The New Glovebox Is Here! The New Glovebox Is Here!

OK, we've actually had it for a while, but are just now getting around to writing a post. We had a glovebox custom made by the Precision Instrument Machine Shop on campus.  As you may be able to tell from the pictures below, this glovebox is a stainless steel monster.  It allows us to conduct a wide range of experiments under anaerobic conditions, and two transfer chambers can be used to bring samples and equipment in and out.

Some pictures during set up:

And the fully functioning beauty:

Arsenic in Turfgrass Systems

Arsenic is commonly added to turfgrass via pesticide and fertilizer applications. We are currently in our second year of field trials investigating arsenic mobility in turfgrass systems.

Here Audrey preps some porewater samplers and Ethan gets them installed.

The field site is set up to examine arsenic dynamics with and without turfgrass.

Matt J. gets the experiments initiated.

At select times, we'll sample porewater, and then begin analyses in our makeshift lab in the research station shed.

We also collect soil samples to measure arsenic profiles.

Then it's back to NC State for analysis!

Last Work Day

Can you believe tomorrow's the final work day? We have a few other things to do on Tuesday, but we fly out on Wednesday night. We are definitely not looking forward to the long flights back!

Sarah and I have had a little time off on Saturday and Sunday to sightsee a bit. Some friends of ours opened a restaurant in December and we had dinner there last night (boy was it a feast!).

Random pictures ahead....

 Monks walking at the National Museum in Phnom Penh

 Fish Amok, the national dish, from FCC

 One of the many rain barrels we collected water from for water testing

 Most of these water sources tested positive for fecal contamination (as seen from the yellow color)

 Sarah and Dina are sampling from the wetlands

 Our mobile lab (a.k.a Pon's van) testing in a rice field....don't try this at home

 A Buddist temple located in the Buddist Meditation Center

 Sarah with the Cambodian flag. Isn't it beautiful?

We went and got our nails and toes done at the local beauty salon. It was only $2!

One Week to Go

Hi everyone, I hope all is well in your neck of the woods. I'm just giving a little report about how things are going so far. I can't believe we only have 1 week to go! Since it is near the end of the dry season, we experienced a few shallow wells that were dry. These wells were ones that are for science only, not for drinking, so this did not have any effect on the Cambodian people. It has been surprisingly wet here so far, but we did have 2 days that have been completely dry.

Tomorrow we will start sampling surface waters which will take a couple days and take us from the Bassac to the great Mekong River.

That's about it here in Cambodia. I hope to have a post up soon about our half day off in Phnom Penh on Sunday.

The (Mis)Adventures in Cambodia

Hi everyone! Sorry for the lack of posts, but we've been busy here in Cambodia. Things got off to a rocky start when the airline lost one of our coolers, but fortunately it arrived yesterday. Oh, I should mention that Sarah Seehaver from the Grossman lab is helping me here in Cambodia. She has a ton of field work under her belt, so we thought she would make a great addition to the trip (and boy has she!).

We expected it to be toward the end of the dry season here, but it seems that the wet season has started early. It's rained every day except for one, but luckily we got to the field early that day so we got a lot done. Last night it poured heavily most of the evening, but it is mostly dry now because of the hot weather. We also went to a very nice restaurant called Laprevu which had a great atmosphere and even a pool! We met a friend from RDI at the restaurant, and he beat us home on a bike while we took a tuk-tuk ride. How pathetic when a bike can beat a moto.

Yesterday was also spent starting nutrient bioassays looking at potential eutrophication of surface waters from increasing concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus. Let's just say it took much longer than anticipated, and it was a pretty stressful day. Here are a few random pictures I have to show you guys:

 Even Cambodia has Red Bull

 Dina is working hard well sampling

 Well sampling

 Using the Hanna to test rice paddy water

 Yup, they still plow with cow

 My favorite Cambodian dog had puppies again!

This crab was trying to pinch us while well sampling

Ethan Wins 3rd Place at the Graduate Student Research Symposium

We have some very exciting news to announce to everyone. First, Ethan Lineberger placed third in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences section of the Graduate Student Research Symposium at NC State last month. Congratulations, Ethan! He presented the work he has done in the past 4 months from his December trip to Bangladesh.

The next piece of exciting news is that Audrey will be headed back to Cambodia in May to analyze surface and well water. Expect a lot more posts during the trip (May 15-31).

We have one more piece of news, but that's just going to have to wait another week or so. Stay tuned!

-Audrey

Soil Digestion Time

I know, it's been extremely too long since we've blogged! Since the field work is over, we've been spending some quality time in the lab working on the data. I thought it would be nice to post what I've been working on for the past few weeks and that is soil digestions. In this process, you add concentrated acids (nitric and hydrochloric acid) as well as 30% hydrogen peroxide (yup, just like you use on cuts, but in a much higher concentration) to extract different elements from the soil. Oh, and if that's not bad enough, you have to heat up these acids to 95 degrees C. No worries, proper PPE is always worn. Here are some pictures of the final product:

Volumetric flasks with concentrated acids that contain elements of interest

The tubes for the digestions are quite large

When the digests are finished, the soil looks extremely different from when you started. 

Soil before digestion

Soil after digestion

As you can see, you pretty much just end up with ultra pure sand in the end and all of the organic matter has been extracted from the soil. Well, that does it for now. I hope enjoyed the post, and if you have any questions, please feel free to post a comment!

-Audrey