Psych! & Work Photos

So, I sorta faked you out. I wanted to blog last Friday, but ended up having to do a TON of laundry to prepare to go to Yozgat the next day. Then, arriving in Yozgat, we found no internet. We didn't get back until late Thursday night, and I worked all day yesterday. So, here we are. Another week later. I sincerely apologize for the delay.

Anyhow—

I'll start with some photos from my work since that's what I spend 85% of my time doing.

These are WAY old, just so you know.

This photo is of the fields in Eskişehir. This was my first experience with field work. I found I like working outdoors. I also found that the sun in Turkey is very intense. I was sunburnt badly this first day, but it has since progressed into a very nice (farmers) tan, so no worries. If you didn't already realize, this is a picture of wheat fields. Here it is still green. Now, it has dried, and I think the particular field was harvested.

The objective for the day was to discard (negatively select) breeds of wheat based upon their susceptibility to yellow rust, leaf rust, and/or stem rust. It is done while the wheat is green because after the wheat has dried, the presence of these rust varieties is harder to detect. We "deselected" them by breaking the stems. 

(In this photo: tall man w/ the hat, Dr. Alex Morgunov; the girl in the purple shirt, Cemale Mursalova; the girl in the white lab coat, Esra Musluk)

Like this. This particular plant had a mild susceptibility to yellow rust (very hard to see). Because of the millions of plants they have sown in field testing, you should only select the very best. The rest are discarded.

This is a very good plot of wheat. It has a short height (to prevent folding), strong stem, rust resistance, large spikes, long peduncle, etc. 

I think I've mentioned Fusarium sp. before. This is one of the most tell-tale symptoms: white head. As you can see, the wheat stem remains green, but the spike has prematurely dried.

This photo is the most tell-tale sign of Fusarium culmorum. This particular species is commonly known as crown rot. The area where the stalk is broken is just above the crown. The browning you see in the stalk indicates the presence of the crown rot fungus. This is, to my relatively untrained eye, mildly infected plant; however, this variety is still not wanted on account of it's susceptibility. 

This is a fantastic example of yellow rust. The leaves are not drying but covered in a fine yellow dust, Puccinia sp. This cultivar is highly susceptible. Obviously, I immediately discarded it.

While we performed negative selection, Dr. Morgunov was busy with positive selection. He selected very specific wheat plots for traits they possessed. The ultimate goal is to breed a short species of wheat with high yield that's resistant to disease and water stress. 

So that's the field work I started with. I have a lot more pictures, but they're not uploaded and my camera battery is charging. You can look forward to more field work later.

Allll right. Moving right along. Now, as I've mentioned before, I spend most of my time in the lab. I've also told you that I spend a lot of time under the microscope. I figured, then, I should take some nice microscope shots so you can see exactly what I'm working with.

This is what I dig through all day. It's a circular dish (obviously). The ridges help to keep your place and separate the soil. There's also a red line (not depicted) that helps you know where you started.

This is what I'm looking for. That lemon-shaped little... thing... is a nematode cyst. It's the mature form of a female CCN (cereal cyst nematode). It's full of nematode eggs and is very delicate. I use a pair of forceps to gently remove it from the soil and place it in sterile water.

Here's a brief bit of nematode biology:

The juveniles hatch from their eggs after a cold period. They swim (very slowly) through the wet soil until they find the root of a cereal plant. They penetrate the root and begin feeding. Eventually, they align with a specific sex. The females begin producing eggs which are fertilized by the males. The females swell. They resemble ^^above, but white. Then they die and become the brown cysts. 

This is a male. This is a resembles a larger version of the vermiform juveniles (in other words, it looks similar to the wiggly little baby nematodes).

I actually just found this picture while blogging. The little guy above is a juvenile. So, there you are. This is a nice juxtaposition of the two vermiform types of nematodes. 

These next two are my favorites. I think they really depict the nematodes well. You can really distinguish the stylet (the mouthpart) that it uses to penetrate the root. Here, if you can't tell, it's the upper end. The one to the right. The stylet almost appears to have a line down it. It's also very sharp.

This is under a higher-powered microscope. They are really good shots of the stylet, but the rear always seems to blur out (it's on a different plane... unfortunately at this magnification, it's nearly impossible to focus on the entire nematode well).

I've also branched out and've begun working with some experiments. This is a growth room experiment involving nematodes. I personally built all of those systems. Just sayin'.

Alright, that's enough for tonight. I'm going to attempt to get some sleep now. If you're curious why I'm up at 02:00, that would be because my face is being dive-bommed by the annoying little millers. I've killed I think nine now. More recently, the wolves have begun howling. If you recall (or if you don't, scroll down) the dogs roaming around campus. Well, they're answering the wolves. It's a fantastic chorus.... if you're not trying to sleep. 

Expect more soon. I'll try to blog tomorrow.

Tekrar Çok Teşekkür Ederim

İyi geceler,

Andrew

Throwing in the Towel

I'm nearly positive that Misafirhane hates me. I've (quite obviously) been slacking on the blogging (I'm ridiculously busy—I really do apologize, though) and was set on two blog posts tonight. Unfortunately, I've lost the first one twice due to power outages. We haven't had them for days. Yeeeahhh, I'm not particularly happy. Anyway, I was in the field all day today and thus, need to get to bed (I'm quite sore due to the intense sun, also—I have gone from ghostly pale to darker than some of the Turks in 3 days. It's been some intense sun action).

As a little teaser, here's what you have to look forward to for tomorrow (inşallah), the weekend, and next week:
- Sazova Park
- Field Work Photos
- Microscope Shots!
- More Work Shots
- Türk Olipiyat
- Odunpazarı
- Konya
- Ankara
- and Beypazarı

I leave for Yozgat early Saturday (to get burnt), so I'll takes some shots of that too; upload them next week sometime.

Thanks for everyone who's been reading. I really appreciate it. And I do apologize for my extended absence.

Teşekkürler yeniden!

Andrew—

Internet is Back!! (For now)

The internet situation here in the Misafirhane has been sketchy at best. It's up and down. This is not my first attempt at blogging this week. I have lost many a blog post to the dreaded "Safari Cannot Display Webpage" message. I had intended to do a ton of blogging tonight (I have a lot of updates in the next few days), but it took a while to get the internet up and running, so one for tonight will have to suffice.

I figure the most interesting post would be one about the city of Eskişehir since I live here and am in the city center each day. Plus, it's an attractive city.

So, let's begin with a little etymology. "Eski" is Turkish for "old." "Şehir" is Turkish for "city." Ironically, it's a college town with a substantial population under the age of 30. It's positioned about halfway between İstanbul and Ankara (if you don't know where they are, I suggest consulting a map. I don't know that I can help you any more than that). The population is roughly 1 million people. I think, of everything, that has been the biggest culture shock for me. I'm not remotely used to city life, but I've rapidly acclimated. I sorta like it. It's great just to have everything right there when you need it. The public transportation system in Eskişehir is excellent. You can take the tram (street level rail-line), minibus, or otobus. We typically take the Dolmuş (minibus) into town, and an Otobus (number 31) back home. And yes, as you probably could have guessed, they're not terribly punctual. Not bad though. Today, in fact, was the worst. 31 was almost 20 minutes late.

Okay, enough of my ramblings. We all know you skipped to the pictures anyway.

Speaking of public transport, this is the tram line. I apologize for the poor camera work. If you'll notice, I was standing on the tracks of the opposing line and it was coming at me, so I snapped this as I was getting out of the way.

This is the opposite direction. You can see the wires crisscrossing above. The trams sort of come out of no where. This was taken maybe a minute before the previous one and suddenly I was dodging a tram!

There are stray dogs and cats everywhere. They just sort of roam the streets and no one bothers them. This particular dog I see quite frequently. I generally see the same dogs every time I'm in town. Funny enough, he stopped to take this picture with me.

This very large, very beautiful Mosque is in downtown Eskişehir. I've not been able to go inside yet. I'm going to try and visit at some point.

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but I laughed so hard that I thought I would share. They have Converse store downtown in this was the image in the front window. No, your eyes aren't going bad. Those are seriously Converse flipflops.

The streets are line with tons of shops. Typically, above are apartments. This particular shot is of Erdoğan's friend's apartment. 

This a better shot of the market district. You can see the multitude of shops below and the apartments above... and the loads of people. It's always crowded here, even at night. This is a good time to mention that the entire city is lit up at night. There are all sorts of lights strung up on trees, in parks, on poles, just around the city. I can't seem to get a good shot of it. I'll keep trying.

These are the Dolmuşlar. We take one of these into town. This particular stop is one of the major stops in the city. They refer to it as Stadyum (in reference to the large soccer stadium of to the left (not depicted)).

The beautiful Porsuk Nehir, runs through the center of the city. Porsuk is the Turkish word for Badger. Personally, I'll just stick with Porsuk. Sounds better. You can see in the background the typical Eskişehir apartment buildings.

More Porsuk Shots

Speaking of the river, another mode of travel is ferry's. This is a more touristic approach, but it gets you where you want to go on top of affording awesome views of the city. I think we're going to take a boat around sometime. 

Day trip to Venice? Nah. This is just the better, even less efficient way to see the city. 

The day I took these [last Sunday night (19.06.2011)] was the day before a big football game. Football is a huge deal for people of Eskişehir. That night, the team paraded around town chanting with people swarming around them taking pictures. They take "local celebrities" to a whole new level. In any case, the team stopped here for a short while and enjoyed a dinner party on this raft on the river. A very elaborate dinner party at that. There was a DJ playing Euro Dance music, caterer, waiters, really delicious looking food (but, hey, all the food here is good).

On that note, I'll introduce you to Kumbru (also known as an Izmir Sandviç) This unbelievably good little sandwich is one of my favorites. It's a combination of 3 different salamis, cheese, and pickles. Delicious.

This is some sort of administrative building in the city. It's not only old, beautiful architecture, it sits behind an elaborate fountain that pours into the river.

That evening, we went a saw a movie. It was a ridiculously stupid French film (subtitled in Turkish... talk about challenging my language skills) about these vampire zombies. Reminiscent of The Hills Have Eyes, if any of you have seen that equally stupid movie. Yes, to answer your question, that IS my hand. I had the theatre rolling with my dog impression during the interlude (the ear was better before... didn't get the picture at the right time). In my defense, although I was acting like a child, the 30 year old next to me started it! But really, we were the only ones there and so we enjoyed the 15 minute break with a few shadow puppets. It was quite entertaining. All in all, exponentially better than the whole movie.

I think that's about all for now! I'll be blogging a bunch more this week. Updates include some more work photos (field work, finally!), microscope shots, trip to the park, and an event at the Stadium. I'll continue to add photos of the city as I get them as well. There's a lot to take pictures of here in Eskişehir. 

Almost 1,000 views!! Keep 'em coming, guys! As long as you're reading, I'll keep posting. I'm glad to know you all are interested. 

Çok teşekkür ederim!

İyi geceler—

Andrew

Anadolu Tarımsal Araştırma Enstitüsü — Campus Tour

ATAE — Anadolu Tarımsal Araştırma Enstitüsü — Anatolian Agriculture Research Institute 

ATAE is the institute where I work. My department is SBP (Soil Borne Pathogens). I am affiliated with CIMMYT (Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo — International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center)

This photo is of the Misafirhane (Guest House). My window is the fourth from the left on the bottom. It's nearly always open. Nice fresh air. Those flower beds are filled with roses (gül) and snap dragons (aslan  ağız —lion's mouth), and the smell wafts in the window. I'll stay here 90% of the time, except when I'm traveling for field work and such. Currently, I don't know if I've mentioned this, I have a roommate for Uzbekistan. He speaks broken English and even more broken Turkish, so it's difficult to communicate at times, but it's been fun. I've learned a significant amount of Russian since he's been here, that's for sure. However, he leaves on Monday for Konya.

This is the entrance to the laboratuvari. It's probably 10 yards from the entrance of Misafirhane, so very close to walk to work. 

Now, we'll follow the sign to the right to the Yemekhane — lit. food house. Obviously, the cafeteria. The food here is by far the best cafeteria food I have ever eaten. This evening, the director's daughter had her wedding reception in the cafeteria. Since I'm staying here, I was allowed to go in before and eat. Fantastic wedding food. Every day, after we're finished eating, we stroll around the campus grounds and walk off a few calories while enjoying the nice weather. 

On a side note, you'll notice on top of the Yemekhane two black rectangular panels. As you've probably guessed, these are solar panels. Behind it is a water heater. Here at the institute, all hot water is generated by the sun. Since we've been receiving and exorbitant amount of rain, the hot water is sparse. I essentially have to time my showers right to have hot water. 

This is the administrative building at the center. This is the business end of things. I have only been in here a handful of times. Once to meet the director, once to obtain a network ID, once to attend a formal meeting, and few other times for random things.

This iss one of my favorite parts of the center. That little red truck is like a grocery truck. It comes twice every day around meal times and for a few türk lira, you can buy all sorts of things, from eggs, to soda, to bread. Good stuff. Really handy when you don't feel like taking the bus into town.

Now, actually where I work. This is a photo of the Pathology Laboratory from the door. The black desk chair you see is where I sit, and the microscope in front of it is the one that I use. I spend around nine hours in it each day.

I know you all wanted to see my microscope. It's awesome. That petri dish in underneath is filled with washed soil (I'll explain in a few pictures). I look through it to find nematode cysts. That small glass dish just to the right of it is filled with probably a hundred cysts (3 days worth). That small brown smudge in the center is all of them, if that gives you some perspective on how small these things are.

This is at the back of the lab. Those are bundles of wheat sampled from the fields. They were tested for both Fusarium culmorum (crown rot fungus) and Heterodera filipjevi (cereal cyst nematodes), the two disease we work with for the most part.

Through a door at the back of the lab near that wheat is this room. This is a sterile room. You can see the fume hood off to the right for working with chemicals and fungus. A lot of the preparation for experiments happens here. 

These are the sinks just outside the room depicted above. This is where we do our soil washing. The tube coming out of the second sink (from the left) is the Fenwick machine. It washes a lot of soil at once. We never use it. Typically, it's faster to wash in buckets. Here's the process:

1. Soil samples are placed in bucket. The water is added.

2. Samples undergo rigorous mixing to suspend the soil in the water.

3. Suspension is poured through a series of sieves. The first catches the larger materials (root fragments, sticks, large rocks) and then a fine sieve catches the cysts, sand, and organic material, letting the actual soil run through. This result is jarred and given to an intern or employee for inspection.

These are assorted fungi cultures in the lab. They are from samples taken from the fields or growth chamber experiments. All pathogenic fungi.

I mentioned earlier that we've been getting a lot of rain here. This was taken (in the sun) after a particularly severe thunderstorm this afternoon. It was great.

This was a quick picture I snapped of one of the many köpekler (dogs) that roam the campus grounds. I think there are at least ten different ones. There are dogs all over the city too. As well as a great deal of stray cats.

Here I am, hard at work. And clearly fine. So stop worrying. You know who you are...

I suppose that's all for now. On account of the wedding, we didn't make a trip to the city today. I'm intending to go tomorrow, so hopefully I can get some pictures then. I may also roam around campus more extensively (it's enormous). I'll post what I've got on Sunday. Erdoğan says we're spending Pazar (Sunday) in this park in Eskişehir, so I know I'll get some good pictures there. 

Once again, I really appreciate you stopping in to read the blog. Feel free to post thoughts under these posts. I enjoy hearing from everyone!

Çok teşekkür ederim,

İyi geceler—

Andrew