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I studied neuroscience originally, all about the brain and nervous system. I was so fascinated with the idea of one organ controlling everything from movement in your little toe through to whether or not you like ice cream (yes please!). I then went on to study for a MRes (Masters in Research) in Biomedical Sciences where they taught you all about how you go about doing a research project in a uni from the start through to writing a paper.

Somewhere along the way after finishing this and starting a research post at a biomedical company, I ended up moving up to Aberdeen for my partner’s work and took a detour into nursing. I ended up applying the neuro stuff to actually treating the illnesses rather than just studying them.

When we weren’t working, we were scaling the mountains around Scotland, trying to climb as many of those over 3,000 feet as we could ( “Bagging the Munros”).

After having my daughter, I went back into the sciences again and did a MSc in Analytical Sciences before starting in the job I’m in now.

Not so much of the mountain climbing these days but certainly a lot more running! Sponsored 10K runs and half marathons and (trying to) encourage small human to enjoy physical activity and the outdoors too!

The team overall look at the effect of things like noise pollution from wind farms, oil rigs, shipping traffic etc on wildlife movements and population numbers, and fishing stock or the levels of different nutrients in the sea surface waters, or toxins in certain fish.

My team measure chemicals in sediment samples taken from the sea bed and different types of fish and shellfish. These levels are monitored over the years and help the government make decisions on policies for controlling the use of the chemicals and improving the conditions in the waters around our coast as much as possible.

We use a range of different techniques to prepare the samples for testing and a range of different equipment to test them depending on the chemicals being tested.

A lot of the work involves developing the methods and validating them (making sure that the method really works like it’s supposed to). It also involves a lot of problem solving when results don’t quite go as you expect and trying to figure out why!

For the Smedes,  I  prepare all the equipment I need beforehand, labelling all the glassware, switching on the oven for when it’s needed later in the day and doing a check of the balances before they’re used. I get the samples I need out of the freezer to give enough time for them to defrost before I start weighing out what I need. I switch on water bath for the evaporation of samples later in the day.

For this method, I use solvents (substances that dissolve other substances) to extract the lipids from the fish/shellfish samples. Depending on the solvents used, you can target specific types of lipids. For us, it’s total lipids so we use a mix of isopropanol and cyclohexane. The solvents are added to the samples in large centrifuge tubes and then mixed up at high speed with an “Ultra Turrax”. Water’s added, the samples are mixed up again and then centrifuged. The top layer (10 mL) is taken off with a pipette and added to a pre-weighed flask before the method is repeated again with a mixture of the solvents. Each sample has its own labelled flask and for each, the second 10 mL is added to the same flask as the first 10 mL.

Each flask is placed in a rotary evaporator to evaporate away the solvents, leaving behind the extracted lipids. They’re placed in an oven for one hour before being left to cool overnight. The next day, the flasks are weighed and the lipid percentage is calculated based on the original flask weight and sample weight.

For the total organic carbon, small silver capsules are filled with around 20mg of sediment sample. To remove the inorganic carbon (carbon compounds that don’t have carbon-hydrogen bonds, like various minerals and carbonates), I use a pipette to add small (microlitre) amounts of hydrochloric acid to the capsules and put them over a heated block for set amounts of time. I repeat this a number of times over a 3-hour period before folding the capsules into little parcels using tweezers. The samples are then tested in the CHN analyser which uses combustion to convert the samples to their simple combustion gases (CO2 and N2). Depending on the weight of the sample, the weight/amount of the individual elements can then be calculated from this.