Lizard Man's Travels

This site is a journal of my travels and other adventures while I shift from doing postdoctoral research on tree frog ecology in Darwin, Australia, to research on digestive physiology of lizards and bats in Sede Boqer, Israel. Enough friends have been asking me for regular updates on this journey, that I thought this would be the best forum to keeep everyone up to date (including me).

Saturday, November 20, 2004

Good news

Sorry about the lack of postings lately - it's been a busy time. Right now I've got the lizard experiments up and running, so I'm taking daily blood samples from them. It seems to be going okay, though I won't really know until I send the samples back to Wisconsin for analysis. I also got the data back from the first round of bat experiments. the data look quite good though there is one bit that is a little puzzling. Once I have a chance to take a good look at the numbers, I'll give the summary. While the lizard project is going, I'm also doing the second round of bat experiments, so that's keeping me busy. Still applying for jobs - no bites yet.

The big news of the week is that the Australian Research Council has decided to fund my project on frog thermoregulation. They chopped the budget by a third, but it will still be A$220,000 over the next 3 years. That means that I definitely have a salary for the next 3 years, regardless of whether I'm successful for any of the faculty job applications. It also puts me in a much stronger position for those jobs, since I have a proven funding record, and have funding that I can bring with me to a new job. I've been floating this week since hearing about the grant.

The next few weeks will be pretty crazy. I've got a physiology lecture to prepare (nutrition and digestion), as well as a departmental seminar. I'm hoping to use the departmental seminar as a practice run for my interview talk. Got to spend some time on that, though I'm not sure when. I also got back reviews on one paper that I've submitted for publication. It still needs some work, but it looks like it's getting close. Would be nice to get that one into the 'in press' column on my CV.

That's about it for big news. Little news - it rained here yesterday, so now everything is muddy. I'll talk about the international dinner, and the feelings here about Arafat's death next time.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Congrats on the grant!! :)

4:17 PM  

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