# Any science folk on here?



## shandyman (Aug 9, 2012)

Hi Everyone. I Joined this forum quite a while back and have only recently become and active member again. The main reason I stopped coming on here was because I started to do a PhD and has taken over my life over the past few years.
Now I am at the final stages of writing and thinking about the wider aspect of the research I have done. I have been making computer models of ancient plants that are millions of years old and looking in to their evolutionary history. 

I am now wondering how many Science fans are out there in the BHM FFA world. Recently Mars Science Laboratory (cursorily) really has made me more interested in wider science again (also the geologist in me loves looking at the images).

So is there anything anyone would like to share? or does anyone have any question on the work I do.... lets see what happens


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## Goreki (Aug 9, 2012)

I am Quite Literally MADE COMPLETELY OF SCIENCE!!


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## shandyman (Aug 9, 2012)

Goreki said:


> I am Quite Literally MADE COMPLETELY OF SCIENCE!!



HAHAHA

Yes..... yes you are!


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## Tad (Aug 9, 2012)

Goreki said:


> I am Quite Literally MADE COMPLETELY OF SCIENCE!!



It's true--she is! 

And doesn't she just have the cutest paleontology?


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## imfree (Aug 9, 2012)

57 year-old lifetime electronics hobbyist/tech, here.


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## Goreki (Aug 9, 2012)

We're talking SCIENCE! Not Pseudo Science!


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## imfree (Aug 9, 2012)

I always thought Consumer Electronics=Pseudo Science, but Electronic Experimentation, Design, & Construction =Real Science. Aahm jest ignernt, I guess.


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## Goreki (Aug 9, 2012)

imfree said:


> I always thought Consumer Electronics=Pseudo Science, but Electronic Experimentation, Design, & Construction =Real Science. Aahm jest ignernt, I guess.


SHHHHHhhhh, I am reminding myself not to bust out my Phrenology.. Bust.


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## imfree (Aug 9, 2012)

Goreki said:


> SHHHHHhhhh, I am reminding myself not to bust out my Phrenology.. Bust.



Now, there you go! I aced every exam I ever took in Phrenology!


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## Hozay J Garseeya (Aug 9, 2012)

We have a resident PhD'er here on the board (she got tits) and she didn't let that get in the way of sharing in the community about how badass she is. 

No excuses.


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## fat hiker (Aug 9, 2012)

Just a lowly robotics engineering tech and ag scientist here...


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## CastingPearls (Aug 10, 2012)

Hozay J Garseeya said:


> We have a resident PhD'er here on the board (she got tits) and she didn't let that get in the way of sharing in the community about how badass she is.
> 
> No excuses.


We have a couple, I b'lieve......where are they tonight?


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## shandyman (Aug 10, 2012)

Hozay J Garseeya said:


> We have a resident PhD'er here on the board (she got tits) and she didn't let that get in the way of sharing in the community about how badass she is.
> 
> No excuses.



Ok ok I am a bad man for not coming in here enough..... In my defence when I started my PhD family members started dropping down dead like flies around me... So my mind has definitely been on other things.

However what is now important is that I'm here, you are all here, we can all be awesome and im going to go away and be quite jealous of the robotics engineer!!!


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## djudex (Aug 10, 2012)

I've got a doctorate in Awesomeology, it's a pretty tough field to get in to


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## Hozay J Garseeya (Aug 10, 2012)

I've always considered myself to be somewhat of an amateur doctor.


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## SitiTomato (Aug 10, 2012)

Well I've seen this movie abut fifty times. I think that makes me a scientist now.


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## mischel (Aug 10, 2012)

Soon to be M.Sc. in business administration & engineering aaaand soon to be international welding engineer.

But i'm a science guy when it comes to warpdrives!


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## escapist (Aug 11, 2012)

I only have an AAS Degree in Computer Science but I love it. I admittedly have been caught day-dreaming writing pseudo code in my head, while I should have been paying attention to the conversation my ex was trying to have with me lol.

Besides that I love almost all things science fiction, and loved the fact that we had to memorize the formula for nuclear fusion in the sun in astronomy.


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## Melian (Aug 13, 2012)

shandyman said:


> Now I am at the final stages of writing and thinking about the wider aspect of the research I have done. I have been making computer models of ancient plants that are millions of years old and looking in to their evolutionary history.
> 
> ........ or does anyone have any question on the work I do



Your work sounds interesting, and I have a few questions: 

1. Are you on the biology side, the modeling side or both?
2. Which plants do you study?
3. How does modeling the plant aid in understanding its evolutionary history?
4. On what do you base your models? Fossil records? Predictions based on convergence or divergence of known plants?

Evolutionary bio is a field in which I have zero experience, so those last two questions might sound completely ignorant to you.


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## Diana_Prince245 (Aug 13, 2012)

I'm in nursing school with eventual plans to get an NP, but my brother's a PhD chemist.


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## Sasquatch! (Aug 13, 2012)

I'm a scientist. At least, that's what I tell people when I run around wearing nothing but a lab coat and goggles.

FOR SCIENCE!


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## WhiteHotRazor (Aug 15, 2012)




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## shandyman (Aug 15, 2012)

Melian said:


> Your work sounds interesting, and I have a few questions:
> 
> 1. Are you on the biology side, the modeling side or both?
> 2. Which plants do you study?
> ...



Hey
1) I am actually coming at this from a geology palaeontology background. I have had to learn a huge amount of botany and am now probably at degree level standard in botany. The modelling is quite straight forward as I use a lot of the methods trailed in medicine and just refine them for fossils.

2) The plants I am studying are the ones before flowering plants evolved, these are mainly gymnosperms which include conifers, pines, cycads, ginkgo ect. For me these are some of the most interesting species that have ever lived.

3) The 3D models allows for a detailed view of some small and complex structures, botanists today use DNA to create evolutionary trees, in fossils specimens we do not have any DNA and can only go by what we can see or the morphology. We also treat modern living species the same way as our fossils so we can do direct comparisons and see how reliable our results are.

4) The models are based on both fossil and living specimens, we try not to look at stastical methods like phylogenies and try to concentrate on finding the evolutionary important structures .

I hope this helps to clear up a bit of what I do


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## Melian (Aug 15, 2012)

shandyman said:


> Hey
> 1) I am actually coming at this from a geology palaeontology background. I have had to learn a huge amount of botany and am now probably at degree level standard in botany. The modelling is quite straight forward as I use a lot of the methods trailed in medicine and just refine them for fossils.
> 
> 2) The plants I am studying are the ones before flowering plants evolved, these are mainly gymnosperms which include conifers, pines, cycads, ginkgo ect. For me these are some of the most interesting species that have ever lived.
> ...



It does. Thanks for explaining! When are you going to defend?


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## shandyman (Aug 16, 2012)

Melian said:


> It does. Thanks for explaining! When are you going to defend?



In the next couple of months, I am submitting my thesis in the next few weeks and then the long wait....

I only saw your background after I wrote the reply, sorry if i dummed it down a bit too much!!


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## Melian (Aug 16, 2012)

shandyman said:


> In the next couple of months, I am submitting my thesis in the next few weeks and then the long wait....
> 
> I only saw your background after I wrote the reply, sorry if i dummed it down a bit too much!!



No worries - like I said, plant/evolutionary bio is not my field at all, so it probably needs to be dumbed down for me!

Have fun with the wait....I've been screwed around by the department for MONTHS now, and am currently waiting for my second defense (you probably only have one, though, as most departments do it that way), but I won't pollute your thread with bureaucratic complaints!


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## shandyman (Aug 16, 2012)

Melian said:


> No worries - like I said, plant/evolutionary bio is not my field at all, so it probably needs to be dumbed down for me!
> 
> Have fun with the wait....I've been screwed around by the department for MONTHS now, and am currently waiting for my second defense (you probably only have one, though, as most departments do it that way), but I won't pollute your thread with bureaucratic complaints!



Feel free to pollute the thread. I am never shocked now by the inefficiency of a University. They are institutions full of clever people, none of which have any common sense!


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## Tad (Aug 16, 2012)

shandyman said:


> In the next couple of months, I am submitting my thesis in the next few weeks and then the long wait....
> 
> I only saw your background after I wrote the reply, sorry if i dummed it down a bit too much!!



Thank you for dumbing it down enough for the rest of us!

And good luck getting the thesis all wrapped, and in not going mad from boredom/tension between then and your defense


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## qwertyman173 (Aug 16, 2012)

I'm a chemical engineer


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## sarahe543 (Aug 16, 2012)

A would have been science gal, I did an entrance exam for med school but i ended up having more babies instead!


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## viracocha (Aug 17, 2012)

My inner-wannabe-paleontologist thinks that awesome. My lack of botany and bio knowledge is a substantial handicap to understand how/what the 3D modeling shows. I'd be curious to know what you can tell from morphology to whatever small and complex structures you mentioned. 
<-- archaeologist out of comfortable time periods


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## shandyman (Aug 17, 2012)

viracocha said:


> My inner-wannabe-paleontologist thinks that awesome. My lack of botany and bio knowledge is a substantial handicap to understand how/what the 3D modeling shows. I'd be curious to know what you can tell from morphology to whatever small and complex structures you mentioned.
> <-- archaeologist out of comfortable time periods



I tend to concentrate on the female reproductive structures as this is where a fair amount of the changes take place. Many seeds will have common structures, however there are usually distinct differences in these structures between different species. These subtle differences in between the species is fairly consistent through geological time. So a Ginkgo seed and a pine seed will be as different now and for the same reasons as they were 120 million years ago. That is in general how is works, although is is not always that simple.
Below is a picture of one of the models I have made


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## BigWheels (Oct 9, 2012)

Hozay J Garseeya said:


> I've always considered myself to be somewhat of an amateur doctor.



I'M NOT A GYNECOLOGIST BUT I'LL TAKE A LOOK


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## fat hiker (Oct 9, 2012)

shandyman said:


> However what is now important is that I'm here, you are all here, we can all be awesome and im going to go away and be quite jealous of the robotics engineer!!!



No need to be jealous, I love to share - and as I started in agricultural science, I in turn am in awe of your biological models. 

Maybe we can come up with a roboticized way to exhibit them?


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## Anjula (Oct 10, 2012)

I'm a future civil engineer, does it count? Or maybe mining one depends on which way will I choose in 4 yrs lol


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## KittyKitten (Oct 10, 2012)

shandyman said:


> Hi Everyone. I Joined this forum quite a while back and have only recently become and active member again. The main reason I stopped coming on here was because I started to do a PhD and has taken over my life over the past few years.
> Now I am at the final stages of writing and thinking about the wider aspect of the research I have done. I have been making computer models of ancient plants that are millions of years old and looking in to their evolutionary history.
> 
> I am now wondering how many Science fans are out there in the BHM FFA world. Recently Mars Science Laboratory (cursorily) really has made me more interested in wider science again (also the geologist in me loves looking at the images).
> ...



I will say that I have an M.S. degree in Biological Science. I do love biology and astronomy! I find astronomy so interesting because when I taught it, I was amazed at what is out there in the universe. We are just little dots compared to other things in our universe! Life is so precious. I do wish to earn a PhD in Public Health, I don't want to work in the laboratory all day.


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## Melian (Oct 11, 2012)

KittyKitten said:


> I will say that I have an M.S. degree in Biological Science. I do love biology and astronomy! I find astronomy so interesting because when I taught it, I was amazed at what is out there in the universe. We are just little dots compared to other things in our universe! Life is so precious. I do wish to earn a PhD in Public Health, *I don't want to work in the laboratory all day*.



The dream of every PhD - to GTFO of the wetlab. You spend 6 years learning complicated techniques, just so you never have to use them again.


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## MrBob (Oct 11, 2012)

I suppose technically I'm on my way to being a social scientist as I've just started my degree course (which is why I haven't posted much for the last few days...mucho reading of textbooks). 

The trouble is I'm already finding myself itching to argue against some of the stuff in them. I know I'm going to end up submitting a 2,500 word paper entitled 'Fuck Society!' at the end of this module.


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## fat hiker (Oct 12, 2012)

Anjula said:


> I'm a future civil engineer, does it count? Or maybe mining one depends on which way will I choose in 4 yrs lol



It sure counts! Especially since women in engineering are still uncommon, if not rare. (Among the 48 first-term robotics engineering tech students I'm teaching this term, there is not one female...)


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## fat hiker (Oct 12, 2012)

MrBob said:


> I suppose technically I'm on my way to being a social scientist as I've just started my degree course (which is why I haven't posted much for the last few days...mucho reading of textbooks).
> 
> The trouble is I'm already finding myself itching to argue against some of the stuff in them. I know I'm going to end up submitting a 2,500 word paper entitled 'Fuck Society!' at the end of this module.



What kind of social "science"? (We 'hard scientists' and 'engineers' often have a laugh at the expense of the 'social scientists' who sometimes seem to substitute opinions for hard facts. The laws of physics are immutable; the laws of economics and sociology, not so much.)


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## MrBob (Oct 12, 2012)

fat hiker said:


> What kind of social "science"? (We 'hard scientists' and 'engineers' often have a laugh at the expense of the 'social scientists' who sometimes seem to substitute opinions for hard facts. The laws of physics are immutable; the laws of economics and sociology, not so much.)



Oh agreed. This course is a load of crap but unfortunately it's a mandatory element in my modern classics degree.


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## dharmabean (Oct 12, 2012)

I originally went to college for criminal psychology /forensics. I studied a lot of science based classes. 

I ended up wanting to so something more creative... then got lost on the way.


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## Gordo Mejor (Oct 13, 2012)

shandyman said:


>



That's a nice rendering. How did you go from seed to 3D model? What software did you use?

I'm not a scientist, but I have made computer graphics to explain science to children.


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## Geodetic_Effect (Oct 15, 2012)

Lately I've been spending most of my time studying the sweet science.


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## LeoGibson (Oct 16, 2012)

Geodetic_Effect said:


> Lately I've been spending most of my time studying the sweet science.



I wish some viable heavyweights would study it. UFC is killing it. I know, I know, there's Paqiuo and Hopkins and Mayweather and a few others, but boxing lives and dies by the heavyweight division and it has been a long while since there has been a charismatic, larger than life champ.


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## Geodetic_Effect (Oct 16, 2012)

LeoGibson said:


> I wish some viable heavyweights would study it. UFC is killing it. I know, I know, there's Paqiuo and Hopkins and Mayweather and a few others, but boxing lives and dies by the heavyweight division and it has been a long while since there has been a charismatic, larger than life champ.



I agree. I miss Tyson. I do really like Mayweather though.


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## cakeboy (Oct 16, 2012)

Geodetic_Effect said:


> Lately I've been spending most of my time studying the sweet science.



WIN. Boxing is amazing.


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