Post date: Jul 26, 2013 5:43:31 PM
Since the last update, History of Life interns have done an incredible amount of work. We’ve all started on our individual projects, which involve the data we collected regarding ostracod and echinoderm body size. I am investigating the effect of temperature and time on marine invertebrate body size along with two others. Throughout this process, we needed to learn to use the statistical program “R”. It was a very bumpy road for our group at first – we were all novices at programming – but we figured out how to plot some basic graphs and see trends in our data. This week, we will continue to work on becoming familiarized with R. We are also very excited to attend the AGU Conference this winter, which is a world-class geophysical conference. We are in the process of writing our abstracts and creating our posters.
Yesterday, we had the opportunity to go up to UC Berkeley, visit their Paleobiology collection, and see the Hayward fault in action. Berkeley is a beautiful school and their collection is very impressive – from daunting sabertooth cats to tiny micro-fossils, their storage room just about had it all. I admit that I was captivated by the shelving, too. The cabinets shifted with the turn of a wheel, both saving space and giving the room a mystic feel. We also went up to the Cal stadium and creek to see the Hayward fault. Noel introduced us to faults and topography this week and we applied our knowledge at Cal. There was a crack in the stadium and a discontinuous portion of the creek bed due to the fault’s continuous motion. We had to walk a lot during the trip, but it was still very exciting because this was my first visit to Berkeley.
In the last two weeks of the internship, we will continue to collect data and finalize our projects. I can’t wait to translate 8-weeks worth of hard work onto a poster!