Question

will someone please read this article and briefly describe what it is about because I do not get it? http://chisholmlab.mit.edu/research/index.html

Answer 1

This article is the mission statement of a principle investigator (which loosely means research group leader) at MIT. It is a general description of the research that the group is doing.

Answer 2

It would be *much* easier to help you if you explained what about the article you do not understand. Like what the document is, or the science described in it, or what?

Answer 3

I dont understand what the research is about

Answer 4

So they are studying an organism, Prochlorococcus, which is a plankton. They start by describing why it is important to study this organism.

Answer 5

It is important to study this because:

1. It is the most abundant single celled photosynthetic organism in the world (so it plays a big role in the food chain and ecosystems in the ocean)

2. Because it is a model organism which is often studied and about which we have a lot of info.

Are both those clear or would you like me to clarify them?

Answer 6

no i know what they are

Answer 7

The clearer you are about what you do understand already and what you don't, the less guess work there is on my part and the more efficiently we can both do this. The sentence in bold is the most important sentence in the entire article:

"We seek to understand the biology of this single organism from the genome level to the global scale."

Everything else on the article describes how they go about studying this. Clear on it too?

Answer 8

i am just not good with marine biology

Answer 9

I hear that. But this is less about marine biology and more about abstract concepts. Concepts and ways of approaching studies.

Answer 10

ok, what exactly do these plankton do and how is it beneficial

Answer 11

This article is not about what the plankton do and how they are beneficial.

It is a *research statement.* It describes *how* the researchers study this plankton - what sorts of questions they ask about it and what methods they use to answer those questions.

Answer 12

Still interested in it?

Answer 13

So basically it is about a group of scientist that are developing a research project, and the information they hope to learn by answering the questions they have in their research plan?

Answer 14

Yes exactly. And a list at the bottom of some of the methods they use to answer these questions.

Answer 15

maybe thats why i didnt understand i thought it was about some parasite they found in the ocean

Answer 16

Cool. So that is all you want to know about the article?

Answer 17

yes unless theres more

Answer 18

Nope, if you're not getting into understanding what the questions actually are - but just saying that they are questions - that is it.

Answer 19

you are awesome are you on here often

Answer 20

I spend a reasonable amount of time on OS.

These days I let other users answer most of the questions, though I clarify points of dispute, answer questions they find too difficult and occasionally just pick a couple and answer them.

Answer 21

anything helps I'm an Accounting Major still trying to figure out why this class is in my curriculum

Answer 22

Suck it up and roll with it, I guess. You must be almost at the end of the semester if it's May. Surely some general understanding of what scientists do and how science works will be useful to you at some point - for example, it's a whole lot nicer if the accounting department at my lab understands, in general terms, what scientists actually do and how we get funding for it.

I'm a professional research scientist - not marine biology though.

Answer 23

A lot of scientists spend a lot of time writing grant applications and managing the financial aspects of our research.

Answer 24

Like the article you asked about. You can bet your bottom dollar that the people who decided whether or not to give this group a grant looked at that article and thought about whether the info that research will contribute to society is worth the money.