Author: greg

Atmospheric chemistry researcher and university teacher. Data analysis/chemometrics specialist (PCA, PCR, Cluster analysis, SOM)

Last week of lectures ahead

Next week is the last week of lectures, but the weekly schedule will be busier than usual. Due to the holiday schedule I have added one lecture for each section in order to finish things properly. So instead of April 9, things will be done by April 11. Everything is prepared and set up, though – so no sweat.

Strategic learning sessions already wrapped up and I am looking forward to the comments regarding their helpfulness in understanding the lecture material! All exams are submitted (regular and alternate), so all I have to do is show up and be available for questions. It is really nice that the exam’s office takes care of everything – you have to hand things in early, but they take up quite a bit of the administrative load.

I have also been busy adding my latest results to my research lecture – the past couple of months were quite fruitful regarding data analysis and calculations, so there is quite a bit of new stuff to present. I have also set up a lecture about biosensors for intermediate analytical chemistry students, which was quite interesting to do, since some of these devices are already available on the market – e.g. the iStat analysis system used for clinical measurements. For students it is really nice to connect their theoretical knowledge with current applications.

I get a feel …

… that the semester is slowly drawing to a close. I started the last chapter in my CHEM-218 class – an introduction to spectroscopy (molecular, luminescence and a little bit of atomic spectroscopy) to prepare students for CHEM-312, the instrumental analysis course. I am confident that I will finish presenting the remaining material in time and in mid-April the final exam will be coming up.

I also work on the revision of another publication – not too much to do, so it will be under way soon. More news to follow, once it is out! I discussed my calculations from last week and checked them for consistency – all looks pretty good and the concentration estimates for selected VOC in air are quite robust.

Estimation of VOC concentration in air from snow data

I currently work on ways to estimate concentrations of selected VOCs in air from VOC concentrations obtained in snow. This would not only give me an idea of the impact of VOC stored in snow on their occurrence in air (for data with no air samples analysed) , but would also let me compare my air and snow results, where I have both available and how the data correlate with numerical calculations.

After looking around a bit in the literature I have done some calculations using Lei & Wania’s approach (2004) with sorption coefficients for selected species compiled by Roth et al. (2004). The parameter that I miss is the specific snow surface area (SSA), which I have not measured for the data set I currently work on. However, Legagneux et al. (2002) published an extensive list of SSA for different types of snow, which they describe using images and a verbal description.

Since I have the latter information available from my snow data (including checks with a light microscope on site) I am able to estimate the SSA for my snow samples. Uncertainty data is available as well. Now that the calculations are set-up, what I need to do is optimise the estimated parameter and compare calculated results with my own data and published studies.

Midterms done!

I am done marking midterm exams and I posted the results well before the course drop date. Since results were quite good with a class average of > 60% (no significant difference between day and evening sections) I hope that not too many students will drop. The results are certainly (significantly!) better than CHEM-217 last semester and there are several reasons for it:

  • Class size is smaller – quite a few students, who failed CHEM-217 did not take CHEM-218
  • Strategic learning classes helped a few to get a better understanding of the material
  • In-class exercises helped to show that the material covered is not easy; at least not as easy as it seems, when you are guided through it by the instructor

Especially the last point is one that I have heard last semester and in evaluations that the exams were more difficult than the examples discussed in class. Since I profoundly disagree 😉 , I tried to provide more in-class examples and more importantly, in-class assignments that students try to solve for themselves before discussing it through a peer instruction exercise and answering the remaining questions in class. Overall I am quite happy about the improvement.

Marking, marking …

… and some more marking. Progress is good, however, and I should be able to get everything done until early next week.I also visited Dawson College today to present the Concordia Co-op Programme, which provides a nice mix of academic and practical experience with work terms in the summer in addition to the regular chemistry curriculum. The work terms provide students with the possibility to network, gain team working skills and get to know several companies! The programme is unique in the Montreal area and not many universities offer such training across Canada.The visit was extremely nice with interested students and some very good questions!

Session on Environmental Analysis at ICASS 2008

I will be convening a session on

“Spectroscopic and Mass Spectroscopic Measurements of Environmental Samples”

at the upcoming ICASS conference (http://www.icass.ca) in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue in August 2008. If you would like to submit a contribution, oral or poster, I would encourage you to do so.

Here is a detailed session description:
“Spectrometric measurements are essential in the determination of analytes in complex matrices. This session will discuss recent progress in the measurement of environmental systems including the usage of advanced statistical analysis of spectral data.”

Busy week …

… on the teaching and research side of things!

  • The first assignment is in, but I am already almost done marking – things went quite smoothly. A few students asked for extensions and all I wait for is for these last assignments to come in. Midterms are also coming up the week after next (study break in between), but there will not be any “leftovers” for me to mark
  • The deadline for the proposal that I co-wrote with my former advisor is finally here and I was quite busy filling forms yesterday evening. I finally got my hands on a version of Acrobat that let me save the filled forms; it is a pain that you can’t do that with the reader, because with the budget and summaries,… to fill in there are usually changes to be made.

Next week is the study break!

What’s new on the research front?

Well – there are quite a few things going on. My teaching load is considerably lighter this semester, so I can tie up a few loose ends on my research.

  •  My draft about the snow work in Quebec is coming along that there is only a tiny section missing; the manuscript describes the determination of VOC concentrations in snow and from the data I would like to calculate sorption coefficients to estimate deposition from the atmosphere.
  • I co-author a proposal on bio-aerosols in snow that should get done next week, since the deadline is looming
  • I have fine-tuned my dossier apart from updates such as new publications, since I get a better and better idea, what I would like to do in the future

I might have to put things on the back-burner, when the first assignment comes in next week, but student numbers are down, since I have one fewer course to teach, so I am hopeful to make some considerable progress until the summer.

Default layout …

… since I was having endless trouble with formatting pages using the previous theme. Not that fancy, but I will be working on a new theme soon. For now I cleaned up the code and reformatted my pages. CV and publication list are up-to-date (both – the web and pdf versions) and have restructured the pages into subcategories for easier navigation. Looks better now – except for a nice picture at the top! PS: After fiddling a bit with Gimp and the WordPress theme I figured out how to change the masthead picture. Looks alright to me for a start!