Yay update!

My annual Seminar presentation and Progress Report and Committee Meeting (of DOOM) occurred recently, so I had to go hide for a while and bust my arse on those. Everything went about as I had expected.

Fun Fact: If you make a word cloud out of my progress report one of the larger words is "promiscuous". Another is "cleavage". SWAM and I get naughty-flagged emails from each other all the time. Yes, I really am in biophysics, why do you ask?

My poor Teaching Portfolio finally made its weary way though all the required committees so I have a shiny certificate that states I will get a Minor in Higher Education (if/when I finish my PhD).

Anybody out there going to the Gibbs conference? It's usually a rollicking good time. I'm trying to make my mind up about it for this year though, because I usually go with BFF Senior Grad Student who is going to be busy writing or something silly like that, and it's quite a trip from where I am.

Dataset Cthulhu: Aka, where I went this last month (the cold room).

Dataset Cthulhu:

• Against all odds, I actually managed to pull off the infamous contingency plan omega. Have I mentioned that my EPR sample-prep protocols are cruel? I do not recommend attempting SDSL of persnickety* proteins unless you have a lot of moxie. And persistence. And the ability to work five 16hr shifts followed by a 38hr shift. Note: my protocol looks almost nothing like the one on the Wiki, although it's about what I started with. But I digress. The point is I finally got the last sample needed for dataset Cthulhu to work beautifully. The data are very pretty, my best ever. Except:
• I've been working on a hypothesis. We shall call him Fred. Dataset Cthulhu is the preliminary data to support Fred. Cthulhu involves examining eight various combos. Combos 1-7 all say: Fred. Combo 8 (the result of contingency plan omega) says: Fnord. Well, huh. Now I have to try to design experiments to see if I am really looking at a Fnord, or if Fnord is a Fred in disguise. Fnord doesn't invalidate Fred, but it might complicate and confuse him a bit. Back to the literature! (Someone should make that a movie).
• We were totally far along on the draft for Paper 1 (short technical/groundwork mid-level-I-hope paper). Fnords might involve some heavy re-write. This is what we get for working ahead.
  

*Persnickety: Highly sensitive to temperature, buffer conditions, pH, time of day, astrological phenomena, cosolutes, concentration, and vibrational motion. Is known to crash out if you : vortex the tube (even on gentle-don't do it!) let it get above 4C for even a second, keep it at 4C for "too long"--highly variable, centrifuge it "too hard", sneeze while holding the tube, play music it doesn't like, or look at it funny. Is fond of Brian May for reasons unknown. Cannot be correctly re-folded by any known method. Yes, I need the active form.

Grad school interrupticus updaticus.

Now with updates in pretty colors!

• Big piles of science need to happen because S.W.A.M. is presenting at conference X in June that is so cool I can't even get in to go listen. She has promised to give me mad props if I can finish dataset Cthulhu by then.
• Final Teaching Portfolio requirement for my Higher Ed minor due early May. TOMORROW, errr looking at the time, actually that would technically be today. YIPE!!! You should see the monster I have going. BFF Postdoc is measuring my progress by how many centimeters it grows every day. Whee! Turned in. Now it has to go through at least two separate committees before I find out what the lowdown is. This is the last requirement for my minor. Will I reach my goal of finishing it by the end of 2008? Looks good so far... but portfolio revisions have occasionally been known to last for multiple semesters...
  
• In other news, Dataset Cthulhu still kickin' my ass. We also had a "fun" cold-room incident that set everyone back about two weeks. Who needs drama when you have science?
• Due to the above-mentioned "cold room collapse of '08" which killed plan theta, we are now officially resulting to "contingency plan omega" to try to get sample Cthulhu-NS to our EPR collaborators in time. I don't like contingency plan omega. It's one of those all-or-nothing, if you cut the wrong wire civilization as we know it (or several months of work) shall die a horrible death sort of scenarios. But it's the best plan I have and a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. *salutes bravely* Wish me luck! (For the next few weeks, kthx)
  
• After a two-year track record of getting my PCR reactions to work within three tries (site-directed mutagenesis, fragment amplification, you name it, I could do it) I am suddenly completely stuck on something. I had a nearly-identical reaction totally optimized and did it (literally) several dozen times without incident. WTF? *head-desk* I am suddenly suspicious of all of my reaction components, despite being super-sterile girl.
  

Grad school interrupticus updaticus.

Now with updates in pretty colors!

• Big piles of science need to happen because S.W.A.M. is presenting at conference X in June that is so cool I can't even get in to go listen. She has promised to give me mad props if I can finish dataset Cthulhu by then.
• Final Exam/Paper for Scary Biophysics Class is due in a couple weeks. Finished, waiting for grade....A+++! So there, Scary Physicists!
  
• Final Teaching Portfolio requirement for my Higher Ed minor due early May. TOMORROW, errr looking at the time, actually that would technically be today. YIPE!!! You should see the monster I have going. BFF Postdoc is measuring my progress by how many centimeters it grows every day. Whee!
  
• In other news, Dataset Cthulhu still kickin' my ass. We also had a "fun" cold-room incident that set everyone back about two weeks. Who needs drama when you have science?
  

Gradschoolus Intteruptus Updaticus

Now with updates in pretty colors!

• Big piles of science need to happen because S.W.A.M. is presenting at conference X in June that is so cool I can't even get in to go listen. She has promised to give me mad props if I can finish dataset Cthulhu by then.
• Final Presentation for Scary Biophysics Class next week (I initially forgot this one because of the defense thing.) /PWND.
  
• Final Exam/Paper for Scary Biophysics Class is due in a couple weeks. Finished, waiting for grade....
  
• Final Teaching Portfolio requirement for my Higher Ed minor due early May. YIPE!!!
  
• In other news, Dataset Cthulhu still kickin' my ass.
  

Faculty of 1000

I love Faculty of 1000. I really, really do. It's a fabulous resource for a variety of situations. Say, hypothetically you have to write a paper about a journal article for a class, with the only restrictions being that the article you select should be "good", "about biophysics," "maybe have some kind of tech advance", and "not be about anything in your field". (In my case, no "proteins, nucleic acids, crystal structures, or EPR." *sob*) Also, let's say that hypothetically you've been procrastinating on the paper because of benchwork catastrophes [1] A, B, &C and the really cool visiting speaker, and... yeah. So now you have to find a "good" paper meeting certain criteria and you don't have time to sift through all of PubMed. Worry not! Faculty of 1000 will help you find a great paper with a "tech advance" stamp, and it's very easy to sort through various topics. The downside being, every time I go to the website I keep getting sidetracked by -oh, that looks cool, or hmm, is that a technique I could use, or wow, I should really read that! Then I download about 50 PDFs to throw in my "interesting papers to read" folder where they may never be seen again.

[1] S.W.A.M. always says I shouldn't call it a catastrophe unless "Something important is on fire, someone ends up in the hospital, something worth over $5000 is broken, or it sets you back more than 3 months; so don't be so melodramatic!" For the record, all of the above have happened to me at some point during grad school. During such catastrophes, I am incapable of using words as long as catastrophe, so I use it when I can. Fortunately, none of these have happened recently. Unfortunately, that means it's only a matter of time. Once, two of the above were simultaneous. Guess which two for 100 points.

Gradschoolus Intteruptus Updaticus

Now with updates in pretty colors!

• Judging at a major regional high school science fair tomorrow. Don't LOL, is srys bznss. I haz 70 abstracts to read tonight.Fun! I will try to remember to share some stories about this later.
  
• Big piles of science need to happen because S.W.A.M. is presenting at conference X in June that is so cool I can't even get in to go listen. She has promised to give me mad props if I can finish dataset Cthulhu by then.
• Final Presentation for Scary Biophysics Class next week (I initially forgot this one because of the defense thing.)
  
• Final Exam/Paper for Scary Biophysics Class is due in a couple weeks.
  
• Annual Teaching Portfolio requirement for my Higher Ed minor due early May.
• Oh, and on the subject of the Higher Ed minor, the date for the oral defense for my research requirement was moved from April 26ish to Tuesday. We -they do them in batches once a semester- were informed of this yesterday. To be fair, this wasn't anyone's fault in particular, but it still is less than fun. There is the option to re-schedule for the December slot, but I don't want to drag it out that much longer when I am so close. Will our heroine succeed or encounter massive FAIL? Check in next week to find out.Success! FTW! I would really love to ramble on and on about the research I did for this, but it's human research and on minors besides, so I can't. =-( Nonetheless, It is really nice to be one major step closer to putting a "done" stamp on my minor. It is a major goal of mine for 2008 to finish all the requirements for this.
  
• In other news, Dataset Cthulhu still kickin' my ass.