Taking 1-step intsead of two.

As of late, there have only been a few things on my mind: the glorious weather, Physiological Ecology of Marine Algae, and 1-step Quantitative PCR.

Spring break ended with spring hitting Worcester with extreme velocity. All of the snow that fell before break has been replaced with highs well into the 60s. There are rumors of temperatures hitting the 70s or 80s next week.

Why yes, I'd love some sunshine while I read.

Aside from the end of this week, with temperatures dropping today and rain expected tomorrow, we've been blessed with sunshine and more warm weather. On Monday I got to spend some time outside while doing some reading during class. While we were given more time than needed to do the reading, I certainly will not complain about the amount of sunrays I was able to soak up while hanging outside. I've beginning to worry about the amount of work I have to do between helping to run two projects in PEMA and finishing up my own research, in addition to preparing presentations, writing my thesis, and giving a defense... all while the weather is getting really nice.

I could try shifting my sleep cycle so that I work a lot at night, sleep in, and enjoy the weather during the afternoon before going back into lab. I highly doubt this is something I'll try. Instead, I'll probably start packing killer lunches and having them on the green in the sunshine.

I have so much to do but I'm still waiting for cultures to grow up and things to be mailed in to retry some of my real-time experiments. I tried running some 1-step QPCR reactions recently since we had the kit on hand. 1-step QPCR makes the cDNA and amplifies it all in one reaction, rather than making the cDNA separately and adding it to the QPCR reaction. While this is definitely easier, saves time, and limits contamination, 1-step QPCR is not as accurate when it comes to estimating the amount of starting template in a sample. As determining the amount of relative template among samples of different test conditions is of the utmost importance to me, it looks like 1-step QPCR won't really fit into my plans any more. However, some initial results suggested my experimental lines of diatoms are behaving as expected (and see previously with normal QPCR), so that's really promising. Once I get a new QPCR kit in and some cells to analyze, my work should be all downhill from here (aside from heaps of lab work).

Watch the video below for a bit more on our beautiful weather and 1-step QPCR.

Oh, winter is here, okay, thought it wasn't coming

Ever since Worcester got slammed with snow and ice just before Halloween, 2011 was pretty mild. In fact, the month of November felt warmer than October, and by the time I went home at the end of the semester, we didn't have any snow in the 01610.

But about a week into the New Year, we finally got a few inches of snow.

A view of the JC (left) and the AC (right) from Atwood Hall.

And over the past few days, we got a couple inches of snow and ice in small increments.

A view of the AC on Sunday morning.

This snow follows a string of extremely cold days in Worcester, with temperatures in the single digits and teens.

So when I thought winter wasn't coming around this season, I was definitely wrong.

The Zen Garden looks like a mini snow bowl.

Campus is now covered in snow, but we're still well behind the amount of snow we got last year.

But I'm okay with that. Cars have already been struggling to make it up the lame excuse of a hill my road is on due to the snow and ice. I'm pretty sure one of these days a car is going to careen into another, because everyone seems to think it's a great idea to simply floor it when they lack traction on the ice.

While we may get a few warm days in this coming week, we may get two doses of freezing ran. That's something I really don't look forward to.

(Tuesday the 24th update: it rained last night and was in the upper 40's today. All of the snow not piled up is gone. Ha! New England weather!)

October Snow Storm Carnage

Last night on October 29th, central Massachusetts got a fair amount of wet snow. Estimates and measurements vary, but the campus got about 5-6" of snow. The problem with wet snow is that it weighs down trees, especially if the trees still haven't lost all of their leaves yet. The problem is amplified with longer branches as it creates more downward force on the branch (basic physics thank you), causing the branches to snap off.

I've taken a bunch of photographs and have posted two videos, here and here. I'll also embed the main video at the bottom of this post.

A somewhat complete photo album is here.

My tumblr post is here.

A slideshow on the New York Times of some of the damage to the northeast.

Before the storm: Saturday October 28th, 2:30 PM.

After the storm: Sunday October 29th, 12:00 PM.

My favorite post-apocalypse photo.

A sample of the carnage:

A video of the tree carnage on the Clark campus.