Category: Uncategorized
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Finally got all the Extreme Cold Weather gear (ECW) at the Antarctica center in Christchurch. The poster shows all the stuff we’re required to wear on the Ice Flight, the Air Force plane that lands on the Ross ice shelf. The outer layers are shown, but actually there are supposed to be four layers in all: thermal…
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At East Knox High School, Tanesha Lewis got to try out “Big Red” when Dr. Rachael Morgan-Kiss came to visit. But what else do you need to wear in Antarctica? A dozen sets of Thermasilk long johns from Sierra Trading Post. For those of you facing the “polar vortex” from Alaska, I enthusiastically recommend these. Thermasilk…
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Your National Geographic view of Antarctica is the pristine, endless icy expanse. What it takes to get there, however, is eight hours in the cargo hold of an Air Force prop plane. Barely heated. No restroom–just a cardboard box, like they gave the Ebola nurse. You have to sling your own gear onto a helicopter. Once…
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In Antarctica, Rachael Morgan-Kiss and her grad students arrived on the “ice flight,” courtesy of an Air Force freight carrier. They are already sending messages back to me to pack equipment they missed. At left, one of the vehicles they rode across the ice to McMurdo. McMurdo Station is built on an island in the middle of…
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A month from now, here’s where I’ll be headed: The Dry Valleys, just over the Antarctic mountain range. As you recall, I’ll be observing small eukaryotic microbes in bizarre frozen lakes with Dr. Rachael Morgan-Kiss. I’m bringing a field microscope to see the tiny protists–here is test footage of Tetrahymena from our intro bio lab (where…
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Sorry I’ve been absent lately; preparing for Antarctica, inviting Doctors Without Borders to visit Kenyon, and setting up Avatar to show for Bio Sci Fi. But here’s a good one you may have missed–guard crabs for coral. These tiny crabs can protect coral reef from getting gobbled up by starfish the size of a trash can. Mutualism…
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When Brain Plague came out (still my favorite book), reviewers sniffed that microbial aliens were “impossible.” They didn’t ask the microbiologists. Today, the microbiologists are homing in on our gut microbiota. “Take me to your leader” may mean taking a look inside your gut. Why do we eat what we eat–and why does it “taste good”?…
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To understand the broader background of Ebola and other viruses, read Michael Spector in the New Yorker. While his title “The Doomsday Strain” is overhype–in fact, I argue, these killer viruses are chronic population regulators–the world he describes, of eat and be infected, is the heart of what’s going on. What’s unique about Africa is that,…
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Could a bacterium’s defense against bacterial viruses be used to protect a human cell from HIV? A lot is in the news about people who seemed to be “cured” of HIV (the virus causing AIDS) yet two years later, the virus returns. That’s because the HIV virus hides a DNA copy of its RNA within…
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Fiction writers used to assume that robots would take us to the stars, or Antarctica, or other future adventures. But today the fastest growing use of robots may be that of caregivers for the elderly. Here in this NYT opinion, a physician argues that robots will be a good thing. Two kinds of robots–one, what you…
Joan Slonczewski 