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.

Week 39 - Mouse

This past week I've been spending a lot of time in the office, prepping for the new project with the Brazilians. This requires acid mixes, buffer calculations for allowing sub-acute acidosis conditions, formalin, fermenter part repairs and sampling extra rumen fluid for coenzymes for my rumen cultures (among other things). Anyhow, I've been sitting at my desk a lot, double-checking manuscripts, and drawing up a game plan and sampling needs. As I sat at my desk earlier this week, a mouse dropped out of the ceiling onto my desk near my laptop. I yelled "Mouse!", but apparently the response to kill the mouse was solely mine, as my Brazilian desk-neighbor watched him scurry away. Just a few days later, the same thing happens. Mouse drops out of the ceiling and I grabbed the closest thing to hit him with. I swung with my iPhone, but no dice. It derailed him from his path, but he made it past my Brazilian neighbor again before I could end it. Suffice it to say - we need a renovation in the worst way. Ever since, I find myself occasionally looking up at the ceiling, waiting for that Ratatouille moment where the rats all fall out of the ceiling. I tried to find you a video of it but it didn't exist on YouTube. Instead, I'll share this one on the Black Death, which my co-workers seemed convinced I would catch for drinking my coffee after the mouse fell on it.

In my efforts to tidy up our buffer calculations, I was led to a buffer spreadsheet designed by a professor at Sao Paulo State University in Brazil. Ironic, since that's where our visitors are from, and I was the one sharing this with them. But it is a very cool sheet, enabling us to calculate buffers that are flexible to the fluctuations in the rumen throughout the day in a simulated environment, while also accurately predicting what this range will be. After testing our buffers out for a few weeks, I feel fairly confident that not only is this sheet the real deal, our buffers work great and the treatments are now locked for our research work. If you'd like to check it out, you can find it here.

During my time in academia, I've been guilty of more than a few bad powerpoint presentations; I would like to think that I give ones better than the average with limited input time. But my wife shared this with me this past week that you should look at and share with all those bad presenters that you can. I took a couple of pointers away from it and the presentation world would be a better place the more that people take these simple messages to heart.

Completely different topic, but have you seen the video to the new song, "Radioactive"? I find the tune catchy and was listening to it on YouTube to see if I liked it enough to burn some free Amazon mp3 credit that I had. Verdict was yes, but not before seeing some creepy puppet fight rings.

Life on the homefront continues forward, with Phil (the ram) calming Betsy down and helping her not to run after sheep. If we can break her of this bad habit by introducing sheep that don't run in the first place, then life for us and the future sheep becomes much simpler. So far, the ram has no backdown in his vocabulary and Betsy knows it from his days back at the in-laws'. Most of the garden is planted and my "solution" to the county domain over my front 30' has been placed. Invasive ground cover that will choke out brush is the gameplan; we'll see how it pans out. First we need some rain to help it root in. For how wet the end of April was, the ground looks pretty dry for the 3rd week of May. Remember to "make hay while the sun shines", because you never know when you'll get this kind of stretch again.

US 315 southbound from Henderson footbridge.

Olentangy River southbound from Henderson footbridge.

Speaking of, I got out on my first couple of real bike rides this week, starting with a ride down the Olentangy River Trail. This bike path is pretty hazardous when populated by a lethal combination of stupid teenagers, fat adults "training" for a marathon, and hardcore bikers trying to rip 25 mph out on a 10 mile trail (there's only so fast you can get your bike turned back around the other direction). However, we hopped in just North of the last road detour and the path is calmer up this direction as well. What was really interesting to me, though, was the dichotomy between the busy highway and the peaceful, scenic Olentangy. These two views were even from the same bridge, just 80 yards apart. I bet most of the people driving back and forth to work every day have no idea of the natural beauty they breeze past; they are in too much of a hurry to enjoy the wonderful, small things around them.

Week 38 - Labor

For those of you who have followed this blog over the past few months, you have to know that we are getting pretty close to my wife's due date for our first child! And yes, it has finally happened. No, not the birth, but instead the video to learn about it. Beware all of you future parents out there (not just future dads), beware, this is a series of hours of your life that can never erase. But since I'm really a big fan of the effective list, let's enumerate the take-homes from the past week's hospital tour, birthing class and associated medical interactions.

1) Our hospital is a CF. Sure, it's recognized as one of the baby hospitals in town and really a great place, but let's be honest... it's under construction, more confusing than Starbuck's menu, and set right into the middle of the worst traffic nightmare in town. I just know she's going to go into labor while I'm at work and she's on the opposite side of the Israelite Exodus crossing the Red Sea (or known as the mass chaos of C-bus rush-hours). But we're going there because it's the only place the doctor goes. Simple as that.

2) I will be an above average dad. How do I know this? Because I met another 20 future dads over the past week and I'm not a chain smoker, wannabe Marine, pants-sagger, junk-food eater, hypocrit, know-it-all, d-bag, wish-I-were academic, "medical professional", obnoxious post-MBA or rich snob. And truth be told, I'm sure their kids will turn out great too, for the most part.

3) I'm slightly terrified of the birthing process. For some reason, I had it in my head that this would be a few hours of pain and sorrow followed quickly by crying baby, exclamation of "It's a (insert gender)!", and loving moments as a proud new family before we were overrun by friends and relatives (no, they're not the same). After sitting through the class, I've realized that this process is not just a few hours of torture for the mother, but living hell for everyone involved during what could be a 24+ hours process (like an Orthodox holiday for the Protestant boyfriend). I'm sure that we will make it through all of this, but for my wife's sake, I hope it goes smoother than some of the videos that were shared with us in class. Some day I will be reminding an obstinate a-hole what their mother did for them, and they won't believe me. For all you out there, thank your mom.

4) There is money to be made if you are willing to be filmed pregnant, naked and screaming - even if you're not a teenager looking for reality gigs. I can't imagine being one of the couples that was roped into the filming, but there is no amount of money that would convince me to allow my wife to sign away her self-decency for the rest of her life. This is a special moment, where the struggle makes the victory so much sweeter, and we won't be sharing it with anyone.

5) Sneaking beer into the hospital for my wife is going to be more difficult and less intelligent than I thought. Once you start realizing how many drugs could be coursing through her veins and how often you will be intruded on by a nurse checking in, you have a severe gut check about that promise you made 6 months ago when you were trying to make her feel better about missing the Christmas toasts. But I'll do anything for you, Dearest, if you really want it.

6) Valet parking is a nice thing for the hospital to do when you're bring them thousands of dollars in business and giving them a purpose for existing. Good call, guys. But then why didn't you want to allow us to leave it there until we check out. Seriously, I have to move my car within 24 hours? And what if I don't?

7) Best part of the whole labor class was the relaxation part. Learning different methods to help my wife feel better both during labor and at home when her back hurts so bad - that was rewarding. I often feel like a helpless bystander as the growing baby tears her apart. I want to help, but don't know how and nothing that I do seems to help. This was worth the time and in-person instruction, and only this.

8) I have been rubbing my wife's back all wrong. When we first arrived, they asked us to have our backs rubbed by the mothers. My wife got back there and showed me how she would like me to rub her back and it was considerably different than what other people have told me to do in the past, and different from what she has accepted from me, too. If only I'd known sooner.

My wife holding 2 market lambs (each about 85 lbs.) while 7 1/2 mths pregnant.

My wife and I are supporting a 4-Her this year in her pursuit of a new experience. So this past week we went over and helped her pick out a 4-H lamb to raise and show. She doesn't come from a farm background at all, but she was a very quick learner as we caught the lambs and helped her choose the one which would be best (heavy boned, fast growing, good muscle). As I elaborated in my last post, I'm so grateful for the people who helped me have these experiences, and even though I don't expect every kid to turn all agriculturalist, it's still great to be able to give others the same opportunities for learning that we had.

We looked pretty ghetto counting out our fundraiser money.

In other news, our annual fundraising event as a grad student organization was this week, Friday and Saturday. Rained out heavily on Friday, we ended up cleaning up and preparing for Saturday, sopping wet in the building's loading dock. Not sure how the end of the money came out, but we broke even for the weekend on the first day. This money goes towards our undergrad field trip opportunities that we host.

New diverter for sampling.

On the work front, I was struck with an epiphany not too long ago as I was rebuilding the pumps from a nitro-glycerin kit we had stockpiled. The septum diverter in that kit was a perfect replacement for the current set-up and with a little bit of plastic tubing downsizing, the diverter is now set in place on our fermenters, enabling me to complete my design for real-time VFA and H2(aq) sampling. It's game on, folks.



Finally, I learned a life lesson this week about coconuts. Don't eat them fresh - they're disgusting. I now know I would never survive on that island with Gilligan. I love breaking them open, but the taste was much chalkier and more sour than I expected. I'm not even sure I would make booze with them.

Breaking it was fun. Tossing away representation of wasted money was not.

Week 37 - Loss

We buried a good man this Thursday. After defeating cancer and fighting dementia, it was the heart failure that Grandpa couldn't overcome. He hung on long enough for most all the family to gather around one more time, the hospital room full of loving faces, brother and sister, nieces and children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He was a man who knew what hard work really meant, who knew that family always mattered most and who put his faith forward into action, leading his family forth by example. The hole left by his loss will be impossible to fill by any one person in this family. We all loved him so much and he knew it; this was obvious as we gathered around the bed to pray and sing hymns. He was smiling and positive, telling me to make sure I took care of the fields and the horses, later reminding us of what still needed done on the farm (even machinery that didn't exist anymore). He held my hand as he told me that he knew he had to go, and that he was so grateful I was there, that we were there to see him one last time. I know he said other kind things to me, which I swore I would write down and remember, but after saying goodbye, it was hard to revisit the subject to remember for a while. Besides, as I sat there, holding his handshake (strong, dairy-farmer grip to the end) and looking into his clear eyes, nothing else needed said. We both knew that it was farewell, and he knew that I loved him; I made sure to tell him that we all loved him. And then it was time to go, leaving him to his closest family for the last hours of his life.

Often when someone passes, people feel regret, but I have only memories. My wife is correct when she talks about how important it is to live close enough to your family to visit them. Growing up 1/4 mile away on the family farm, Grandma and Grandpa were a staple in my life. We would sit on the porch and eat peanuts or snap peas, talking about the weather, the livestock, the Buckeyes or the sunset. He would come out and shoot hook-shots off one foot, just like he learned to do during his basketball years. Or I would find him under a plow as he asked me to grab for a tool as we talked about the new calf on the ground. We baled hay together and fixed fences, while debating whose animals really caused the problem. I was blessed to live so close to them and enjoy so much time with them; I'm only disappointed that the last years of his life were while I was so far away at school or Europe, and that when I returned the dementia had already started to settle in. And I wish I hadn't been in Chicago for his last birthday, calling him from the van on the way home, and losing reception in forsaken Indiana, but he understood, and he was happy I was able to call him. Most of all, I wish that he had been able to hold our first child in his arms - he was so excited for us when we told him about the baby.

Me with my first market steer project.

Grandpa shaped my life in more ways than I can cover in a blog post, but I will tell you about the most critical one, because it is one of my favorite examples of the man. When I was 9 years old, we moved back to Ohio and he gave us a piece of the farm to live on. Being a wild thing recently returned from the woods of Michigan, this was a great time, but my carefree days were interrupted by this distraction called 4-H. My brother and grandpa had gone out and come back with a steer on a trailer, black as the night sky with this white blaze up the middle of his face. Houdini would become a love of mine, helping my brother feed him and water him whenever I could. I later took rabbits so that I could be in 4-H with my brother and learn about animals, thinking that I would never actually tackle a cattle project myself. But as the years rolled by, one thing led to another, and eventually I was hooked on the love of animals, the livestock industry and the idea of becoming a veterinarian. And all of this was just because Grandpa wanted us to have the experience of taking care of the stock, just like his children. Years later, I am pursuing my 3rd degree related to Animal Science, the love of which was first introduced to me by Grandpa so long ago.

Grandma and Grandpa with us my last year in 4-H.

Sitting and watching the clipping at NAILE with Grandpa.

Me, with my sister, years into college - continuing a family tradition.

Peace, like a sunset on the empty streets of Italy.

All work-related activities pale in comparison to the loss of my Grandpa, even though I've been working straight through everything to get a project off with the Brazilians and summer interns as fast as possible. In a way, having new people to train and protocols to arrange has given me something to focus on while the pain of loss diminishes. It is fun to see the Brazilians' responses to some of the things in the lab that were also awesome to me in the beginning, but I have grown accustomed to over time. And I remember that other people struggle through things far worse than my troubles. Knowing that he had a strong faith in God and having experienced his strong love of family leaves me with peace at the end.