greg – Page 19 – Greg's Teaching & Researchblog

Reviewing other people’s work

I have started reviewing other people’s manuscripts – just received another one at the beginning of September. It is very interesting with procedures varying from journal to journal and different deadlines, but it is indeed a lot of work.

I have now settled into a procedure to make sure not to forget anything: I start with reading the article several times, each time with a different focus (e.g. objectives stated and reviewed, consistency, clarity) making remarks as I go along. I also read some key articles in the field, should I not be 100% familiar with the topic to place the manuscript into the current research context.

Then it is about structuring and clarifying my remarks, so that the authors can understand them and get my point. Alltogether it takes quite a bit of time (1-2 full days), but it is quite interesting, especially on a plane to Europe, when you are bored ;). The deadline is approaching fast anyway.

Submitted 2 Articles

I was busy writing in the past few weeks and I have recently submitted two manuscripts for review. One is about my previous work at the IFA-Tulln, where I have compiled details about the sample preparation procedure for the spectroscopic analysis of corn and wheat for contamination with mycotoxins and how chemometric results depend on the investigated size fraction of the ground cereal. It is data that has not been published or reported before and makes a nice package.

The other manuscript deals with current work – fungi and micro-organisms found in snow were identified and their ability to transform dicarboxylic acids as part of their metabolism was investigated. Quite a few analytical methods were used for this study including Solid-State-NMR and GC/MS.

I now have a couple of weeks to concentrate on other stuff, before the reviewer comments will come in.

Running samples …

I have been running samples lately and things are looking good. Baseline of the GC-FID is solid at 2.7 pA for the instrument background. The only exception was this morning, when I had to fix a leak on the ultra-zero air cylinder (I wonder, where that came from?), which took a while to locate. But now things are working fine, although I am in for a long evening.

I use the same water that I have used at Alert for rinsing and cleaning (except that the feed is different – I have used DI water at Alert and I now use water from our standard MilliQ system as feed, because the pre-treated water is RO, which the cartridge in the portable system is not suitable for). Water quality is fine and blanks are very similar to those in Alert.

Today I run snow samples collected on June 2 at the Special Studies Trailer (SST), snow layers from 2-6 cm and 36-53 cm from the surface. I carry out headspace and liquid phase measurements in duplicates using a divinylbenzene-coated SPME fibre.

A major webpage update

Well, well – I have been thinking about it for quite a while: The integration of my pages into WordPress. And here is a first result – I am hoping to polish the pages and validating them in the next few weeks. If there are any problems, let me know.P.S.: Validation was done in an evening – a few uppercase tags from way back to change and some others needed closing (e.g. the img tags). Nice.

Baseline problem solved

Finally, the ultra-zero air has arrived and things improved as I had expected. The baseline is down to 2.8 pA and stable. So I am ok to run under similar conditions as in Alert, which is fine. Bring on the samples.

I am also quite happy that I have moved the GC to a new lab, where there is more space available and a fumehood close by (with a space for my acid bath). I am still waiting for a 20 Amp jack to be installed, but for now an extension cord from a jack at the far side of the lab will do. I have also hooked up the GC computer to the network, which makes it nice and easy for me to back up my raw data.

GC-FID baseline challenge

I have set-up the GC-FID again and things are running fine. The system works after I had a few problems with broken connectors. However, the baseline (BL) has stabilised at 16 pA after several days of equilibration.

I have therefore cut the column at the detector end to reduce column bleeding that had occasionally occurred – no luck. The spikes that appeared every once in a while were mostly gone, but the BL stayed at 16 pA (identical with the BL of my colleague running a similar system next to me). In Alert, however, my BL was much better (4-5 pA). When cleaning the system I found out that my BL dropped to 13 pA, strange given the higher temperature and load on the column.

But my hypothesis is that the (standard) compressed air is the culprit. The cleaning program uses a lower air-flow, thus introducing less contamination into the detector system. Additionally, I have used Ultra-zero air in Alert (much cleaner), which I have ordered now and that is due to arrive on Monday.

Getting some feedback on my Alert data

I gave my first presentation on my field trip to Alert yesterday. It was a group meeting presentation and presented mostly background information (reasoning behind decisions, ancillary data, procedures) and some preliminary results.

It was a good exercise, because it served as a first test about how well embedded my VOC measurements in air and snow are in the overall dataset (consisting of my own ancillary data and Environment Canada meteorological data). I also could inform the group in more detail about what I have done and if it is conclusive to them as it is to me.

So a very enjoyable presentation with good feedback; I was only quite busy the day before putting everything together. I finished up with some nice pictures from Alert

Some Weblog Editing …

I have started adding some pictures to previous entries on my field trip to Alert. It is something I did not manage to do right away, because of time and bandwidth constraints and a misbehaving Firefox browser. So expect more pictures in past entries soon.

I have also made a step towards using more free and open-source software by eliminating MS Office (replaced by NeoOffice, an OpenOffice port for Mac) and Photoshop (replaced by Gimp) from my laptop.

Gimp runs fine (for my purposes), NeoOffice is feels sluggish and clumsy and there are some minor compatibility problems with imported Excel files (especially with graphs and error bars). But a Beta version is in the works, there will be improvements down the road. But I use mostly LaTeX anyway, so no big problem here 🙂

Unpacking and Writing

I was busy unpacking the last couple of days and setting up the GC in a new lab to make some space in the rather crowded lab, where it stayed before. I have requested a new 20 Amp jack to be installed and while I wait I am busy finishing 2 manuscripts that have been sitting on my desk on a while. That includes writing as well as data analysis, the latter of which takes up a good junk of my time. Typically, I have to browse through > 100 peaks per run (for qualitative analysis), which is quite demanding.

Everything else I could put away swiftly, although some boxes still need to be stored away. Long awaited equipement has finally arrived for other members of the lab to use (pH meter, GC spare parts, stir plates).