Project planning notes via Handrite

Here are some notes I took using handrite for android regarding my project plans. I don’t mean to advertise for anything, but I use this app ALL THE TIME and it is super helpful. Typing on my phone is annoying sometimes and Handrite allows me to use my finger to write (albeit sloppily). These notes were taken yesterday while I was meeting with Steve (on my phone) and now I have time to paste them in my notebook. So here is some background on my ramblings:

  • I would like to effectively analyze the amount of hydrogen-deuterium exchange in my samples. This is a phenomenon I’ve talked about a lot, know very little about, and stress a lot over. We tried FT-IR of water samples to see if we can determine differences in the water types. We’ve had mixed results in this regard. It boils down to the fact, that I don’t trust anything. How do I know that deuterium isn’t sneaking into my unopened bottles of DDW, or that hydrogen isn’t getting into my D2O? What about after it’s been opened? What about in my samples? If I’m going to get reliable results with yeast and e. coli I’ll need to know if I can trust commercial products.
  • NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) seems to be a promising route to try and there may be some equipment either in the Chemistry department or Biomedical Engineering here at UNM that I’ll need to look into.
  • Mass spectrometry may be another avenue to determine precise amounts of deuterium in water.
  • Something not written but that I talked with Steve about yesterday and just remembered is that I need to talk with Sigma to find out how they measure the purity of the DDW and how reliable those measurements are long term. If something sits on a shelf for a year, how do I know it isn’t really just pure natural water?
  • I also have some stuff in my notes about the Repeating Crumley experiment. I just setup a D2O only experiment to show definitively that tobacco seeds do not grow in D2O. Previously I would only track this data for 10-15 days and Crumley went up to a month (if I remember correctly). I’ll write the setup in a minute, but I want to do 30 days so I have some pictures for my open access, self published RC paper (spoiler alert!).
  • Also to show that I’m no slouch, I want to try and repeat Crumley’s original experiment with paper towels to show that the growth of the 100% D2O seeds was due to H-D exchange and other environmental factors and not because they eventually grow in D2O. Yea I’m a badass.
  • The rest of the notes are some ramblings that are not really private but thoughts I would prefer not to elaborate on now.

Tata for now!