Siliceous and Delicious

After another useless-yet-mandatory safety training this morning, had a great DSA meeting with Beau. As always, his perspective was invaluable, and while I would have thought it almost unimaginable when I got out of bed this morning, I now feel fairly comfortable and almost excited at the prospect of the progress report and the work ahead. Most of all, in being forced to talk through the muddle of thoughts circling around the progress report in my head, I realized that I haven’t been completely idle over the past twelve months, and I’ve actually put in a very significant amount of effort with some not inconsiderable progress resulting from it. Even if I haven’t nailed my methods down yet, I’ve come a lot further in the past year than I was allowing myself to see. Here’s Beau’s notes from the morning:

Ben discussed progress report due later in April. Worked through all four major projects:

1. Confocal microscope work: talked about the fact that he has a reasonably clear idea of how to gather the data, but needs to nail that down. Once he starts to crank out some measurements, he can then start to figure out appropriate ways to convert the matrix of data points into a morphospace.

2. FIB-SEM work: talked about the many frustrations of machines being down and staff being AWOL. But it was clear that the methodology for this is really coming together, and with some better luck on the machine availability side, some raw data could be generated fairly soon. Also mentioned the inverse staining idea, which he will try and get to in the coming work. This could address both the problem of staining individual fossil fragments, as well as ensuring a high resolution picture.

3. Rabosky/diversity: Ben mentioned that around Christmas he felt very close to being done with replicating Rabosky’s work, but has let it slide since then. Ben should avoid the tempting narrative that the whole thing wasn’t of any value because it wasn’t “new” work. But acknowledging that the committee will be most favorable to breaking new ground, should emphasize the fact that the method is pretty much ready to go and will be useful in making headway in the coming year.

4. Radiolarian project: this has been stalled for a year, and Ben reflected on whether this means the project is not worth continuing.

Some outcomes for the progress report:

– Emphasize the positive things that you’ve achieved this past year, and how it provides a solid platform to gather data in the coming months and move into some serious analysis.

– Talk frankly about practical problems encountered with securing and accessing necessary equipment, and perhaps ask for more support in this respect from the committee.

– Start with the meaty stuff (the FIB-SEM), some sexy pictures, and end with the less exciting material that you haven’t made so much progress on. Perhaps speak frankly with the committee about avoiding taking on too much work.

– See if Charles can be patched into the session via Skype.

Ben also talked about a new microscope strategy of 6-9 pm several times a week, although that risks not having staff around when there are machine issues. Could work around this with a follow-up morning session if needs be. Emphasis at this point should be on cranking up the time allocated to important data gathering activities.

For next week:

Ben will produce a framework for the presentation/report, including images already produced and placeholders for other images, and an initial stab at text. He will at the very least start to work on the inverse staining approach, and at best will get some images to show.

The rest of the day: EPS 8 lecture, then grading this week’s EPS 8 lab. Home at 5:30, decided to postpone working on the next week’s EPS  8 lab until tomorrow morning.