Caroline Crichlow-Ball's Bacteria Project Journal
"If I had a penny for everything I love about you, I would have many pennies."(Waitress)
12/3/07:
In class, Hailey, Anna, and I began setting up our Wiki page. This included coming up with a name and a password for our website. We also divided the research questions as fairly as possible. Since there is not an even number of questions for everyone in our group, we tried to make sure that those of us with more questions got some of the easier or shorter research topics.
At night, I began researching my first topic, which was the classification of our bacteria, deinococcus radiodurans. I searched for deinococcus radiodurans in the Encyclopedia Britanica online edition. I got no results from this search. Then I went to Gale Group and searched under the same term. I got slightly more results, but I didn’t find many of the answers I was looking for.
12/4/07:
Today in class, I worked with Anna and Hailey to finalize our project timeline. We spent the class period trying to set reasonable goals for completing our project, which will include several group meetings outside of school. We set the timeline as a sidebar.
That afternoon, I continued my research at Gale Group. I was still looking for answers relating to my first research question. I was researching classification, and whether or not deinococcus radiodurans is aerobic or anaerobic. I was unsuccessful at obtaining the information on Gale Group. Actually, I have been unsuccessful at obtaining anything related to the topics I was supposed to research. I decided to simply use what has been provided to me and take notes on the information that I have found. I was having trouble using SourceAid to cite the website that I was using, so here is the citation:
Feldman, Ruth Tenzer. "Berry interesting! (Animal Angles)." Odyssey 12.5 (May 2003): 49(1). Student Resource Center - Gold. Gale. St Andrews Episcopal School - Austin. 4 Dec. 2007
<http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS>.
Though I continued my research, I had continuous problems importing citations from Gale Group onto Source Aid. I will just have to try citing my sources another day.
I found an invaluable resource while reading a transcript of a NPR piece on d.c.r. I discovered that the leading authority on d.c.r. is John Battista, a professor of microbiology at L.S.U. I got his e-mail and phone number from L.S.U’s website. This may open many opportunities for our group!
12/5/07:
In study hall this morning, I was able to import several citations that I had trouble doing yesterday.
In class, I told my partners about John Battista, and they were impressed. To top it off, Anna said that her mom went to LSU! I think this will really help us out a lot. I was not able to work on my research in class because Ms. Jansen came and talked to us about trustworthy websites and the evaluation that we must perform for any sites on the free web that we wish to use in our research. I realize that we have many good resources provided to us through our subscription databases, but it is still frustrating that we can’t just go on Google and type in “deinococcus radiodurans.”
I was not able to do any more work tonight because I had to do prep work for an upcoming lab.
12/6/07:
Today in class, we had good news that we would not be doing a lab today in class. We will instead have the opportunity to work on our projects in class. Anna presented an idea to the group that we could make a brief video explaining how our bacteria is able to withstand radiation. We composed and sent an introduction e-mail to Professor Battista. To our dismay, we discovered that our timeline on our wiki had been erased. We spent a good amount of time re-doing it. We also discovered that unfortunately, several of our citations had not been saved on Source Aid.
This afternoon, I received a reply from Professor Battista. He said that he will be available to us only after De. 14. That only leaves us with two days to ask him questions! I hope this will all work out. I was able to re-do my Source Aid citations at night, but because of this I did not have time for other research.
12/7/07:
It was a lab day in class, so we did not have a chance to do further research. I babysat that night, so I did not have free time for research.
12/8/07:
I worked on my lab report for Biology class. This, with other homework assignments, rehearsals, and helping watch kids at a Christmas party meant that it was another deinococcus radiodurans-free day.
12/9/07:
This morning I madly rushed to finish researching my assigned topics before our meeting this afternoon.
This afternoon, we met at Anna’s house to work together on our project. I typed up all my research notes and continued to edit my journal. I also composed interview questions to ask Professor Battista.
It suddenly came to Hailey’s attention that her Uncle Bill is a professor of microbiology at Cornell University. She got his contact information. (Hailey nonchalantly mentioned anesthesia, and Anna remarked, “I love that stuff!”)
Hailey composed an e-mail to Uncle Bill asking him for help.
Anna and I compiled our group notes into one, easy-to-read format. We also composed an e-mail to Professor Mike Daly asking specific questions about holes in our research.
12/10/07:
This morning in study hall, I finished editing our front page. It looks pretty sweet, I must say.
There's not much more to do on our project now, so these journal entries may be getting significantly shorter. As of now, our group is just waiting to hear back from several professors that we have contacted, either for interviews or to answer some of our research questions. We are planning to meet this Friday to finish up our project. That's about it for now!
12/11/07:
Anna received an e-mail from Professor Daly saying that he would be able to have a phone conference with us at 11 am Wednesday. We set this up with Mrs. Rasmussen and spent some time making sure that we have a good list of questions to ask him.
We also confirmed that on Friday we will meet at my house after school to finish our project.
12/12/07:
Today was a very exciting day! We finally had our much-anticipated phone conference with Dr. Daly this morning. He was so kind and enthusiastic; he obviously loves his job, and we could tell that he was very excited that students were interested in his field of work. He shocked me with some figures about the amount of soil and water here in the United States that have been contaminated by radiation.
In Biology class today, we started a very interesting lab about several different tests you can do about bacteria.
That evening I worked on my lab report.
12/13/07:
In biology class, we had some difficulty completing the bacteria confirmation lab, considering the fact that we broke about 4 slides. But we did finish it (eventually), and in the process learned how to do a Gram stain, how to do a motility test, and how to do a Mac test.
That evening was devoted to finishing the lab report due the next day.
12/14/07:
In class today we compared results from our lab data and then completed our lab reports.
This evening we came to my house after school to finish our project. I e-mailed Dr. Battista with our interview questions. I hope he e-mails back in time for us to turn our project in! I also worked on updating my journal, and adding quotes and pictures to our page. We generally beautified it. We also edited our compiled information, made a "definitions" link, and posted our notes from the phone conference with Dr. Daly. Then it was time for a well-deserved break, so we went out to see the Golden Compass. We decided that I will e-mail our link to Mrs. Rasmussen and Ms. Jansen by noon on Sunday, whether or not we have received an e-mail back from Battista.
12/15/07: I just went through the website and made sure that we had all required information, and that everything was in good condition.
12/16/07:
I talked to Anna, and she wanted me to delay e-mailing our link in until 3pm. I never heard back from Dr. Battista, which is frustrating. I'm excited to present in class!
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