that I never would have thought to tackle before this adventure. 

 

This summer I gained a new confidence in my intellect and abilities. I developed professional relationships with peers and mentors that I hope to continue to work with throughout my education and future career. The skills that I learned from my peers and mentors have helped me take the first step on the scaffolding to success. I will look back on this experience with pride for myself for the rest of my life.

 

 

Katelyn Boyer

This internship has gone by fast and I have learned so much from it. This week I have worked on writing my final paper and creating my PowerPoint presentation that I will be giving this upcoming Wednesday. It has been interesting to learn about the different types of research that have been conducted on fires and snow water equivalence. Writing my paper has given me a broader understanding about the effect fires have on snow accumulation in mixed conifer forests through the different types of research studies that has been conducted. Each research study has tested different variables making it possible to gain a better understanding of fires and snow water equivalence. Even though this internship is almost over I am excited to continue to expand my knowledge about the world we live in.

 

 

Todd Brown

No entry

 

 

 

 

Darcie Christensen

Bioretention Systems are new low impact development that reduce storm water velocity runoff and remove contaminates in storm water runoff. My study has been focused on nitrogen removal by vegetation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Georgie Corkery

This week I dived into the details of my paper, trying to explain the setting of my experiment to the fullest. This has been tricky because the greenhouse environment used as one of my three locations has fans and humidifiers that require energy and water that should be quantified into the resource inputs of my project.

 

One lesson I am learning in conducting this experiment is that the more time you have, the better. As I have been drawing near to my conclusion with my work for iUTAH there are so many variables and metrics that I would have liked to incorporate into my research from the start.

Now that I am almost complete with the program I see that I should have been measuring the amount of water the hydroponic systems did NOT use when I switched out the water. We switch out the water bi weekly to prevent diseases and bacterial growth, so by default we are using about the same amount of water for each plant in a hydroponic system. If I had measured the amount of water not used by each plant when switching out the water it would have been more clear as to which environment and plant (kale or pepper) used more water. However, I do plan on discussing the amount of water that each plant didn’t use in my final presentation and paper.

 

Hydroponic systems could be an optimal way to grow food in Salt Lake City because Salt Lake poses many challenges to grow food in traditional urban agricultural setting. This video reviews the pros and cons to using hydroponic systems versus traditional urban agricultural practices and discusses a research experiment being done at the University of Utah in which hydroponic systems are grown in different settings. Data collected on water, energy, and nutrient input as well as pounds of yield (output) in this experiment will be used to determine optimal food production methods in Salt Lake City, Utah.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cynthia Elliott

No entry

 

 

 

 

 

Andrew Hackett

As this summer's iFellows program winds down, this week has been spent double checking portions of the secondary water conveyance map I've been working on, as well as preparing a presentation and paper describing my research. A true test of time management skills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greta Hamilton

This week proved to be a very busy week writing abstracts for AGU and putting together presentation slides for next Tuesday. Time outside of writing was mostly spent in the lab getting the THg mercury machine online ​for analysis. The part for the needle had finally arrived. A calibration run was prepped and analyzed in order to test that analysis was running smooth before using actual river samples. Many of the calibrations were rejected so quality control methods were updated and the standards were remade. A second calibration run was prepped and analyzed with favorable results prompting the prep of a river sample run. Friday morning the reducing agents were added and the samples were being analyzed by the MERX-T machine. 

 

 

 

 

 

Stacy Henderson

This week I did a bit more research for both my paper and my presentation, worked on my presentation for the final symposium, and finished the full rough draft of my paper. I found some new information that I hadn’t previously found regarding my project that was extremely useful. I also managed to speak with someone at the Utah Association of Conservation Districts who was able to give me more details on what they manage and what other water agencies they work with. This information was invaluable and got added to my paper and presentation. I’m definitely excited for the new information I found and believe it fills in the gaps in my research that were bothering me.

 

 

Rebecca Lee

This week I worked a lot on my oral presentation and on my paper. It is crazy that the iFellows program is almost over. I have enjoyed it so much. Things are wrapping up. It is great that we have been able to relatively quantify fecal contamination. The last thing we are trying to do is make standards for qPCR in order to absolutely quantify the contamination. We are so close to having standards made and have a great protocol for everything except the last two steps. We keep having problems when it comes to having enough plasmid DNA to extract. We first tried making a patch plate, but the colonies didn't grow and then we tried making a liquid culture but the E. coli didn't grow enough in that either. We now are trying a different protocol for the last two steps to see if it works better. 

 

 

Gabriela Martinez

This week was all about getting my poster ready for the symposium even though I was not going to be able to present it due to some IRB issues. I was disappointed, but that's the way research sometime goes...the good news is that I was able to finish my project, print it and feel proud about my work all other issues aside.

 

What an unforgettable week, my little girl -and future iFellow- was born! Other than staring at her constantly I have been working on my power point presentation and my paper. Again, due to IRB issues I will not be able to present next week at the symposium but it feels good to be able to finish something I have been working so hard on for the past nine weeks!

 

 

Mitchell Steele

No entry

 

Shanae Tate

This week I have been able to do more analysis of the data.  This has allowed me to draw more conclusions and write my paper.  We are preparing to wrap things up for the season with our research paper and presentation next week.  It's a great and busy time to be an iFellow!

 

Luis Vidal

This week I used the feedback from the iUtah symposium and looked more into the data and gave second glances at things I already looked. It's interesting how you find new things again when you look again with a different perspective. I found more relationships between race/ethnicity groups and it helped explain some questions but also bring up more as well. 

 

 

 

Lily Wetterlin

This week I finally received my Nitrogen data. I have coded it into graphs using the program R and will be spending this weekend and the remainder of the program interpreting my results and finishing up my paper. I look forward to the finished product and am excited to present my findings at the upcoming symposium this coming week.

 

 

 

Adam Whalen

In my second to last week as an iFellow, I was hard at work on my upcoming oral presentation at the iFellows Symposium. Considering my past work in marketing and public relations, I am no stranger to a well-crafted PowerPoint. Of course, scientific research is entirely different than the latest attraction at your local mall, and as such, I have relied heavily on my mentors for guidance. I look to them not only for help in how to design my slides, but also in the best practices for delivering such information to an educationally diverse crowd. It has presented an intriguing challenge for me, but I believe that it will ultimately be worthwhile in my future academic endeavors.

 

This week also saw me beginning the second draft of my paper. Due at the end of the program, all iFellows are required to deliver a five page report of their research. This is not unlike a work you would see in an academic journal. Once again, my inexperience in the scientific way of crafting such deliverables is showing through. I am more accustomed to media releases and papers on political theory than I am on methods sections and recommendations for further research. As per the norm, I will seek the influence and help of my mentors to craft this paper into something worthy of my research.

 

Next week will be bittersweet for sure. Not only is it my last week as an iFellow, but it will be the conclusion of my individual contribution to the greater iUTAH project. While I may not know what the future has in store for me in regards to iUTAH, next week will be a final testament to the thing I have learned as a part of it.

 

Sandra Udy (Young)

Sandra Udy explains how to create a nutrient diffusing substrate.