My 20 New Friends

I emailed my mentor a few days ago, asking for some papers for me to read in preparation for the tar extraction project - to commence in about a month.  I thought,  "Excellent.  I shall have a few more sources of inspiration.  These will count for a few more research checks or so."

"I have added 20 papers to your file server."

20 papers.  Yes.  This is awesome.  I now have 20 new friends.  Things are looking better now that I have these new sources of information.  I always feel as though I should ask more questions at the lab, but don't feel informed enough to.  In writing, that makes no sense, but it is real fear in the shadowy realms of my mind: asking uninformed questions.  

I've been going to mentorship about once a week and partook in a pico green assay the week before last.  This is another method for gaging the concentration of something in a sample and involves applying a stain to the sample which attaches to the genetic material (double-stranded DNA [dsDNA]). As little as 25 pg/ml of dsDNA can be detected using this method - that's 25 picograms (one trillionth of  a gram) per ml (1 thousandth of a liter).  Science!

I have no pictures to post but hopefully will soon.