It's been quite a while since the last update, but a lot has been happening. The design of the permeameter is complete, and almost all constructed. I am in the initial stages of testing it in the cold labs at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, and the outcomes look positive.

I leave for more intense testing in a couple of weeks at Dr. Ed Adams Cold Regions Laboratory at Montana State University. There I will simulate the exact sampling methods that I will use while in the Taylor Valley, Antarctica. After that, I am spending a week at the University of Montana-Western, in Dillon, Montana, to work on digital mapping techniques that I plan to incorporate into the project to give a "spatial" modeling aspect to compliment the more traditional sub-surface modeling.

A new, and completely unrelated, portion to the Antarctic research is the involvement of elementary school age students. These students will be independently learning different aspects of Antarctic ecology, conducting experiments (in which I will do and transmit the data back to the US), and they will do the analysis and develop the results. More information is forthcoming.