Beginning Research
I have basically been working on setting up the experiment. We are looking to see what the effects are of carbon nanotubes on Ceriodaphnia dubia, also commonly known as the water flea. This is a toxicity study and will we be looking at effects of the carbon nanotubes on reproduction. To the best of my understanding, the reason why we are looking at effects of carbon nanotubes is because it a new material that is become more widely used (similar to graphite). The reason why we are looking at the water flea is because they are recommended by the EPA as an biological environmental indicator.
What I did last Friday and today was observe the mothers and make sure that they were healthy and count the number of neonates (young) in each of their broods. We are in the process of selecting neonates from mothers who produced large broods in hopes that they will have large broods as well. Those selected will be used in the toxicity study.
July 1st, 2008 at 10:40 am
Adria-
Interesting stuff. I shall look forward to hearing about the uses of carbon nanotubes. I wonder in the old days, technologies were introduced with very little thought or study of the bad biological consequences. And we ended up with asbestos and DDT, for example.