All entries for Tuesday 14 August 2007

2nd day

I don’t know if it was related to the horrible weather today, but nobody in the lab was in the mood to work! Imonge went home at half 3 because she couldn’t be bothered to work any more, citing the reason that her ‘incubation would take too long’ and she’d miss the bus if she started it. Oh well!

Anyway, it seems the wet labs at Warwick come in useful! They were very handy today while I was making my media for my plants. I had to make agar plates with gentamycin for my transgenic plants to grow on. I also had to sterilise all those seeds I prepared yesterday and finished off this morning. I haven’t quite finished off the sterilisation, as there were a lot of seeds and the technique takes about 15minutes for each seed line, and I have about 40! So do the maths :p

So tomorrow I expect to finish off the sterilisation and start culturing some nice fungus in petri dishes!

: 14 Aug 2007 21:48 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Starting the final lap

The trip to London was definatly a right decision. Even though the British Library was less helpful than we originally expected, mainly because Dan did not get a reading pass; so for everyone who intends to go: Do not forget your ID and prove of residency and a separate confirmed card with your signature. Nevertheless, it was still a very nice day out in London, which we used to visit the British Museum and the National Portrait gallery (Dan saw it on his own).
Working in the British Library was great, despite the fact that it is even harsher than our library in Warwick, was great. In comparision I would even argue that Warwick University Library is a liberal paradise; in the BL you are for example only allowed to use pencils, not speaking about any form of drinks. The social science reading room, in which I worked, is an experience in itself, but I also found some interesting information for our research. Most importantly, that the Bologna-Process has its origins in the early 1990s, when the Commission published a paper that aimed at the economic importance of higher education in Europe. I became aware of this through a very interesting article by Tomusk, who has written quite extensively on the Bologna process, but to whose work I had no access before I went to the British Library. He also had some things to say about Warwick, which I am not going to quote, because we are thinking of using his quotes in our poster presentation.
After this day out, we did some proper work today, discussung our work done in phase 1 and 2, with our supervisor Ben. I think he was quite happy with what we have done so far, however, now the difficult part arises, finding some coherent themes between Dan’s and my work.
Additionally, we are planning to publish a potcast or a vidcast on our research for which we practice in the RAW rooms today. Thursday will be the date when we will hopefully record it. First, we will have to write something like a script, though; I am very much looking forward to it.

: 14 Aug 2007 17:06 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem