The earth's climate has changed greatly over the course of millions of years. The Geology lab studies how small microfossils called foraminifera (forams) tell what the climate was like millions of years of ago. The lab studies how forams and their shells can tell us about the how the climate and about the acidity levels of the ocean thousands and millions of years ago. By studying the shells and how much calcium carbonate are in the shells it tells researchers exactly how acidic the ocean was. It is important that researchers know how acidic the ocean was and how it affected sea life, like shellfish, and corals. If researchers know that information then they can predict what will happen to sea life if the pH levels in the ocean keep dropping. It is important that we know about the climate then and now because that way researchers can predict how climate changes like global warming, rises in CO2, and drops in pH levels will affect all of us and sea life in the long run.

Washing samples:

1. Get a 63 micrometers sieve and place it in the sink.
2. Pour the wet sample that is in the beaker in the sieve that is in the sink.
3. If part of the sample remains in the beaker use the nozzle with a gentle spray of deionized water , that is strong enough to remove the sample but not too strong or the sample will go everywhere.
4. To test the strength of the nozzle, turn it on AWAY from the sieve and test on your hand, it feels too strong then turn it down until it feels really gentle.
5. Using the nozzle wash the sample in the sieve for thirty minutes.
6. While washing move the nozzle slowly in an up and down motion or in a side to side motion. This will break up some of large clusters of clay and/or forams
7. To test if the sample is clean after thirty minutes place the beaker under the sieve and let the water fill the beaker.
8. If the water is cloudy add another fifteen minutes, and if it is still cloudy after that then it may need a second wash.
9. To remove the sample from the sieve, place a circle piece of filter paper in a funnel and put it in the same beaker you used in the beginning.
10. Using a spray bottle with Deionized water to gently remove the sample from the sieve into the filter paper.
11. After that is done, place the sample in the dry oven over night
12. Clean sink, station, and place sieve in sieve washer.

Do you think we've come a long way or we've still got ways to go when it comes to woman's advancements and giving people proper credit when it comes to working and fair pay? 

I think we still have a ways to go to when it comes to fair pay and giving women proper credits. There are cases when equal pay and credit is given but there are still a lot of instances were women do not receive equal pay or credit. In the case of Katherine Bush she received proper credit and pay most of the time but she was unable to join expeditions because she was a woman. However she was able to publish work. 

Botany Collections Procedures - IF

Intro Revision

In today’s world, there are researchers across the nation and the world with various research goals, such as the DNA of a plant, how does it’s structure correlate with it’s geographic location, etc. Unfortunately with everyone being in vastly different parts of the world, it is hard to collaborate with others and share data such as certain plant specimens in an efficient manner since it takes times to send a request to a collection for a certain specimen, the order being approved, and it being sent. Working in the Peabody Museum’s Botany Collection under the supervision of Dr. Patrick Sweeney, I’m tasked in contributing to the lab’s overall goal of digitizing current and future additions to the Botany Collection online. Some tasks that I’ve been doing includes mounting plant specimens onto paper, inputting data to entries in a database online, and cataloguing the plants already in the collection. Interns also collaborate with other East Coast Herbariums, such as the Pringle Herbarium at the University of Vermont, in an effort to making plant specimens between Herbarium Collections accessible in a more efficient and digital manner rather than the complex manner of doing it physically. 

Mounting Specimens

1. Wear a lab coat, latex gloves, and protective eyewear to prevent any reactions if you come in contact with an undesirable specimens (mandatory for minors)
2. Prepare your work area! Make sure you grab two paper towels, a jar of water, a paintbrush, multiples strips of bands with different sizes, tweezers, and scissors
3. Get a long piece of cardboard, preferably greater length than width, and a piece of white paper, paper thicker and less flimsy than construction paper and also about the same size as the cardboard piece, and place the white paper on top of the cardboard
4. Carefully grab a newspaper with a specimen in it and delicately put it next to the cardboard and white paper stack and open the newspaper
5. Take the specimen label and cover the back of the label with glue applied using the paintbrush and press this label, glue side down, onto the bottom right hand corner of the white paper
6. Carefully open the newspaper to examine the specimen and maybe any small bits of pieces that are no longer connected to the main specimen, ie leaves that may have fallen off, fruits pressed and dried, etc
7. If you find these small bits and pieces, consider putting them into a fragment pack appropriate to the pieces’ size, small or big fragment pack. If not, skip this step. If you find something, then put the fragments into the pack and glue the back of the pack onto the bottom left hand corner of the white paper
8. The fun part gets to actually mounting the specimen. Carefully pick up the specimen and place it on the white piece of paper
9. Adjust it so that it is not blocking either the label of fragment packets (if applicable)
10. Envision where you may be placing bands to pinpoint and constraint the specimens’ axis of movement
11. Once you’ve done this, cut bands of appropriate length and apply glue to the ends of the band using the paintbrush
12. Carefully place the band over the desired location and press down on the sides to stick the band onto the paper
13. Repeat steps 10-12 until you’ve mounted the specimen onto the paper so that the specimen has little to no freedom to move. Remember: too many bands is better than too little
14. When you’re done mounting, transport the cardboard and specimen on the white paper stack onto another location
15. Cover the mounted specimen with wax paper and then use some sort of paper weight to keep the wax paper down
16. Cover this with another piece of cardboard or hard surface that can cover the current stack
17. Repeat steps 3-16 for the next few specimens waiting to be mounted

Cataloguing Specimens

1. Wear protective gear! Wear a lab coat, latex gloves, and protective eyewear. (Mandatory if you’re a minor)
2. Go into the main collections room
3.Identify the plant family you’ll be cataloguing
4.Once you know the plant family, look for that name in the plant directory. Find the name and you’ll see a number next to it. This number corresponds the cabinet the family can be found
5. If you need to, use the handles on the ends of the cabinet to make room for you to access the cabinet
6. Open the cabinet that has the desired plant family and make sure you find a conspicuous flap with the plant family name on it
7. The folders under the flap in individual shelves belong to the plant family
8. Open surrounding cabinets in order to know whether or not if the plant family extends to other cabinets or not
9. Once you have an idea of how many drawers have the plant family that you want, get a counter
10. Go to the plant family flap, and start with the first folder under it
11. Carefully peek at the bottom right hand corner of the folder and try to make a slow, thumb book flap motion (when you press your thumb on a book corner and quickly let go)
12. Every specimen with a label on the paper is a count so press the counter for every time you see a label. Remember, drawing do not count
13. Repeat steps 11-12 for every folder with the desired plant family until you reach another flap conveying that it’s another plant family. That’s where you stop

Procedure drafts and week 7/25 homework

Pre-washing your sample:

Make sure balance is level
Weigh the beaker to find the weight before you put the sample in
Start to fill in the chart with all important information (Ex: Date, beaker #, weight of beaker, sample number)
Put sediment in beaker but leave a thumb sized amount in the bag in case other researchers need to use it later
Use bag sealer to reseal the bag
Weigh sample in the beaker
Finish filling in the previously mentioned chart with the weight of the sample in the beaker

Foraminifera (forams) are dust-sized protists that live at the bottom of the ocean. These fossils are collected by drilling into the ocean floor. The Geology lab looks at fossilized forams and uses them to measure the climate, and ocean acidity of different geologic time periods. Ocean acidification is when the ocean takes in fossil fuels such as carbon dioxide which change the pH levels of the water. If the pH gets too low, the ocean is more acidic. When the ocean is more acidic, Foraminifera shells are thinner because they don’t have enough calcium carbonate to make strong shells. This can affect us because animals that make shells in the water are eaten by larger fish and we eat some of those fish. If animals can't make their shells they start to die off and that can seriously affect our food supply.

Do you think we've come a long way or we've still got ways to go when it comes to woman's advancements and giving people proper credit when it comes to working and fair pay?

I think we've come a long way in women's advancements. Back in the late 1800s to early 1900s women in science were usually unpaid volunteers and their colleagues and husbands would take credit for their work. Now women are paid to work in science fields and able to publish their work without it being stolen. We still have some ways to go though because some people still take credit for other's work. Also women aren't yet paid equally to men.

Nicholas Simons Introduction

Botany Laboratory Week 3 - Summary:

During the third week of my internship I've noticed how streamlined my partners and I have become. Though I continue to spend most of my work hours mounting plants, it has become much easier to position the specimens and care for them in the correct way. As more weeks continue to pass I find that my work has become much more streamlined and I now rely on Bob and Richard less and less with each passing day. I also find that Dr. Sweeney is beginning to introduce new assignments. One of these tasks required us to take a group of specimens that belong to the same family and divide them by species. We then take divide each of the species by region and file them within folders. Since I have already had prior experience filing specimens, it was very easy to adapt.

Introduction for Research Poster:

Research collections, also known as biological libraries, provide a depiction of the past that can assist scientists and researchers discover in different studies. These collections can sometimes be inaccessible and can only be observed by the lab through which they are confined to. This summer I interned at a Botany lab led by Dr. Patrick Sweeney located within the Peabody Museum. Under his supervision, my partners and I are tasked with assisting the laboratory in their effect to catalog the Peabody's extensive collection of plant specimens. The digitization of these specimens is funded by the National Science Foundation and our occupation as catalogers supports the museum by taking plants that were once inaccessible and put them out into the world.

Drafted introduction

Foraminifera (forams) are dust-sized protists that live at the bottom of the ocean. These fossils are collected by drilling into the ocean floor. The Geology lab looks at fossilized forams and uses them to see the climate, and ocean acidity of different geologic time periods. Ocean acidification is when the ocean takes in fossil fuels such as carbon dioxide which change the pH levels of the water. When the ocean is more acidic, Foraminifera shells are thinner because they don’t have enough calcium carbonate to make strong shells.

This week we worked on making a research question for our research poster. We also learned how to bottle samples and arrange them onto trays. We also started an experiment to see how ocean acidification affects shells. We broke up oyster shells and put them in salt water with varying levels of acidity to see the differences. We're going to be monitoring these shells over the next few weeks. This week we also learned about earthquakes and how to read seismographs.

IF - Homework 7/17/16

How was the week? What happened and what did you do at your internship this week?

This week went by fast but was mostly the same old same old with mounting new specimens and cataloguing more online. However with doing more of this, I am slowly progressing and becoming better at the two activities. With every specimen I mount, I become more aware of how many strips would I really need, how thin/thick should they be, etc. With cataloguing, I continue to decrease the amount of specimens that are unprocessed.

 Draft your poster Introduction.

Working under the supervision of Dr. Sweeney in the Botany section of the Peabody's Collections, I am tasked in contributing to the lab's overall goal of digitizing the Botany Collection online. Interns are tasked with mounting plant specimens onto a paper platform and later digitizing it onto a database. In collaboration with other universities along the east coast, a huge collection of botanical specimens are made viewable online by researchers across the nation and across the globe for future studies. 

Weekly Homework:
           This week in the lab we started a new experiment on ocean acidification. We crushed oyster shells and put about one ounce in a salt-water vinegar solution, another in just a solution of saltwater, and the final ounce in a solution of seltzer water and vinegar. After about a month we will see how much the shells look like being in water with that level of acidity. This is to show how the ocean acidification affects shell-fishs' shells. We also continued washing samples and learned how to put the dry samples into bottles, so that others can study them. We also began to arrange the forams on slides, for me this was a bit of a time consuming. We put glue on the slides and using water we stuck them on there. I , of course, picked the smallest forams to arrange and it took me 45 minutes to arrange six of them on a slide. However, i enjoyed it. It was a good week overall.

The earth's climate has changed greatly over the course of millions of years. The Geology lab studies how small microfossils called foraminifera (forams) tell what the climate was like millions of years of ago. The lab studies how forams and their shells can tell us about the how the climate and the acidification was thousands and millions of years ago. By studying the shells and how much calcium carbonate are in the shells it tells them how Ocean acidification is caused by the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere which causes the Ph levels in the ocean to drop. The acidification of oceans makes the shells of shellfish weaker and thinner, and by studying the amount of calcium carbonate in the shells of forams it can tell researchers what the climate was like millions of years ago.