Speaking of the hot topic today on Guamo's site, I have been staring at Frc, our Fungal Respiration Chamber pronounced "Frick") all day, waiting for the temperature in the car radiator to equilibrate. The blasted thing has wasted so much of my time in the last month or so. It's kind of a cool apparatus, actually. We sawed off the bases of a bunch of nalgene bottles (we destroyed them!!!), shoe-gooed them to a galvanized steel plate, and hooked up a bunch of Bev-a-line tubing. THe car radiator comes under the steel plate, keeping the chambers at a constant temperature. To make it look extra scientific (and so we can bring the temperature extra low), we have green antifreeze running through the tubing going into the radiator. It looks SWEET. :) Our objective? Measuring respiration rates of fungi from different altitudes, and seeing how (and if) they acclimate to warmer or colder temperatures. I know Roubos is the only one who actually cares about the last few sentences, so enough about fungi. (They're so COOL, though!!!)
What have I been procrastinating on? Paper due for tomorrow--last one of twelve that I have had to write this past year (first year of grad school). The final topic is cell differentiation ("How do cells know what they're going to be when they grow up?"), something I care very little about, and since I have to come up with a molecular method to test a hypothesis (which I haven't come up with yet), that adds even more reason for slacking off until the last possible minute.
PLUS...it is such a nice day out today--what am I doing inside????!!!!
OK, back to the paper...