Hey readers!
This week, I've been working hard collecting in the lab and analyzing data at night to try to finish my data collection on time. However, it seems like every bit of progress is met with a new obstacle to overcome, but that's the fun of it and the nature of the beast, I guess...
So, without further ado, here's what I've been up to this week:
Monday, I (re-)set up the apparatus for 3LCAA, which is a technique I am using to characterize the hydrophilicity of the samples. I came in last Saturday to set this up, but someone ignored my notice and moved the camera which ruined fine-focus I had calibrated (you need HIGH HIGH HIGH resolution pics for these drops).
Once it was calibrated, I analyzed 3 of my 10 samples by applying drops of water, glycerine, and alpha-bromo. I finished characterizing all of the samples by Tuesday, so that was right on schedule.
Since I knew that my data would not be complete by Feb 19th, Mrs. Haag generously granted me a 1 week extension. However, I still did not want to be behind, so I have been analyzing 3LCAA images at night to get those elusive contact angles and thus surface energies. This involved fitting an ellipse to each drop (~7 per sample with 3 identical samples and 10 of each type of sample) -- we can find the contact angle from the arctan of the y-offset and major axis (if you're interested, you can read the step-by-step directions in our lab's 3LCAA SOP written by my wonderful fellow intern Ashley).
I finished parsing the 3LCAA images, so now I only need to enter the contact angle values from my Inkscape SVG files (as shown above) into my master spreadsheet, which can calculate the surface energies. Once I have these surface energies, I plan to plot them by sample first on a bar graph, as shown below.
The advantage of this method is that we can see the contributions from the individual components to the total surface energy (the lower dots that sum up to the top dot). After showing this bar graph, I hope to quantitatively plot uniformity as the dependent variable responding to surface energy. In this scatterplot, each data point with coordinates (surface energy, uniformity value) would represent a sample (combo of coating and substrate).
This week, I've been working hard collecting in the lab and analyzing data at night to try to finish my data collection on time. However, it seems like every bit of progress is met with a new obstacle to overcome, but that's the fun of it and the nature of the beast, I guess...
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| I'm the mouse, and data is my cheese. |
So, without further ado, here's what I've been up to this week:
Monday, I (re-)set up the apparatus for 3LCAA, which is a technique I am using to characterize the hydrophilicity of the samples. I came in last Saturday to set this up, but someone ignored my notice and moved the camera which ruined fine-focus I had calibrated (you need HIGH HIGH HIGH resolution pics for these drops).
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| My reaction when I saw the camera after it was moved. |
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| Example 3LCAA image... look at how nice those drops are! We care about the angle each drop makes with the surface. |
Since I knew that my data would not be complete by Feb 19th, Mrs. Haag generously granted me a 1 week extension. However, I still did not want to be behind, so I have been analyzing 3LCAA images at night to get those elusive contact angles and thus surface energies. This involved fitting an ellipse to each drop (~7 per sample with 3 identical samples and 10 of each type of sample) -- we can find the contact angle from the arctan of the y-offset and major axis (if you're interested, you can read the step-by-step directions in our lab's 3LCAA SOP written by my wonderful fellow intern Ashley).
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| Here's a screenshot of me analyzing some drops on Inkscape. Check out the ellipses! |
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| Here's an example of how previous students in my research group have plotted surface energies from 3LCAA |
About uniformity... now, it's obstacle time. ASU has been very difficult (basically stopping our research) because of our use of human blood, even though we had previously gotten approval from them. So, we have been working with them to allow RBS of human blood (where we get elemental composition and thus uniformity from) and qualitative observations with human blood.
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| Me when the lab technician at ASU stopped us from running blood samples |
But, there's not stopping -- we just gotta adapt.
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| No, seriously, we can adapt... no excuses! |
I decided to pivot slightly and prepare samples from saline and canine blood, since we are apparently allowed to run RBS and qualitative analysis on those types of samples. Although human blood is preferrable, both types of liquids are models for human blood (ions in a aqueous, or water-based, solution) and can also give us measures of uniformity. At the same time, I'd really like to do work with human blood, so we hustled and submitted a request to Environmental/Health Safety.
So, right now, I have 1 day of RBS, and we are proceeding with RBS tomorrow, as planned, except on samples with saline and/or canine blood instead. I held off on pursuing qualitative observations because I may still potentially be able to use a lancet to apply human blood to the substrates, even if I can't analyze its elemental composition. I think it will still be a robust data-set, but please keep your fingers crossed that we hear back soon about using human blood, as planned.
One "benefit" of this could be that I may have to alter my methods section to reduce the sections on sample collection, which could reduce my word count. But, as a researcher who wants his experiment to be the best it can be, I definitely do not consider that ideal. Whatever RBS data I get, I will obtain the elemental composition at 2 spots for each sample, subtract the values, take the absolute value, divide by the average, and find the mean -- this will give the standard error for each sample. To be implementable, it must be less than 10%.
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| Here's an example spreadsheet from the control (no HemaDrop-coating). I got errors above 30% (expected), as you can hopefully see. The font is super small because I have 1047 rows per spreadsheet... rip eyesight. |
For my qualitative data, I have held off observations since I cannot ethically prick myself at ASU. I guess these new, out-of-the-blue regulations are understandable, but still very annoying. I can easily take these measurements as I have set up printed sheets (with pictures) and a Google form link in my Drive to enter the observations.
My plan for the next week then is to finish collecting my data. Monday - Wednesday: perform RBS on samples (saline & canine blood, or human blood) -- I'm ready for either. And then, Thursday and Friday, finish qualitative analysis. I am confident that I will only need this week to finish data collection, and since I have been working on data analysis along the way and since I have a plan for analysis of new data, I should be set to finish in 1 week. The only question that remains is whether the liquid tested will be human blood or not.
I have no problem working in the lab and then analyzing the data at night... anything to get the best data possible!
Sorry for all the disappointing news, but we are going to pull through... with RBS tomorrow, I'm trying my hardest, and things are looking up!
Excited for next week,
Yash
(1062)
Yikes! What a nightmare! I was not expecting any of that with the human blood. I guess they're just trying to protect the relatively healthy 17 year old males out there.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your attitude, though, in trying to find an alternate plan rather than despairing. Please, however, reach out to me and let me know when all of this is happening. I don't want you to feel panicked alone (although I'm sure Dr. Herbots was an invaluable asset in figuring out the new game plan).
What up big boi? I know that setbacks can be frustrating, but I think that every true researcher experiences them. That just means that the work that you are doing is not trivial, which is pretty important if you are an AP Research student. With that being said, I am glad that you are still able to progress with your research despite the couple setbacks. Although I understood very little of what you are actually doing, it seems like you know what you need to do, and have a solid schedule laid out for when you want everything done by. Good job on that! Just keep on grinding through the data collection and try not to get too stressed about it all!
ReplyDeleteDear Yaship Girl,
ReplyDeleteIt sucks that all of a sudden you hit this bump in your road in your research, but I admire your ability to find the next best thing (canine blood mixture) as soon as possible. Hopefully, you get this all figured out soon and ASU stops being weird and mean and unreasonable.
Also, it's great that you seem to have a really good idea of what your graphs are going to look like and what your results section is going to look like. So despite that setback, you really are ahead because you have a pretty solid game plan.
Hey Yash! Just first wanted to commend you for explaining this in such a clear way that an anti- biology person could follow most of it. I only started to get lost towards the end. I'm sorry you can't keep preforming the research like you want to, but everything always works out in the end. I agree with Kristiana that your game plan is solid and I think you have done a really good job adapting to your new situation. My only question is if this is going to severely change your literature review or is it going to stay the same?
ReplyDelete