Profile

• Time Zone

  Central

  
  
• Organization

  Mississippi State University

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  I study invasive species with a specialty in aquatic plants. My research seeks to study how these invasive species interact with the environment and how we can better control them. Currently, I focus on a plant called alligator weed which has invaded lakes and rivers in the southern United States

  
  
• Profile Question 1

  When and why did you decide to go into a science career?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 1 here (300 words):

  I always had a budding interest in biology ever since I was a kid and even majored in biology in undergrad. However, it wasn't until my final semester in my final year as a senior in college when I was encouraged to go to graduate school. It was then, during my master's, when I knew I wanted to research aquatic invasive plants as a career.

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  What is your favorite plant? Why?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 2 here (300 words):

  Picking a favorite plant for me is like picking a favorite child, but one of my favorites is an orchid native to the South called water spider orchid. It is particularly cool because, while it is found in shallow waters, it only grows on top of other aquatic vegetation. We call these plants that grow on top of other plants: epiphytes.

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  What is a typical day like for you?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 3 here (300 words):

  The only thing typical about a day in the life of a biology graduate student is that no day is typical. I could be spending my day teaching college students, on a boat in some backwater slough, or in my office writing papers and running statistical analyses. The wide variety of work I do week to week is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job.

  
  
• Challenge, ELL, Honors

  Honors or AP - Advanced Placement

  
  
• In addition to English, I am comfortable communicating with students in the following languages:

  (not set)

  
  
• Videoconference Ability

  (not set)

  
  
• Capacity: How many teams at a time are you comfortable working with?

  1

  
  

Recent Posts

vsnhsfrazerwosspring2024 project 5 Samuel Schmid Apr 27 at 09:15am

Great work on your final project everyone! Your data are interesting and I think y'all developed good conclusions to explain your findings. I hope you found this exercise interesting and useful, the world can always use more plant scientists.

vsnhsfrazerwosspring2024 project 5 Samuel Schmid Mar 25 at 11:40am

Hi Anthony,

 

Sorry for the delayed response. I was at a conference for most of last week and am playing catchup. As you may already be aware, the body of a scientific paper consists of four parts: introduction, methods, results, and…

more

Hi Anthony,

 

Sorry for the delayed response. I was at a conference for most of last week and am playing catchup. As you may already be aware, the body of a scientific paper consists of four parts: introduction, methods, results, and conclusion. Here is a summary of the major parts of a paper:

Introduction

• This is where you discuss and cite information from other scientific sources that are relevant to your study.
• I recommend starting with very general information and then discussing more and more specific ideas.
• At the end of the introduction is where you will state your objectives, hypotheses, and predictions.

Methods

• This section is where you report what you did and what you used in sufficient detail so that another scientist can replicate your study.
• While it is sometimes tempting to write in the second person like you would for a recipe, avoid this. Instead write in the first or third person as a retelling of what you did.

Results

• This is where you will write about and show your data.
• While you should describe your data in written form, you should also provide figures as this is easier for the reader to comprehend.
• In your case, I would make a bar graph since you are comparing values from multiple, unique treatments. This can be done easily in excel or google sheets.
• While you do report your results, you should avoid interpreting them in this section.

Discussion

• First in the discussion, you should give a brief summary of your data and state whether your data support or oppose your hypotheses.
• Next you will describe your findings more in-depth and discuss them in the context of previously published literature.
• It is helpful to reference other scientific sources in this section.

I hope this helps you write your paper. Be sure to reach out if you have any other questions.

vsnhsfrazerwosspring2024 project 5 Samuel Schmid Mar 17 at 06:45pm

Hello again Anthony,

Good to hear at least some of your seeds germinated! I think you're right, y'all seem to be running into an issue of "too much of a good thing is a bad thing." Organisms interact with their environment in…

more

Hello again Anthony,

Good to hear at least some of your seeds germinated! I think you're right, y'all seem to be running into an issue of "too much of a good thing is a bad thing." Organisms interact with their environment in complex ways in what we call 'non-linear relationships'. Consider this graph:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTonPv6YLvQO6cyB3YG9sh9f5_-bo1oJhSLGjVImCoRYkQ6EMRjgFuQDg__3jhh82IQwnQ&usqp=CAU

You can imagine that the x axis is some environmental factor (in this case, sugar in the water) and the y axis is plant growth. You can see that too little is bad for the plant and it won't grow, but way too much is also bad for the plant. There is this sweet spot in the middle of just right where the plant thrives. The problem is, we don't always know where that sweet spot is. When scientists are facing issues like this, what they do is try to figure out where this curve is, but having a scale of treatments with varying intensities. In your case, you might consider having multiple sugar water treatments, one with low concentration of sugar, one with medium concentration, and one with high. I hope this helps!

Remember, in science when nothing happens, that tells us just as much as when something happens.