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How To Get Dubai Residency Visa?
Tax free high standard lifestyle in a strong economic zone is what everyone considers. Especially investors and professional business entities always prefer to setup their business and to have residence visa of places like that. If you are one of them, we recommend you to choose UAE as it provides tax free high standard lifestyle with wide range of opportunities and Dubai Mainland residency visa as well.
Residence visa is not quite easy to get in all over the world. Luckily, UAE is an ideal place not only to setup a new business but also to avail an easy residence visa process. The step you need to take is to hire an expert individual or a team that help you through the whole visa process step by step.
Mainland Visa Meaning
Mainland company registration or the visa means that you are going to have visa on the behalf of a company that is not only owned by you but also a UAE National. Your UAE National partner owns the 51% of the company. Your partner is going to be your sponsor for the Mainland visa in UAE.
What is employment visa Mainland?
The most "in demand" visa types in UAE are Free Zone and Mainland. The ownership rules and regulations differentiate between the both visa types. If you want to setup a business in UAE main market, Mainland visa is the best option for this purpose. Your 51% shareholder, the local sponsor will help you a lot to activate a successful business in the region.
Your sponsor has right to shift all the authority to you with power of attorney. So you will be able to hold and handle whole the process and activation of the company.
Difference between Free Zone and Mainland Visa
Free Zone visa allows you to start a business with 100% ownership. You will need to handle all the legal matters by your own. While Mainland visa helps you to get a National sponsor who will face government and other legal matters related to the business formation.
The major difference between both of the visas is the time period they are valid for. Mainland employment visa is valid for two years while Free Zone employment visa is valid for three years.
Free Zone visa process is taken care by the specific Free Zone laws while Mainland visa process is controlled by UAE labor Law.
UAE Employment Visa cost 2018 is around 30,000 AED for commercial license and around 27,000 AED for professional license.
Mainland Visa Processing Time
Usually UAE/Dubai Mainland Residency visa process takes 100 days. This is 10 days more than three months.
UAE Mainland Residency Visa
UAE/Dubai Mainland Residency Visa application process is very simple. We divide this process in few easy steps usually.
Register Online
Get registered for E-Channel services. This would be the first step for your Mainland visa process. This step is designed under the supervision of Government of UAE. Online application process has made everything faster, accessible and easier.
You just need to ask your Mainland agent to make your company registered through online procedure and pay the fees. Now this will be your agent's responsibility to do the rest of the job. You will be notified right after your registration is done.
Entry Permit
After getting registered for E-Channel services, this is the time to apply for entry permit or employment visa. It is a temporary visa that is valid for 60 days. After getting this visa, you will need to change your status. This step is to activate your entry permit.
Medical Test
You need to get done with your medical fitness test before obtaining Mainland visa. A blood test for any infectious disease and a chest X-Ray will be done for medical fitness test and the result are usually out after three days.
Emirates ID Card
After getting done with your medical test, you need to proceed for emirates ID card. It will help you to open an account in bank and also for other official uses.
Residence Visa Stamping
Now this is the time when you get an actual visa sticker in your passport. Stamping process takes 15 days usually. You can move out of the UAE during this process. After successful visa acquiring, you can apply for your family, dependent or even for your employees.
Mainland visa process is basically very easy but only for those who are professionally expert in this field. This is very important to choose a proper platform for your business so you will be able to establish a successful entity.
To get easily and smoothly through the whole process you would need a Business Formation Specialist. EBMS will make the whole process hassle free and lumps free for you and your dream company. EBMS provides you comprehensive range of services from getting registered to fully functional stage of your Business. Give your fate a chance and try to explore easy and efficient way of business startup with our professional business services providing staff.


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A few of the more common places you may like to seek out a free wireless internet connection would be public libraries , churches , book stores , airports and hotels. These are obviously just a start to point you in the right direction for au gratis wifi but if you do some online research you may be surprised to find even more local hot spot areas.
Our family utilized a free wifi connection at one point in time when we moved from one home to another. The new home was near a faint wifi signal but the signal was so faint we could not use it to surf the net. We decided to make our own free long range wifi antenna to see if we could pick up the signal better for usage. Upon placing a usb wireless dongle in the center of a large steel bread-mixing-bowl and placing it in a window where the wireless signal was strongest we were able to surf the net for free. Our free wireless internet access enabled us to surf at speeds bursting to 2.8 +/- mb/s. Quite good for a free wifi connection.
Free wifi , whether you initiate yourself around your own home or neighbor hood or whether you are on the move connecting with businesses or organizations that provide it for you is available. If you have a free day or afternoon you can even take some time to move around your city area and map out where there are free or open wifi signals for you to avail of when needed. Your laptop will show you what open free internet wifi hot spots are immediately available around you if you examine your wireless network sharing connection built in software.

subset: commoncrawl


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NEW YORK (AP/WCBS 880) — A lawsuit in New York claims that the U.S. Census Bureau discriminated in its hiring of more than a million temporary workers to conduct the 2010 census.
Civil rights groups filed the lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan several months ago. It was updated Thursday.
It says the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warned the bureau last year that its hiring practices might be discriminatory. The lawsuit said the EEOC told the bureau that its criminal background check policy might "run afoul" of the Civil Rights Act.
The lawsuit accused the bureau of illegally screening out applicants with often decades-old arrest records for minor offenses or those who were arrested but never convicted.
Messages left for U.S. Census and EEOC attorneys were not immediately returned.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)


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The Center's Ph.D. student Konstantin Kuzmin, advised by Prof. Boleslaw K. Szymanski, will be honored with Founders Award at this year Honors Convocation.
Konstantin Kuzmin, the Center's Ph.D. student, will be honored with Founders Award. He is advised by Prof. Boleslaw K. Szymanski and plans to graduate in November. The Founders Award of Excellence was established in 1994 to honor students who embody qualities of creativity, discovery, leadership, and the values of pride and responsibility at Rensselaer. The award consists of a special certificate, recognition by faculty, staff, and peers at the Honors Convocation ceremony, and a cash prize. Approximately about one percent of Rensselaer's student population are honored each year as winners of Rensselaer's Founders Award of Excellence.


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Madeley Methodist Church
Poolside, Madeley, Crewe, Cheshire, CW3 9DX.
Church Profile
Church History: Madeley is a large village of about 5,000 within the Borough of Newcastle.
Service Times: Sunday 10.30 am Communion Service monthly
Worship Area: New building to the rear of the old (joined by entrance area). Measures 40 x 21 feet. Seating - 110 chairs (padded), interlinked into rows of 5 but easily separated. Aisle down the middle of the Church. Movable communion rail.
School room (old church) 24 x 24 feet. Entrance hall, vestry, kitchen and toilets.
Numbers Attending Worship: Average size of congregation – 20, more when the Puppet Ministry are involved.
Music & Liturgy: Songs of Fellowship and Hymns and Psalms. Piano and organ.
Media: None.
Children & Young People: Occasionally teenagers attend from the Puppet Ministry.
| Printable Version


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- Format: Xbox One (version reviewed), PS4, PC
- Unleashed: Out Now
- Publisher: Square Enix
- Developer: Eidos Montreal
- Players: 1
- Site: https://www.deusex.com/
- Game code shared from freelance work
The original Deus Ex is sixteen years old now. Despite being old enough to smoke (yet being physically incapable of doing so), it's still held up by many people as something that more games should aspire to. Ironically perhaps, none of the other games in the series have managed to capture the same seemingly unanimous critical acclaim. An aborted sequel turned into separate title Project Snowblind, Invisible War is spat upon by many (unfairly we would argue), Human Revolution was well-received but had horrible and entirely out of place boss fights, and The Fall is a mobile-exclusive title that most fans haven't even bothered to investigate. Mankind Divided could go either way – so which way did it go?
The first question on the quivering lips of many DE fans will undoubtedly be "does it have stupid boss fights?". The answer is "No. Well, not really". Ignoring one side-mission encounter which can be avoided, there's only one boss fight – right at the end of the story. You can't talk your way out of the fight, which is disappointing; and he's essentially a bullet sponge, which is even more disappointing. However, as well as fighting him directly, there are also several options for either non-lethal takedowns or indirect kills. This time, it truly is possible (though very difficult) to go through the entire game without killing a single person.
Square Enix have taken a holistic approach to communicating the story – dialogue, environment and marketing – in a way that has very much proven to be a double edged sword. Said story follows on from the events of Human Revolution where, after augmented people across the world committed acts of violence and murder after losing control thanks to Hugh Darrow, they now find themselves feared and segregated. You'll find that most civilian police, and many citizens, are suspicious of (or aggressive toward) you simply because of your augments. When the inevitable late-game curfew part of the story kicks in, your high-level clearance papers aren't even asked for. This can make getting from point A to point B a little annoying if you're trying to avoid unnecessary kills.
We've already discussed why trying to draw parallels with racism is entirely inappropriate. Having now played the final product, seeing that on rare occasions it even goes to the grimly laughable extreme of calling those who dislike augmented people "racist", there are moments where this ill-judged attitude sours the whole experience.
Those moments are however thankfully rare. By and large it's a carefully crafted and highly enjoyable experience, better even than Human Revolution. The first mission gifts you a fairly decent selection of augmentations, but after that of course an excuse is found to strip 'em down and make you start building your abilities up again. The excuse for this is probably to "allow the player to mould Jensen according to their playstyle" or some such rot, but in fairness that's exactly what you can do. The brand new abilities, introduced fairly early on in the story, are mostly geared toward engaging enemies. One that will get some people excited is the titan shield, impervious to anything but an EMP attack.
The main storyline will drag you through a variety of locations and into direct contact with various people, including the series' trademark dialogue trees and choices to make. Optional missions will offer such choices too, and the impact they have in both tends to be more meaningful (sometimes emotionally, sometimes in terms of gameplay) than previous games. Although it may not be immediately obvious, a few choices you make can have a major impact on the final mission, with one even giving you a way to instantly end the aforementioned boss fight. That it's probably not obvious which choices and missions these are at the time is a credit to the game design.
Lingering on the issue of side missions for a while longer, these are arguably the main way in which Mankind Divided shines brighter than Human Revolution. None of them are throwaway fetch quests or simple "go here and kill all the people" tasks. They're multi-step missions, each of a decent length without ever feeling like things are being padded out unnecessarily. Each self-contained plot could easily have been stretched out for an interesting separate adventure game, but here they're included simply to add variety and value to the package.
There's a lot to like, but there are also some cynical decisions that deserve nothing but scorn. Most grating is the issue of purchasable praxis kits. Thanks to the fact that Square Enix now kindly allow you to buy praxis kits and in-game credits with real-world money, in-game praxis kits are no less than twice as expensive as they were in the last game. It's also suspiciously difficult to build up enough in-game cash to buy them; it's no exaggeration to say that you'll struggle to buy even one in a playthrough.
As good as the writing is – and it (usually) is good – at times it feels distinctly incomplete. One of the side missions teases you with an explanation of how and why Jensen was installed with his mysterious new augmentations, before abandoning you completely having not actually explained anything at all. The main story, no matter which ending/s you get, is not resolved properly either, leaving you with the distinct feeling that there should be at least two more missions to tie everything together. If any of this missing info is contained within the paid DLC that was gleefully announced before the game even hit shelves, SE should be ashamed of themselves.
Oh, did we mention why this review is so late? A widely encountered game-breaking bug across all three formats, now finally patched, made it literally impossible for us to continue. Things are fine now, but if you're thinking of buying the game for a console unable for whatever reason to download updates – don't do it!!


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Hancock Park Golf Club
- 237 Naruna Rd, Lampasas, TX 76550
- (512) 556-3202
- www.cityoflampasas.com
Hancock Park Golf Club is an 18-hole regulation length golf course in Lampasas, Texas. This short layout has 3 sets of teeboxes for a fun, but challenging golfing experience. Online tee times may be available at Hancock Park Golf Club or at nearby golf courses, usually offered at a discount from the normal rate.
Note: The info on these pages is typically reliable, but sometimes there may be mistakes. Should you come upon anything that needs updating, please get ahold of us about it.
Beneath this text, aerial imagery should load of Hancock Park Golf Club at 237 Naruna Rd, Lampasas, TX 76550. If you can't find the course, try panning around and looking at the surrounding area.
Please login to add your review.


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Kentucky's Leadership Networks
The system of Leadership Networks in Kentucky has been designed to support the quality implementation of the requirements set forth in Senate Bill 1 (2009), Unbridled Learning. Specifically, the networks are intended to build the capacity of each district in the Commonwealth as they implement Kentucky's new Core Academic Standards, develop assessment literacy among all educators, and work toward ensuring that every student is college and career ready. To that end, the vision for these networks is: Every school district in the Commonwealth of Kentucky has a knowledgeable and cohesive leadership team that guides the professional learning and practice of all administrators, teachers, and staff so that every student experiences highly effective teaching, learning, and assessment practices in every classroom, every day. (Result: Proficient and Prepared for Success!)


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The CL-5500-D Label Printing Scale has the functions you need at an affordable price. Includes CL-Works software package.
Use the CL-5500-D Label Printing Scales in Supermarkets, Speciality Stores, Delicatessen's and more!
- The maximum capacity that we supply is 15kg.
- It can hold up to 8000 plus and 1000 ingredients
- Speed keys of up to 144 plus keys
- Supports label format using utility
- High speed thermal printer
- Cartridge loading type label installation
- 40 fixed format & 20 customized format design
- Display type Graphic LCD(32 x 202) + Numeric LCD(4/5/6/6)
- Label size Width: 40 by 60 Length: 30 by 200
- Platter size 380(W) x 270(D)
- Dimensions 396(W) x 464(D) x 612(H)
- Product weight (kg) 12.64


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On Thursday Palestinians are protesting about the latest instance of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli government. In the Beer Sheba (Beer es Saba) region of southern Israel about 30,000 inhabitants are about to be driven from their homes.
Their villages have been designated "unrecognised" for more than 60 years, making their lands easy prey for confiscation. And while they are refused the same rights as other Israeli citizens to facilities such as running water, schools and hospitals, the Israeli state demands their taxes.
The British government must condemn any move to evict the Palestinian citizens of Israel from their lands, which were documented under the British Mandate as privately owned Palestinian land – not ownerless as the Israeli state now claims.
Geoffrey Bindman QC
Victoria Brittain
William Dalrymple
Ken Loach
Tony Benn
Ahdaf Soueif
Miriam Margolyes
Caryl Churchill
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Linda Riordan MP
Bob Russell MP
Martin Caton MP
Katy Clark MP
Alex Cunningham MP
Julie Hilling MP
John McDonnell MP
Andy Slaughter MP
Dame Jenny Tonge
John Pilger
Leila Sansour
Ghada Karmi
Ilan Pappe
Dr Salman Abu Sitta
Prof Steven Rose
Prof Hilary Rose
Louise Christian
Rodney Bickerstaffe
Bruce Kent
Reem Kelani
Kika Markham
Michael Rosen
Leon Rosselson
Alexei Sayle
Jeremy Hardy
Hugh Lanning, Chair PSC
Keith Sonnet
John Austin
Canon Garth Hewitt
Andy de la Tour
• Those who lead European football must respond to an appeal from Palestinians dismayed at the prospect of Israel hosting Uefa's under-21 tournament in 2013. A state that uses military might to hold sway over land it illegally occupies and exploits, flouts international law and ignores UN resolutions surely forfeits the right to be treated as a member of the community of nations. But western powers continue to embrace Israel as an ally.
During the 2011 under-21 tournament in Denmark in June, 42 Gazan football clubs, backed by many sporting bodies, wrote to Uefa president Michel Platini calling on his organisation not "to reward Israel for its violent repression of Palestinian rights". We ask Uefa to respond positively to this plea.
Stephane Hessel diplomat
Ken Loach filmmaker
Michael Mansfield barrister
Miriam Margolyes actor
Nurit Peled Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought joint winner 2001
John Pilger journalist and filmmaker,
Ahdaf Soueif novelist and political and cultural commentator
Jean Ziegler vice-president, advisory committee of the UN human rights council
• The government changes the law and brings out the red carpet to allow alleged Israeli war criminals into the UK (Former Israeli minister to visit UK after change in arrest law, 4 October) but changes the rules to arrest visiting Palestinians whose only "crime" is to campaign for their rights (Palestinian activist was held unlawfully, says high court, 1 October). The Goldstone report, which has been endorsed at the UN general assembly, provides clear evidence of how in its 2008-09 attack on Gaza, Israel was responsible for attacks on children, use of human shields, and use of phosphorous bombs and flachettes in civilian areas. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also documented serious cases of abuse. For William Hague to invite to the UK Israeli leaders who were in government at the time these alleged crimes were committed is a slap in the face for relatives of the 1,400 dead, the 5,000 injured and the many others who suffered due to Israel's Cast Lead attack on Gaza.
Dr Stephen Leah


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Dead Rat in Ceilings of homes is a very common call most rodent removal companies will receive in the winter time. Rats and mice will get into walls and attics to make their home on long cold winter months, rats and mice are very thinly furred and they will often seek shelter during these cold snaps. What better place to find shelter than in your attic area of your home, Mice and rats are the most common rodent problems that people have in the winter months of the year. One very common call we receive is to find and remove dead rats and mice from ceilings of homes and buildings. This is sometimes a very difficult thing to do, Mice and rats are rather small and it takes lots of patience and skill to often find a dead one that has made its way into your walls or ceilings of your home. we have a article on the removal of dead rats from walls of homes, this article will concentrate on the removal of dead rats from ceilings of homes
How did a dead rat get into my ceiling?
Rats can get into almost any part of an attic or wall space of a home that has not been properly excluded. A rodent exclusion is a method of sealing all parts of a home or building to prevent any possible entry to the area by a rat of mouse, this process can also be performed to keep out squirrels, bats and other types of wildlife that is typically found near homes or buildings. After the rat or mouse has made access to your home or building, they may come in contact with poison that is set out by a pest control agent or possibly the homeowner. Today's poisons are very toxic and it sometimes only takes a day for a rat to die and start the decomposition process. Once the decomposition process starts to take place and the rats body starts to break down the smell will become very bad, some people think that once enough time has elapsed, the smell will just go away, this is not true, if a rat or mouse decomposes in the ceiling and is laying in insulation, the insulation will have a very bad odor until it is removed and replaced with new insulation. Same goes for sheet rock, all items that a decomposing rat comes into contact with must be removed, the entire area deodorized and material should be replaces. This is the only way you will ever completely eliminate the odor of a dead rat in the ceiling of a home. We have several more very detaled rat removal pages located here.
What are some ways the rat could have died in my ceiling?
Some of the possible ways the rat could have died in the ceiling of a home as mentioned earlier is rat poison, this is the most common ways that we see rats have died in ceilings of homes, another possible way rats could die in your ceiling is by being electrocuted. Rats are rodents, meaning that their front teeth always grow, which gives them the urge to chew. Every now and then a rat will chew on a electrical wire, the rat will chew into the hot side of the wire and will immediately be electrocuted. These rats will be very easy to find as they are usually still near the light box which they were chewing on. A lot of times people will notice that their phone lines or cable outlets will stop working, this is a sure sign that you have a rat or mouse chewing on your wiring of your home.
We have compiled a list of professional rat removal companies, the list is by city and state, all of these companies will be able to help you find your dead rat removal problem. The rat control professionals are located across the county, All the companies listed on this site do rat exclusion and dead rat removal.
The types of rats they remove is roof rats, house mice, norway rats and kangaroo rats.


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October 2014
It's exciting for me to write this October update – it was in October of 2012 that I wrote my original blog post as a Phipps Botany in Action Fellow. It's been two great years and it's fun to look back on all the different aspects of my research. And next month, I'll have a brand new site for my blog too so I can continue posting updates long after I'm a BIA fellow!
This past month, I finished up the last of my outdoor research on the green roofs. Most of the plants are still alive and well but you can tell that they're getting ready for the winter. They are almost all finished flowering and have begun to lose their leaves or turn red: a sign that fall is officially here and winter is not far behind. I still need to visit two of my green roofs in early December to dig up my temperature probes and read the data one more time, but for most of my sites, the temperature data has been collected and the little probes are buried once again so they can continue recording data all winter long. I bet they're going to get cold – I know I sure wouldn't want to be on top of a roof in Chicago in the middle of winter!
Hopefully the other plants that I took down from the roofs and finally buried under mulch in their "over-winter station" won't be too cold. I'll have to wait until next spring to find out.
One of the most exciting parts of my research this past month was an opportunity to speak at the World Green Infrastructure Network's annual conference in Sydney, Australia! I've never been so far away before and (despite the very long plane ride) it was really interesting to see how people on the other side of the world build green roofs and other types of "living" buildings that include plants all over the outside walls.
I think my presentation went well too and a lot of people asked me questions about how to design green roofs that support a larger variety of plants like the ones I'm using in my research. I didn't have time to travel to any of the great national parks in Australia this time… I guess that just means I'll have to go back to see all the amazing plant diversity "down under" at another time.
Once I returned from the conference, it was time to get back to work. At this time of year, that now means either writing or working in the laboratory. With my research team at Loyola University, we ran a few experiments on the green roof soil we collected to try and learn how much water the soil could hold. We just started taking some measurements and beginning to learn if there are differences in the soils as a result of the plants and tiny microorganisms that we put there earlier in the year.
I also started working with the more than 300 fruits that I collected from my experimental plants back in August. I'm now carefully weighing each one and then cracking them open to count all the seeds to learn which plants were better at reproducing. I then save all the seeds for the next part of my experiment… to be continued!
September 2014
Is it fall already? It's sure starting to look like it on the green roofs. The plants are starting to turn brown and become dormant or inactive for the winter. Some of the plants have been pollinated and now have seeds that fall off, get buried, and maybe grow into new plants next year. It's exciting to see how the changing seasons affect the plants.
My research outside is just finishing up. In September, I collected samples of the soil on green roofs so I can see if there have been any changes since I last checked in April. I also collected data about the temperatures on the green roofs. Over the summer, I had buried these little electronic probes that record the temperature in my green roof trays every hour. In total, I put 48 probes in the trays and 4 outside the trays to see if there were differences in the temperature between the different experimental treatments that I set up earlier in the season. I don't know what the results are yet because there are THOUSANDS of temperature readings to go through, but when I have some more information, I'll update the blog. For now, I've buried the probes yet again so they can keep recording data all winter long. I have to dig them up again in December to read the data and reset them for another round. Hopefully they won't get frozen!
Speaking of frozen, I also set up an "over-winter" station for some of the plants that I'm hoping to keep alive over the winter so I can use them in another experiment next summer. These plants are in pots and if I leave the pots out during the entire Chicago winter, the soil will probably get really cold and the plants' roots will freeze. This would kill the plants and be very bad news for my experiment. I'm hoping that my over-winter station, which will be filled with cloth, sand, and wood mulch, will help provide insulation so the plants don't get quite so cold during the winter. It's a little scary to put a lot of work into this project and not know for sure if the plants will survive. I've got my fingers crossed!
Also this past month, a new report that I wrote with some colleagues was published in a scientific journal called The Great Lakes Entomologists. In the report, we identified some of the different types of bees that are found on green roofs in Chicago. We didn't collect bees from very many roofs but we found that there were 26 different kinds, or species of bees. I think if people planted a larger variety of the plants that bees like to use for food, there would be even more species of bees! But that would involve some more research and I can't say for sure. If you'd like to read the report, you can click the link HERE. It might be a challenging read if you're not used to the style of scientific journals but maybe you'd like to see it anyway.
As September comes to a close, I'm getting ready to talk about some of my research at a big conference for the World Green Infrastructure Network (WGIN) in Sydney, Australia. Check out my blog updates next month to read about what will probably be a great experience in October!
August 2014
August was filled with more data and some new beginnings.
The weather got a bit hotter and drier – it actually felt like the real Chicago summers that I'm used to! This was good and bad news for data collection. The experiment that I was conducting using the green roof trays dried out very quickly from the lack of rain. By the first week in August, just about all the plants had dried up and turned brown. But I'm not too worried just yet. It's possible that some didn't get enough water and died but I'm pretty sure that other perennial plants (ones that will come back again next year) might just be dried out for the year. I'm crossing my fingers that many of the plants from this experiment will grow and flower again next summer.
The seedlings that I'd planted in the other green roofs were not as affected by the hotter and drier weather and are actually doing quite well! Some of the plant species were doing better than others, but overall they looked pretty good. My research team and I took the last of our measurements for this experiment. I'll go back every few months throughout the year to collect data from our temperature probes, but it's just about time for most of the plants to stop growing and become dormant for the winter.
My third experiment of the summer is just about to wrap up too – well, the outdoor part anyway. After moving all my potted plants off the green roofs and to a new secure winter location (my parents' backyard – thanks Mom and Dad!), I counted the number of flowers and fruits and started collecting seeds from these plants too. After the last few remaining plants have ripe fruits to collect, I will begin my work in the laboratory, where I will clean the seeds and grow them into baby seedlings for future DNA collection.
Two summer interns that were working with me over the past few months had to finish up their research projects and present their work to a large audience. They are now both seniors – one undergraduate and one high school – and are back in school. I'm very proud of the work that they did and their final presentations were both excellent! I will miss their hard work, positive attitudes and smiling faces but I'm sure that they will be doing well in their future studies – hopefully studies that also involve botany!
And it was back to school time for me too, but this time as both a teacher AND a student! In August, I started a new job as an instructor for Loyola University's Institute for Environmental Sustainability. I'm helping students learn about plants, their structure, their importance, and the ways that plants and people affect each other. I couldn't think of too many other classes that I'd enjoying teaching more than this one and I feel very fortunate that I am able to share some of my knowledge, passion, and research with interested undergraduate students.
July 2014
July has surprisingly been a great month for working on the green roofs. I am so thankful that summer has been pretty cool in Chicago this year. Because we had good weather and because I've had a great team of interns to work with, I've been able to finish a lot of data collection this past month. There is still a lot more to be done out on the roofs, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
This past month, I continued collecting data about the plants growing in my experimental trays and in my green roof plots. I'm happy to report that a lot of them are still living and growing – some of them are even flowering and are making the green roofs look a little bit more like prairies than gardens, which I find really beautiful.
To start collecting a different type of data, my team and I organized and buried temperature probes on the green roofs in July. These probes can measure the temperature of the soil every hour and tell us if some of the plants on the green roofs are helping to cool the buildings during the hot summer months. Next month, I'll go back to the green roofs to collect the temperature probes and record the data from them. Then I'll burry them again and keep collecting data about every 2 months to find out how the temperature of the green roofs changes in the winter.
To help explain differences in plant survival and growth, my team and I also measured the "infiltration rate" of the green roof soils. Infiltration rate is a measurement of how fast water can soak into the soil. If the rate is very fast then the water might be moving through the soil too quickly for the plants to be able to use it. In areas that have a slower infiltration rate, the soil usually stays wet for a long time and the plants can absorb more of the water through their roots. While we were getting dirty in the soil collecting the infiltration rate data, my team and I also collected soil samples. We then dried these samples in an oven for a few days and used the dried soil to perform tests in the laboratory that helped us learn about the nutrients and the structure of the green roof soils. We will use this information to help explain why some of my prairie plants are growing well on certain roofs but not on others.
In July, there was still a lot of rain like last month but there were a few days in there where I was able to collect data on which bees and other pollinators were on the green roofs. On some roofs, there were almost none, while on others there were so many that all the buzzing from the bees was quite noisy! I didn't see too many of the bees actually visit my potted plants that I had set out on the roofs back in June, but some of my plants had fruits that were starting to form. These plants need to get pollen from other plants in order to make fruits so this is a sign that something is up on the roofs doing the pollinating.
The plants were pretty much finished flowering by the end of the month, so I packed them up and took them off the roofs. I should note that not all of the plants did so well on the roof – actually a lot of them didn't make it at all. But that's plant science for you! Next month, when the fruits are ripe and the seeds have developed, I will collect seeds from each of the plants and grow them into little seedlings in an incubator. The step after that will be to conduct a paternity test to find out if pollen is moving between green roofs… but that is work to be done indoors when the weather is not nearly so nice as it is now. As usual, there is much more to come!
June 2014
Field season is in full swing! This is the time of year when we plant scientists get to work outside a lot – a very exciting and fun time of the year for me!
This past month, aside from some writing and editing tasks, I've been busy visiting all of my green roof sites to collect data. I've been measuring the survival and growth of my little seedlings, both in the experimental trays and in the continuous roofs. I still use my handmade grid to locate the plants each time I return to a site, as you can see in the picture. I'm happy to report that a lot of the species that I planted are doing quite well on the green roofs! We've had a lot of rain recently and it hasn't been as hot as it normally is in Chicago by this time of year (although on one of the days that I was measuring the plants, it was over 100 degrees on the roof!). So while this is generally not great weather to go to the beach, the plants on the green roofs seem to love it. I'll continue to monitor these plants each month in the future too: I'll return in July, Aug, and September of this year and then again in 2015.
An exciting addition to this experiment is the help of my undergraduate intern, Monica from Amherst College in Massachusetts. Monica will be conducting an experiment using the planted plots on three of the green roofs to determine how small difference at each site might be helping some of the plant species to survive. I'm excited to help her answer this question!
In June, I also put 150 potted plants out on 10 green roofs for a new experiment (with help from two wonderful interns at Loyola University). I will determine if bees, butterflies, moths, and other pollinators are moving pollen from these plants between the roofs. I also started measuring other aspects of the green roofs that might be attractive to pollinators, such as which other flowering plants are present.
One measurement I've been trying to make is called "pollinator observations." This involves watching my chosen plants for about 30 minutes and recording all the insects that land on the flowers. It is pretty easy to do and can provide helpful information about the types of insects that might be pollinating my plants. But, unfortunately, I've been having trouble doing this because I can only take these measurements on warm sunny days and my green roofs are right along the shore of Lake Michigan, which keeps getting very foggy. Apparently, the winter in Chicago was so freezing that the giant lake is still really cold and when the cold air above the lake mixes with the warmer air in the city – presto! – you have big clouds of fog. I didn't think that this past winter's weather would still be affecting the weather now, but there are so many ways in which different aspects of the environment are connected. I guess that's one of the things that keeps science interesting for me! I've got my fingers crossed that it will start to become a bit sunnier and that all the plants I set out will begin to flower and attract pollinators. Things should start to pick up in July – I'll let you know next month.
May 2014
Time to break out that nail brush! May has been a busy month with lots of planting and getting down and dirty with my research. It's great to see some progress being made and some plants beginning to grow on the green roofs. I feel like all that dirt under my nails at the end of the day is a badge of honor or at least an indication that I'm doing some real plant science!
This past month, I visited the green roofs where I planted seeds in the fall of 2012. I collected data on which plant species were able to germinate (start growing from seeds), survive a historically cold and snowy Chicago winter, and begin to grow this spring. Some species were more successful than others but I was happy to see a lot of little prairie plants poking out from under the green roof soil. Even a couple of the native cacti that I planted had germinated, something that is very rare! The process of germination can be difficult, especially on the dry green roofs, so I am also testing the plants' abilities to grow if they are started from small seedlings. These seedlings are sometimes called "plugs" because when you plant them, you open up a little hole and then "plug" in the seedling. It took a long time to plant over 1,000 plugs into specific locations on several green roofs but now they are all in and hopefully have begun to grow. In a couple weeks, I will go back to all the roofs and begin collecting data on the survival and health of the new plugs.
All of the experimental green roof trays that I also planted with plugs are now out of the greenhouse and on the roofs. It took more time than I thought just to move the trays (120 of them) to where they belonged, but I am happy to say that they are now greening up the Chicago skyline. Luckily, I'm now working with two wonderfully talented and dedicated undergraduate interns at Loyola University whose work is really helping me out too! The environment on the rooftops is much harsher than in the greenhouse, so I'm a little worried about the plants' abilities to survive. It has been getting pretty hot up on the roofs lately and it hasn't been too rainy so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there will still be plants from which to collect data throughout the summer. If not, well…. that's science! It's all part of the experimental process. Sometimes things go as predicted and sometimes they don't.
In May, I also started setting up a new experiment in which I'm hoping to measure how pollinators move pollen between green roofs. Right now I'm still in the early stages of this experiment and have just started growing the plants that I'll be using for this research. I've chosen to use three prairie species. The species have very different types of flowers that attract different pollinators – one has small light pink flowers that attract small bees, another has very funky-looking orange flowers that attract bumblebees and butterflies, and another has very big bright yellow flowers that attract large moths. None of my plants have any flowers just yet so I have to wait and just take care of all the plants in the meantime.
On top of teaching a class, those research tasks have been keeping me quite busy the past couple of weeks. To see a summary of my research so far, check out this new post featuring my work on the Chicago Botanic Garden's blog. I'm pretty excited to start working with another undergraduate intern in a couple weeks and, together, see what this summer will uncover!
April 2014
It's finally spring, which means that it's my favorite time of year – time to work with the plants! I really enjoy when my research shifts from writing and indoor activities to planting, data collection and other outdoor activities. That's part of the fun of being a plant scientist!
There are some more signs of life on the green roofs now. I haven't collected any data yet, but I've been checking in on some of my prairie plants that I planted as seeds back in October of 2012 (check out my first blog post all the way at the bottom of this page). It's great to see that some of them are growing and doing well, especially after one of the coldest Chicago winters in a really long time. I'm looking forward to tracking their progress throughout the summer.
Indoors, my other seeds have been germinating nicely in the comfort of a warm and moist greenhouse. They started off pretty small at the beginning of the month, but by the end of April, most of them were ready to be transplanted into their final home – experimental trays filled with special green roof growing media. In April, I was busy setting up an experiment with these trays where I'll look at how well different plant communities can grow and trap storm water on green roofs. I'll be using the same plant species that I've already planted on 3 green roofs and I'll be comparing the performance of these native prairie species to succulent plants called "Sedum."
I will also be adding natural soil that I collected from a prairie to half of the experimental trays. I am predicting that living organisms which normally live in prairie soil and help plants grow there will also help the prairie plants that are on the green roof. If this is true, then I should see that the plants are healthier in the experimental trays with this extra prairie soil. We'll see!
It took a while to plant all of the Sedum and prairie plant seedlings but now they are ready to go. It's still too cold in Chicago to put the experimental trays with the little seedlings outside but in a couple weeks it should be warmer. Once the trays are all on the rooftops, I'll be able to start collecting data and then I'll be able to start answering some more of my research questions.
March 2014
Could it be? Is spring finally coming? It didn't look like it too much in Chicago this past month but I guess there were a few signs. For the most part, my study sites, the green roofs, were covered with ice and snow. But by the end of the month, the snow began to melt and although it's too early to see if the seeds I planted over a year ago have grown into little plants that are alive and growing, there are a couple of other plant species that are doing well. I think things will start to get much more exciting on the rooftops next month.
So while waiting for things to warm up outdoors, I focused on indoor aspects of my research during March. This month I helped plan a speaking event, featuring Dr. V. Bala Chaudhary from The Institute of Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University. She studies fungi that live in soils. We will be working together this summer to learn about how these soil fungi help plants to grown on green roofs. The fungi and the plants have a mutually beneficial relationship which means that they help each other out. They fungi help the plants use nutrients from the soil and the plants give the fungi food that they make using energy from the sun. The fungi also help hold the smaller parts of the soil together. On a green roof, this is especially important so that the soil doesn't blow away. There are not very many other researchers studying these relationships on green roofs so there is a lot to learn!
In March, I also continued working on some of my writing projects. I'm still writing a chapter of a book with another scientist that describes all the ways that bugs on green roofs contribute to healthy cities. Another article that I wrote was published this month in the newly established Journal of Living Architecture. It discusses how flowering plants on green roofs produce high-quality seeds that are able to grow into new plants. It is a little more scientific than my typical blog posts, but if you're interested in checking it out, you can read it by clicking on the link here.
In addition, I've been finishing some requirements of my graduate program and getting ready for this coming field season of data collection. I completed my qualifying examination, which is a major milestone for PhD students to advance to the next stage of research. I ordered supplies for future research, such as green roofs trays, and have been monitoring my seeds that are still in "cold stratification" in the refrigerator. I'm planning on planting them next month. I finished my teaching assistant duties for my statistical methods class and I've started working for a different instructor in a Conservation Biology class. This new class will focus on how people can help keep and increase the diversity or variety of living things, especially in and around cities. There are a lot of connections to my research regarding plant conservation on green roofs, so I am excited to help share my passion and knowledge with a new group of undergraduate students and learn some new things too!
And last but not least, my most exciting news of the month is that I have been selected to be a Botany in Action Fellow again! Thank you Phipps and supporters!!! I am grateful and honored to be part of this fantastic program for another year and look forward to a lot of great outreach opportunities and new ways to share my science with people of all ages and backgrounds. This means I'll be contributing another year's worth of research updates, so there's lot more to come from me. Thanks again!
February 2014
February always goes by so fast, doesn't it? It's hard to believe that it will be spring in a few weeks but it's exciting to think that soon I'll get to work outside again. Even though there is still plenty of ice and snow around Chicago and working with plants outside isn't yet possible, there is still plenty to be done indoors.
This past month, I continued a lot of the writing projects that I've started. Next month, I need to present a really big proposal detailing all of the research projects that I'm currently working on. So I've started coming up with new ideas, reading more information about other scientists' work , and writing the proposal. Even though writing isn't always my favorite thing to do, it's a really helpful way to get my thoughts organized and it's a necessary part of sharing my work with others. I also started writing a chapter of a textbook that should be published next year. This chapter will talk about how bugs like bees, spiders, and ants have important jobs on green roofs. It's fun to help people learn about the value of insects on green roofs and in cities but I had no idea that to publish a book in 2015, you have to start writing about a year in advance! It sounds like I have a lot of time but when there's so much to write about you have to start early.
In February, I also started preparing some native plant seeds for an experiment that will begin on four green roofs in Chicago once the weather is nicer. I'm going to plant these native wildflower seed on the green roofs in a particular pattern and answer a couple different questions. One of the questions involves seeing if the living organisms in the roof top soil (things like bacteria and fungi that live in dirt) are able to help the plants grow. Another involves comparing the growth of plants that were just planted as seeds on the green roof with some that were planted as grown-up plants. It might sound easy just to put the seeds in the soil and watch them grow, but for a lot of the species I'm using in my experiment, I need to trick them into "thinking" that it's already spring. To do this, I mix them with some wet soil and put them in a refrigerator that is set to a normal Chicago springtime temperature. Some of the seeds also need to experience a little roughing up like they would in a natural field. To do this, I rub the seeds gently between a couple sheets of sand paper. This makes very small opening in the outside of the seed so water can get to the important tissues inside the seed. In a few weeks, I'll put all the seeds into a warmer greenhouse, so even if it's still really cold outside, the chemical processes in the plant will be running as if it's spring and will cause the seeds to grow into little seedlings.
Starting the seed germination process made me look forward to spring! This month I even started to look forward to summer too as I reviewed over 100 applications for a summer internship program that I will be a part of. I am excited to be a mentor through the competitive Chicago Botanic Garden's Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) summer program once again this year. College students from all over the country who may not have opportunities to do plant ecology research at their schools come to Chicago and work with scientists for three months to experience first-hand what our work is all about. It's challenging but fun to be a mentor and help students who are not as experienced learn about botany and being a researcher. I'm sure there will be many more pictures and stories to share about my mentoring experience as the summer progresses, so stay tuned.
January 2014
January has been the start of a new year and a chance for me to begin new aspects of my research.
To help prepare me for a career as both a researcher and a teacher, this month I started a teaching assistant job at my university. I'm helping undergraduate and graduate students learn how to use statistics (fancy math) to explain the results of their experiments and observations. When you think of plant scientists, you might not expect that we spend a lot of time on computers and might be surprised at just how often we use computers and math to answer our questions – learning these techniques is actually quite important for plant scientists! Teaching is one of my favorite jobs so helping in this class is a lot of fun for me. I always learn new things myself and when I have to grade assignments, it really helps me make sure I completely understand the topics too.
In addition to being a teaching assistant, I am also now taking on the role of a student once again. I am taking a class at another university in Chicago about ecosystems. "Ecosystems" describe how all the living things in a certain area interact with each other and with the environment. For a plant scientist who works on lot of green roof (like me!) ecosystem science is important because it can help me figure out how all the plants and animals on green roof are affected by things like light, water, wind, and nutrients in the soil. This new class just started in January and I'm excited to learn a lot more about green roof ecosystems over the next few months.
Not everything is new – I'm still working on some research projects that I started in 2013 and 2012. I'm using the data from an experiment that I set up on some green roofs in Chicago (see my post from October 2012) to design a new experiment that I'll start this coming summer. I will be learning about how prairie wildflowers attract insects and trap rain water on green roofs. Even though it's still only January and it's much too cold and snowy for plants to survive outside, I need to start growing some of the seeds inside a greenhouse where it's nice and bright a warm. Hopefully I will have some neat pictures of these seedlings to share with you next month. I am also working with a couple other scientists to finishing identifying all the insects that I collected from the green roofs in Germany last summer. We have now finished all the bees, beetles, wasps and ants and are almost finished with the spiders. Once we know how many different types of little critters came from each roof we can start using that "fancy math" (statistics) to help us explain the qualities of a green roof that are best homes for plants and insects.
As I look ahead at all of my research for 2014, I realize I have a lot to do! To help me with some organization, it was nice to be able to receive feedback from other researchers and students at my university. A few weeks ago, I gave a presentation covering the research that I've completed so far and my plans for the future. Graduate students, research associates and professors came to hear about my progress and offer suggestions for improving my upcoming plans. I think 2014 is going to be an interesting year!
December 2013
December has been quite cold in Chicago, which means it's been a good time to get some indoor work finished. This past month I did a lot of writing! Sorry, not too many good pictures to add this month unless you like to see me typing. Doing science can't always be glamorous!
The main writing that I worked on in December is a chapter of a book about green roofs and walls. I was surprised to see just how much reading I needed to do before I had enough information to write about. My chapter is about how green roofs can be homes for many different types of interesting plants and animals. The more green roofs a city has, the more opportunities there are for providing homes for all kinds of living things like wildflowers, birds, bees and butterflies. I hope that everyone who reads my chapter will understand how important it is to use our resources (like rooftop space) wisely to help all living things in cities. Although I sent the writing to the editor this month, the book will not be printed for a little while. If I can post a copy of my chapter to this blog in the future, I certainly will! Finishing this project helped me get excited about another book chapter I'm writing about the different types of bugs that are found on green roofs. Did you know there are thousands of different critters that live on green roofs? Depending on what types of plants live there, green roofs can literally be hopping with activity! This new chapter will still take many months to write, but my research in Germany over the past year has helped give me lots to write about!
In December, I also started planning for the new quarter that starts in January. Next month I will be taking a class to learn more about how plants interact with the non-living parts of their environment. The class is called "Ecosystems" which is a word that ecologists use to describe all the living and non-livings parts of a certain place, like a garden, forest or green roof. I have also been learning how to use a new computer program so that I can teach a class about using this program to analyze or make sense of scientific data. The class starts in January and I am excited to be learning more about the specialized math and data analysis along with my students! It should really help me understand the patterns of plants and insects that I observed when I was on the green roofs in Germany this past year as well as the patterns that I'll see on many other green roofs in the future. Other than that, I have also been designing a new research project to learn about different genetic traits that plants on green roofs have and writing grant applications so that I can get all the equipment I need to carry out the necessary experiments. It is exciting to get some of this behind-the-scenes work completed before the start of the new year.
November 2013
This month my research has lead me back to the good old USA and to my home city of Chicago. After working in Germany for 10 months it sure is nice to be back home but there certainly is a lot of work that needs to be done.
I was very happy to find that (after some drama) my green roof insects that I shipped back to America finally made it! I carefully unpacked all the specimens (the collected spiders and ants) and am currently working with some specialized insect experts to figure out which species of spiders and ants I collected from the German green roofs. Along with the identifications of the bees and beetles and the rest of my soil and plant data, I will have collected a lot of information about the organisms that are using the green roofs as well as some of the processes that are taking place in these unique gardens. My hope is that this information will not only be important to the people of Germany but also be useful to help people all over the world design green roofs that support a lot of living organisms.
Now that the weather is cold and the plants and animals are not as active I will focus on analyzing my data, obtaining researching funding, writing about my work, and planning future research projects. In November I started doing all of these things, which means I spend a lot of time in my office working on my computer. The writing can be especially tedious because sometimes it is difficult to explain what your experimental results mean – you have to be very specific and make sure not to write things that are unclear or incorrect. But I am happy to say that most of my writing projects are moving along. This past month I finished revising one article for a scientific journal and submitted a draft of another one. The first one is about different species of bees that are found on green roofs in Chicago and the second one is about modeling how attractive flowering plants can be to pollinators. I am also currently writing a chapter of a book about how green roofs can support the diversity of living things in cities. In between writing and reading, I was also able to visit a building in Chicago that might be one of my research sites next spring. It already has a green roof on one half and I am hoping to install an experimental green roof on the other half. With a soil ecologist as a partner, we will find out if designing green roofs with prairie plants helps them to work like real prairies would on the ground. I'm sure I'll have many more updates about this project as it develops over the next year, so stay tuned!
October 2013
Hard to believe, but this will be my last update from Germany. My 10-month research fellowship has already come to an end. Boy, the time goes by fast! October was very busy as I was finishing the data collection portion of my research project as well as learning as much as possible about plant diversity on green roofs in Europe.
In a short period of time I was able to visit a variety of green roofs in Stuttgart, Munich, Vienna and London. These cities all have different laws that encourage or require people to build green roofs and it was really interesting for me to learn more about these special habitats, especially those that are built in specific ways to support a large variety of plant and insect species. I hope that I will be able to teach people in the U.S. about how to encourage more support for a wide variety of plants on green roofs when I get back to Chicago next month.
When not traveling to see the amazing green roofs of Europe I was busy in the laboratory, making the final preparations for all of my collected insects. The beetles were packed up and I traveled to Berlin to bring them to an expert who was able to identify which species each of them is. The wasps were dried, packed up and sent to a different wasp expert in Germany. The bees were already dried and displayed but needed to be arranged in a certain way with special labels indicating where they had been caught and what species each one was. The bees will stay in Germany but the spiders and ants had to be packed up in a very specific way to be shipped to different identification experts in the U.S. Aside from being really expensive, it turns out that importing bugs into America is actually quite a hassle, even if they are just harmless little dead ants! And the government shutdown during October didn't help matters as it was impossible to obtain the necessary forms and information about U.S. Customs inspection procedures. But I think I finally figured everything out! Please keep your fingers crossed for me that these very important research specimens make it back to me in Chicago!
Other than that I have been spending more time working on some writing projects, including a report about bees on green roofs, a book chapter about green roof biodiversity and a children's activity book about urban ecology. I also started working with a mentoring program called Planting Science, where I have been helping some high school and middle school groups design experiments about seed germination. It has been really interesting to work online with groups from both America and Europe and fun to be a scientist mentor. If you are a plant scientist, teacher or student (or anyone, really!), I encourage you to learn more about the program! Here is the link: http://www.plantingscience.org/
September 2013
I can tell that fall is here! The days are starting to get shorter, the nights are much colder and more of my work as a plant scientist is moving indoors.
In early September, I made my last trips to the green roofs to collect one last set of bugs and some other data, like how high off the ground each of the roofs are. After going to the same roofs so many times since April, I finally felt like I was getting the hang of it. But it's very nice that the sample collection part of this current project is over and now I can focus more on lab work, such as identifying the insects, and computer work, like analyzing the data.
This month I also traveled to France to give a presentation about some of my research at the World Green Infrastructure Network's annual congress. This "congress" is a big conference, where about 500 people including architects, city planners and scientists share the latest news about buildings that are designed to incorporate plants, like the green roofs where I work. My presentation was about plant diversity on green roofs and how, even though plants can be stressed during droughts or really cold winter, there are still some species that are really good at surviving on the roofs. The presentation went well and it was great to hear other scientists talk about their findings too. But my favorite part of the conference was going on a couple green roof tours, where I got to learn about some unique roofs and actually seem them in person too. In 2 days, we went to about a dozen green roofs between the Atlantic Ocean and Paris. Even though it was a bit cold and rainy, there were still some great views!
More of my indoor work also included identifying all the bees that I collected from the green roofs. There are over 300 different known species of bees in the region of Germany where I'm working and trying to figure out which ones are in my collection is quite a task! It would actually be a nearly impossible task for me, but luckily, I got help from a local expert who is really familiar with German wild bees. It was an interesting experience to learn a lot more about bees and we even found out that a few of them in my collection haven't been found in the region before – that's pretty cool that some species are moving to the area and are using green roofs! I am really happy to have these new data and excited to learn more about how the bees on green roofs help the plants and how the plants help the bees too. I'll keep you updated as I learn more!
August 2013
August was busy, but a good month for research. First, I collected insects again at all of my research sites. I have almost 8000 critters in my collection so far! I spent a lot of time sorting, counting, and preparing all these little guys for identification later. I will collect insects one last time in September and then, since most of the plants will have stopped blooming by this time, I will stop. I need to bring some of the bugs back to America when I return in the fall so I will need to figure out how to do this properly and make sure that I have the correct customs forms completed so I can bring these German bugs to America. It's kind of like they need their own passport too!
One factor that might be important when I am trying to figure out why certain plants or insects are living on green roofs is the surrounding environment. For example, I think that if there are a lot of places for bees to make nests around a building, I might also find that there are a lot of bees visiting the green roof. Especially small bees –they have little wings and can't fly too far so they generally stay in their own neighborhood. One way to measure this is to look at how much space around the green roof has lawns, gardens, or other "green" spaces with plants. This month, one of my colleagues helped me use satellite images of my green roof neighborhoods to measure the amount of green space in the surrounding environment. I don't know if my predictions are correct yet, but I'm excited to find out.
This time of year usually marks the beginning of conference season for us plant biologists – the time when we travel a lot and share our discoveries with other scientists. This year is no different. I made a presentation about my green roof research for the annual conference of the Ecological Society of America. Of course, because I am in Germany and the conference was in Minnesota I was not able to give the presentation myself, but my advisor gave the presentation for me and said it went very well. Now I am getting ready for another presentation that I will be giving at the annual congress of the World Green Infrastructure Network. I will be talking about how changes in weather can affect the types of plants that grow on green roofs. There is a lot of work to do for presentations, including background research, analyzing data, making interesting figures and graphs, designing PowerPoint slides, writing a script so I know what to say and, of course, practicing! I am a little nervous because I will be speaking in front of a lot of people, many of whom have been doing green roof research for much longer than I have, but I am also really excited! You'll have to check out my blog next month to see how everything went.
July 2013
Things are really heating up here in Germany! Both the weather and the research!
After finishing collecting my plant data, in July I turned my attention to some of the other aspects of data collection on the green roofs. This month, I have been performing more laboratory tests on the special dirt that is used on green roof, called "growing media." Growing media is a lot like dirt because it has nutrients for plants (and it's dirty, trust me!) but it has a lot more rocks than most dirt you would find in a garden and it has to be really lightweight so that its weight doesn't damage the structure of the building that it's sitting on top of.
This past month I tested the amount of acid in the growing media and also how much water the growing media could hold. These measurements will help me learn which types of green roofs are better environments for a variety of plants to live.
All the growing media tests have been going well except I had some unwanted visitors at one of my research sites that dug up my equipment and tampered with my insect traps. Crows! They must have thought that my equipment and traps were toys and that I had set up a wonderful playground for them, because they dug them up and tossed them all over the roof. I even caught one crow nosing around on the roof while I was working on the building next door. But, as a scientist, things happen that I don't expect and I have to figure out how to solve problems like this. The next time I went back to these roofs, I installed bird-proof netting that allows insects to see and enter the traps but keeps the birds out. The netting seems to be working so far but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed.
Another big job this month has been continuing to sort through all the bugs I'm collecting and start making a dried collection of all the bees that I've found. It's a big job! I've cleaned, counted, sorted and stored over 6,000 bugs so far. And with another 2 months of collecting, this job's definitely not over yet. The reason that I need to make a dried collection of the bees is that I need to determine which type or species they all are and it's much easier to do if the bees are dried and they are placed on little pins so you don't have to keep touching them and accidentally knock off a wing or a head or something important. I've learned that in the region where I'm working there are over 300 different types of bees. Figuring out which species each of my bees are is going to be a challenge but luckily a local bee expert will be helping me.
I hope that by next month's research update I'll have all the growing media tests done, more insects collected and hundreds of bees dried and on their little pins, ready for the next step of the naming process.
June 2013
June has been the month of plant surveys for my research. Plant surveys are lists of all the different types of plants (the plant species) growing in a particular area. For my research, these areas are green roofs. This summer I have 13 green roofs where I am collecting data. In June I went to each roof and made of list of all the plant species growing there. It might sound easy just to make a list but if you see a plant and don't know which species it is, you need to use a key in book to help you figure it out. This can be fun (like being a detective!) but it can also be frustrating (for me, especially because the plant keys I need to use are written in German and I need someone to help me translate them). When I have a complete list of plants growing on a green roof then I can start to learn more about how the different plants live together and how they help insects live on city rooftops too.
This month I also started performing some laboratory tests on my soil samples from the roofs. The first thing I've tested is called the "infiltration rate" which means how fast water is absorbed into the soil. Some plants need quick-draining soil to live and other plants need more slowly-draining soil to live so the infiltration rate of the green roof soils helps determine which plants can survive on a roof. To measure this I fill a large cylinder with a specific amount of soil, fill it up with water, and use a special instrument with metal tips to determine how quickly the water level drops by 1 centimeter. After I do this for all the roofs I compare the times for each location. The roof soils with the longest times have the slowest infiltration rate and the roof soils with the shortest times have the fastest infiltration rates. In the future I will use this information to help predict which soil types will be the best for green roof plants.
As I was working on the green roofs in June I saw a lot of interesting plants and animals. Here are just a few pictures of some of the green roof diversity that I have seen.
May 2013
May was a good month for doing research. As a plant biologist, I always love when all the plants spring to life in May!
This past month I added a couple new research sites to my project so now I visit 13 green roofs a few times per month. Like last month, I set up insect traps to collect all the little critters that are crawling and flying around on my research rooftops. Unfortunately, May was pretty cold and rainy which means that most insects were not quite as active. I didn't collect as many bugs as I was hoping but at least I have some! I have started carefully sorting all my collected bugs into different categories like ants, bees and beetles. I will have to spend a LOT more time with these little guys if I want to determine their scientific Latin names, but at least I have started the process. In April alone, I collected almost 1,200 bugs! How many will I collect by the end of the summer? I'm not sure but I am looking forward to seeing if there are any interesting connections between the insects and plants on these green roofs in Germany.
I have also begun collecting other data from the green roofs. As with any garden, the properties of the soil are very important for plant growth and survival. Good, healthy soil means good healthy plants! So I collected a small sample of soil from each of the roofs that I brought back to my laboratory. I hope to test different properties like how many nutrients are available to the plants, how compact the soil is, and how much water it can hold. Although the soil lab at my university is under construction right now, I've got my fingers crossed that I'll still be able to figure out a way to do all these tests. I hope that when I know which types of soil help the plants and bugs the most, then these types of soils can be used on more green roofs in the future.
Starting next week I will begin measuring the plants and trying to identify all the different plant species that are growing on my green roofs. I think it will be hard work but it is fun to be a plant detective and figure out what all of the plants are called!
And on the days when I'm not working on the rooftops, I will be working on getting some presentations started. I found out that I will be presenting my research at the World Green Infrastructure Congress in Nantes, France this coming September and my advisor will be presenting some of my research for me at the Ecological Society of America's annual meeting in Minneapolis in August. So I had better go get to work!
April 2013
Spring has finally arrived in Germany and with that comes the beginning of "field work" season. This year that doesn't mean that I'm literally working in a field but that I'm working outside to collect data rather than doing work at a computer or inside a laboratory.
April was very busy with last-minute planning for my field work, especially because I am only able to travel to my "field sites" (my green roofs) on specific days. When I go to the green roofs in Berlin, I need to drive for about 3 hours just to get there so I have to be very organized and make sure that I can stop at all of the roofs during the same trip. Also, I need to try to keep everything that I do the same on each roof so that I am able to make good comparisons at the end of my experiment.
For example, when I set out insect traps they all need to be in place for the same number of days and in the same type of weather. If I put some traps on a couple roofs on sunny days and put some on other roofs on cloudy days, I might collect different types or numbers of insects. This wouldn't help me explain how plants and insects are related because the weather could be a factor affecting my data too.
With good planning, I was able to finish making all my insect traps and set them up on all of the green roofs in Berlin and Neubrandenburg that I will be working on this spring and summer. The traps were filled with a preservative liquid so the trapped bugs wouldn't begin to rot and were left open for four days. Then I came back to collect all the insects. I am happy to report that the traps worked! (I let out a big sigh of relief!) All the bugs are now being kept in special bags filled with alcohol which helps to preserve them. Next month, I will begin to sort the bugs into different categories like spiders, bees, ants and beetles, and then start to determine what each bug's scientific Latin name is. Because I am a botanist and not an insect expert I think this is going to be hard but also really fun!
Next month I will collect insects again with the same traps and will start to collect data about the different soils on the green roofs too. Sometimes I think it is funny that I have to learn so much about soil and bugs when I really want to answer questions about plants. But everything is so connected in the environment and when I know more about the relationship between plants-bugs, plants-soil, and plants-plants, then I will be able to really understand how and why plants can live successfully on green roofs in our cities.
March 2013
This month, work for my research shifted to preparations for my field work and data collection. The first steps to field work involve determining what data you will collect and where you will collect it. I already know that I would like to collect data about the plants and insects living on green roofs in and around Berlin. Trying to find good places to conduct this research is much more complicated.
Getting permission to collect data on people's green roofs can actually be quite a challenge. Just like in America, I am finding that some people in Berlin would rather not have anyone up on their roof. Building owners have many concerns including my safety, the security of their building, or the availability of a staff member to unlock doors and provide ladders for to access the roof. Of course trying to explain that my project will help improve the biodiversity of cities around the world is also much more difficult when building managers speak only German and I don't know the language very well. But I had a couple good meetings in March and I am slowly making progress, adding little post-its to my map of research sites one by one and looking forward to getting up on the roofs soon.
I have also been gathering and buying supplies that I will need to bring with me when I start to collect data next month. I will need insect traps, tools to measure the plants, and tools to measure different properties of the "growing media" which is just a name for the special type of lightweight dirt that is used on green roofs. I am finding that this is also more of a difficult process than I expected because some of the supplies that I use for my plant science research in America are not available in Germany and it's too expensive to have supplies shipped overseas. Additionally, some of the techniques that I counted on in America aren't working. For example, in the past I have always used these "bee bowls" to collect bees which are little plastic cups spray-painted with fluorescent paint. When I tried to spray-paint plastic bowls here in Germany, the paint peeled right off – it literally dried and then blew away in the wind! Obviously, this is not going to work. But being a scientist who works with unpredictable plants means that I always have to be ready to adapt to new plans and possibly develop new methods of doing things. I haven't thought of the perfect method for painting my traps yet, but I will be sure to let you know next month what I came up with!
The best news of March: I am very excited to be supported by the Phipps Botany in Action program again in 2013! I look forward to continuing my blog posts to update you with my research progress. Thank you Phipps!!!
February 2013
February was very cold, cloudy, and snowy. But there is always work to be done as a plant scientist, even if the plants aren't actively growing. I found that I used Skype a lot to video-chat with scientists back home in America about many topics including conference presentations, funding for research, green roof education materials, and reports that need to be written. This past month I also spent a lot of time continuing to work on a project with my advisor in Germany. We are trying to find out if plants with particular qualities are able to survive on green roofs during different shifts in the weather. For example, which plants will die when the winter is very cold? Which plants will survive with very little water during a drought? If we discover that the tough survivor plants all share some qualities (like producing a lot of seeds or flowering very early in the spring) then we can let people know that these types of plants would be good ones to use on green roofs in the future.
I am excited to learn the answers to these questions and more but it does mean that I have to spend a lot of time at the computer sorting through data. I will continue to work on this project for at least a few more months.
In February, I also continued to work on planning a different project that I will be working on the rest of my time here in Germany. I will be collecting plant and insect data from about 20 green roofs in and around Berlin. I have been spending time becoming familiar with the types of insects that I might find so when I collect them I will be able to identify which species they are. I have also been working with my project advisor to determine which sites will be best for my research. There are so many green roofs in the area to choose from and it would be impossible to study them all!
We were able to go to Berlin for a couple days to talk to some people who work with green roofs there and to look at some of the potential sites. It was such a treat for me to be able to stand on the roofs and touch the plants in locations that I had read about when I was still in America. One of the green roofs we saw was built in the 1970s when a group of artistic people thought it would be neat to put plants on their building. It is now a great research site, complete with solar panels. Another roof we saw was built unintentionally about 130 years ago when some people put a layer of sand on their roof to help cool the building. Over the years, plants started to grow and today there are many plant species there, including some very rare ones! I am very excited to start collecting plant and insect data at these locations but will also need to find others to add to my project. I am looking forward to collecting data once the weather gets nicer!
January 2013
I am excited to be writing my first research update from Germany! I have been here almost 4 weeks now, and have been getting used to the new location and culture. I was here less than a day and already got a short tour of the offices, labs and green roofs on the college campus where I will be working until November.
I think one of the most challenging things so far has been the difference in languages. I took some German classes when I was still in America but I am finding that it is much more difficult to communicate with people than I thought. It is also very difficult to read some of the books, websites and scientific papers that I need to complete my research. I am very thankful for the Google Translate website! I am now taking a German class for 3 hours every day and I think that will really help too.
I have a lot of questions about the green roofs here in northern Germany. What kinds of plants are hiding under the snow right now? Are they the same species of plants that grow on the green roofs I study in America? Even though it's winter here, I can already tell that some of the plants are very different than what I'm used to. (For example mistletoe, like the kind that people kiss under at Christmastime, grows on a lot of trees and without leaves on the trees you can really see this festive plant all over the place!)
What kinds of insects will I find here? Some of the green roofs where I will be collecting data this summer are very close to a large lake where there are a lot of birds. I know that sometimes plant seeds come onto green roofs through bird droppings – birds eat the seeds but they don't get digested. I wonder how this will affect the types of plants that I find on green roofs that are close to the birds and to the lake.
Even though it will still be a few months before the flowers are blooming, the bees are buzzing and I can start collecting data, I still have projects to work on right now. I have been doing a lot of reading to find out what other researchers have discovered about green roofs in this area. My project advisor here in Germany has been visiting some green roofs and keeping a record of the plants that grow on the roofs for the past 20 years. This is a long time to collect data and it is exciting to start looking through some of his records! I have also been sending emails and making phone calls to ensure that I have permission to go to some green roots that are on private homes in Berlin. Next month I will be going to Berlin to look at a green roof that I am hoping to include in my research – it is over 100 years old!
And I am also beginning to collect research supplies. In America I made these little containers to collect bees. We call them "bee bowls" and they are basically little plastic dishes filled with water and painted with iridescent colors to attract bees. I will need to make similar bee bowls here, but the dishes they use are actually yogurt containers. It's not the most scientific thing I do, but eating yogurt is a necessary step to collect research supplies and I'll need a lot by May so I am starting early!
December 2012
Last post of 2012! Happy Holidays to everyone! This month was busy with a lot of wrapping – not only wrapping Christmas presents but also wrapping up a lot of work before I head to Germany for my research fellowship.
I finished taking a statistics class where I learned how to use different types of mathematical tests to find out if differences that I observe in my research are likely just caused by chance or if there are really other processes at work. I used some of these statistical tests to find out if the types of bees I was finding on green roofs had anything to do with the type of roof. My colleague and I found out that the size of a green roof, the height of the roof, and the time since it was planted aren't good measures to predict what type of bee community will be on a green roof. BUT the variety of plants (especially flowers that provide nectar and pollen – food for bees!) is a good predictor of bee communities.
We found that green roofs with a wide variety of flowers had many more bees and many more types of bees too. This is similar to what you would expect to find on the ground but no one has ever tested this on green roofs before. We are still working on writing the manuscript and getting it published in a scientific journal, but that is our most exciting finding.
This month was also very busy with writing grants. I will need money to carry out all my research in Germany as well as start a couple other projects when I come back to Chicago in the fall. Scientists all over the world have to compete with each other to obtain money for research and graduate students are no exception.
Grant writing can be a very tedious process because there are a lot of requirements from each organization that must be met in order to have your grant proposal considered. But I also like the grant writing process because it forces me to sit down and really think about the design of my experiments and data collection. When I have to provide an itemized budget, I think, "Do I REALLY need that or could I use something else?" When I have to write a statement about why my research is important I always get more excited about what I do. Most of my grants for 2013 funding have been submitted – now I just cross my fingers!
And finally, this month I have been preparing to go to Germany for my research fellowship. I leave in 5 days – I can't believe it! There has been a lot to do just so I can go there and live as a visiting graduate student for a while. I have needed to organize a research project that I set up in Chicago so that my advisor will be able to collect data for me while I am gone. I had to figure out how to get from the Berlin airport to the town where I will be staying because their railway in undergoing construction. I had to find a place to live. I had to get an international driver's permit so that I can rent a car when I need to visit my different green roof research sites. This list could go on, but you get the idea! Although it has been a bit stressful to get everything organized I am also very excited to be able to learn about how green roofs change over time. For my project, I will be determining the characteristics of plants that help them survive on green roofs for many years and finding out how these types of plants might be able to help insects like bees, beetles, and ants by providing them with food and nesting places. I can't wait to bring you more updates on this project when I am in Germany.
November 2012
The weather became colder, the days grew shorter, and I started more of my indoor work in November. This past month I had the chance to attend several seminars and presentations at Northwestern University and the Lincoln Park Zoo. I was also a guest lecturer at a class at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The students in this class were all studying landscape architecture: the design of outdoor spaces like parks and gardens. Because the green roofs that I study are a type of outdoor space that is designed by landscape architects, the students were very interested in how different types of plants survive in these environments. I brought some of my research tools so the students could see the things that I use when studying green roofs and we got to take a little tour of one of the roofs where I planted seeds last month. It was fun to talk about my research and I loved answering all the students' eager questions.
In November, I also attended the Chicago Wilderness 2012 Congress. Chicago Wilderness is a partnership between many organizations throughout Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana that try to protect nature around the Chicago area and educate people about this important topic. At this day-long meeting hundreds of people listened to presentations, had discussions about how to improve regional environmental conservation efforts, and met other professionals from the area. I loved getting to hear all about the exciting things that are being done to protect nature and got to talk to people who preserve wildlife like dragonflies, bees, and spiders. It is exciting to know that just because people live in a big city they still care about plants, animals, clean water and healthy land for future generations.
This past month, I was also busy writing a manuscript with another researcher that we hope to have published in a scientific journal soon. We are writing about the bees that we have collected on green roofs in Chicago over 3 summers. After we collected the bees we spent many months identifying which species each of them was and now we are using different mathematical tests to determine if there are any relationships between the types of bees and the types of green roofs where they were found. Do smaller bees live on smaller roofs? Will green roofs with more plant species also have more bee species? Will older green roofs have a greater number of bee species? Right now the answer to these questions is… I don't know! My colleague and I are in the process of answering these questions and many more – I will update you when I know the answers. I am eager to find out!
And finally, I started making some preparations for a very exciting stage in my research. In about a month I am leaving for a research fellowship in Germany! For 10 months I will be working with a green roof scientist to learn more about how the types of plants and animals that you find on green roofs can change as time goes by. I will live in a dorm room on a university campus and I will take an intensive language class so that I can get better at speaking with the German people about my research. I am excited to bring you more updates about this project in the future!
October 2012
Welcome to the first entry of my research blog! Each month, I hope to share the progress of my work with you. If you ever have questions about what I'm doing, send me a message at email@example.com – I love to get emails!
October was a pretty busy month but here are some of the highlights. The first week I spent in Columbus, Ohio at an international conference called "EcoSummit" where over 1500 people from around the world met to talk about the global state of ecology research and policies. I attended many lectures where scientists talked about their research. I was really looking forward to meeting scientists that I've heard about from reading their books or other publications –it was like meeting celebrities! I went on a field trip where I learned about some of the sustainable businesses in Columbus and saw a really thought-provoking art exhibit where artist Aurora Robson created beautiful sculptures out of discarded plastic that would otherwise end up in landfills. But the best part of the conference was attending a special session about green roof ecology where I talked about my research and got to learn about a lot of similar experiments happening in the U.S. Canada and Australia. I was a little nervous about speaking in front of group of scientists who have more experience with research than I do but I was prepared and it turned out really well!
When I returned from Columbus, I got right to work on setting up a new experiment that I am conducting on green roofs in Chicago. Green roofs can be really hot, windy, and dry places with very little soil compared to the ground. This turns out to be a very rough place for plants to live! This past summer, I went to similarly harsh places on the ground around Chicago to learn which local plants were able to survive. For my new experiment, I am planting seeds from these species on green roofs in hopes that those plants will be hardy enough to survive. These native (they occurring naturally in the area) species of wildflowers and grasses also have the benefit of providing resources like food and nesting material to local birds and insects. As a scientist, I am trying to stay very organized about how I select species and how many I plant so I made a large grid that I can place over my plots to keep track of where I am planting each seed. Planting almost 10,000 seeds this way was tedious work but it will be much easier to keep track of the plants once they start growing in the spring (at least I really HOPE they start growing!).
After I was finished planting all my little seeds, I attended another conference, hosted by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. This conference was in Chicago and I was part of the organizing group. I helped to create a networking and demonstration event for students to talk about their green roof research. I was a presenter at this event too and it was fun to use some of the skills I learned at the BIA Fellows weekend to participate in informal conversations about my research tools and discoveries that I've made so far. Like most other conferences, there were also plenty of lectures to attend and I got to meet a few more of those science celebrities I was talking about before!
Now that the weather is getting colder and I don't have any exciting conferences to attend, I will be spending a lot more time working at the Chicago Botanic Garden and attending classes. But you'll have to wait to hear more about that in next month's update.