After a long silence

It has been so long since I last wrote. Before I had nothing important to write about, but I faithfully wrote every week. Now so much has happened since I last wrote on 3 Sep, I have not written a single thing. How ironic!

In short, I must say that life is good, real good.

First I have finally finished some minor editing of the wedding photos, and I'll send Emilee and Dad DVD's of the photos. Also I'll post the reception photos on Picasa webalbum.

At the end of last month I took my qualifying examinations (8 hour written test and 3 hour oral defense of my answers). The orals only took 1 hr 45 min. It pays to know your stuff. Interestingly the most difficult questions were where one committee member asked a question about someone else's subject. The mycorrhiza professor asked me to explain to him what the Global Meteroic Water Line was. It is so easy to understand, but I had never had to explain what it was before. It was not as easy to explain as I had expected. Then the genetics professor asked me what linkage disequilibrium was and I could not remember for anything. Of course, that was my fault. I said that linkage disequilibrium could explain what 2 species that share the same area do not successfully form large hybrid zones. Right when I said it I realized my mistake. I should not have invoked a term that I could not explain. In the end I still passed with flying colors.

I lost a committee member and asked another new professor to take his place. The new professor first told me, no. Then later said yes but was quite brusk. I was not at all impressed and did not want her on my committee. I tried to find someone else, but to no avail. I did not talk to her for several month because she was quite unapproachable. After several months she started working with stable isotopes. Now she comes to the lab quite often. She is so nice now. She emailed me before I went to Puerto Rico to wish me luck. I am very glad we are much more friendly as she is on my committee.

Before going to Puerto Rico I gave a talk in front of the biology department at UMiami. A row of 7 professors were seated on the back row. As soon as I showed some my first graph, one professor asked a question. After that the questions did not stop. I received at least 50 questions during the talk. The more they asked questions the more questions and excited they got. At the end it was a feeding frenzy. I basically just fielded questions for the rest of the time meanwhile trying to finish my talk. Most of the questions were sincere, but some were purposefully designed to trip me up and find holes in my research. I not only had to defend my data but also my future research as some of the professors knew what I planned to do. They asked questions about what I would do under specific conditions or if certain things happened. Gladly I can say that both my research and I held up under the scrutiny. Afterwards several grad students came up to me with a look of horror and admiration. Horror because such a spectacle had never happened before in the department and they were very glad that they were not in my place. Admiration because I did not buckle. It was more tense in many ways than more qualifying examination.

I must say that none of the professors had it out for in a vicious way. They all congratulated me for not falling apart and a few of them offered their help in my future research if I needed it. In the end it was a good experience, but not one that I want to repeat anytime soon.

Of course that brings up another point. I went to Puerto Rico to give a presentation, visit research sites, and set up collaborations with the plant physiological ecology lab at the University of Puerto Rico. I was invited to talk there on my root function research. The professor, Elvira Cuervas, that paid my way was really a neat person and we had so much fun. We saw Guanica Forest and the Robos mangrove and dry tropical forest. I stayed in San Juan, the capital. It is such a crazy city, much like Miami. After giving my presentation, Elvira invited me to give a mini course at the University of Puerto Rico on DNA fingerprinting. It should be very exciting. I'll teach a course for 2 weeks in Puerto Rico. Afterward I'll take a select group of students to the field to collect some data and then take them to Miami to develop the DNA fingerprinting technique.

Puerto Rico is a very beautiful island. I'll put photos up later. I have not had time to do anything with the photos yet.

Probably none of you watched the Breeders Cup, so I'll give a little important info. Corinthian won the Breeders Cup Dirt Mile! Corinthian was bred by Aunt Sandra. He annihilated the field by 7 lengths. Now he'll be retired to Gainesway Farm and will command an impressive stud fee of $40,000. Here you can watch a replay of the race.

I will later update my website with more photos and I'll put links in my next entry of the pages I updated.

On Saturday I went to Key Biscayne to look for mangrove propagules for my hydrogen fractionation research. I decided to go look for a brown basilisk lizard while I was out there. I was rewarded with a nice look at 2 different males. They are a rather interesting lizard with large scales on the back of their head like the dinosaurs: hadrosaurids. The lizards are best known for their ability to run on water. The tap the water so fast that upwelling that occurs keeps them on top of the water. I saw seen them run on water twice. I got a picture of it, but the picture quality is very poor.

Corinthian and Vitruvius ran on Saturday. I talk about the races on my horse news page.

I am looking forward to seeing the family and Arizona in a few days! I cannot believe that I'll be in Arizona in 3 days. Unfortunately the stay will not be long, only 4 days.

Work as usual

Nothing to report this week. I wish that I had more interesting things to report but I guess that I would have had to do more to be able to report on more. All I do is go to work and go home to sleep. I am analyzing the data from my Colorado field trip. I am also studying for my qualifying exams (oh what fun!).

Poison oak episode is pretty much finished. I now only have a lot of peeling skin on my arms and legs. The best thing for poison oak poisoning was soaking in a load of baking soda for at least an hour a day. I used up 8 lbs of baking soda in 4 days. (I have never used so much baking soda in my entire life.) I noticed immediate improvement in the condition of my legs.

Stake presidency finally talked to me on Sunday, so now I am officially the branch clerk. I started off my new calling with an financial audit (passed with flying colors). Of course, nothing really changed with my new calling because I was already doing branch clerk duties without the official calling. The good part is that the stake presidency called 2 assistant clerks, too. Now I can actually get everything done without spending my entire Sunday running around. Also I can start attending Sunday school again and more than the first half of priesthood (at least sometimes).

Hiking in the mountains

I have updated my webpage with pictures from Colorado, birds, lizards, mammals, and mushrooms.

One professor on my doctoral committee studies mycorrhizas (fungi symbiotic with plant roots). We have a group each week where read papers on mycorrhizas, and I have become quite interested in fungi lately. While in Colorado I took numerous pictures of fungi. I never realized how pretty mushrooms are. I even ate a few of the edible ones. Colorado had a wet summer, and mushrooms sprouted up everywhere. I have never seen so many mushrooms.

I got to hike in 2 mountain ranges in Colorado and 1 in Idaho. My research took me to northern Colorado to Niwot Ridge. I collected stems, soils, and CO2 from 14 sites from 1700 to 3400 meters. It was a lot of fun to see the mountains after being in south Florida where the highest elevation is 12 m. We also got to see the drastic changes from the plains of eastern Colorado to sagebrush and juniper to ponderosa pine savanna up to the lodgepole pine, Englemans spruce, and subalpine fir to finally to alpine meadow and bare rock. By the end of the trip my colleagues were saying that they wanted to live there in the mountains.

At each site I collected sapwood (inner wood) of stems, soil down to 40 cm, and 3 CO2 samples. The 3 CO2 samples took the longest time because I had to set up the system that would pump CO2 from the soil from the chamber over the soil to the gas analyzer then through scrubbers that removed water and finally into a collection flask. I had to first remove all CO2 from the system before collecting CO2 from the soil. Then I had to start collecting CO2 and wait for the CO2 concentration to reach at least 360ppm. All these steps took time. Also we had to hike into the spots with all our equipment including 3 small 12v batteries and a deep cycle marine battery. The mountains have small layer of soil then underlying granite foundation. Sometimes the soil was only 1 cm deep, so we had to use a pick to dig through granite boulders to collect soil samples to 40cm. Two graduate students help me with the collection, which required working 12+ hours a day. However, I planned for everything to take a long time, so we had an extra day after all the work was done. I was going to add more sites because we had one more day, but I had been working my volunteers for 12+ hours a day for 6 days straight. I figured that I would be kind and give them a day off to hike.

We spent it hiking to a alpine meadow (3500+ m) above Brainard Lake. Once we reached the top of the alpine meadow (300m above timberline), we going to go to another higher point, but it started raining and then hailing. We thought that it was best to get to lower elevation under the protection of trees. I had to move particularly fast because I had nothing to protect my camera. Thank goodness the rain stopped after a 20 minutes.

The next day we had to go home, all of us were sad to leave the mountains, but it was nice to get back to the ocean.

Hiking woes

I am back from my 3 week family reunion/research trip to Utah then Idaho, then Colorado, then to New Mexico, and back to Colorado. The family reunions were awesome and my field work was successful. I have to get into more details later because I do not have time at the moment. I do, however, want to show you what I brought back from CO.



I have already touch poison ivy before but did not have a reaction. I thought that I was party of the 10% minority that do not react. Unfortunately I was wrong. Sensitivity to the toxic oil urushiol, increases with subsequential exposure. I must have developed quite the sensitivity. The sad thing that I did not even see any poison oak poison ivy or poison sumac! (All 3 species are in the same genus Toxidendron.) My forearms are covered with small wart-like blisters that ooze lymph and itch like the dickens.

Below is my right knee. The degree of inflammation is not completely visible. The underside of my knee is so inflamed that it is difficult to bend my knee completely. My foreleg is covered with oozing blisters that itch and hurt at the same time.


Monday morning, I first noticed a few very small breakout on my left arm and leg. They were quite small and only gave minor irritation. By Monday night they were alarmingly larger. By Tuesday afternoon they were covering large sections of my left forearm and leg. By Wednesday morning the right arm and leg were breaking out and the left side of my face broke out. By Thursday morning the leg from the knee down and the left forearm were completely covered. The individual bumps were so close together they formed large inflamed bumps of skin that were raised above the rest of the skin by 5mm.


Breakouts continued on Friday when the small isolated patches on my right leg became nearly as large and grotesque as the left leg. Also affected skin appeared above both knees covering both thighs. My right forearm is now partially covered. Also a few small outbreaks appeared on my stomach and hands.











I am using calamine lotion, which gives some relief, but does not take away the itch and pain completely. I take benedryl to help the itching (does not really work).

At work a visiting professor in Puerto Rico where I may do some field work gave me some ideas to help and even carry some of them out. She put baking soda paste all over my legs and covered my legs with paper towels. It did seem to help, but it sure looked odd. She also told me to put an infusion of chamomile and impatiens flowers on the affected skin. They are helpful as anti-puritic remedies. (Now I just have to find some impatients.) The last suggestion that she gave was a "failsafe" remedy for poison ivy. She said that I need to get some soil and pee on it then paste that all over my legs and arms. I'll look for some impatiens flowers, but I think that I'll pass on her miracle cure for poison ivy. Her suggestion was more a miracle cure for getting rid of people than healing my skin.

I did not know that there was poison ivy/oak in Colorado as the field guides do not states that it exists there. However, it must because it broke out bad on me.

So the moral of the story is watch out for poison ivy!

Entering the blogosphere

Now that I have a webpage, I decided to enter the blogosphere. The next post will have more information on it.