hobglobin

adibah, on 07 May 2013 - 07:33 PM, said:

I mentioned it because you wrote "its supposed to be in powder form". I'd really avoid this and use only a solution containing >30% water.
And with etching I meant that it's a quite strong acid and wondered if the marking is an acid burn, but actually it is not (luckily).

I'd say most important for plants are mycorrhiza fungi which you should not forget. You can detect them even with simple microscopy and suitable staining methods. Even quantification is possible with quite easy methods (e.g. percentage of roots with mycorrhiza).

Anyway your approach is quite challenging esp for a beginner as you work with an extreme complex and dynamic system which you have no idea when (or only when it's too late), how and why it changes. And you cannot control changes in terms quality and quantity and possible direction of changes, as you have no measures except the proper soil smell.

A more scientific approach would be to work with a standardisation (only one soil type with defined characteristics as I write below) and simplification (i.e. one or few MOs) so that you can tell which changes cause which results and then go to more complex experiments.

Don't forget that also other factors such as humidity, soil texture, pH, nutrient content and organic matter content highly influence plants, MOs and all other species in soil and that these factors also influence each other to a high degree (e.g. influences the pH value the availability of nutrients). You should consider to measure these values as far as possible (humidity regime, pH measurements).

For pH and nutrient measurements kits for gardeners are available, that you can get an idea about this and they are quite cheap.
For inoculation of soils with beneficial MOs also ready-made cultures are available that should support the fertility of soil. Esp. many organic gardeners use them to avoid synthetic fertilisers. You should check this (also to avoid double work ).

So far I never reared them but successful culture methods are available online: http://www.beanbeetl...rg/handbook/#CT
Anyway the reasons for a unsuccessful rearing can be a lot: inbreeding, wrong food, contaminated food (pesticides), wrong environmental conditions, diseases, etc. Also several reasons can act together of course. Especially the contaminated food is an often overlooked and serious problem when you don't have access to "clean" products, as insecticides have sometimes surprisingly long persistence times and some products (depending on origin) also high loads...

Well there are many definitions of species, and that's one of several...anyway for this definition it's the question if coyotes and dogs do produce fertile offspring in natural conditions and not if humans bring them together or even do a test-tube fertilisation. In nature there are sufficient other barriers that can lead to the two species as we understand it, such as geographical barriers, different behaviour (mating barrier), different time of estrus (physiological barrier) etc. (not sure if and then which barrier is working for canines)
This can then be even more complicated when humans introduce a new (sub-)species in the area of the other species and then they can interbreed (it is estimated that the domestic dog's origin is East Asia as far as I know, and therefore new for Americas). Anyway this shows the obstacles and limitations of species definitions .

Olgitsa, on 08 February 2013 - 10:48 AM, said:

you need some posts already in other threads to have access (to avoid pure paper collectors here)

over-read this, sorry. Other common problems with these description are overloading the wells and protein contaminations, but the latter would be surprising with a PCR sample.
Sharper bands you can get e.g. if you start with 80 V until the loading dye is in the agarose and then increasing to 120 V (and if TAE buffer I wouldn't increase more), fast loading of all the wells (avoiding diffusion), a sufficiently long polymerisation time of the gel. And running the gel not too long, as then diffusion becomes a factor.

First I'd check if the electrophoresis is really running, i.e. check for tiny bubbles at the electrodes when it's switched on. If this is okay the gel-percentage you also should check. Which percentage do you use?

or 96.97 % (rounded)

Kindle has its own file format azw- or whatever it is called, and a Kindle edition is made to be used by kindle then (and only Kindle, nothing else)....early Kindles did not even accept normal pdfs, but you had to send the pdf to amazon that they converted it (or not, I guess copyright issues were the reason and of course politics to force you to have an exclusive provider ).
More modern Kindle versions accept now pdfs, but no idea if there is still some copyright check and worries.
Anyway for me it was always a reason not to buy it as I'd like to read my papers with it and didn't want to send them to amazon and I'd perhaps also like to get ebooks from other sources except amazon...

Well are you really a newbie then with tech experience and a master's degree?
Anyway if the presentations are about topics that belong closely to your field of work, then you should work on theory and background and try to broaden your knowledge or try to catch up the stuff with a textbook.

If it's something different (belonging to different fields, nothing or not much to do with your work) then I think it's quite normal not to understand everything and even to have a quite relaxed view on this....detailed knowledge about this won't help you and you'll forget it anyway fast and biological sciences are extremely broad and you never can know all.
Best is perhaps to get a broader knowledge base and not to become an "expert idiot" with extremely restricted knowledge and view. And you might can try to learn more about basic principles and "laws" that often help to understand at least what they talk about, even if you don't get all tiny details.

And I guess in such classes most just pretend to understand everything and show the expert attitude...if you'd ask them to explain it, they'd be in difficulties

a good opportunity to use this good old website:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q...r dye chemistry

Perhaps you used highly conserved regions of the DNA within that species.

I'd replace the whole metal jar and also try to seal the bottle inside and work under a fume-hood. Or if you don't need the bromide, dispose of as hazardous waste following your lab regulations for such stuff.
As Bromine is quite corrosive and reacts with many materials (plastics, metals), has a low vapour pressure and is toxic for humans and many other organisms, it's not easy to store it long time without leakage (e.g. in a glass bottle with a plastic lid that starts to corrode after some time) and therefore it's questionable if you should store especially larger amounts in your lab or in your stock of chemicals (which is hopefully ventilated).

what is 'N sync?

wikipedia knows several like these (mostly for beginners):
Dumb Kids Prefer Candy Over Fancy Green Salad (Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species)

Idiotic Penguins Make Antarctica Too Cold (Interphase, Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase, Telophase, Cytokinesis)

Harry He Likes Beer Bottle Cold, Not Over Frothy. Nelly's Nanny Might, Although Silly Person, She Climbs Around Kinky Caves; for the first 20 Elements of the Periodic Table. (Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Neon, Sodium, Magnesium, Aluminium, Silicon, Phosphorus, Sulphur, Chlorine, Argon, Potassium, Calcium.)

From Dusk Till Dawn in my lab