I'm currently working on a research permit application for one of the state National Wildlife Refuges. One of the boxes I'm supposed to fill out asks for a map of proposed study sites and/or plot locations. That's dandy, except that I'm asking for the permit so that I can go off-trail in the NWR's to find my frogs and therefore my study sites. I cannot attach a map of my study sites if that is the reason I am asking for the permit. What to do?
Maybe I can find little ponds on Google Earth and sent them screencaps? Woe...
Monday, March 2, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Is that like Platform nine and three-quarters?
I applied to a grant at the end of January, and today just checked the announcement to see when they announce the winner.
It says, "February 29, 2009."
Umm...
It says, "February 29, 2009."
Umm...
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Happy Darwin Day!!
It's Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, hurray!! And this year marks the 150th publishing anniversary of his book The Origin of Species (and the 170th publishing anniversary of The Voyage of the Beagle).
The Bell Museum at the U of MN is having some special events for Darwin Day, including the opening of a really interesting sounding photography exhibit. And today my department celebrated by having short Darwin-esque themed presentations during seminar hour. The seminar was both preceded and succeeded by "fossil cake", which turned out to be chocolate and banana layered cake with nut "fossils." Apparently the sliced almonds went extinct and never made it to the banana layer...I did not notice this becuase I was far to busy going "CAKE!!!" and shoving it into my mouth to investigate the geology of the cake. I'm such a horrible scientist...
To paraphrase a friend and fellow EEB student's Facebook status, I hope you all get lots of evolutionary presents under your Darwin Day (phylogenetic) trees. And don't forget to leave out seed for the finches that bring those presents!
The Bell Museum at the U of MN is having some special events for Darwin Day, including the opening of a really interesting sounding photography exhibit. And today my department celebrated by having short Darwin-esque themed presentations during seminar hour. The seminar was both preceded and succeeded by "fossil cake", which turned out to be chocolate and banana layered cake with nut "fossils." Apparently the sliced almonds went extinct and never made it to the banana layer...I did not notice this becuase I was far to busy going "CAKE!!!" and shoving it into my mouth to investigate the geology of the cake. I'm such a horrible scientist...
To paraphrase a friend and fellow EEB student's Facebook status, I hope you all get lots of evolutionary presents under your Darwin Day (phylogenetic) trees. And don't forget to leave out seed for the finches that bring those presents!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Happy Obama day!
I'm not sure I'll get a chance to watch the inauguration tomorrow, despite coverage from 8:30am to 4pm. But between rebroadcasts, the internet, and blog posts, I'm sure I'll see and hear plenty about the festivities.
In other news, spring semester starts tomorrow. I would normally have evolution lab, but thanks to the first week of school, it is canceled. Hurray!
In other news, spring semester starts tomorrow. I would normally have evolution lab, but thanks to the first week of school, it is canceled. Hurray!
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Brrrr
It's cold out. How cold, I cannot say. Vista/my desktop tells me it is -10 F. Google says it is -2 F. This website says it is 0.9 F but the windchill makes it 2 F (what??).
Either way, it's cold outside.
Either way, it's cold outside.
Monday, December 29, 2008
1/10th of the way there!
I have completed the first semester of my graduate school career. Woohoo! Only nine (or more? who knows) semesters to go. It's amazing how quickly the time went by. Sure, some parts draaaaagged and I thought I would never make it to winter break (the NSF fellowship experience comes to mind). But all in all, it was a decent enough semester.
Now I'm spending my time doing productive things like catching up on television shows, watching all the DVD's I got for my birthday and Christmas, hanging out with friends, and eating Christmas cookies. Oh, and playing Spore. I know there have been a lot of negative reviews about the game, but so far, I'm pretty impressed. Yeah, there are things that could be better and things that could change. It took me forever to get out of the "creature" stage (you're basically an animal running around, eating, and mating), and that got a little frustrating. And there's definitely a learning curve. But, no game is perfect, and especially for this nerdy biologist, the fun of running around collecting new body parts to evolve with and trying to ally with other critters far outweighs the negative bits.
For Christmas I also got The Future is Wild (Discovery Channel and Animal Planet). It discusses animals that might exist far into the future (5 million, 100 million, and 200 millions years future) after humans die out from planetary changes and whatnot. For example, marmots might evolve into large rodents capable of surviving an ice age, and wolverines might evolve into a larger sabertoothed version of themselves that preys upon the evolved marmots and other creatures. We don't know that these animals will evolve, but scientists looked climate changes, current species, past species, and evolution, and came up with all these species that could plausibly evolve. One thing bothers me though. All the scientists featured on the show as the experts are male, as is the narrator. I double checked the credits to be sure, and yep, all seven science consultants are white males. There isn't even a racial minority or one female to try to fill some quota. What's up with that, Discovery Channel?? Surely there were some prominent female evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, or natural historians you could have consulted.
Now I'm spending my time doing productive things like catching up on television shows, watching all the DVD's I got for my birthday and Christmas, hanging out with friends, and eating Christmas cookies. Oh, and playing Spore. I know there have been a lot of negative reviews about the game, but so far, I'm pretty impressed. Yeah, there are things that could be better and things that could change. It took me forever to get out of the "creature" stage (you're basically an animal running around, eating, and mating), and that got a little frustrating. And there's definitely a learning curve. But, no game is perfect, and especially for this nerdy biologist, the fun of running around collecting new body parts to evolve with and trying to ally with other critters far outweighs the negative bits.
For Christmas I also got The Future is Wild (Discovery Channel and Animal Planet). It discusses animals that might exist far into the future (5 million, 100 million, and 200 millions years future) after humans die out from planetary changes and whatnot. For example, marmots might evolve into large rodents capable of surviving an ice age, and wolverines might evolve into a larger sabertoothed version of themselves that preys upon the evolved marmots and other creatures. We don't know that these animals will evolve, but scientists looked climate changes, current species, past species, and evolution, and came up with all these species that could plausibly evolve. One thing bothers me though. All the scientists featured on the show as the experts are male, as is the narrator. I double checked the credits to be sure, and yep, all seven science consultants are white males. There isn't even a racial minority or one female to try to fill some quota. What's up with that, Discovery Channel?? Surely there were some prominent female evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, or natural historians you could have consulted.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
What is that bright light up ahead??
The end of the semester is...in sight? Weird. I have surprisingly little to do. Today I turned in my last statistics assignment. Now I only have an essay and two finals left (stats and animal cognition). Oh, and one more journal club meeting. Then I get almost a whole month off to relax (eg, write grant proposals, read lots of papers, and analyze more data). YAY!?!
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
We interrupt your regular program...
Today, we are going to deviate slightly from the usual biology nerddom to look at two videos.
This first one is about a month old - I meant to post it earlier, but see previous post. But I like it, it's a good message, and so I'm still going to post it. Here you go (it's captioned if you go to the YouTube page and turn them on): Keith Olbermann on Prop 8
This second one is hilarious (but also a good message). And it has that Barney guy in it from "How I met your mother" (alas, no captions): Prop 8 - The Musical
This first one is about a month old - I meant to post it earlier, but see previous post. But I like it, it's a good message, and so I'm still going to post it. Here you go (it's captioned if you go to the YouTube page and turn them on): Keith Olbermann on Prop 8
This second one is hilarious (but also a good message). And it has that Barney guy in it from "How I met your mother" (alas, no captions): Prop 8 - The Musical
See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Slacking...
Actually, not slacking. Well, slacking with the blog posts, but that's only because I've been busy not slacking as much in other areas. Like, you know, minor things like grant proposal writing, statistics homework, weekly essays, data analysis, presentations... You get the idea.
To expand upon the above... I did get the grant proposal in. There were lots of revisions, some banging of head on wall in response to revisions, and many late nights involved. And I might have hit "submit" a mere forty minutes before the deadline. But it got in! Now I get to wait six months for results, by which time I will probably have forgotten about the thing entirely. Or repressed the memory. Something.
As for statistics homework and weekly essays, I have only one or two more statistics problem sets after I turn in tomorrow's, and no more weekly essays for animal cognition (the last one was due today). Granted, I have finals in both classes (ew), but on the plus side, I don't have animal cognition next week, and we're having a pizza party during the last week of class. You are never too old for in-class pizza parties.
Data analysis has progressed nicely. Mostly. I just might have lost an important scrap of paper, and had to remake some sound files and rerun the data (twice), but it all turned out okay in the end. The past week has involved a great deal of math and conversions between things I'm only semi-familiar with, but it's been a good learning experience. Unfortunately, the math resulted in me rejecting the main part of my hypothesis (*sigh*), but the data are interesting nonetheless. All this data analysis led up to today (well, yesterday I guess, since technically it's Wednesday now) when my advisor and I gave a tag-teamed presentation at my alma mater. That went quite well. We were very well recieved, and at least one student is interested in working in our lab for research experience. I'm hoping to recruit some undergrads from St. Kate's to work with me this summer. They get research experience that they can't get at St Kate's, and I get peons. I mean, assistants. Win win.
Tomorrow (er, later today) either 2/4 or 3/4 of my classes and seminars are canceled, so my Thanksgiving break starts at least two hours earlier than I thought it would. Not that I'm a fan of Thanksgiving (don't like turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes...I'm weird, I know), but I am very much a fan of not having to sit through classes at 4 and 5 pm, particularly when four days of sleeping in are so close.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
To expand upon the above... I did get the grant proposal in. There were lots of revisions, some banging of head on wall in response to revisions, and many late nights involved. And I might have hit "submit" a mere forty minutes before the deadline. But it got in! Now I get to wait six months for results, by which time I will probably have forgotten about the thing entirely. Or repressed the memory. Something.
As for statistics homework and weekly essays, I have only one or two more statistics problem sets after I turn in tomorrow's, and no more weekly essays for animal cognition (the last one was due today). Granted, I have finals in both classes (ew), but on the plus side, I don't have animal cognition next week, and we're having a pizza party during the last week of class. You are never too old for in-class pizza parties.
Data analysis has progressed nicely. Mostly. I just might have lost an important scrap of paper, and had to remake some sound files and rerun the data (twice), but it all turned out okay in the end. The past week has involved a great deal of math and conversions between things I'm only semi-familiar with, but it's been a good learning experience. Unfortunately, the math resulted in me rejecting the main part of my hypothesis (*sigh*), but the data are interesting nonetheless. All this data analysis led up to today (well, yesterday I guess, since technically it's Wednesday now) when my advisor and I gave a tag-teamed presentation at my alma mater. That went quite well. We were very well recieved, and at least one student is interested in working in our lab for research experience. I'm hoping to recruit some undergrads from St. Kate's to work with me this summer. They get research experience that they can't get at St Kate's, and I get peons. I mean, assistants. Win win.
Tomorrow (er, later today) either 2/4 or 3/4 of my classes and seminars are canceled, so my Thanksgiving break starts at least two hours earlier than I thought it would. Not that I'm a fan of Thanksgiving (don't like turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes...I'm weird, I know), but I am very much a fan of not having to sit through classes at 4 and 5 pm, particularly when four days of sleeping in are so close.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Friday, October 17, 2008
Elevated cortisol levels
Lombard research has been put on the back burner, and all focus is currently on my grant proposal. The research proposal section is lacking, and needs to be much better by Sunday morning, so that I can make a powerpoint about it in the afternoon, because I have concert tickets for the evening. Monday I present my proposal idea to my lab group so they can give feedback before I present the "real thing" to the behavior group on Friday. Oh, and I have to have final drafts of all three essays (personal statement, previous research experience, and research proposal) by Friday. This is more a self/advisor imposed deadline than anything, but it's still a deadline.
My advisor is predicting late nights this week. I am predicting no nights. :( I have homework (a weekly essay and weekly stats homework) to do too. And a committee meeting to prepare for and conduct. I'd like to think it gets better from here, but I don't think it does...
My advisor is predicting late nights this week. I am predicting no nights. :( I have homework (a weekly essay and weekly stats homework) to do too. And a committee meeting to prepare for and conduct. I'd like to think it gets better from here, but I don't think it does...
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