begin rant

Posted by Derksen at 7:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Derksen at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Student: andrew derksen
ETD PKG UFE0024628
Title: Host Susceptibility and Population Dynamics of Scirtothrips dorsalis Hood (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) on Select Ornamental Hosts in Southern Florida.
05/08/09 04:05 PM

Today, we received your final submission for review. Accordingly, it has been reviewed by the Editorial Office. I am pleased to inform you that your PDF has been accepted by the Editorial Office. No further changes may be made to the document, as it has been forwarded for publication.

Congratulations on a job well done.

Best of luck to you in all of your future endeavors.

Posted by Derksen at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Drove up to Gainesville special to personally submit my thesis to the graduate editorial office. The final draft of my thesis has been reviewed and approved by six or seven different people... checked, rechecked, printed twice... and finally dropped in the "submission" bucket.

All done, except for the waiting - and the final approval for electronic submission.

Posted by Derksen at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I first was doomed to head down to Homestead, way back in May of 2007, I found my path blocked by seasonal wildfires. They raged up and down the interstate, completely closing the Alligator Alley that runs from Florida's Gulf to Atlantic coasts. You would think that omens such as this would have stopped me, but I am ever stubborn.

Now, as I try to drive North to submit my thesis in person, I find myself confronted by a similar wall of flame. I almost made it through the net last night - perhaps, had I started but half an hour earlier, I would have made it. As it was, I had driven to the edge of the Alley only to be turned back by flashing lights... after sitting in a traffic jam for nearly two hours.

I will have to take the long way around, and today I will head up to Gainesville direct, instead of stopping to visit my parents. I will remain just as indomitable at the end as I was in the beginning. If I can force myself into the fire, and hold my hand there for the two years so required, then I can hang on just one more day and be done with it all.

Posted by Derksen at 6:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, stick a fork in me - and cue the music: I am defended and for the most part, done. I am not yet totally sure how it feels to be out and on the other side, and truly - I am not out of the woods yet. Now I must process the comments and criticism that my committee offered on my thesis, and re-submit it to them for final approval.

Then I put it in the appropriate format for the graduate school, get it through graduate editorial (can you tell I've left these links up for my own personal use?), pay a small library fee, and process the electronic submission. Then will I be done and free.

Except that I will have to find a job, and reformat my thesis into one or more publications.

It never really ends. Every ending merely acknowledges where something else begins.

Posted by Derksen at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First TREC seminar down.

"Host susceptibility and population dynamics of Scirtothrips dorsalis Hood (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) on select ornamental hosts in southern Florida"

Copies are available for the curious in Powerpoint 2008 and PDF formats.

Now for the defense next Wednesday.

Posted by Derksen at 6:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just finished the final revision on the first draft of my thesis submitted to my committee. Put that way, it sounds a little less final, but it is an important milestone along the end of the road.

I am almost done.

Now I just have to defend it, revise it with their comments until it meets their approval, and then render it down into its component parts for publication, a process I have already begun.

Posted by Derksen at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finally! After first promising that we would move in by November of 2006, the graduate student housing at TREC is open for inhabitation. These buildings are a far cry from the trailers (referred to by staff as "our little legal liabilities") that I have lived in for the last year and a half. While the houses are intended for eight students to share, there are currently but four of us living here - and we have more than enough space between us.

Better still, this is a place that all of us can be proud to live in. They're brand new houses with all of the latest amenities, and I finally have my own amazing kitchen with a truly awesome ceramic-surface oven and a giant refrigerator. My mattress is brand new, and is not rotting with mildew - and neither are the walls! Above and beyond the trailers, I cannot emphasize how nice these places really are. When I leave here, I really do not expect to live in a place this nice again for years to come.

In the meantime, I really don't know what to do with myself - except to graduate and get out of here. While I will never be a fan of south Florida, I finally feel that I have someplace I could call home.

Posted by Derksen at 8:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With a new year, new deadlines. My life for the next four months, summarized (all apologies to Bungie):

• Deadline for degree application
  January 30, 2009
  Begin processing the paperwork on ISIS.
  Status: Complete!
• Submit thesis to committee
  scheduled for February 10, 2009
  Submit thesis to committee in whole.
  Status: three quarters written, pending first approval and edits.
• Defense
  scheduled for March 5, 2009
  Sit down and be electrocuted by committee for five hours.
  Status: rebuild graphs and display files, practice discussion of data and results.
• Entomology department deadline
  scheduled for March 16, 2009
  Thesis first submission (defended, signed, formatted, on paper) to Department for review.
• Thesis first submission
  scheduled for March 30, 2009
  Thesis first submission (defended, signed, formatted, on paper) to Editorial (160 Grinter) for review.
• Final exam form deadline
  scheduled for April 20, 2009
  
  • Final exam form deadline (Editorial, 160 Grinter) for dissertation or thesis degree award.
  • Final submission of thesis or dissertation.
  • Deadline for “Final Clearance” status in the Editorial Document Management (EDM) system, to qualify for degree award this term.

Posted by Derksen at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I spent the latter part of this afternoon converting excerpts from my thesis' literature review into the Wikipedia entry for Scirtothrips dorsalis, so now the truly bored can learn more about this critter than they ever possibly wanted to know. I am probably going to continue to expand the article, adding sections on management of the thrips - but converting all of those citations makes my eyes want to bleed, and I keep finding things that should be linked into other things. I mean, I can't leave a section on putative Tospovirus transmission in S. dorsalis without first improving the page for Tospoviruses, now can I?

Please feel free to contribute to or to vandalize these articles as necessary. This information needs to be shared, and right or wrong, Wikipedia has gradually become one of the most prominent references for common knowledge. It is amazing what ten minutes of expert opinion can do to improve an article, and conversely, what ten seconds of vandalism can do to ruin it.

Posted by Derksen at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night was also the NCAA college championship between UF and OU under the politically fraught and controversial bowl system. While I am not a fan of the lavish attention that college football receives at the expense of academic programs and other sports, it is interesting to see the madness up close and personal.

Since the championship game was being held in Miami, and I receive no other benefits for attending the University of Florida so far from Gainesville, I sort of felt obligated to attend. Of course, getting tickets was near impossible. As a student of the University of Florida, I can enter a lottery to win permission to buy tickets to the game. Had I won one of these tickets, I could have paid $175, and would have had to pick them up at the ticket office in Gainesville - after presenting two forms of picture ID and a valid credit card. I later learned that OU students paid only $110 for their tickets. These were tickets discounted for students in the nosebleed seats. I'd hate to think how much seats in the front or middle tier might have been worth.

Still, lacking for entertainment in Homestead, I figured it was worthwhile to attempt to crash the game, or to go tailgating in the parking lot. Parking was supposed to have cost my small party an additional forty dollars, but we were fortunate to arrive a little late to the opening ceremonies. I say fortunate because the person responsible for collecting money for parking had run off to watch the game, and his staff told us to just park and to enjoy the game.

While we never got inside the stadium, there were more big screen televisions in the parking lot than there usually are at a sports bar. There was considerable food about as well. While we did not so engage ourselves, had we wanted to, we probably could have stepped into one of many drunken lines and taken some barbecue and booze from someone watching the game. We ended up circling the stadium most of the night, just watching the people watch the game - until we found an ideal spot outside of the VIP lounge where there were three giant screen televisions.

I was not entirely surprised to find that local fans were not as enthusiastic as Texas football fans, but few people are. You can usually hear a Aggie or Longhorn game long before you see it. Still, whatever their level of enthusiasm, these were still southern football fans. Some folks were friendly, and enjoyed the game. Others were more bellicose. We watched a drunken skinhead pick a fight in front of four police officers. We watched a man in MSU green (and not much else) bicycle by. Our celebrity sightings outside the VIP lounge included the Miami chief of police, former President Bill Clinton's heavily armed security detail, and the wrestler Mankind. We saw a lot more people in Oklahoma red than I normally expect to see in Miami on any given Wednesday. I got to try and explain the "Sooner" nickname to South Americans.

After a tense first half, Florida won it in the third quarter.

Then we all went back to our trailers.

Posted by Derksen at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My old company just axed another quarter of their staff during the weekly meeting this afternoon. It was an unpleasant surprise to most of the assembled staff, and apparently the CEO was too craven a coward to make the announcement himself this time. I am rapidly running out of people that I met there who still work there. This is their third round of layoffs, and each one has cut staff by at least twenty percent. This does not bode well for the future of the company, but I suppose that they are slimming the workforce in order to concentrate all of their diminishing resources on one of their three drug candidates currently in clinical trials.

Once again, I must reflect and recognize that I am lucky to have left when I did. I almost certainly would have been fired in the first round; I was in a superfluous and overstaffed department, and was a malcontent and rabble-rouser. I do wish that it hadn't unemployed so many of my friends quite so suddenly.

I wish them all the best on their roads ahead, and I even hope that the company does survive this latest downturn. Whatever reservations I have about the conduct of certain scientists employed there or the management team, the biochemistry recorded was amazing in its breadth and depth. Many of their drug targets show incredible promise as treatments for debilitating and terrible diseases, and I suspect that given sufficient time and resources, Lexicon will eventually produce a product of note and value.

Posted by Derksen at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I feel that I am finally done with the preliminary writing for my literature review, and with any luck I will not feel the need to drastically revise or add to it again in the near future. Of course, barring a miracle, someone else will probably have a few suggestions for improvement. It currently masses in at approximately thirty and a half pages in length when double spaced at twelve-point "Times New Roman" font, and is followed by a little more than eleven pages of single-spaced citations and references. It will probably still undergo some trimming and slimming in places, and some expansions in others - but for the most part the whole of the thing is written and done and out of my way. Now I just have to avoid plagiarizing myself while I finish writing chapter introductions to experiments and then in discussing my results.

Posted by Derksen at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The day just keeps getting better. Here we are in December, but I have finally received a not-insignificant check from the "Dade County AgriCouncil". I was glad to receive the reward, and I will be glad to send them a copy of my thesis and any associated publications as I finish them.

Posted by Derksen at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know, there are very few moments in cinematic history that actually pull a truly emotional reaction from me. Stephen Spielberg's Jurassic Park is one of them. You know the moment. It's the one where you meet your first live dinosaur for the first time. John Williams' score begins to swell, and the brachiosaur comes over the rise, trumpeting mournfully.

I've probably been waiting for that particular moment my whole life.

I really am in the wrong field.

Posted by Derksen at 8:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The man was filled with shadow,
the land was bathed in sun.

The afternoon was waning,
the man was on the run.

He had to get to Reno,
his future there to find.

He had to get to Reno,
before he changed his mind.

If life is but a gamble,
and each is dealt one hand,
he had to get to Reno
to play his one-man band.

Truth may prove elusive,
old beer may lose its fizz,
but a man who leaves his shadow
can change his was
to is.

My father, ever the poet.

Posted by Derksen at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To be presented on November 17th, at the Entomological Society of America meeting in Reno, Nevada.

Posted by Derksen at 6:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have several hours to kill in Paris before my friends get off of work and can join me in frivolity, and so of course while wandering down the Seine, I eventually wind up in a library. I am ever slave to the written word, even if it is not in my own tongue. I figure that even if I am on vacation, I can afford to spend some time looking through the entomological section of the library for a French perspective on les thysanoptères. This rapidly proves to be a moderately amusing exercise in futility: thrips are no more popular in French than they are in English. Out of thousands of pages dedicated to les insectes, I can find perhaps two pages on thrips. My spanish is good enough to make a rough translation of what I read, and it seems that the same problems plague researchers in France as elsewhere: thrips may be incredibly diverse and a significant crop pest, but they're just too damn small to work with.

The rest of the library is of course, more thrilling. This is a building that was constructed around a small forest, and which is flanked on its sides by apartment-building sized towers, all full of books. They have resources in many different languages, and I run through the science section, stopping here and there to flip through a volume on DNA or paleontology. More wonderful is their display of the truly impressive Coronelli globes. This pair of two-ton globes were originally constructed for Louis XIV, the "Sun King". At this, my inner musketeer is awakened, and my ongoing love-affair with globalization continues. They were objects of science as much as they were objects of art, and they expressed the Sun King's power in a very explicit and clear fashion.

I would have taken more photos, but flash photography was forbidden in order to protect the pigments on the star and earth globes. I respect the preservation of such art and science, but one of these days I am going to have to remember to bring a tripod for long exposures in low-light conditions.

Posted by Derksen at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Wordle of my literature review for Scirtothrips dorsalis. I am amused to note that et al displays with as high a frequency as it does.

Posted by Derksen at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today, I scored my second photo credit. This time, a representative from Catalpha Advertising & Design contacted me on behalf of their client, "DM Health Systems", and requested to use the above image in promotional materials and packaging for their insect-screening product. While it isn't fame and acclaim, and it certainly isn't a paycheck that will convince me to give all this up to become a full-time nature-photographer, at least it provides another line on my increasingly diverse CV.

Posted by Derksen at 6:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have collected and counted 31,785 thrips on 472 3x5" sticky card traps since July 19th of last year. My research thrips of interest, Scirtothrips dorsalis, accounts for 84.04% of all captures. The next two species that account for the largest proportion of thrips collected during the year are Frankliniella schultzei, at 3.59% of all captures, and Gynaikothrips uzeli, who account for another 3.05% of all thrips trapped. I would suggest that this implies that S. dorsalis represents the predominant thrips species on my two host plots throughout the year.

Next week I will collect my final traps for this project, and with sixty weekly sampling periods, this experiment will be complete.

Obviously this project would have been improved if I had access to larger and more field plots from which to sample. This project could have been further improved if these additional sample plots had been from a broader geographic distribution both in south Florida and across the state. It might also have been more informative had it included samples taken from around additional host plants, and had it included an additional variable - measuring captures on traps at an increasing distance from certain host plots.

Officially, this was my "back-burner" project. I did not receive support or encouragement to continue or expand this project during its first three months, and once officially endorsed, it was suggested that I direct my enthusiasm for improving this experiment elsewhere. I was discouraged from modifying the experiment in order to achieve the improvements I have mentioned above.

This experiment is now one of the fundamental planks of my thesis.

Graduate school is all about realizing that you are in charge, and perhaps more fundamentally, that you probably do know what you are doing and where you should be going. Cast off self-doubt, and pursue reasonable research goals that are endorsed by your peers. Follow your heart. Most important of all?

Graduate.

Posted by Derksen at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Time alone - oh, time will tell: ya think you're in heaven, but ya living in hell."
- Bob Marley, Time will Tell

So the news is this: I will not be graduating in December.

Members of my committee feel that I could stand to repeat two of my experiments by expanding the number of treatments, and by increasing the number of repetitions within those experiments. I will collect data on these experiments for another two months, which will put me two weeks from the departmental deadline for thesis defense, and it is extremely unlikely that I would be able to complete my analysis and writing while dealing with the obstacles of bureaucracy at the University of Florida. As such, I will most probably defend in January, and graduate in May of next year.

I am of mixed feelings on this subject.

While I rather wish that they had reached these conclusions before approving and endorsing the experiments in the first place so that I would do it right the first time, this is also the first time in two years that I have had clear objectives and a deadline. I know exactly what I need to do in order to finish.

Posted by Derksen at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
- Lazarus Long, in Robert Heinlein's Time Enough for Love

Posted by Derksen at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Derksen at 4:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"You know how I love to watch you work, but I’ve got my country’s five-hundredth anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. I’m swamped."
- Prince Humperdinck, the Princess Bride

The Book of Hours that will determine my ebb and flow for the next six months:

• Degree Application Deadline
  September 19, 2008
  This is the last date by which to apply for graduation using UF's registration system.
  I've completed this, but I should reconfirm.
• Doctoral dissertation first submission
  October 13, 2008 4:00 PM
  While this is not actually a deadline that I am responsible for, it is a good target date to keep in mind in order to complete my defense by the following date.
• Master’s Thesis First Submission
  November 3, 2008 4:00 PM
  Thesis first submission (defended, signed, formatted, on paper) to Editorial (160 Grinter) for review. While this is technically a draft submission, everything actually already needs to be done by this date in order to satisfy my committee.
• Final Thesis Submission
  December 2, 2008 5:00 PM
  Deadline for “Final Clearance” status in the EDM system in order to qualify for degree this term. If there were any significant or substantial changes from two weeks ago, I'd never have passed the defense. This deadline is really for sorting out additional paperwork and dealing with technical formatting issues and printing standards.
• Degree Certification
  December 23, 2008
  Congratulations. Assuming that you didn't screw things up, you're done and you can move on with your life. Have a very merry Christmas!

Posted by Derksen at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Flight data for Scirtothrips dorsalis around two hosts, Rosa 'Radrazz' and Conocarpus erectus for approximately one year - before and after transformation by the natural log. Kindly ignore the posted trendlines, as they are mostly irrelevant and unduly influenced by start and endpoints.

BEFORE:

There are obviously absolutely more thrips flying around the roses than around the buttonwood year-round, but a more interesting question to ask is whether the rate changes between those notable peaks and valleys are similar for the two hosts. This graph suggests some similarity between the two flight populations, but scale makes it difficult to eyeball an answer. I am further plagued by inconstant variance that increases as a function of the mean - not an atypical trend among natural biological populations. This linear transformation I will apply helps to normalize the data, and it will also remove some of the problems of scale:

AFTER:

While I still need to go through and confirm statistically that these weekly rate changes line up between the two hosts, it does appear a lot more likely that thrips are changing their weekly flight behavior around both hosts in a similar fashion throughout the year. Host is certainly relevant to the total number of thrips available for flight (data not presented here!), but other factors which are constant for both hosts might explain the relative weekly rate of thrips in flight about those hosts.

I obviously need to compare this data to environmental factors, and to the on-plant population densities that I have also recorded during the last year.

Is this progress? I don't really know. It is a hell of a lot of data to poke through.

Posted by Derksen at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Ow! Damn roses! Damn thorns!"
- Seymour Krelborn, Little Shop of Horrors

I totally feel his pain. I was pruning again today, and those things are vicious. Just remember, whatever you do - don't feed the plants!

Posted by Derksen at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"The lack of molecular-only and molecular and morphology support for monophyly of the S. dorsalis complex suggests that this 'species' may actually be comprised of several morphologically indistinguishable species which can only be separated using molecular analyses..."
- Hoddle et al 2008b

As discussed earlier, I suggest (as do authors Inoue and Sakurai in the paper described) that in order to better resolve the phylogenetic relationships between the assorted genera of family Thripidae, someone would first have to expand the analysis of genus Scirtothrips by sequencing and comparing several unambiguously defined species for that genus at the always-popular COI allele. Now, the Hoddle lab at UC: Riverside has done precisely that.

Continue reading ""work that is sure to come"" »

Posted by Derksen at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"For science to work, clear questions, hypotheses, and testable predictions are an absolute must. Without them, research is blind and typically ineffective."
- Zachary Blount

Posted by Derksen at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My encounter with the invasive Cuban Knight anole earlier this morning.

Posted by Derksen at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It occurs to me that I could use a course in multivariate statistics, and maybe a nice refresher in basic statistics, and maybe someone familiar with the prosecution of complex data sets with multiple regression with whom to consult with so that I feel more confident about my results. Then again, maybe this is asking too much.

Graduate school frequently feels like flying blind. I suspect that this sort of thing should appeal to me, as it has never bothered me to skate alone and in the dark on novel roads. Just as those wild nights, this project should be an exhilarating exploration of the unknown, with each step a perilous and exciting finding, and each mishap a grand struggle to recover from with verve and delight... but instead I feel unsupported and lost most of the time.

Independence is great, but even freedom needs guidelines. Without them, I just find myself free falling.

Posted by Derksen at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Irony is being bitten by mosquitoes while working in a wooden shed that has been riddled by termites... a storage shed that is completely full of pesticides.

Posted by Derksen at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A little less than a month later, and the article is finally published. They really should have retouched the image they used to give it better color depth and contrast.

It is additionally amusing to note their awareness and acknowledgement of Florida as one of the invasive species capitals of the world. It is a state with many ports which see considerable traffic from the world over. This is where the invasion begins - but not with a bang, or a whimper. Just the steady whine of airplane engines or the gradual heave of an unending supply of container ships. When combined with Florida's steady warm and humid sub-tropical atmosphere, it provides a near-ideal home and inevitable point of establishment for some of the many and diverse things which normally crawl or fly through other more alien skies.

Posted by Derksen at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There aren't nearly enough hours in the day to get the things I would like to get done accomplished. Perhaps another reminder to be learned from graduate school: nearly everything takes far longer than you expected. The same could be said for many of the important events of life; if you don't budget for accidents or interruptions, you'll never arrive on time. Of course, it never seems to matter when I plan anything. Reality is resistant to this. On the other hand, having occasionally tried to fly by the seat of my pants, I find that having some form of plan is better than no plan at all. At least then you have something to complain about when everything falls apart.

Posted by Derksen at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Greenhouse Canada has requested permission to use your image. This photo will accompany a May feature by Graeme Murphy, IPM specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs."

Well, while I am not certain that this constitutes a traditional scientific publication that will go on my CV or resume, I do have to admit that I am thrilled to hear that someone is making use of the photo. I took them so that someone might make use them. Kudos to the University of Georgia and their Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health for hosting and sharing the images, and kudos to the Creative Commons licensing that helps to make such sharing possible.

All of this just makes me want to take more and better photos.

Posted by Derksen at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know what hurts more than you think it would?

Imagine plucking a rosebud, and driving one of those small and needle-sharp thorns that hides just beneath the sepals into the soft and fleshy pad of your thumb, and another just beneath your nail. There is no blood, and at first there is no pain. Now imagine that you have been rinsing these roses in alcohol (you know: to get the thrips off?), and savor the sting for a little while.

Almost better than coffee when it comes to the mid-afternoon wakeup call.

Posted by Derksen at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune, - often the surfeit
of our own behavior, - we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
if we were villains by necessity; fools by
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star!"

- King Lear: Act I, Scene II

Posted by Derksen at 8:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When in doubt, speak to your committee.

They are very helpful people who are full of ideas, and they want you to do well.

Posted by Derksen at 5:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well.

Hunh.

I guess it turns out that I am not totally incompetent after all, and that my thesis research has the potential to be interesting to somebody outside of the academic community. It seems that I have recently been awarded the "Dennis Carpenter Memorial Fellowship", sponsored by the Dade County AgriCouncil.

This is kind of odd, and kind of flattering.

I've never really received money for writing up an idea before.

It kind of feels good.

Posted by Derksen at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So... I remembered a few things about myself this weekend. I have been housesitting for one of the folks related to the research station, and it reminded me of what I liked about living and working around a real home.

The first is that I really like stereo sound, and I have missed it terribly. I plugged my host's speakers to my laptop, and the improvement in my movie-watching capability was dramatic. Headphones are okay, but nothing beats the freedom a pair of cheap speakers and a small subwoofer can provide. I can only imagine how much better my surround sound system will appear to me when I finally return to civilization and a television that provides more than monaural output.

The second thing I have rediscovered is that I focus better with less white noise. I am okay with music blazing clear, or random nature rustling in the background, but the steady whine of machinery like the incubator beside my desk can be incredibly distracting. It gets inside my head and it grinds against my brain - and it drives me crazy. It makes me want to plug my ears up and go to sleep.

So I just need to find good clear sound for my brain to function right.

Muses, are you listening?

Posted by Derksen at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is announcements like this one that remind me why I should take my current graduate studies seriously. While I may not be directly involved with the crafting of said bioengineered organisms, I am examining and exploring the small-scale dispersal of a creature difficult to observe. This experience may prove vital in exploring the consequences of a large-scale release of some future engineered creature.

"The purpose of the USDA Biotechnology Risk Assessment Grants (BRAG) Program is to assist Federal regulatory agencies in making science-based decisions about the effects of introducing genetically modified organisms into the environment. Investigations of effects on both managed and natural environments are relevant. Applications to the USDA BRAG Program must seek partial funding for a conference or address one of the following areas:

1. Identify and develop practices to minimize risks associated with genetically engineered organisms;
2. Research methods to monitor the dispersal of genetically engineered organisms;
3. Research to increase knowledge about the characteristics, rates, and methods of gene transfer that may occur between genetically engineered organisms, and related organisms;
4. Perform assessments to provide analysis which compares impacts of organisms modified through genetic engineering to other types of production systems;
5. Other areas of research designed to further the purposes of the USDA BRAG program."

I need to keep my eyes on this money, because I would like to work with whatever labs become more directly involved in tackling this project.

Posted by Derksen at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adult Geiger beetles aggregating on the underside of a leaf on a Geiger tree just off of US1 on the road to Key West. The beetles are precinctive to the area, and the Geiger tree is their only known host. A friend of mine is working on some of the interesting defensive behavior that the beetles' larvae display.

Posted by Derksen at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Folks who have known me entirely too long for their own good might be amused to take note of the following lab vehicle:

It is almost as old as my old yeep, and has just as many problems with the air conditioning, power steering, brakes, windows, engine, and oil - but it is also just as responsive as my old warhorse once was. In fact, when I first made its acquaintance, I was not completely certain that it was not my old beast. It would have been fitting and appropriate for us to have found one another thousands of miles from where we last parted ways.

For such a lunker of a car, it handles pretty well - and could probably manage any exit that the highway might provide.

Posted by Derksen at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know, there is something to be said for striking while the iron is hot. Lately, I've been entirely too distracted for my own good. This leaves me full of ideas and potential... that are sadly often left incomplete. I am trying to put the pieces back together into the semblance of a human being, but there are fits and false starts. It is going to take a lot of personal effort to finish this degree while simultaneously trying to figure out where I am going next, and why I will be going there - all while trying to retain or manage the ghost of a personal life that might give greater meaning or purpose to the whole process of human existence.

There is also something to be said for productive slacking. Yesterday evening, my roommate and I tore out of here to see a concert. I did not get anything degree-related accomplished last night, but I have been remarkably productive thus far this morning. I may be easily distracted, but if I am at peace, I can focus on completing even a distasteful and uninteresting task.

I obviously need more slack in my life. As always, I am open to suggestion.

Posted by Derksen at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While searching for recent publications on my research creature of focus, I stumbled upon the UniProt database entry for the two sequences used to develop a phylogeny for family Thripidae. It is almost enough to drive me in search of the ITS1 and ITS2 sequences for the species, because I am sure it would further illuminate the phylogeny for the family as a whole.

Maybe later, when I am not supposed to be working on the dispersal ecology of the critter?

Posted by Derksen at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Christmas came early this year. Not by much, but still early. My textbook for next semester's course in "insect molecular genetics" arrived in the mail today, and it basically contains every reason I went back to graduate school.

I can only hope that the class as a whole follows the preface to the text. Evolution, expression, parasitism, development, transmogrification... everything a budding young scientist out to create an army of transgenic monsters could want to begin his plans for world domination. It isn't the hands-on manual that I need just yet, but it is a good review of the literature as a whole, and a starting point for the direction I would rather have had my graduate career travel.

There is even a section on the value of negative and positive controls in an experiment, which implies that I am not alone in assuming their importance to a study.

So I hope to continue to be happy about these developments. If nothing else comes of it, the book is a good fun read. Which I think says a lot more about me and what I'd like to be working on and working with than it does about the text.

Posted by Derksen at 5:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This weekend, some lucky cads found out quite by accident that the UF graduate student insurance information listserv had been left open and unsecured, and that anyone replying to it could be heard and read by all recipients. This security failure eventually resulted in an amusing series of postings from the very diverse graduate student community. It certainly resulted in an undue amount of what could be considered "spam" in many persons' mailboxes, but it also showed a strong desire among the graduate student body for some sort of forum or mailing list where we could find common cause and to try and connect with one another as just another oppressed minority outside of our own departments.

The messages received contained humor, a request for volunteers at the local homeless shelter, the complete text of Beowulf, an offer for a slightly used Suzuki Bandit, suggestions for Christmas presents, and a recipe for baked potatoes that I will now share with you:

The Perfect Baked Potatoe

"This baked potato has a crisp, golden skin, and is light and fluffy on the inside. Great comfort food!"

PREP TIME 1 Minute
COOK TIME 1 Hr 30 Min
READY IN 1 Hr 31 Min

INGREDIENTS

• 1 medium baking potato
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons butter
• 1 pinch freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Scrub the potato, and pierce the skin several times with a knife or fork. Rub the skin with olive oil, then with salt.
2. Place the potato in the preheated oven, and bake for 90 minutes, or until slightly soft and golden brown. Slice the potato down the center, and serve with butter and black pepper. Sprinkle shredded Cheddar cheese over the top, if desired.

For a treat, try slicing the very top of the potato off rather than slicing it in two, forming a 'lid'. Scoop out the fluffy contents of the potato, keeping the skin intact. Mix the potato in a bowl with butter, grated cheese and black pepper, then spoon the mixture back into the skin. Replace the lid and serve.

Posted by Derksen at 7:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So... late last night (early this morning?), I finally met with my advisor to discuss the current status of my research. At midnight. Just as I was starting to fall asleep at my desk, just outside her office. I'd been sitting on standby since at least eight. On a Friday night. The job comes first.

Whatever it takes.

The good news is that I have convinced her that at least two of the major planks of my project are well underway and producing interesting and publishable data. I can say a thing or two about when a chili thrips might decide to fly, and suggest the environmental factors that might be necessary to satisfy their internal air-traffic controller, and which members of the population appear to be more prone to flight under particular conditions. Now I just need a third stable plank to complete the story, and we both suspect that experiments I have already launched looking at the reproductive biology of the thrips might be enough to satisfy the conditions set for my Master's.

Time will tell, but until then I will remain guardedly and cautiously optimistic.

Posted by Derksen at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(but only for now...)

Posted by Derksen at 6:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Derksen at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I often find that knowing the answer to a question is not nearly as important as knowing how to find that answer.

Posted by Derksen at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Inoue and Sakurai's 2007 paper represents some excellent work, but as the figure simplifying some of their results demonstrates, it also shows how little effort has been placed on sequencing the genus Scirtothrips when compared to other genera of thrips. One of the obvious conclusions that the authors reach from their results is that sampling more sequences from broader populations and different species of genus Scirtothrips (which inspired the figure above, having "an ambiguous phylogenetic position in this study") would help to better establish the position of the clade in relation to other groups. Curiously enough, a much larger sampling of genus Scirtothrips already exists (Rugman-Jones et al, 2006), but it focused on sequencing samples for ITS1 and 2, and not COI or EF-1a. Furthermore, the Rugman-Jones et al laboratory were using RFLP to establish a standardized amplification protocol, and had not yet attempted to construct the inevitable phylogeny that is sure to follow for the group. I am uncertain as to whether species of genus Thrips or Frankliniella have already been sequenced at these alleles, but given their economic importance, it would not surprise me and those observations should be compared to the work that is sure to come from the Rugman-Jones lab.

Moreover, these experiments show precisely why taxonomy and phylogenetics remain critical tools relevant to modern management programs. As both teams of authors clearly demonstrate, phylogenetics can be turned to tasks beyond what some critics have derided as "merely academic interest in the evolutionary history of a group". The primary aim of Inoue and Sakurai's research was to compare the evolutionary phylogeny of the pests to their competence as a vector for several different strains of Tospovirus (Bunyaviridae). Determining the evolutionary relationships between the groups should allow one to predict the suitability of other species within that group as potential vectors for various strains, and perhaps provide a better explanation as to how the Tospovirus made its evolutionary leap from a virus that infected insect-tissue to one that could also invade a plant. The primary goal of the Rugman-Jones project was to provide a quick and dirty molecular solution to the occasionally painful task of taxonomic identification and its reliance on a few trained specialists sometimes using highly variable morphological characters.

The USDA has already launched a similar project, using phylogenetic information to document family relationships and the associated pesticide resistance profiles for several reproductively incompatible demes of whitefly. They are alleged to be in the nascent stages of a thrips-based project which hopes to resolve and establish the missing characters for these groups so that a true phylogenetic comparison can be established...

REFERENCES

• Inoue, T and Sakurai, T (2007). "The phylogeny of thrips (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) based on partial sequences of cytochrome oxidase I, 28S ribosomal DNA and elongation factor-1a and the association with vector competence of tospoviruses." Applied Entomological Zoology 42(1): 71 - 81.
• Rugman-Jones, PF; Hoddle, MS; Mound, LA; Stouthammer, R (2006). "Molecular Identification Key for Pest Species of Scirtothrips (Thysanoptera: Thripidae)." Journal of Economic Entomology 99(5): 1813.

Posted by Derksen at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"The only reported difference between these two species is the length of the pronotal posteroangular pair of setae (Mound et al. 1995)."
- from Held et al, 2005

The differences between the Cuban Laurel Thrips, Gynaikothrips ficorum, and the Weeping Fig Thrips, Gynaikothrips uzeli, are minimal. This seems to be a typical problem with many of the genera of thrips, and is a strong motivator for other means (Brunner et al, 2002) by which to identify individual species.

REFERENCES

• Brunner, PC; Flemming, C; Frey, JE (2002). "A molecular identification key for economically important thrips species (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) using direct sequencing and a PCR-RFLP-based approach." Agricultural and Forest Entomology, 4: 127 – 136.
• Held, DW; Boyd, D; Lockley, T; Edwards, GB (2005). "Gynaikothrips uzeli (Thysanoptera: Phlaethripidae) in the southeastern United States: distribution and review of biology." Florida Entomologist, 88(4):538 - 540.
• Mound, LA; Wang, CL; Okajima, S (1995). "Observations in Taiwan on the identity of the Cuban laurel thrips (Thysanoptera, Phlaeothripidae)." Journal of the New York Entomological Society, 103: 185 - 190.

Posted by Derksen at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Okay... I am now convinced that I am reaching the correct conclusions for the wrong reasons. Just a little more tinkering to convince the software that I really do want it to run a multiple regression testing for interaction between my two factors, and eventually I'll get there.

Posted by Derksen at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As you can see, I am making as much of Time as I can. The thrips seem to be making better use of such time, as their populations are recently rebounding on my rosebuds.

Posted by Derksen at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know, I spend almost as much time fighting with and relearning new software packages just about every other year as I do actually using said programs for statistical analysis. I need more familiarity with the basic practice of statistics before I feel truly comfortable tearing apart any application and actually convincing it to do what I want it to do.

And then I need something heavy to drop on the computer until it magically produces the graphical depiction of the data that I want it to.

Posted by Derksen at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ow.

The problem with stopping every now and again to appreciate nature and to smell the flowers is that sometimes you stop on top of a fire ant mound.

In flipflops.

Ow ow ow ow.

Cue profanity.

Ow.

Posted by Derksen at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

That was quite the experience, shared with approximately ninety thousand of my close personal friends. It was good to see the game in the flesh, and such a thing could prove habit-forming if I had the time and the money to attend. I was constantly amazed at how much better the picture was in reality when compared with watching the game on television. Well, almost any television - and that problem and my scratched glasses should be repaired by Wednesday. It was still fairly disconcerting to be looking for and never see the handy lines that most networks overlay on the video, directing your eye to the ball or to the first down or even the most recent slow-motion replay. Whatever did people do before the creation of the Jumbotron?

The Florida Gators were rather loud and enthusiastic. And orange and blue, apparently. Not quite as crazy as some universities, but still... very enthusiastic. The Gators were also victorious - which was actually somewhat disappointing. I'd rather have seen an amazing game between two equally matched opponents, but while Western Kentucky provided a few amazing feints and a good short passing game, they never claimed the yardage they needed, and their defense might as well have been made of Kleenex for all the good it did them. The game was called with eight minutes remaining in the fourth quarter "due to rain", but it was a mercy-killing for the drowning Hilltoppers.

While the Gators walked through this game without much effort, it will be interesting to see how well they respond to a real challenge. On the bright side, Tebow continues his extremely promising career as quarterback. I am surprised that the University did not rely on him more last season, as he actually knows how to pass and run when the opportunity strikes him. I expect this year's successes will be harder earned, but also more worthwhile.

Time will tell.

Posted by Derksen at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have officially moved into new digs.

In some ways, they aren't much of an improvement. The walls are still choked with mildew and mold, and my allergies are just as outrageous every morning.

In other ways, there has been a vast improvement in my quality of living. I now have twice as much floorspace in my room, taller ceilings, and carpets. I also have one less roommate to share the main living space with. Not altogether unreasonable. I mean, aside from the purple carpets and the pink curtains.

Photos forthcoming.

Posted by Derksen at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If graduate school has taught me nothing else, I now read the "materials and methods" sections of papers with far more scrutiny than in the past. I make too many assumptions about how sensible a scientist might be while performing an experiment.

Posted by Derksen at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are a few things about Homestead worth noting:

• At night (so long as you are not facing Miami, and it is not raining) you can see the stars.
• There are moments and spaces here where the grounds are actually quite pretty. Exotic tropical plants help.
• There sure are a hell of a lot of critters crawling around in the undergrowth to entertain an amateur naturalist.
• There are still sunsets every evening.
• I always did say I wanted a job where I spent half the day outside, and the other half inside the lab analyzing data. Almost the right job, but nothing in the world beats data.
• Every day, I have more data.

Posted by Derksen at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was just given the go-ahead to set up my wireless in the lab.

Zing!

I am writing this from the other side of the room, away from my desk. Now I'd like to see how much of a signal I can leapfrog back to the trailers. If I were to do so, I might become an immediate hero to my peers.

Next stop? Networked printer.

Posted by Derksen at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey, I have data.

Nothing feels better than data!

Of course, it turns out that my thrips may actually have made the jump from infested host-rose to Schefflera far faster than I'd initially imagined, and I may have to repeat the experiment with a higher resolution for data collection in the initial stages. Whatever! This is still great news for me because it means that at heart, the basic experimental design is functional and valid, and I might actually get some real results that I can interpret.

Of course, this is provided that the few chili thrips larvae I spotted on leaves aren't just statistical flukes, or that my assumptions about thrips-damage on host leaves turn out to be true... and then I still have to develop a host-damage profile for Schefflera, and to try and correlate plant damage levels to thrips population levels... but who cares? Right now, the project might be working, and that is really all that matters.

Posted by Derksen at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am not sure that my roommates and I have the same understanding of the word "hygiene".

Posted by Derksen at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scirtothrips dorsalis is small even by thrips standards. A large female chili thrips is pictured above with a distant cousin, Frankliniella occidentalis, the "western flower thrips", on a sample of "thrips proof screen". While this screen is usually sufficient to keep all but the most persistent and determined of flower thrips off of your plants, you can see that a chili thrips could potentially squeeze between the gaps offered by the nylon, and sneak inside. This is an important finding because some rose growers use this screen to protect their precious flowers from thrips, and it turns out that chili thrips also like to feed on the buds of growing roses. If growers are faced with an infestation of chili thrips, they will have to find and use other methods to protect their flowers.

On the other side of the coin, I may be able to use this mesh to create an exclusion barrier for flower thrips to determine if they in turn are excluding chili thrips from adult flowers through competition (and possibly predation!), or whether my thrips just like the growing buds of flowers and leave them once the flower matures.

Posted by Derksen at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is a good thing I like scope-work, because lately - I've been doing a whole hell of a lot of it.

Posted by Derksen at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Another look at the thrips I will be working on, Scirtothrips dorsalis Hood.

This time, the photo credit is mine.

Posted by Derksen at 6:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the advantages to my new home is that the sun peeks in through my window as it rises, and very little will keep its persistant determination from lifting the lids of my eyes for very long. As a result, I was up at what might normally be considered an unnaturally early hour of the morning for myself - especially on the weekend. Lacking anything better to do with my time, or failing to want to do anything more than get some breakfast and go back to sleep, I watched my version of Saturday morning cartoons on Google Video.

I put a bagel in the toaster, spread some peanut butter on it, and sat down to watch Craig Mello give a talk at Google corporate headquarters on his Nobel-winning research on RNAi as part of their continuing seminar series on emerging technologies. The tech talks are interesting because they give you a look into what the almighty Google is thinking about buying and turning into their next cash-cow. Dr. Mello's talk is interesting because he is a good speaker and does an excellent job of translating highly technical jargon into plain english that the layperson might understand and appreciate without feeling condescended to. That, and he is talking about RNA interference, one of the single most interesting and important topics to hop along through molecular biology in the last ten years. To say that I am excited by its potential application in various subfields of biology and chemistry would be something of an understatement.

If you have an hour and ten minutes to kill, I highly recommend that you check it out...

Posted by Derksen at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, I guess it is official: I am now trailer trash living at the University of Florida's Tropical Research and Education Center.

Ironically enough, the University has these trailers as FEMA leftovers from the last time an Andrew visited town. They maintain them because Homestead is an hour south of Miami, and even renting property in the ghetto is prohibitively expensive for graduate students. Of course, "maintained" is a term subject to qualitative observations, and it has been more than fifteen years and a few more hurricanes since these trailers were new. That, and apparently many graduate students do not take very good care of their living space. My share of the trailer is a 7x7x7 cube that I can almost turn around in. Thank god it holds the fishtank in a corner on top of a dilapidated dresser - but I miss my old kitchen (and my dishwasher!) already.

Posted by Derksen at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Once again, as I prepare to leave Gainesville for Homestead, I find myself indebted to my friends. I'd never have been able to thrive and survive here without the lot of you, and I certainly would not have been able to move out of here without your aid and assistance throughout the process.

You were an unlooked-for bonus in this town, and you kept me sane and you kept me from dropping out. You emphasized that I could survive this program and this project so long as I found a way to make it mine, and that there was always time to prepare for a superior doctoral experience. You reminded me that there was more to research than reading, and that one's interactions with one's colleagues will inevitably prove more valuable in the real world beyond the Ivory Tower. You also knew how to throw a wild party, and I found happiness in your company.

Thanks.

Posted by Derksen at 2:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, then. As of approximately a quarter past noon today, I was done with this semester. Now I just have to assemble my graduate committee for a meeting discussing my research project based around thrips dispersal, and to finish packing.

One final look at the apartment before I begin to disassemble it?

I dislike moving, and I will miss this place. I have actually become somewhat fond of this apartment, as it suits many of my needs and my desires in a home. It could have used newer appliances, and the roaches were an occasional annoyance, but it had excellent counter-space, an open kitchen, and reasonable storage space for the size. This was a home I was proud to welcome friends into. As always, I will miss the people more than the place - but it was a good location to set down roots for a while.

Posted by Derksen at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My goals for graduate school were as follows:

1. To familiarize myself with a broad array of modern molecular techniques and technologies, and to expand my direct experience with those tools while exploring a project of both significance and utility to the society that produced me.
   
2. To enhance my knowledge of the processes underlying evolutionary biology, and to contribute something to our understanding of the science.
   
3. To increase my teaching experience, and to focus on pedagogy aimed at college undergraduates.

Posted by Derksen at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My friends are always so helpful:

[We] came up with a proposal in haiku format:

To my professors:
I'd like to do bugs and stuff.
All for now, Andrew.

We were thinking about replacing the final line with something deep like:

"My soul screams in vain"

but figured that was putting too much effort into it.

My thanks as always to the family Ketcherside.

Posted by Derksen at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sun, iced and spiced coffee, David Bowie on the radio, and another four hours of hammering at my proposal. I've managed to refine it to three major topic areas, but defining specific questions to answer and hypotheses to test has proved somewhat difficult. I am a creature prone to wandering from one idea to another as part of an interconnected whole, but science is better written when it is focused and addresses particular details instead of drifting aimlessly across the map. It does not help that at least two of my major topic areas experience some significant overlap, and extracting the effects of particular variables is either going to require a lot of little experiments or one massive multivariate mess that may not be able to extract the significance of any particular element. In this light, writing my proposal has been a bit like biking uphill: you'd best switch major gears before you get there, because changing topics in the road is likely to slip your chain and find you going nowhere.

Posted by Derksen at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know, after considerable thought on the subject and some reflection on the desires of my past, I have arrived at a conclusion of sorts: if I could say something about the future trajectory of my life based on where I have been and what I would like to be doing, I would like to be responsible for developing and releasing genetically modified organisms into the environment for specialized functional purposes.

Posted by Derksen at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just for the record, while pulling an all-nighter gets easier with practice and caffeine, they haven't gotten any easier with age. The worst part is learning just how much longer the recovery period takes. Still, it is amazing what a few carefully placed cups of coffee and just a few earnest cat-naps can do to pull you through to the weekend.

Posted by Derksen at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A little bit of homework from the good folks at DPI:

These are a pair of 'unknown' Phlaeothripids whom I need to identify and familiarize myself with. I should be thrilled - they are more than twice the size of the thrips I will be working with.

Posted by Derksen at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"My dear, descended from the apes! Let us hope it is not true, but if it is, let us pray it will not become generally known."
- attributed to the wife of the Bishop of Worcester, in reaction to the infamous debate between TH Huxley and the Bishop Wilberforce

While I do not subscribe to the "great man" theory of history, there is no question that Charles Darwin happened to be the right scientist in the right place at the right time. Spurred on to publication by Alfred Russel Wallace, the "father of biogeography", his observations from years of collected research led him to conclusions that shook the foundations of biology and the society built atop that platform. His work brought forth a mechanism by which the whole of diversity might be explained within the context of geological history. When linked to the evidence of heredity first explored by Mendel, and then confirmed at the molecular level by Watson and Crick (and Franklin!), it provided the unifying synthesis of modern biology.

As I am dedicating my life to following the science that he helped to establish, it is with some interest that I note that my own life has from time to time, accidentally fallen into Darwin's footsteps. I have touched the same armoured glyptodontids that he helped to unearth in Southern Argentina at the Museo de la Plata. I have stood in the home he kept, and looked through the study to the desk at which he wrote much of his work. Lately, I have seen the villainous vinchuca that was to bring him low in his later years with Chagas disease in a new light, and finally, I have stood atop his grave at Westminster Abbey in London.

Everyone has their heroes.

Happy Darwin Day, everybody.

Posted by Derksen at 1:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As part of my duties as a graduate student, I am required to give the occasional tour of the facility to interested folks from the general public. These range in age and experience from elementary school children to concerned growers from agricultural communities, and it is my responsibility to shed a little more light into the science of entomology - as well as to underline the research that the department here at the University of Florida is responsible for. I personally enjoy these tours, and get an extra-special kick out of the kids because I get to stand up on a podium and have fun talking about the weird diversity of everyone's favorite creepie-crawlies for an hour. It gets even better when the kids know how to ask good and pertinent questions, like "how did you arrive at [that impressively large number] describing the number of different species of insects there are?" - or "how did you figure out approximately how many insects might live in a common acre of farmland without actually counting them all?" I love the little skeptics among them best, and I suspect that they are going to have a very bright future. Anyone who refuses to simply accept facts as they are spoon-fed to them is an awesome and attentive human being - and seeing a fourth grader question methodologies, results, and conclusions is even better. An informed mind can follow a pattern and find their way out of a particular situation - but a critical mind can eventually work its way around overcome any obstacle in the path to truth.

Of course, working and touring around the entomology department has its own unique risks. Little things, like stopping off to let the kids (and their chaperones!) take a bathroom break next to a classroom with a lecture in medical entomology. At which point the professor might stick his head out, and wave you over for a little discussion...

"Oh - sorry, Dr. Kaufman - are they being too loud? I'll move 'em out of here real fast, and get their parents to shush them a bit if they are distracting..."
"No, no - not that at all. I'm just about to show a few slides of sarcophagids."
"Flesh flies?"
"Yes. On hosts. From a... (whispered) crime scene."
"Oh."
"Right."

Disaster averted, we take them into the other room, and instead introduce them to "Sally" and a box full of her friends, giant cave roaches from central america.

For some reason, this always seems to go over well.

Posted by Derksen at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And like that, on the first day of the semester, I am magically made unto a Teaching Assistant (aide-in-training) for the undergraduate survey course, Principles of Entomology. This feels kind of strange, as I have neither taken the course, nor extensive prior experience in entomology - but nonetheless, here I am. On the bright side, while I do not know my entomology backwards and forth, I do know biology - and I actually may even have a little more teaching experience than some of my peers. I guess all that time substitute teaching or working with the "gifted and talented" kids paid off.

It should be noted that I will receive neither pay nor credit for my efforts - but I will gain more invaluable familiarity within the science of entomology as a whole... and maybe a nice letter of reference for my good behavior.

Time will tell.

Posted by Derksen at 3:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So...

The semester is over and done with, and I am done for as well - at least for the next two or three days. Then I really need to get back to work to try and define my project proposal for my Master's research. The growth rate for Scirtothrips on common commercial plants in Florida temperatures and humidities appears mostly under-documented, and I figure that this would be a valuable starting place for my research. I'd like to follow it by exploring thrips dispersal patterns. Population densities and local humidity appear to be important in influencing brachyptery and macroptery - whether individuals are winged or not - and this would be critical in determining their ability to fly away and expand their range. Plenty more interesting questions to be researched there - I personally wonder about the environmental triggers and timing that leads to the expression and development of winged individuals.

There are a few other tangents I might like to explore with my research, provided time and available resources. Thrips end up clustering at the bases of leaves, much like aphids - and one might expect that ants would be significant predators of them as such - but many ants appear to avoid or ignore the presence of a thrips infestation. Thrips are known to produce any number of chemicals, and some species carry and distribute droplets of these possibly noxious cocktails from long hairs on their hindquarters around the colony feed-site. None of this behavior has been specifically documented in Scirtothrips, and it will be interesting to determine if something similar is present.

In the meantime, I am 'relaxing' by catching up on the effort to sequence the Neandertal genome - and by blasting a lot of vicious aliens.

Time will tell.

Posted by Derksen at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finals week again.

This is not a part of my undergraduate education that I missed. I'll be mostly silent on this front for the coming week. Too many critical projects left unattended for far too long, and all of which have required far more time resources than I initially estimated.

Time will tell. I just want to do well by my professorial staff.

Posted by Derksen at 8:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know what does not enhance your calm?

Trying to identify very small things. I don't care how great your microscope is - microsculpture is still hard to rotate and keep in focus. It helps to have a well-prepared specimen. It helps a lot, but it also helps to know what you're going to need to look at before you prepare your sample, and if your sample is an unknown? You won't know what you need to look at until you can't quite make it out under the scope, no matter how much you rotate and refocus the little monster. This only gets worse when your unknown is under a millimeter in length. Even if you knew what you had to move out of the way to see what you needed to see, getting a hold of a limb and gently moving it up and out and over without also completely removing it from the body as a whole is probably just as tricky as you might imagine.

How sharp are your microforceps?

How steady is your hand?

Now do it for five hours.

Now how steady is your hand?

Posted by Derksen at 8:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is amazing how much of a difference three hours can make.

Three hours to the South of Gainesville, there is still sun, and the leaves are still green. Gainesville may never quite experience winter, but it unquestionably sees fall as the leaves here turn to yellow and gold and sail and swirl away on the wind.

Visiting family for Turkey Day was good. Family is good. They have helped to fill the empty space that my surrogate family made up of my extended network of friends used to fill... or maybe I have that backwards. Whichever it is, I know that it makes a difference to sit down and break bread with people, and to see the same faces every day. There is more than a sense of community - there is a sense of 'belongingness' that I did not find outside of Austin. Besides, few things in the world beat watching your aged and respectable parents laugh and chase after dragonflies with an enormous butterfly net.

Finally got a new battery for my laptop, and it is rather like falling in love all over again: I have no strings, and I may wander. No longer do I need to worry about squandering power frivolously on such things as a monitor with gamma bright enough to read. No longer must I race from outlet to outlet, hoping that I will have enough charge to last all the way through class.

So life is good.

Then again, I am about to re-enter hell-week. You should either expect extended silence from this station, or lengthy tales of procrastination. One of the things I do not miss about the whole educational program is the sheer number of things that must fall together at the last possible minute. I am moving forward, and with far more diligence than in my undergraduate years - but... Yeesh. Corporate life retrained me to accept lower standards, but I am starting over and I refuse to hand in anything less than a solid effort.

Time will tell.

Posted by Derksen at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just spent a whole day looking at flies under a microscope, and boy - are my eyes tired. I still do not feel confident of my abilities to identify a given family of fly on sight alone, and the keys are poorly executed - only to be followed quickly after developing much familiarity with the individual traits responsible for dividing organisms into one group or another... and I just don't have the practical experience to assess those traits rapidly, and there has been no one to reassure me that I have even reached the correct conclusions for good reasoning - or even the wrong conclusions for the right reasons.

Agck.

Time will tell.

Posted by Derksen at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So...

Thursday night last week was one of the better days I have had in a long time. Not only was I looking at a three-day weekend due to the observance of Veteran's Day, but the seminar speaker for the afternoon was Dr. Jim Marden - a guy I think of as famous for his work on the evolution of flight in early insects. He has done a lot more work on a lot more integrative biology since then - pushing the science at the level of the gene into its effects on behavior and population structure. One of the projects he is exploring looks at the frequencies of certain genes in a metapopulation of butterflies. These genes are responsible for the butterflies' ability to convert sugar to energy and stay aloft for long periods of time, and inadvertently represent the butterflies' ability to migrate from one area to another. Butterflies who express one form of this gene tend to be very good at staying in their natal patch and reproducing there. Butterflies who express another form of this gene tend to disperse and migrate out onto new patches.

Continue reading "grad school rocks! grad school is going to make my brain explode!" »

Posted by Derksen at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Monday, I found out that I am but four points shy of being the second person in over ten years of biochemistry to pull off an "A" without having first taken organic chemistry - and the class average is rumored to be at least ten points below me. All I have to do is really crack down and blow away the next two tests and the final - and I can end this semester feeling that I have accomplished something worthwhile. The prof is even recommending another series of advanced genetics courses, and is encouraging me to apply for the medicinal genetics lab course taught at the hospital over the summer session. They only take five folks, so I'll have to be stellar - but the amusing thing is that it mostly sounds like playing through all of the roles laid out across the pharmbio labs back at Lexicon... which is all I really wanted to do in the first place, so I will have come full circle...

In the meantime, I am still trying to work out whether I want paleontology as a hobby or to potentially take it more seriously as a profession. It would be deeply personally satisfying, and there are few things in the world that would probably make me happier, but... I don't know that I am not just imagining things - and entomology is unquestionably still far more employable. More importantly, I've found a few things in entomology that really grab my attention and are starting to pull me in. Of course, the problem is that they have very little to do with my alleged thesis project working with thrips.

Continue reading "phoenix smoulders" »

Posted by Derksen at 8:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Marshall Nirenberg was the recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with Har Gobind Khorana and Robert Holley for their research exploring the translation of nucleotide-triplets on mature messenger RNA into specific amino acids linked along a polypeptide chain. Of further note, and of personal significance, Dr. Nirenberg recieved his master's degree in zoology at the University of Florida. His master's thesis focused on the classification and taxonomy of caddisflies.

He began his career as an entomologist.

There is hope for me yet.

Posted by Derksen at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A good many have asked my thoughts on the progress of graduate school thus far, and while I remain conflicted on some of the details and my nuanced response could go on for pages, there really is a simple answer. If any one thing underlines my experience thus far, it is this:

science is fun again.

Posted by Derksen at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Interesting. The possessions that I formally consider part of my 'desk' environment at home have gradually begun migrating from my apartment to my office cubicle at work. I suppose that this process has been driven by three factors:

1. My apartment is unusually shaped, and I do not have a formal 'desk' space or desk area upon which to pile all of my work-related possessions in an organized fashion. Many of them ended up in disorganized sprawls, where they were casually tossed while I engaged in other activities in the home. Some notes ended up scattered across the kitchen table while I ate, other books were tossed onto the coffee table while I studied from the comfort of my couch, and more papers ended up at my bedside as I read them before I slept or just after waking in the morning. As a result, I ended up crawling all over the house just looking for the textbook or notes or paper that I was interested in at any given time, and I hate disorder. Moving all of these things to my desk at the lab has allowed all of these school-related items to coalesce into a single working space where I have ready access to them, and where my mind is inadvertently focused on working, and not distracted by the temptations of other sociocultural spaces.
2. I still have no internet access at home, and it will continue to be cheaper to just borrow the school's network for all of my net-related business - be it personal or professional. I lose only my ability to play videogames against internet-based opponents, and the opportunity to illegally download copyrighted material for later perusal. I am not really losing anything with the former, as I certainly do not foresee my having the time to play many videogames in the near future, and as for the latter?

   I suppose this is what borrowing the coffee shop's "free" wireless connection is really for, isn't it?

3. It is only a ten-minute walk from my office to my apartment, and it flies by even faster on bike or on skates - and so I have no excuse not to go out and get that exercise. Besides - I have longed to spend more time outdoors for the last five years, and I enjoy the fresh air and occasional encounters with furtive armadillos foraging in the underbrush along the roadside.

Posted by Derksen at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today, I had a good day.

It began entirely too early - just slightly past six. I am not now a morning person, and I will never be. Still, I managed to pull myself onto the road an hour later after only a single cup of coffee. Sometimes there are reasons to get up in the morning, and sometimes I will find the proper motivating force to drive me forward through the hazy cloud of sleep. Today, I will meet my advisor in the flesh for the first time, and today will truly mark the beginning of my graduate career.

I drive East out of Palmetto, heading towards Interstate 75, which I will follow South to Naples. In Naples, I-75 will turn Eastwards again, and suddenly become "Alligator Alley", a turnpike cutting through the very heart of the Everglades. Endless miles of hungry swamp ensue, with only a thin chain-link fence holding back the horde of hungry alligators - as well as the occasional invasive burmese python. Of course, the truth is actually rather disappointing: the fence is there to protect the alligators and panthers (and pythons, oh my!) from us, and not vice-versa. The "untouched purity" of the wilderness that some would like to romanticize no longer exists. Our greatest natural heritage and our best national parks must be managed, lest their structured ecology slowly phase into the cultured environment of 'civilization'. It leaves them as artificial an environment as any zoo, if not more grandiose.

Continue reading "and so it begins" »

Posted by Derksen at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ordering as many of my textbooks from the UK (which were originally printed in the United States and shipped over to the other side of the pond) as possible and then having them shipped back to the States will still save me nearly a hundred dollars - and this is just from Amazon.co.uk. Even the American incarnation will save me nearly thirty dollars on the school bookstore. This is almost as crazy as re-importing drugs from Canada.

Posted by Derksen at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Director of Human Resources:

In order to continue my education, I have decided to volunarily terminate my employment with Lexicon Genetics on August second, 2006.

Thank you for your time;
Andrew Derksen
July 19th, 2006

Posted by Derksen at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Okay... as of today, it appears that I have a new major advisor for graduate studies in entomology, and a new project focus for my education. I will now complete a lifelong goal by defending America from an alien invasion. Admittedly, this will be an invasion of small biting arthropods known as thrips, but they're strange enough to be from beyond this world.

They are tiny parasitic insects of about a milimeter in length whose wings can only be described as feather dusters. They are incredibly prolific, and once a colony is established, it can be extremely difficult to eradicate. Worse still, they are promiscuous parasites, readily leaping from a preferred host to an alternate host when environmental conditions demand. Most important of all, they can also act as vector to several commercially important plant viruses, and to top matters off, they will bite human beings when they run out of plants.

It appears that Florida stands poised on the brink of invasion by a creature that could only be described as an enemy to all I hold dear - the Chilithrips, Scirtothrips dorsalis. It will be my duty to develop a management strategy to control and identify their advance across the nation. Millions stand to perish if I fail.

I am actually looking forward to the challenge. I mean, it isn't mosquitoes, but it still will be ecological control of a potentially harmful species, and it presents all sorts of interesting opportunities to explore the evolution and adaptation of an invasive species: resistance, founder's effect, structured competition, host-shifting and sympatric speciation. As in all such things, only time will tell.

Posted by Derksen at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"Congratulations. The Entomology & Nematology Department's Graduate Committee has approved your admittance into our M.S. program to work under the direction of Dr. Chelsea Smartt."

Posted by Derksen at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So things are like this -

It has been a great long while since I last ranted and raved in so public a forum, and I suspect that I may have lost something in not doing so more often. It has not been a sign of disrespect to you, my friends (and some of you my family) - merely a sign that things have not always been well on the home front, or that I've finally decided to take some of your advice and keep my opinions to myself. Anyhow - after much agonized consideration, I have decided that I may have been a little premature in choosing to terminate my career at Lexicon as of December 15th. It is true: I hate my job, and I am wasting my time here. I am not learning or growing - or being challenged to achieve anything of significance by my environment. I have not been permitted to advance within the hierarchy of my organization, and yet I have also not been allowed to change departments to try and find a new home elsewhere within the corporate structure. All of this in spite of being one of the senior-most members and incredibly competent and good-looking to boot!

I would like to leave Lexicon tomorrow - and I am willing to accept that I have built myself a sufficient safety cushion that I probably could do so tomorrow should I choose to do so. I would eventually have to get some sort of dead-end job of menial labour that paid an hourly wage much reduced from my current circumstances - but it could and would be done in order to pay for rent and food and car insurance and gas - and heaven forbid: entertainment costs and medical insurance. That said, I'll be honest: for the first time in my life, I find myself truly afraid of the future.

Which is not to say that I will not eventually be leaving Lexicon - I know that I can stay there no longer, but I wonder at my motivations.

I am being driven away from a thing, and probably by rage and frustration and disappointment. I am not being drawn towards anything, and would be left with emptiness: even more alone than before, and unemployed in what might as well amount to Greenland.

And that is the kicker: I need to be drawn towards something - I need to have somewhere to go. It is not enough to be a wandering tramp, and even I don't really have the money for that sort of strange adventure - nor do I feel that sort of extended vacation would develop me as a person. I'd always want to be doing something more with my idle hands. So I am looking for alternatives - or rather, I have been inspired to look for alternatives for the past two months, but have found it just as frustrating as when I first graduated from college. I have more experience, but in many ways, it is not of the sort that matters to alternative employers in the fields which interest me.

I am no longer going to ignore offers of aid or employment merely because they were brought to my attention by a friend or a family member. I recognize that familiar relationships such as those are often more important to a prospective employer as they bespeak a great deal of trust or confidence by the recommending member: your reputation is on the line. I thank the lot of you who have offered me sanctuary on the offhand chance I am invited to interview at a job - or more importantly, a graduate program - in your area.

There is the heart of the solution: I do need to head off to graduate school.

If any goal stands out like an outcropping in the river of my future, it is furthering my education. This is not because I have run out of other ideas for things to do, or because I feel that retreating into academia will save me from poor management. This isn't even because having some form of graduate education will make me more attractive to future employers: this is because there are honestly questions of science whose answers are as of yet unknown, and I would like to help develop the plan to understand them. I really do care about nocturnal pterodactyls and theropod evolution and dinosaur metabolism and the arrival of bats in the early Quaternary and the disappearance of primates in North America and the Old/New World monkey disjunction and lumping Australopithecines and early members of Homo instead of constantly splitting them and mosquitoes and malaria and dengue and West Nile and whatever else will crawl out of the jungle next and how to control or prevent the spread of that misery to come...

So I have some ideas about how to solve those problems, and I'd like someone with more professional experience to give me a little bit more of the training and direction and resources to attack those problems.

So I need to get into graduate school.

Which means that I will be touring more programs in the near future and taking more care in submitting my applications to a broad diversity of departments, and asking a lot more questions.

First, I need to retake the GRE - and this time around, I need to beat the math section into submission. I don't know how or why I managed to so terribly underperform on that portion of the exam the last two times I took it, but I need to sell myself as competitive and intelligent as possible. If this means I must take one of those awful GRE-coaching courses guaranteed to improve my score - then so be it. I am a better and brighter and more dedicated individual now than ever - I just need to prove it to the rest of the world.

And maybe, just maybe...

prove it to myself.

Time will tell.

Posted by Derksen at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Amusing to watch you kids suffer and squirm as you apply to graduate school.

Am I the only one who applied to an odd dozen schools and programs, and then got rejected from every single one except the one that accepted me - and then had my future advisor call me back in a panic because the department had just lost funding and SHE was now out looking for a job...?

It doesn't matter how well prepared you are, kids. It doesn't matter what your recommendations folder looks like (since mine contains refs from all current bosses and several old ones, both of my old advisors, and one or two people of whom I am fond and I suspect respect me from a scientific perspective). It probably doesn't really matter how well you do on the GRE. I mean, if you did okay on the SATs, you'll do okay on the GREs. Unless of course you just can't do math fast on the infernal (and more expensive) 'computer aided test', in which case you will suddenly hose out that portion much like I did. Time to adapt new test-taking strategies.

Hell.

I was amused to hear from one school that rejected me that I needed 'research experience', too. This amused me, because I had been doing 'research' for both the government at mosquito control and the private sector for over a year and half by that point. Not only was this a considerably longer period of time than most undergrads can claim, but I am performing identical studies to those that we provide to undergrads as stupid summer internships so that they can claim to have 'research experience' on their transcripts and resumes. Jeez. Next time I go undergrad, I'll remember to apply for more internships over the summer instead of actually working for a living.

Anyways... What seems to matter to the people I discussed my future with was a solid four-year undergraduate plan of work, and a solid indication of where you would like to take your studies in the future. It can't hurt to have your Master's thesis already written out and a government grant to boot, too...

But what would I know?

I was a part-time screw-up in College, and I got rejected. My bad first year of overconfident slackitude came back to bite me in the backside. Forget that I pulled my act together by my senior year! If you were a graduate committee, would you choose the candidate who never made any mistakes, or the one who made some but had hopefully learned from them?

Yeah.

Is eternal mouse-work my (lucrative) punishment in purgatory?

Maybe I am just bitter because I can't make up my mind about where and what to do with myself. I would be eternally happy to dedicate myself to the study of transitional communities in the fossil record, watching the geologically sudden explosion of diversity after calamity... specifically by looking at the radiation of root primates or the odd adaptations of the disappointingly extinct pterosaurs... but I suspect (and trade magazines and discussions with professionals in the field seem to indicate) that there isn't a lot in the way of paying work out there for people who know and care about these things.

So I am forced to consider alternatives that seem more applied but are tangentially related. Like maybe forensic science. It is just that I don't really want to do forensic science: interesting, but I am not in love with it, and I fear I might not be able to fully dedicate the next four to eight years to it... followed by the rest of my life.

On the other hand... I sure as hell can't stay here.

Posted by Derksen at 12:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)