iUTAH Undergraduate iFellows

 

Week 8 Recap

July 4-8, 2016

 

Joydino Beyale

No entry

 

 

 

 

 

Heather Bottelberghe

No entry

 

Katelyn Boyer

In this video I explain the research I have been doing over the summer and show how fires affect snow accumulation through different graphs. Focusing on percent conifer mortality, our study shows an increase in peak snow accumulation in severely burned forests due conifer mortality but whither that results in more available water resource still remains unknown.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Todd Brown

No entry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Darcie Christensen

This week was a short week due to a holiday and I was out of town. Wednesday, we FINALLY got a good set of standards for our ammonia oxidating (amoA) genes! So next week, we will be doing a lot of PCR to get concentrations of this gene in our soil DNA extractions. Thursday was focused solely on getting my research poster the rest of the way put together. It took a ton of time to put together good figures, but it is coming together better than I could have imagined. Today was a meeting at Utah State to practice presenting our posters, which was a bit intimidating but very productive. It was great to get feedback from everyone. I can’t believe the symposium is next week!

 

 

Georgie Corkery

This week I started to harvest kale in the Hydroponic Lighting experiment! It is exciting because we finally are able to compare the input to output, and as hypothesized the plants in the greenhouse are producing more pounds of produce than the plants indoors and outdoors while using less water and nutrient input. However, we have to factor in the energy and water input that maintains the humidity, temperature, and air circulation that maintains the environment, which could change the outcome.

 

I have also concentrated on condensing all the information from my project to fit onto my poster and deciding what images to use. It has been hard because a big part of the my research is the fact that it is an extension of two past projects. One was conducted in the summer of 2015 looking at the evapotranspiration of hydroponic plants indoors and container gardening outdoors. The second was in the winter and fall of 2016 where the question was could collecting snow capture and solar panels Could satisfy the demands of a hydroponic system large enough to grow an individual the recommended amount of fruit in Salt Lake City?

 

Overall, the project is coming together. I am consolidating my data and working through the unexpected challenges that come with conducting research.

 

 

 

Cynthia Elliott

This week was all about analyzing data and building my poster. We are using a program called SPSS. I have never used it before (frankly, I'd never even heard of it!), but I got a guide book from the school library that has been quite useful. It gets really frustrating sometimes when I cannot seem to figure out how to get the program to do what I want it to, but all in all, I'd say it is pretty fun learning a new program. It makes certain tests much easier to do than if they were done on, say, excel. We had a cohort session today where we presented our draft posters (using powerpoint) and it was EXTREMELY helpful! We all got great feedback from each other, in addition to getting ideas from seeing all the different posters. Next week is the symposium! Woohoo!

 

Andrew Hackett

This week Heather Bottelberghe and I were able to assist Jessica Wood from USU's ACWA Lab to gather data about Meadow Creek at Starkey Experimental Forest and Range in Oregon. It was a busy and engaging week gathering flow measurements, temperature readings, and downloading data from permanent loggers along the creek. Altogether it was a lot of fun, and really interesting to see how data is gathered in the field. There were several other researchers sharing the Forest Service bunkhouse during our stay and it was interesting to discuss our variety of projects and enjoy the forest!

 

 

 

 

Greta Hamilton

This weeks mercury run had to be pushed back because we are waiting on the delivery of a new  analyzer needle. Hannah and I prepped the water samples for the DOC run on Wednesday. Hopefully, the results from the DOC analysis will available next week for use on my poster. The rest of the downtime during the week was spent composing a draft paper and poster for our mock presentations at USU on Friday. I received some useful feedback and plan to work on those changes for our symposium next Friday. 

 

 

Stacy Henderson

This week I started my poster, created more maps, and refined maps for my project. Once I got the poster layout figured out with the help of my mentor Dr. Joanna Endter-Wada, I figured out what further maps I would need to create to complete the layout we chose. I then worked with my other mentor Enjie Li to clean up and refine my maps. I finished the week by working hard with both mentors to create a complicated water conservancy district map and get the final rough draft of my poster completed for our cohort session on Friday.

 

Rebecca Lee

This week we worked on cloning and creating standard curves for qPCR. We are planning on starting to do qPCR on our environmental samples in the next few days. I also had the chance to work a lot on my poster for my poster presentation next week. This week the cohort session was Friday and I was able to present a draft of my poster and get very helpful feedback to make it better and help me to better communicate my research.

 

Gabriela Martinez

The last couple of days have been very exciting. We were able to finally get out in the field and interview people about their landscaping choices. Even though it was hard to get people to talk to us, the times when someone did felt amazing. I was surprised to see how much people liked talking about their yards. Even the people that would let us know from the beginning that they only had ten minutes to talk to us or were in a hurry, would open up and share very interesting facts about their lives and their landscaping choices. Although it was at times very tiring I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it!

 

 

Mitchell Steele

No entry

 

Shanae Tate

It's been a short, but good week here.  I've spent most of my time trying to create results to show on my poster.  I made the draft and I'm really glad I received such useful feedback today at our Cohort Session.  There's a lot to do still before the symposium and I need to practice my "elevator pitch."

 

Luis Vidal

This past week was spent mostly working on data analysis and working on our rough draft posters that we presented on Friday. It was great to finally start looking at results from all the data we gathered and to start interpreting the data. We learned to use SPSS which is a statistical software that is used by more and more people in the research field to analyze our data. On Friday we received feedback from this week's work.

 

 

 

Lily Wetterlin

This week consisted of finishing up with water extractions and weighing out my leaf samples on the mass balance.  My samples are finally being ran and I will have data back within the next week, yay! This week we also did a mock poster presentation at our cohort session. It was very helpful to see layouts of other posters and get feedback on how to improve mine.  Excited for the upcoming symposium! 

 

 

 

Adam Whalen

This week I’m delighted to share with everyone a short video describing outlining my research process. Each week I have discussed the program I use, IBM SPSS Statistics, and the coding skills it requires. My video is an attempt to visually demonstrate the process. Functioning as a tutorial of sorts, I walk the viewer through a few simple commands and logistics of the program. All of this is done by way of a screen-capturing program which allows me to narrate each and every thing I’m doing on my computer screen.

 

 

 

 

Sandra Udy (Young)

This week started out with a bang! Well, with July fourth that is. On Tuesday Beth Ogata and I went down to BYU to extract more DNA. This time extracting went well and we were able to extract twenty four of the discs from our NDS cups. I am excited to have the ultracentrifuge working so that we can see the DNA-SIP process from beginning to end. The discs that had the glycine amendment didn't seem to have as much growth on them, but that could be because the autotrophic algae don't like the organic form of nitrogen as much. I am excited to see what happens and what types bacteria prefer what form of the nitrogen. I also got to work with R Studio this week some more and learned some simple troubleshooting tips that were super helpful. This week ended with presenting our posters at an ifellow cohort session. This was a wonderful opportunity and I really enjoyed seeing new ideas of ways to present and how different poster styles were organized. I gained some new insight on how to improve my poster.