The last few weeks have been a mixture of very tedious data analysis and exciting outreach. You might remember that a couple of months ago we sent off our little vial of hopes and dreams to an external sequencing company. A vial filled with the amplified genes of over 700 wasps! Well, it turns out sorting through those data takes a really long time.
 Mustard is tired of staring at computer screens all day. |  Even the dog would like the data analysis to stop. |
The upside is that there is actually data to look through! The sequencing of our wasp DNA seems to have worked reasonably well, and we promise to keep you updated as we sort through it. It's just very slow going! Sometimes science happens quickly, and we have really fun days in the lab or the field. But good science also requires making sure any results you publish are correct, and that takes time. It's more than a little scary knowing I have less than a year left of my PhD (where did the time go?) but hopefully this might be the last big hurdle.
What's been a welcome break from data analysis has been a bunch of outreach events! We headed up to Murray Bridge High School and talked about wasps to year 7/8 students with Children's University Regional Lecture Series, and also visited a primary school to do some slime-making and dry ice demonstrations with the year three students (they were learning about states of matter). I also participated in the Three Minute Thesis Competition, and am off to the University Finals on the 12th September! Hooray for wasps!
What's been a welcome break from data analysis has been a bunch of outreach events! We headed up to Murray Bridge High School and talked about wasps to year 7/8 students with Children's University Regional Lecture Series, and also visited a primary school to do some slime-making and dry ice demonstrations with the year three students (they were learning about states of matter). I also participated in the Three Minute Thesis Competition, and am off to the University Finals on the 12th September! Hooray for wasps!
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This Friday 25 August, we're giving a family-friendly talk convincing you why you should love wasps! Find out more and come along here: https://www.scienceweek.net.au/why-you-should-love-wasps/
What's next on the cards? Well, we're heading to Canberra for a conference in September, and then Mustard and I are off to Bush Blitz! Never head of Bush Blitz? Don't worry, we'll be writing a few posts as we get ready for the grand adventure, and the next one will explain everything you could ever want to know about why 20 scientists would go to the middle of nowhere for two weeks... stay tuned!
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