A Lab Notebook

 
TA work and more
I spent much of the day being a TA. I am coordinating 26 undergraduates to go out on a ship spread out over four days. Van rentals, preparing of reagents for ship-board measurements, installing software on crappy, old laptops, renting vans etc. Otherwise, I just have some incoherent thoughts about a paper I read the other day, followed by a summary of my run this morning.
Ackleh et al. [1995] estimated stickiness during the 1993 SIGMA tank expereiments using 1) an inverse, least squares methodology 2) an aggregation model 3) individual phytoplankton growth model. Model underpredicted particle densities for larger aggregates (>0.4mm^3) and predicted the peak of the bloom to occur earlier than was observed. They interpret their data to show that aggregation is relatively insensitive to stickiness and as a result it is difficult to estimate stickiness by fitting aggregation data.
I think "efficiency of sticking" is used to describe the strength of the floc after aggregation, while "sticking efficiency" is alpha?
How do they differentiate stickiness and sticking efficiency.
When he visits, ask G. Jackson if he thinks the flumes are more representative of shear (perhaps precluding differential settling?) due to their design (ie. 40 cm water depth)
**Get Reibesell and Wolf Ref. from 1992 DSR**

I ran for about 45 minutes easy this morning. It was misty and around 45F. I came across a young dear carcass in the forest adjacent to the RU campus. It has been a wintry mix all evening so tomorrow's run may be chilly and icy... but we'll see.
- posted by alex @ 22:53