Changing Seasons and Focus

This has been a long year and it has been around a year since I last wrote an update about my research. It turns out that after a long process, I have decided to change directions. I have switched from Wally Fulweiler’s coastal biogeochemistry lab to Nathan Phillips plant physiology and urban metabolism lab. I have also begun a new position as a visiting fellow at the Harvard Medical School in Pamela Silver’s lab. Instead of monitoring changes in the field, I will be focusing on smaller scale processes within plants and microbes and it’s definitely a whole new world.

I spend most of my time now learning molecular techniques such as running different kinds of gels, doing PCR, and cloning. When not at my new bench space (which I’m excited to have :), I’ve been meeting with Nathan Phillips on the roof of the CAS building scouring pipes, fans, and boxes for GHG fluxes.

It’s a whole new perspective and I’m super excited! I’ll be sure to stay more up to date as things progress!

From the Field to Functions

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to post. I had a great finish to the field work for my LIS project. The spring sampling went well and we collected everything we needed, plus we went out one more time to collect some extra sediment samples.

Maria and Rob were with my on my last field excursion, which was really exciting! Maria took some awesome action shots, which I am very grateful for!

She also got a great video of me taking a core.

We also got a bit creative on our last sampling trips. First we took some samples from the inside of one of the old holes we found from a previous core, which we took over a year ago! It’s at least important to understand the impact we have on the marshes we study. This was the contraption we used so we could measure how deep the core hole still was and take samples from a certain depth.

Then I also got to do some acrobatics in sampling from a leak in the sewage pipe at Udalls Cove.

Yes, it was gross, and we all took showers right after that!

Now that all of that’s done, I’m leaving behind the field for now and moving into the world of sample and data analysis, so from the field into the functions to figure out what’s fueling these marshes!!

 

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship!!!!

I woke up on March 30th to one of the best texts I have ever received, “Congrats on NSF!!” I hadn’t even checked my email yet and one of my dear friends told me I had been chosen to be one of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellows!! It was the best way to find out. I applied back in November and it was a very long process, but this means that I have my own personal funding for the next three years. I can be much more independent and focus more on particularly what I’m interested in. It’s also a very prestigious award.

I particularly want to thank Wally Fulweiler, my current advisor, for helping me through the application process every step of the way and writing me a letter or recommendation as well as Selena Ahmed for all her advice throughout the years, teaching me how to really do science, and writing a letter or recommendation. Also thanks to Colin Orians, my previous advisor who is a wonderful person and gave me a chance and Lucy Hutyra who also recommended me for the fellowship.

This is an incredible honor and I am so excited to start my new project on algae!

Potato Panic! Science Night @ Lincoln School, Brookline

How often do you get to see a little one’s face literally light up? 🙂

 

This picture was taken towards the beginning of a Girls Science Club activity, but by the end Maria was a flurry of hands switching the cables, adding pennies, connecting alligator clips between positive and negative nails.

Last week I coordinated the Girls Science Club and the Biogeoscience Outreach Committee visiting the William H. Lincoln Elementary School in Brookline, MA. Six of us piled into our department van with our gear and signs and made our way over to set up a sediment drainage experiment, phenolics visuals, and a potato battery experiment. I mostly stayed at the Girls Science Club potato experiment and we got a ton of traffic!

 

 

 

It was an intense two hours on a Friday night, but totally worth it. We definitely got it down by the end. Angela and I would have the kids making basic circuits, understanding that the current goes from negative to positive, and lighting up light bulbs with batteries. Then we’d send them to the potato/fruit side of the potato where Divya and Will would explain why potatoes can also light up little light bulbs and the different kinds of nails that had to be used.

It’s funny to think back to when I was making circuits and lighting up light bulbs. I remember not understanding how circuits work, so it was great to, with that in mind, try and explain it to kids. Some of them really ran with it. There was one kid who worked through when we ended until the last moment when we had to take the last volt meter, light, and battery he was working with before walking out the door. It was truly inspiring.

This is a related, inspiring side story, but the weekend before this I spoke to a close friend who grew up in this area. When I was telling her about the Girls Science Club that I’m running and the Science Night, she made a point of telling me that people like me make a huge difference to these kids. She remembers the cool college kids who would come and do science experiments with her from all the universities near by and felt like they really influenced her perception and experience. It was absolutely thrilling and very encouraging to hear!

A Winter Marsh

There are places in this world where humans are not naturally supposed to go; space, the ocean floor, inside the earth, and, in my opinion, salt marshes in the middle of winter.

The big field season for any ecological study is the summer months. Not only are there fewer classes for studies being done through universities, but the weather is lovely. The spring and fall are workable, but very few people do field work in the winter. Consequently, there is a lack of information about what happens in the winter. To attempt to fill that gap, my studies is a seasonal study. I am supposed to go out during every season to measure nutrients, respiration rates, decomposition rates, and other factors related to marsh health. It is a great thought and sometimes you have to be tough to get good data, but sometimes, even with the best intentions and determination nature can have the last word.

Alia and I tried to go out into the field last Thursday and I have to say that overall, it was definitely not a success at least. We were barely able to collect any samples, ultimately didn’t visit all the sites, and have to go back, but we did get incredible pictures:

Pipe restoring the previously restricted Barn Island

Top of the Marsh at Barn Island

Frozen Tundra

The hike to Jarvis Creek

Top of the marsh in Jarvis Creek

Our site at Jarvis Creek

Here is the description I sent my professor (The numbers reference pictures that can be found below): At the first site, Barn Island, there are usually a lot of pools. These pools were frozen, but the top 4 cm or so was actually slush if not just water (1,4). We walked through it going to our site. The whole top of the marsh was very flat and frozen over with wet snow on top (5), but near the creeks there were a lot of huge, frozen, broken ice slabs (3,9). The only open water part was near the restricted area (2). When we got to the area near my sites, we found all of them thanks flags I had put, but there was almost a foot of wet snow or ice, probably at least 6 inches of ice to get down to the ground and we had to really hack at it to reach it (6,8). The ground itself had plant matter on it, which seemed to be held in place by the ice if it was far enough from the creek, and was very wet. I don’t think it was frozen at this site as we were able to push in a ring to one of them (8,15), though it required occasionally slashing the ground when you broke through the ice and really pulling up a lot of grass and dirt. We also couldn’t maneuver around much if you hit a shell.

At Jarvis Creek, I think the tide comes on top of the marsh more because the ice on the top of the marsh might have been a little thinner, but it was completely frozen. There was no snow and we were just walking over ice. There were also a lot more huge slabs of ice up on the top of the marsh (10,11,13). It was still hard to hack through the ice sheet though and once we did dig a hole, it immediately filled in with water (14). I tried to scoop out the ice, but it came in too quickly. I could see it coming in in dirty plumes from the side of the hole. It made it impossible to really search around in the hole, so we couldn’t find the litter bags. The ground itself also seemed to actually be frozen. There was actually grass poking up through the ice in places (16) and a few small holes in the ice to the ground, but it was entirely frozen there and I couldn’t get a ring in. One interesting, though very sad, part of this site was that we saw a bird across the creek who was dying (12). We tried to get it out, but it died before we were able to get it (17). At Barn Island we met a lady who particularly commented that there were a lot of dead birds at the site and wondered if we were studying them.

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The field work was really very intense. It was hard to hack through the ice and I was pretty frozen by the end of it. While it was frustrating, I was almost happy to turn around. Alia was really a trooper though!! Thanks so much Alia!! Here’s some pictures and a video of what it took to hack through the ice:

Collecting water samples

Measuring pH and salinity of the water sample

Taking turns trying to get through the ice

I also have to say that Alia was very brave when it came to the duck. She went over and was able to get it out of the creek and put it back up onto the reeds:

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Overall, it was not something I would attempt again without a different goal, but it was a good experience. Though I should also mention that by the next day I was sick and had re-injured my knee, which has been bad for years Hopefully we’ll have better luck a little later in the season!

Silica Science of the Snowmageddon!!

As many people probably know, Boston has been hit incredibly hard by the last few snow storms. Being a scientist stuck inside for so many days, I couldn’t help but peruse some of the historical records of snow fall. Already this season is number 10 out of all winter seasons for snow fall with a total of 73.9 inches. What’s crazy is the fact that this all came down in just 17 days. This means we have now broken our previous 40 day record in 17 days. Currently we have around 37 inches just sitting around and I’m sure we are not done. In fact, it is still flurrying and on Thursday we are supposed to get more snow.

What this means for me/science is that all of the schools here have been closed and the T has been shut down. BU has had 5 snow days so far, including tomorrow and our whole transportation system was shut down during the first storm and will mostly be shut down tomorrow. Even though the snow is going to stop some time tonight, all rail service is shut down so the MBTA can catch up, clear off all the ice, assess the damage, and fix everything.

In an attempt to ameliorate this situation, my professor told us, don’t come in to work, but collect snow samples! I took advantage of this request and the driving ban (not only could no one park on main roads, but no one could drive anywhere) during the first storm and trekked 4.5 miles across Boston/Cambridge/Somerville collecting snow samples. Here’s a picture of my journey and all the places I collected snow:

It was amazing. There was no one on the roads besides a few odd groups with sleds or skiis. Being incredibly scientific, I carried around little plastic bags I pushed fresh snow into, wrote on with a sharpie, and kept outside in a little black bag to keep them frozen:

 

Back in the lab, these samples will be thawed and analyzed for silica. This is an element on the periodic table, Silicon (Si), that is normally found in an oxidized form (silica = SiO2) in nature. It is an essential nutrient for plants as it can be found in large quantities in all plants and makes plants stronger and more resistant to stresses like disease, insects, and toxins. Most likely there is very little silica in these samples since silica does not have a gaseous form and therefore would not be “washed out” of the air as some other elements are (e.g. nitrogen (NOx) and sulfur (SOx)), but it is always good to check! We will also see whether my transect from Boston to the more suburban Tufts University (my alma mater) area shows anything different. I will report back with the results!!

Everyone has favorite pictures they have taken during the past few weeks, here are a few of mine:
a)                                                 b)                                           c)
  
a) A car after the first two snow storms b) A parking meter I must admit I didn’t pay at and c) the day it snowed inside of my car.

I hope everyone is staying safe and warm!

Holiday Science

I have decided that some things, including ginger bread houses, are not just for kids or, graduate students are still kids, or there’s very little difference between kids and adults. It’s probably a combination of all of the above.

At BU, there’s a rather confusing set up in terms of departments/programs. The Earth Science and Geography Departments merged to form the Earth and Environment Department (E&E). There’s also an interdisciplinary Biogeosciences Program between the Biology and E&E departments. Here’s a schematic I drew for my sister to explain it. The light green “SB” is me.

We did this at the end of last semester, so it’s a little out of date, but the Biogeosciences program has a lot of events to bring together everyone in its program. As a creative attempt to do this, we had a holiday party where we built a ginger bread house. This wasn’t just any ginger bread house. This was a ginger bread house surrounded by all of our field sites. Being a group of stressed out graduate students right in the middle of finals, this creative outlet of a break was brilliant. We wasted no time turning the large cardboard pieces into a masterpiece of various candies and colored icing. Here is our house:

Everybody contributed their own section to this masterpiece. Mine was a salt marsh:

Specifically, this is a salt marsh in the fall because all of the Salicornia have turned red/purple. If you haven’t guessed from all my photos of Salicornia, this is my favorite marsh plant, sorry spartina.
Betsy made a lovely log bridge over a mud patch leading to a lake:

These are pictures of what we called the dirty back and picturesque front. On the left we have the dirty back with a snow experiment and a few forest experiments along with a miniature version of Betsy on her computer (for all of the GIS/R people doing “underwear science” as some ES/Bio people call it. Science you can do in your underwear). On the right you can see the picturesque front of our ginger bread house with the lake, salt marsh, heart be-speckled mud patch and bridge, and meadow also in the fall. The actual house has a few aluminum solar panels installed on it.

We had an amazing time making this. Perfect study break. Thanks Pam and Amanda for planning it!

FEEdium Exposure at the Cary IES!!

I have known a fair amount of people, myself included, who have gone to sleep away camp. You suddenly find yourself spending every moment with a group of people from all over the country or world with only their reason for going to the camp in common (probably their parents wanting them out of the house). The beginning is butterflies of introductions, but as each interaction snowballs into the cascade of becoming friends, you soon realize you are simultaneously experiencing the ephemeral beauty that is camp; a life changing experience that can never be created again in quite the same way. Those were some of the best experiences of my life and I treasure those memories, but I, probably like everyone else, thought those were childhood experiences and I accepted their place in my life. I never expected to find myself at a science, sleep away camp for graduate students.

I just got back from two weeks at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies taking the Fundamentals of Ecosystem Ecology (FEE). For some background, The Cary Institute is a very prestigious research institute (one of the few independent research institutes left) where experts in the field of Ecology are tackling critical environmental issues. Let me note that when I say experts, I don’t mean people who really understand their subject, I mean people who founded their entire field of study. Basically, the FEE course takes summer camp, throws in some of the most intelligent, interesting, profound, and caring teachers possible, and relates everything to your chosen field of study that is consuming an incredible amount of your life energy.

I lived at the institute for two weeks and every day we had a class in the morning and a class in the afternoon on different subjects in the field of ecology. They were all taught by different teachers and focused on the application of ecosystem studies. We studied multiple biogeochemical cycles (e.g. Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, etc.), primary and secondary production in terrestrial and aquatic systems, decomposition, urban ecology, data management, and a suite of fascinating special subjects. I was lucky to have taken some relevant courses on 1/3 of the classes, but the other 2/3 were completely new. Even in the 1/3 of classes I had background knowledge in, some of them came from completely different perspectives I had never considered and I re-learned the subjects all over again. One of my favorite examples of this was our lesson with John Cole, an expert on the carbon cycle. Last semester I took a class on the carbon cycle, but this lecture was brilliant. It addressed the carbon cycle in relation to what I would consider the oxygen cycle and immensely expanded my understanding of the subject my research is primarily based on. It was amazing.

Besides the incredible lectures and fundamental scientific articles, we each lead discussions about the readings after many of the classes. This was a fascinating process. Maybe it’s because we’re all slightly reserved science types, but it took us a week to really converse intellectually in a comfortable manner. Struggling through the initial awkward silences characteristic of the first few discussions, we were able to kickstart our conversations by breaking into smaller groups until we found our stride and could start to explore the extent of knowledge and opinions present in the room. By the end, these discussions were some of my favorite times. Partially because of the topics and perspectives, but a large part of it was because of how present everyone was. There was no where else to go, no one else to see, and no other work to be done besides the other work for this class. I haven’t experienced that since becoming an “adult.” Therefore, it didn’t matter how long the discussions went because everyone knew exactly what we were all going to do afterward, all walk back to Bacon Flats (our dorm) together and read. I, at least, have never been more present in a class and sincerely enjoyed the freedom it provided for reflection. We could explore, in depth, every topic we would normally only really consider for the middle half hour of an hour long class if we were lucky enough to have any class on the subject in the first place. There is no better way than this to internalize information, concepts, and ideas.

I also have to say that I could not have gone through this experience with a better group of people. All 19 of my fellow class mates were fantastic! The Institute did an amazing job of picking a diverse group of young, budding scientists who are all incredibly passionate about their work. I was able to particularly connect with the students living in Bacon Flats, since we saw the students staying in the Smith house (the other dorm) much less, but we had an amazing time. We all arrived separately to empty, 50’s style, Murphy Bed rooms with adjoining closet kitchens, matching 50’s ovens, and mini-mini fridges. Four puzzles, 13 days, 28 papers, 31 cards, and a million Taylor Swift songs later, we topped off our experience with a fire alarm bonding session and final adventure to find Stuart and give him our thank you gift. I feel like we left together with a set of friends and familiar faces to look forward to seeing at our upcoming first conferences, which I know I would have dreaded otherwise. I was honored to be a part of this group and will genuinely cherish the heartfelt late night conversations, dances around beds in the dark, and study nights in our makeshift common room.

  

I want to sincerely thank Wally Fulweiler (my advisor), Boston University’s Biogeosciences Program, Boston University’s Earth and Environment Department, and the Cary Institute for giving me the incredible opportunity to experience the FEE course.

Teaching Middle School; A New Experience

Today Nathan Nesbitt and I had the wonderful opportunity of visiting Lexington Middle School. We were guest speakers in Mr. Hall’s 6th grade science class. It was a wonderful experience. Nate and I talked about how we got involved in science, what climate change is, what our research is (sea level rise and solar cells), and how they can get involved in science. The presentation will be posted on a new presentations page I will be making.

 

This was our first time teaching 6th grade and I will definitely admit that we didn’t really know what to expect in terms of what they would know and what we would be able to convey. They definitely surpassed our expectations! The kids were right with us every step of the way asking wonderful questions. With the help of Mr. Hall, who worked with us tirelessly throughout the entire day tweaking our presentation to make it as accessible, relevant, and inspiring as possible, I believe we were able to reach a fair amount of students. So many of them were already so well informed, but we really tried to give them perspective about what it’s like doing research and give our own work as two examples. I tried to show them what it was like to metaphorically and literally walk in my shoes (I had one student try walking around in my big boots for walking in a marsh). They got to see the difference between sea ice and glaciers, understand how nano structures on a butterfly’s wing work, handle marsh grass, and see light interacting with nano pillars.

 

One of the most inspiring parts of the day for us was their response. During one class Nate asked them how many of them were considering being scientists; 4-6 of around 22 raised their hands. At the end of the class, Nate asked again and at least twice as many students raised their hand!! It was so meaningful for us. We can’t wait to bring the message about climate change and scientific research to as many students as possible!

 

Thank you so much to Mr. Hall, Lexington Middle School, and al of the wonderful 6th grade students we met today! We hope to see you again some time soon!

Tea on the Weather Channel

Two thoughts, first, it’s usually hard to watch the news because of all the horrible events that are often talked about, but here’s one example of where that wasn’t the case!

http://www.weather.com/tv/shows/amhq/video/tea-tastes-worse-when-it-rains-too-much

Here’s a short clip from the weather channel about one of my previous research projects I worked on at Tufts on tea chemistry and how it is altered by the weather, which has implications about climate change. Basically, the amount of different secondary chemicals changes when the amount of precipitation increases during the monsoon season in China, which changes it’s nutritional value, taste, and therefore cost. The tasty chemicals go down with more rain, so the cost goes down.

Second thought, this is awesome, but the only problem is that I never change the weather channel anymore. I just check the weather app on my phone. I believe these news stories are an attempt to change that though. Maybe it will! I’m certainly aware of them now.

P.S. Working on embedding the actual video.