Week 83 - Ellipsoid

Hannah is now 9 months old! It's hard to believe that time is passing so quickly. The daily groove of getting up, getting out the door, going to work and coming home to pick her up makes time pass so quickly. We have settled into a few favorite stuffed animals, but Clarence the cow is still the winning choice right now. I think that's because we spent so much time propping Hannah's bottle up with him when she was younger. Hannah is still in a nice little sleep pattern, out by 8ish and up in the morning by 7ish. She naps a lot, like any baby, but really likes her sleep. And who can blame her? I love my sleep, too.

Her personality continues to grow and she has become a pretty spunky baby. Her expressive eyes and happy nature makes her pretty easy to get along with and she is getting used to being the center of attention.

Mom took us to work this week!

Maple sap collection continues to roll on. With the abrupt changes in weather, it's really important to be careful about not getting the sap once it turns bitter. Once the weather stops cooling off in the evenings below freezing and then is always above freezing the sap will start to turn a bitter taste. This is also linked with budding on the maple trees. Since I don't really have the time to keep an eye on this, my little brother volunteered. Of course, I wasn't really expecting the pictorial updates I received at work of him licking the trees, drinking sap and "getting in touch with nature". He was literally perched to catch the drops as they ran out the spout. That is pure dedication to the maple project - and also a slight touch of very weirdness. Anyhow, apparently the sap is still good and someday you'll laugh when you see your picture made the blog like this.

St. Patrick's Day was this week and I broke out the old flag from undergrad to celebrate.

With St. Patrick's Day rolling around, I went on good behavior and forewent a party this year. I think I've had enough good times in the past to let one go every now and then. With St. Patty's on a Monday, I did go out to the bar for a lunch meeting over green beer. Now for those of you who don't believe in the lunch beer with co-workers, let me try and persuade you. When you meet at work to discuss projects or ideas, many people are uncomfortable to ask questions or bring up ideas. But as soon as you move into a more comfortable environment where everyone feels like they are equals, it opens the door for more relaxed and productive conversations. I think that I do more teaching at the bar to my fellow graduate students than I do in the office.

And this trip out was another success. We have been working for a while to more accurately determine protozoa volume. The problem is that they twist and turn while they swim and so it reveals that they could easily be a much different shape than the coefficient*cylindrical approach of eariler generations. Turns out that by using our ability to capture video we can bypass a video analysis for protozoa volume (have had trouble finding a programmer to write the auto-detect and integrations) and use freeze frames for measuring area. By measuring area as an ellipsis, I found a measurement tool that takes a "feret" diameter. This ends up giving me the equation for the area of the ellipsis. By tracking the smallest and largest parts of the protozoa as it swims around in solution, we can identify to sets of ferets. These give me an averaged length and two alternate radii. This all adds for the calculations of the volume of an ellipsoid. Compared to other methods, this ellipsoid calculation decreases our standard deviation of volume by more than 25%. Not bad if I do say so myself.