Hey Guys, welcome back to the meme blog. Let's start off with the classic "I used to ..., then I took an Arrow to the knee." It's a classic from Skyrim. Also download the app houseparty, It's lit.But let's get right into the research. It was a rather exciting week, but there seems to be a wrench in my plans. Usually my ASU days start off with dropping my sister off at school at 7:30am. Then I start the half hour drive to Tempe, park in an Indian temple, then take a bus to PSF 3rd floor with Dr. Ozkan.
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| A great lecture with Ozkan |
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| Tushar on the left, Paul with the Fallout poster, and I usually work on the right |
I came in Thursday to fix the error that occurred the previous night, after about 4 hours of surfing the Linux system, we found an error in my bash.rc directory, with some screwed up old commands. After fixing those pathways, I went home again. Only to realize that I had another error.
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| When the analysis fails on you 3 times |
My main concern so far is the timeline. If the trials drag out longer than I expect for the chimeras, I may have to switch to only analyzing Lac1 and its mutants. I can still look at conserved and non-conserved regions with the specific mutations, but I will miss out on the comparison to the chimera. In terms of other things, I have finally managed to see some official final DFI representations and models. I'll talk with Dr. Ozkan to better understand these representations.
Till next week,
Ashwath V.
Hey Ashwath,
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I'm really impressed with your parking scheme -- does the temple have free parking and how far away is this?? Dr. Herbots has just been paying for my parking, so any advice is appreciated! Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how Dr. Herbots and I ran into Ashwath in the hallways in PSF (#ResearchFam)!
Anyways -- I definitely agree with your statement that it's really cool to talk about your research with other profs and researchers, since you can actually see people using it. We are now part of the research community! Obviously, it's also not ideal that you've run into these issues, but I'm glad that you have been using your problem-solving abilities. When you say you put it in "MD," are you using Molecular Dynamics (if so, that's pretty sick, dude)? Also, your blog has a lot of technical lingo without explanation, so even as someone who is pretty familiar with your project, I don't really understand parts. So, make sure you explain parts a bit more.
I think ultimately regarding timeline, you need to ask yourself if comparing the Lac1 and its mutants to chimera is essential to your answering your question. What information would analyzing just Lac1 and its mutants provide? Asking Dr. Ozkan and working with Mrs. Haag to answer those questions should guide your course of action.
Don't get discouraged from the errors/setbacks... you got this!
Hopefully, see you soon -- on Houseparty or at PSF!
Yash
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Hi Ashwath! Oh no, so many problems!! I am happy to hear that you started getting some trials running smoothly at least. What I would do in this week's meeting with Ms. Haag is formulate a plan for your research paper in case you can't get the chimera data. This will give you piece of mind going forward if things don't go according to plan. Then I would just do as much as you can before the 19th (and maybe a little into that week if necessary), and hopefully you get all the data you were originally planning on getting, but, if not, at least you are prepared to finish your project. On the bright side, you are getting cool lab experience and working with some really knowledgable professors, so awesome job there! With forming a backup plan(s) and keeping strong communication with Ms. Haag, your research paper will come together, so just keep up the amazing work in the lab, experience all you can with the professors and resources there, and get as much accomplished as possible in the next week. Good luck and happy researching!
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost, can we chat about the grammar of the following sentence? You wrote, "On Wednesday, I met my boi Paul, who was super sick with chest congestion, at 9:30am" -- Am I to understand that he only had chest congestion at 9:30 AM? That seems like a very strange illness, if that be the case.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, I definitely don't want to sacrifice the chimera part of the research. What kind of timeline are we talking here? How far would this set us back? Let's get a clear idea of this, so we can adjust accordingly.
Finally, as you have all year, I think you assume a lot of knowledge on behalf of your reader. You need to explain things more clearly.
Hey Ashwath! The meme was really appropriate because you used to be on schedule but you took an arrow in the knee this week. Yeah, I didn't understand much of what you did except that you had a bunch of problems and then there are a bunch of programs you had to run to keep solving the arising problems. I think this research process is really refining your skills in regards to dealing with surprising difficulties and road bumps, so that's good, because learning experience! I am also glad you finally got things going to answer your actual question by the end of the week! In terms of repurposing and reconstructing your schedule, do that as soon as possible. I know how nerve-wracking it can feel when you don't have a real plan and your original plan won't work anymore. When I got sick last week, I had a mini freak out I wouldn't be able to finish everything, but I was able to reschedule with Mrs. Haag, and it put things into perspective. You probably will have to commit more hours and do more stuff each day, but if that means having that layer of analyzing the chimera to your research, then its worth it. Don't sacrifice parts of your research when you still have time left to do it! Um, persevere! But, when you try to schedule and you find it impossible, then I'd refer to what Yash said and doing whatever will lead to answer to your question. If the chimera helps with that then definitely try to get extra time for data collection. So, um, good luck boi!
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