Presentations, and Wrapping Up

Whew, was that a nerve-wracking experience. We just finished our last presentation in front of the PIs, mentors and our sponsors at NASA -- 12 minutes apiece, plus 3 minutes for questions, AGU style. While it was stressful to talk about a topic that I had only been thinking about for less than a week, when I got up there, I was not as nervous as I expected to be, just because I was so excited about the results I found. Although we only had a short amount of time, everyone pulled together to really help each other, teaching each other how to use ArcGIS to overlay our sampling sites on maps and listening to each other practice over and over and over again. 

The friendly audience

Moreover, I was so impressed by all of the talks -- these students really ran with the data to produce some fantastic findings. Notwithstanding my own bias, the Air Team talks were incredible; I was so proud of my fellow team members, especially given our timing issues. The NASA reps were also very impressed: they offered to send not one but two students from each group to AGU to present their findings at the NASA booth. We find out in a couple of weeks who the lucky students will be. 

The Air Group post-presentations

Now, I suppose it's time to offer my farewell, but I find it difficult to sum up the excitement, frustrations, challenges and glories of the past six weeks. I came in hoping for research experience that could evolve into a qualifying exam project but came out with an expanded view of the type of resources available to me and of the level of research I can accomplish. I hope I will not lose touch with the numerous incredible scientists and mentors that I had the opportunity to work alongside, and perhaps even work with them again in the future. It still amazes me how cohesive of a group we were throughout this process. I also wanted to thank NASA for investing in these scientists from all disciplines in order to encourage them to pursue earth science research. 

Finally, I want to thank everyone who took the time to read about our adventures. I hope I imparted at least a fraction of the experiences I had. 

Kat, clear.

Our last pep-talk!

(All photos in this post courtesy of NSERC)

Data Analysis

We finally got our data!

After long weeks of collecting, running and modifying samples, we now have a data set to work with. This week, we explored possible project ideas while our PI went through the data to make sure that data points that were due to leaky canisters, degrading O-rings and other such snafus were not included. After what seemed like an eternity, we received our data Thursday midday, and--fixing a few data hiccups along the way--we explored the dataset in order to refine our project ideas. This weekend will be crunch time as we do all of our data analysis and put together our presentations to practice delivering them on Monday. We get one more in-depth presentation review Tuesday morning, before the other groups start presenting Tuesday afternoon. Then, Wednesday, the Air Group shows the rest of SARP what we've been doing, as we wrap up the program. It hasn't really sunk in that we have less than a week left, mostly because all of us are so focused on developing a project to be proud of.

We did, however, take a short break Tuesday morning to visit the Hyperion Treatment Plant: Los Angeles's oldest and largest water treatment facility. We took a tour of the grounds and underground....

Around the facility

Chemical containers

Peering at sewage

The view from the lab

Water after different stages of treatment

The Air Group

Learning how one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country treats hundreds of millions of gallons of water each day was not only fascinating, but it also really hit home what humans are doing to the hydrological cycle. Made me think twice about sticking things down the drain, at least. 

Data Processing

I must admit that these post titles aren't very interesting, and usually the reason for that is that I am not clever enough to think of something more...well, clever. But this title is specifically intended to convey the mind-numbing process of what they call "modifying."

The potential peaks for one canister (courtesy of Erica Weathers)

Last week, we ran samples using gas chromatography to get signatures for each of the 60+ gases that we can measure. The output of that laborious process is a graph for each canister, with potential difference peaks for each gas. Using a standard, we set the baseline for each gas in each sample and integrated under the curve. This simple sentence does not convey how time-intensive modifying truly is. It made us feel less like hotshot NASA scientists and more like chemistry robots. Which would still be pretty cool, now that I think about it...

Close-up of the peaks for two gases (courtesy of Erica Weathers)

Nick Heath modifying column B
(courtesy of Erica Weathers)

In any case, that occupied the bulk of my week. Yesterday, we matched each sample to the geographical data, like latitude, longitude, altitude and time. That way if we see anything interesting in the data, we know exactly where and when that sample was taken.

Next week, while we all do background research, our PI will compare those areas under the curves obtained from modifying to the standards, and from that calculate the concentration of the gases in every sample. Then comes quality control, where he looks through all of the data and assesses whether any spikes or dips are due to interesting chemistry or bad samples. Once the data is cleaned up, we'll be ready to put together our respective projects to present the following week.

Running Samples

Now that we're no longer flying, I thought our schedule would relax a bit. Nope -- we're still moving forward, full force. Between ground sampling of air and running the samples, this has been a full week.

Taking samples

Water treatment facility

At the intersection of two of the most polluted regions
in terms of air quality, on the way back from taking samples

Back at the lab, in groups of two, we ran the samples to determine the concentrations of methane, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in each canister.

Running snakes for CO/CO2

Running a canister for CH4

The methane was the most fun, although my hands were blistered after a few hours of knob turning and screw tighening. The CO/CO2 was much easier on my skin, but each canister took 10 minutes to run, so everything was slow-going.

Friday morning, though, had some extra excitement: we all gathered in the main classroom at 8am to watch the final shuttle launch together on the big screen.

Waiting for Atlantis to launch

After working on our own little NASA project, I gained an even greater respect for the scientists and engineers entrusted with making this final shuttle mission a success. Not only was I absorbed in the momentousness of this historic moment, but I also felt connected to people all over the country, from my colleagues back at MIT sending emails about their own showing to the dedicated people standing at Cape Canaveral to see Atlantis launch live. It reminded me why we Americans tend to idealize NASA and why, more importantly, they kind of deserve it.