I developed my code further this week. Late last week/early this week I added a proximity sensor that is able to identify the same jelly from frame to frame. I then added a jelly counter. I also added metrics that when calibrated will give the distance of the jelly from the AUV, length of the jelly, and swimming direction of said jelly. I also added a locking function that really cut down on the false positives. I now have a working jelly counting algorithm.

Wednesday already? Time really does fly at MBARI.

Turns out distributional analysis is still very hard, even with the 20+ year time series available to us. I've begun looking into Monterey Bay's oceanographic features (ie Seasonal patterns, upwelling, etc) to find clues as to what really influences species abundance. However, it appears I'll have to look even deeper since the species I am looking at are considered uncommon or "rare."

Looks like my future is laced with a stack of unread scientific papers.

Data collection is now in full swing... tedious and time-consuming, but could lead to interesting results. Just watching videos all day! Fun times. Tempus fugit! Squid are awesome.

I have finally managed to align my sequences and found some promising variations in at least a few genes. I will amplify more gene regions in the next week and check for further polymorphisms to complement the data set.

I am currently away from my desk in Vegas. I will reply to your updates next week.

Ok. In more detail. I have been processing a lot of data this week. It's all starting to look good but I plan on surveying two more areas to eliminate some potential influences.

With Corinna and Jen we organised a cookie break. Judging from the empty plates at the end it went well.

Short week and shorter vacation... Development of LRAUV fault classifier now at full steam ahead. I've developed a method to capture deviation from normal LRAUV behavior - next I'll be generating code to look at large quantities of data to find when classification fails (and hopefully debug).

Last week was short, but I spent it in the video lab as usual quantifying squid behavior and orientation in the water column. I will be continuing with that until I've been through all the sightings of Histioteuthis. This week I also want to take out some preserved specimens of the squid so I can get a better feel for their weirdly arranged bodies and take some measurements of the angles of their eyes relative to their bodies, and the arrangement of their photophores.

A short but productive week last week. With my mentors, I looked at the data I collected from the week before and some interesting results fell out, giving me enough to work on to come up with a sampling strategy for my next samples ready for heading up to Santa Cruz again this week. I have sampled every other core resulting in about 40 samples which I see taking about eight days to to process and run but then I'll have my full set of data, for this 10 week project at least.

As usual, also continued with my core logging. only 12 to go!

Pretty productive week considering its length. The tank prototype float is a few SS socket screws away from being buttoned up and thrown in the tank. Came in Saturday and finished up the code modifications necessary to interface with the two different pieces of hardware. Said integration was easy...after I realized I'd been working with a deprecated version of the Go To Sea code.....frustrating that I spend too many hours fussing with something needlessly, but exciting when I realiezed how easy the integration would be.

Also finished up my cleaned up my Simulink models of the float. I have a version that models the float in a linear, and quadratic drag regime. Each of these flow regimes holds truth at different flow regimes in the water, and I want to review some papers that go in depth about which model is appropriate at which times.

Barring large and unforeseen bugs in the tank prototype code, I should be alternating between modeling and testing controllers starting this week! Finally.

What a short week!  The behind-the-scenes tour of the aquarium on Monday was really cool.  It was great to have someone to answer all of the questions I had from walking around it, and really neat to see the set ups they have for the kelp bed tank and jelly rearing.  Thank you George for organizing it!

As for my project, I finally got some rate data on lebensspuren creation and degradation rates.  I will try to have the rate measurements/calculations done by Wednesday for my lab meeting.  Next will be the spatial analysis of lebensspuren in the rover images.

Katie, Corinna and I made a European-themed cookie break that seemed to be well received.  Tuesday was Canada Day, so we had a quiz at the dorms last night.  I will pretend not to be offended that the best score was 14.5/31! 

For me, the week was a little longer than for the rest of you. Thursday, I scrambled to finish my project proposal/powerpoint presentation and present at CSUMB that afternoon. So glad to have it behind me, and glad to have a big chunk of work taken out of the final paper. Had a long and fun weekend exploring santa cruz and oakland. Back to work...

Last week was short but was able to get further along on the suspension framework for the aquarium exhibit. I finished modeling more of the components, including stress and displacement calculations by hand and FEA stress and displacement simulations on the computer. I have started on a design to mount the motor as well as other components in the assembly.

I was working with climatic indices PDO, NPI, NPGO, MEI and Upwelling Index. I want to try the hypothesis of double integration considering the abundance of 7 species of fish larvae. I did this using different scales, ranging from 1 year to 25 years. I downloaded from the NODC data for temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen from 1951 to 2002 for the study area.