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Description: "The overall project was to characterize nutrient losses from rewetted fens in NE Germany. The end goal of the project was a paper written and submitted to an international journal for publication.          My daily duties included lab analysis, techniques such as photometry and ion spectroscopy.  The preparation included dilutions, centrifuging, taking masses and measuring pH. Of course, as any good intern i did lots of dishes, but only my fair share, no more dishes than any of the other lab workers. Once a week, we went out into the field to collect samples. This involved piling into the car, driving a few hours, going out into the wetlands and extrating peat cores.

I also did lots of data analysis and number crunching. There was lots of Excel work for the calculations, and also lots of time spent in discussion with my co- workers to determine just what those numbers mean. I did a small amount of literature review. I did lots of writing for our publications, since it was in English and i am a native speaker. i also did a few translations and improvements to some other articles written by my coworkers."

Comments: "Doing an entire research project with very competent and very nice co workers was very rewarding. The most interesting was eating breakfast and lunch with my co workers, and discussing our project on informal terms."

For further information, please write to brian.payer@googlemail.com