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New Ideas, New Questions! Such is the ebb and flow of Science... (Week of 3/8)

 

Hello again! I have once more returned to write and create the scientific journey of a lifetime for all the attentive readers out there! This week we will preview the research questions asked by fellow classmates, and discuss them. Hopefully we find some new ideas and thoughts, and maybe we'll even revise our own questions!

To start us off, a fellow classmate proposed that there may be a correlation between the status of the fruit (I.e whether the fruits are jarred, canned, or fresh) and if the time of year both have an effect on the microbial composition of the starters. Both of these are fairly reasonable to analyze given the information students have access to, and each should be easy to compare microbial data between sets with. Another question that was proposed included location in the variables, and whether or not the area in which the fruit was obtained affected microbial composition. Again, this is feasible and not very difficult to compare with other starters, although the locations of various stores/markets and their respective environments could differ widely . 

One more group of questions was a bit more inquisitive and difficult to analyze. The first question asked about similarities and differences between trends and bacteria from this last year's data to this year's. This would be almost too broad to fully answer, mainly because there are so many trends to discuss and analyze, so many changing and lurking variables to identify. The second in that group talks about unknown bacteria and how it would be analyzed, which is a valid question, but it would be sequenced and grouped (or ignored, if the bacteria was not registered or considered in our data sets) with the rest of the microbes. Finally, the last question considered the feeding regimen and how much that affected the microbial composition of the starters. A valid question indeed, but one that could also be easily grouped with the effect that the age of the starter has on composition, so it is feasible to ask! All around, excellent questions. 

My own questions consisted of these three ideas: Whether or not the age of the starter affected microbial composition, if the comparison of older or newer starters correlated with a difference in composition, and if different fruits led to different microbes in starters. I would keep my first and third questions, but change the second (as it is almost identical to the first) and change it to question the status of the fruit and how that affected the composition. This would make the research more diverse and interesting to read, as well as more relevant to the data we are collecting. Thanks so much for reading!


Citations!!!

https://bernbianes.blogspot.com/2021/03/qiimeing-in.html

https://sourdoughadventures123.blogspot.com/2021/02/week-of-222.html

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