Mayra Pelagio
time went by way too fast
posted Aug 14, 2013
The last weeks were amazing. I spent time working on my project and we had a potluck the last Friday. I loved the bonding, we all had fun and even the staff at the geocorner fun, they played football against the History Of Life interns. The presentations on the last Friday were very interesting and we even had a teacher present her project to the History of life on the last week. These were very informative and it was enjoyable to see my friends present the data that we all collected.
With all of the interns presenting their projects we concluded another amazing summer at Stanford. Time went by way too fast but I enjoyed every day of work. I will miss the friends I made and I know we will meet up again, we became a family, a crew, HOL for life! :)
The best part of the summer is . . .
posted July 29, 2013
We are on the 6th week of the program and it is simply great.
After collecting all the data available for Echinoderms, we get to play with it and decide on a project. I am partnering up with Cathy and Alondra to investigate the effect mass extinctions had in the size evolution of Crinoids. We discovered in the process that neither C02 nor oxygen were influencial in the evolution of size of this class.
Our project is going great and we are still figuring out more about Crinoids. We hope to have a more concrete discovery with some more data analysis.
The best part of the summer is hanging out with the other interns, I have met lots of people and they are super fun. We are becoming really good friends and I have learned to play football among other things.
We visited Berkeley and saw evidence of the Hayward fault in out last fieldtrip, that was fantastic too!
I am having lots of fun! I wish summer didn't go by so fast!
Second summer beginnings
posted July 08, 2013
Summer is the best time to spend with friends, and the History of Life internship has helped me gain many of them.
This is my second year at the internship and there have been some drastic changes, drastic for the better. This year I am in a lab with 18 more amazing high school students measuring fossils of marine creatures to continue with Professor Jon Payne's project on size evolution.
Our mentor is Dr. Noel Heim, who is in charge of assigning us work, articles to read and other fun projects.
As I mentioned there are 18 other interns and as I see it, we are growing together and becoming a family.
We have so far gone in one field-trip. Last week we visited to rocky shores where we interacted with fossils and the organisms living in the tide-pools. I simply loved it.
It feels great to be back at Stanford, the friendly environment is perfect for the summer time.
Science and my Poster
posted Aug 13, 2012
Well we have gotten to the end of the summer, and our work is done but even when the program ended, I feel like it is a new beginning. I am so thankful to Jenny and Jon that have given me the opportunity to know more about this amazing field! I love science and geology is certainly a very important part of earth sciences. I am not sure yet whether I want to become a geologist or not but from this experience I learned that a geology is an amazing field where I would not mind working on the rest of my life. I really hope I can spend my next summer at Stanford doing research on Earth sciences again.
As I mentioned in the previous blog everyone in the paleobiology lab spent the last weeks working on the porters for the AGU conference. This is my poster:
Earthquakes
posted July 27, 2012
During the past few weeks in the paleobiology lab we have been thinking about our projects and we have somewhat started on them. I am not sure if every department has to do a project but we will. We know we will be doing a presentation at the end of the summer where we tell the other interns what we have been researching, but that’s not it, we have been told about the AGU conference and we will be also creating a poster to present there. I am very excited about it because I have never actually had a chance to go to that type of event.
Wednesday is still my favorite day of the week. Today we went on a fieldtrip to Los Trancos to see some of the changes in the land that the earthquakes have brought about. It was a great experience, very fun and informative. We learned about seismology and the new technology that is being developed to give people a warning before an earthquake happens. Among other things we talked about the structure of buildings and how we know for sure that engineers have to start designing all the buildings in a way that they could be resistant to major shaking during earthquakes. That makes me kind of interested and I am thinking to so some research to see if engineering is an option for me. It was very fun today.
I can’t believe the internship is almost over! I don’t want it to end I am having so much fun this summer, I am very thankful to all the people that have worked with us making us a little wiser and teaching us more of the interesting stuff Earth Science is about.
-Enjoying the last few weeks
in the beginning
posted July 11, 2012
The Earth science internship is on its 4th week now. At this time I have had the opportunity to meet new people that, like me, have an amazing interest on science and like to explore the environment around us. All of interns of the Earth Science program are still in high school or have recently completed it. The team was divided into groups that would be taken to a specialty this summer. We are all working on different research areas, and they are all very exciting!. In my case I am working in a paleobiology lab, which is found in the Geology Corner.
We work with professor Jonathan Payne, he is an awesome educator and a very nice person. There are around eighteen people working in the lab all with different background and they are all amazing!. At the same time we work into three groups doing different research. We work on collecting data of organism such as Ammonites, Gastropods, and Foraminifera.
Size matters
The main purpose of the research is to determine the changes in size of the organisms mentioned. We work with primary sources mostly to determine the size and time period when the different species lived. It is terrific that we can actually get our hands on something that is a hundred years of age, I had never imagined I would ever have the opportunity to do this, it’s very exciting. Anyway, we are interested in looking at the sizes because they can tell us the background of such organisms. It would be hard to imagine for instance that the size of the forams' growing pattern correlated with the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I am working with ammonites and even though we are missing data from a time period we hope to get an idea of how their growing patters correlated with factors of the environment.
So we all work in different species but we all work together and the working place is stupendous as well, the people in the lab are amazing!
Wednesdays
My favorite day of the week is Wednesday! I love how we all get together to learn a little more about science in general. so far we have had a field trip to Monterey,a lab on plate tectonics and labs on carbon dioxide and water. I simply loved them, I had the amazing opportunity to be around people passionate about science and their profession. They have inspired me even more to enter the science field in a future.
I love how summer is going , I have had many moments of fun an learning with the people around me, specially with my friends Ngoc and Robert (since we are most of the time together) . I hope the rest of the summer is as magnificent as it has been so far.
http://mayrajap-summer.blogspot.com/2012/07/earth-science-summerinternship.html