So my trip to Florida was amazing, but I didn’t get a whole lot done in terms of science while I was there. The resort I stayed out had no internet (surprising isn’t it), and I only managed to read one paper while I was there, which only made me ask questions instead of answering them. I did manage to read halfway through Michael Nielson’s book: Reinventing Discovery (which I keep thinking is actually titled Rediscovering Science).

The book is pretty good and it is fun to hear the stories of groups who have succeeded in implementing an open network approach in their fields. It has given me a few ideas that I think can greatly impact open notebook science and my PhD quest.

I’ve also decided to write up summaries of papers I’ve read here. Mostly it will be for my use, but perhaps someone someday will be able to use the summaries. I won’t republish anything in the papers (like figures or quotes) for copyright reasons, but I will reference them and of course properly cite the article I’m summarizing.

On top of that I’ll be starting up some new experiments this week. I’m going to do a large scale DDW experiment and another run of the Repeating Crumley experiment. I’m also looking to start doing DDW tests with other organisms, but need to refresh my molecular bio techniques.

It’s good to be back and I can’t wait to get going again.

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The purpose of this post is to test whether I can add picture to a slideshow over time and the slideshow updates itself. Hard to explain why that would be a problem, but the way this script works is that it only incorporates images added via this post and you can’t select old pictures from the media library in wordpress.

The reason I want to do this is so that I can have like posts for each type of seal in the water evaporation experiment. For this it doesn’t make sense to update by day, but rather by type. This experiment is the equivalent of watching paint dry so I thought it would be more intuitive to compare a bubble growth to itself rather then against other bubbles. If that doesn’t make sense it will in about 1.5 weeks.

My name is Anthony Salvagno and I would like to welcome you to the new open notebook of my research. My goal is to make the information here as accessible to everyone on the planet as physically possible. Over the next few weeks this site will be going through some major changes, but since science is 24/7 the research will be pouring in.

If you follow my personal blog, the Randomly Grad Life, then this marks the official split of my research from everything else. If you are new to me, my blogging style, and my research, then you are in for a treat. With that said, I’d like to tell you a little about myself for all the newcomers (and maybe those that know me will learn something new).

I am a 5th year Physics grad student in the KochLab at the University of New Mexico. My research was primarily focused on manipulating DNA with optical tweezers, don’t worry if you don’t understand that because in the next few days I’m going to tell you all about it. I’ve recently hit a road block in that department and because of funding issues I am switching focus to a new project. I’m beginning to examine how different organisms live and grow under differing water environments. At some point I’ll be playing with kinesin motor proteins (which are the bread and butter of the lab) and testing their stability under similar conditions.

While in grad school I stumbled upon graphic design, which has become quite the hobby for me and one day soon will become my next profession. I created IheartAnthony about a year and a half ago as my personal brand. I wanted it to be a place where everything me could be stored in one location. With the addition of this notebook, that dream is nearly complete.

With the introductions out of the way let’s take a magically journey into the world of the KochLab where science sizzles.