Week 43 - Restart

Moment of silence... for period 2 of the study. Nothing is more frustrating in research than the knowledge that you need a parameter measurement which you never took, and your experiment ended months ago. But when you experimental units die off like flea-bitten rats in a Paris sewer - that's a close second. My protozoa are dying, and I can't figure out why, but that's not even the worst of it.

We've been doing everything right, transferring them quickly from the dairy farm after good variation in sampling locations. The temperatures are good, and the rotational mixing and filtrate removal/buffer input rates have been steady and low to eliminate washout by confusion or overflow. We start off with great counts of nearly 1.1 x 10^6 cells/mL, but drop off quickly to the 1.1-2.3 x10^5 cells/mL. That still being a solid fermenter number, I was willing to celebrate until they dropped into the 40-50k range. This is too little and might have been more than in period 1 data, but the fate was sealed with the great arcing debacle on Saturday/Sunday at the beginning of this week.

I entered the lab to smell burning plastic and immediately asked our Brazilian if she smelled something burning? "Yeah," she answered with a wrinkle of her nose and then she walked out like nothing was wrong. Her compatriot informed me a few minutes later that he had been having trouble with the fuse on hot/stirplate 4 and the temperature was dropping. There was just no saving her as the temperature fell quickly. I looked at the back of the plate and the arcing was severe enough to have knocked someone down if they touched the wrong spot. I was lucky that my Brazilians were even standing to tell about the problem. It was melting through the fuse case and actually even melted some of the metal casing for the fuse itself. This was almost a huge disaster. I'm thankful to God that we didn't burn down the whole department building or have a staff member in the hospital. I just need to duke it out with the lab gremlins now to stop dinking with my stuff. The following Sunday we also had a problem with a faulty GFCI box, and a cross-threaded CO2 regulator (thanks a lot to whoever wanted to prove they could tighten that one down...) which resulted in a second restart of the system at the end of this weekend. And we still can't get those numbers to hold high.

What might be our last night out on the town before Baby arrives!

At least at the end of the day, I have this lovely lady to come home to! She was a sport and went out with me to the POTP3 fundraiser for Pelotonia with some friends from work. A few beers later (and a regrettable shady Taco Bell stop later), we were back in our warm bed with the cuddly dog and I wasn't a headache worse for the wear. Great new location for the POTP3 at EndZone, although I'm skeptical if it is always that clean and friendly - something seemed a touch off from the usual. You can see it in the employees. But a great turnout and a good cause. If you'd like to join our fight against cancer, you can post in the comments or check out www.Pelotonia.org.

Week 42 - White

The name's White, Betty White, and she's "off her rocker". Have you seen the show yet, because I hadn't until this week and I have to say it about knocked me off mine. My wife and I have been spending increasing amounts of time indoors in front of the television in search of laughs. And if you haven't been expecting a child, don't judge. By this far along, she's just searching for any temperature that makes her feel a bit less like an oven, and for a place that she can rest where she's not heating up that oven. It's probably pretty tough being a pregnant woman, but I will never know. What I do know is how much I admire her for her perseverance and positive attitude. She will be a wonderful mother, and I can't wait to see it.

So we were watching this show and I recommend you check it out if you don't mind old people and crude/foul humor. Truth be told, my ears burned at some of the things said, but that doesn't mean I wasn't able to appreciate the humor. The premise is that Betty has collected a bunch of old people together and then the entire thing is film clips of them pranking younger people (which leaves the door wide open to prank about anyone). Almost every show is the same, same pranks done by the same people, but done to different people. Pretty light, easy to follow humor - it sure helped us as we tried to relax after long days that are getting hotter.

Wicked was the highlight of our week, and in honor of my wife I will post the video link to the "best version, ever" of "Defying Gravity". I personally really like this play, even though this time the bubble queen was a bit too bubbly and the chorus seemed a bit more random than organized. It was a really great time and I enjoyed it a lot. What a wonderful anniversary gift from our in-laws; I know it was super special for my wife and it's so great to get out on a date this late in the pregnancy.

Great color for the new beer.

My 4th year of the Pelotonia really feels like it is rolling as this week was the 1st Buckeye Biker Bash, headlined by a new Nashville singer, Evan Blankenship. Evan was nice enough to pose with us classy cancer-haters and he has a great voice with versatility and a grasp of the good country sound without all the fake twangy. I liked his performance and only wished he could've been a larger part of the show. Beer, good music and anti-cancer fundraising always go together like peas and carrots. Meanwhile my own beer at home has taken a turn for the doubtful. Don't go writing it off quite yet, but the carbonation is just not perking up on it. Luckily, it's a bitter ale, so the carbonation doesn't have to be perfect, but I'd love to see a bit more head on it, and for it to at least have some carbonation worth mentioning. A guy down at a local brew-store suggested that my basement was too cold for the yeast, and after further investigating, it would appear he is right. With the bottle inverted twice and a 1st floor location, carbonation started to build up in just a few days. Hopefully I can turn this frown upside down again because the beer itself tastes really good.

Us with Evan Blankenship at the Buckeye Biker Bash!

Sadly, in our volunteer world, an extension employee of great value to the program passed away suddenly this week. Remember, you should never take your time walking this earth for granted. And always, always tell people how much you appreciate them.

Week 41 - Sampling

Although last week I actually started period 1 of my first trial here at our nutrition lab, this was the week of data collection, and I have to say that it all went pretty well. I was pretty nervous that I might miss something or one of my interns might lose something or mix something from the wrong subsamples. Sure, it took just a bit longer than we expected to get the subsampling done, but we got better day by day and will only get faster.

Since the understanding of sub-sampling and the theory behind it seems to be pretty weak among graduate students, I thought I'd spend a few minutes elaborating on the basics of sub-sampling and why we do it. It's pretty simple shit, kids.

1) Sub-sampling is the sampling of a larger pool of available options.
2) The idea of sampling is that you have a population and a guess of what that population looks like can be achieved by taking pieces of it. In my case, this is achieved by collecting all of it, after taking many random samples throughout the rumen, but in other cases it is achieved by controlling group size and sample location to get lots of variety in the sample.
3) Then you want to sub-sample. This is just taking some out, but doing it randomly again. In theory, if you have randomly sampled, and then you randomly sample from that sample, then you will have smaller and more numerous sub-samples to have for experiments.

What people never seem to understand is the importance of getting a representative sample in the first place and how this is done. Make sure your sample is mixed well (equilibrium, stir-bars, shaking, shuffling, mixers). Make sure your sample is taken from arbitrary locations in a greater field. Keep these location samples even in size (otherwise you will weight the results towards the data coming from the larger - or smaller - fields). Store, preserve and handle your samples correctly (seriously, how many times do people have to leave samples to freeze beyond their storage and melt down, releasing disproportionate matter relative to the sample?). Keep backups and good labels (and don't store your backup in the same place as your primary sample - what's the point?). And train other people to sample in person (just because your directions say to do something, that doesn't mean they know how to do it).

In other news, the baby rolls right on through the growing stage with good doctor updates and we're talking about a June 20th induction before the OBGYN goes on vacation with his family. So the big day is rapidly approaching and we're started to get ready for the trip to the hospital. With our pre-registration comes the first big headache with pregnancies - in$urance. The hospital calls and says that payment is required before arrival, but don't believe them. You shouldn't pay anything until you get done and it's billed through the proper channels. They're just bitter about the people who don't follow through. We're not those people and we ought to be treated better.

Baptism class was this weekend as the congregation plans to move into the family center during sanctuary expansion. Let me just say quickly that I was very disappointed in the baptism class. Being a Lutheran (LCMS), I could have taught this Catholic class with stricter keeping to the scripture and meaning of baptism than this woman did. I thought we were there to learn, but apparently we were there just to generalize about baptism and to learn how to fill out papers correctly. Some Christians have far too low of standards for the education of their children and family in the faith - we will not be among them.

Betsy, sound asleep at home.

My wife feeding the sheep, AND the dog. Both seem to love corn.

Sheep have finally arrived at our residence and this time for good. Phil, the large ram, won't take crap from Betsy and he makes for a much better sheep-chaser-breaker than I could have hoped. Betsy now slows down, respects the ram and is only friendly with the other sheep, who do not run. Next sheep over to the house will be our 4-H'er's wether for the county fair in September. With the sheep at the house and Betsy adapted, she has sunk into thinking she's one of them. She sleeps heavier at night with a purpose to achieve in the morning of protecting (and playing with) the group.

Related to the sheep, we finally burned up the big pile of clear-out from the fence project that was stacked behind the barn. With the cool weather, there's nothing better than a big fire with friends and s'mores.

Got to love those big hot fires!

Still burning the next day (8 ft. fencepost in fire for size reference).

Week 40 - Accuracy

I was going to name this week, "Disrespect", but I started thinking that my discussion on accuracy vs. precision would bring home the point adequately. This week was the last in our series of quality assurance sessions taught in the county for 4-H/FFA youth who are taking market animals to the county fair. This session became necessary when people thought that animals could be treated any way they damn well pleased, and they lacked respect and forethought on the well-being of the animals they were showing. Yet, these were the same folks who were talking in the back of our jam-packed session, looking at each others' TFLNs and pictures on their phones. Their disrespect for our volunteer efforts.to educate youth about proper animal care and health was dismaying.

Accuracy vs. Precision (credit NOAA.com)

Now let's talk about a work example of my topic of the week. As we work towards better hydrogen measurement, we greatly struggle with the fact that any errors can lead to loss of hydrogen in the sample data. However, we don't know what we're losing, so we have to standardize the measurement to recovery curves and figure out the loss, and then look at our consistency in measurement. Unfortunately, our precision thus far overrides our ability to confirm accurate measurements. I think that the following image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration bicentennial celebration site adequately diagrams what I'm trying to say. Precision is merely grouping, but accuracy is getting data that is truly exemplary of the result. For example, you can see from the following picture of protozoa (taken from a day in the lab) that there are a ton of protozoa gathered around a food source. Hypothetically, if I'm doing a counting 50 grids across a counting chamber, and I see this and count all of these guys... they can greatly skew my accuracy. Am I precise in my measurement? Absolutely. But, I am not actually accurate in my estimation of the true mean. However, if I randomly land on this grouping in a preset counting pattern (which is what we do), then I can't know if there aren't other groups like this, and so we accept that it doesn't not skew our estimation any more than any other occurrence.

Crowd of protozoa around food source.

So back to my teaching example with the disrespectful teenager. Teaching to a group, I'm aiming for a certain accuracy in what I teach, and my opinion is that some kids are just going to miss the mark because they don't care about others, or learning proper animal care. These kids are lost and shouldn't be allowed to interfere with my ability to teach the rest of the group. Could I discipline them and force them to pay attention. Yeah, sure. But can I force them to learn? No. And thus, because I care more about learning than the perception of attention, I give up a little bit of precision in the results from my teaching efforts (that, and apparently, I can't kick them out of the session for no credit - that would be ideal). But, by maintaining my cool and controlling their impact on others, I can lose some precision but will not lose the accuracy of my efforts in education the general youth population about animal care.

Homebrew hard cider helps with the thinking.

Betsy eating melon.

In the home life, baby continues to grow happily and Betsy continues to cause trouble. Betsy has now been taught how to eat melon off the rind instead of eating the entire rind and then mercilessly depositing chunks everywhere in her path of chaos - either by digestion or lack thereof. It's nice that's she's become so civilized, but keeping a dog around that requires someone's hands to hold her melon while she eats it is a little time consuming. Same as humans - civilization takes too much effort. Why did we train her to do this??? I often wonder what kind of a big sister pup Betsy will become. I think it will probably evolve over time from the over-protective guardian to the one trying to prevent accidents, to the willing scapegoat, and finally as a reluctant old trouble-maker in her late life. Of course, only time will tell, but with the weather perking up and that porch swing calling my name - I spend a bit more time engulfed in thought than before. For what it's worth - I like sitting on that porch swing. Hope to do a whole lot more of it this summer.