Clean lab ruminations

Getting dressed up to go into the clean lab is not a trivial feat. You have to take off your shoes, put on your 'clean lab Crocs,' go through a series of doors, put on your personal protective equipment, and only then can you get to work.

Equally, when you want to leave the clean lab, you have to undo all that.

During allergy season, I retreat into the clean lab and try to stay there all day as to avoid the sniffles and headaches that California's dusty pollen likes to give me. The exceptionally well-filtered air in the clean lab usually has my worst allergies cleared within 30 minutes. It's amazing.

On these days, when I'm attempting to stay in the clean lab continuously, I find myself regularly ruminating "Hmmmm... I'm so glad that I don't study sulfur (S) isotopes (like my advisor did for her PhD thesis)." See, I enjoy healthy, fibrous lunches, which obviously make you fart, and S is a natural component of farts. So, everytime that I fart in the clean lab I snicker and say to myself "I'm so glad I don't study S isotopes."

So, this begs the question, do S isotope geochemists hold their farts to avoid contamination or do they go through the time-consuming clean lab entry/exit process every time they want to 'let one rip?'

If you're a S isotope chemist, please feel free to educate me on your experience! :-)

ISEE Professional Development Program

Fair warning: this post doesn't have anything to do with Israel. Or the research I will perform while in Israel. But it is a common thread for the majority of the 2017 IRES grad students.

Three of the IRESers this year (Kim, Esra, and myself) hold a position with such distinction that no less than three acronyms are required to contain its power. We are the few. We are the elite. We are the ISEE PDP DTLs.

• ISEE: Pronounced like the slushy drink from 7-Eleven, this stands for Institute for Scientist and Engineer Educators. This is a group at UCSC is focused on developing evidence-based best practices for STEM teaching, and teaching these practices to current and future STEM educators.
• PDP: Professional Development Program. This is a program (largely targeting graduate students) that focuses on teaching inquiry-based teaching strategies. It has a yearly cycle. First, participants attend two workshops. One of these workshops is designed to get participants acquainted with the established concepts for inquiry activities, and the second is focused on allowing participant groups (called "design teams") to design their own activities. After this, teams are expected to prepare for and then facilitate the activity with a group of ~20 undergraduates. After the inquiry activity, design teams are expected to evaluate the effectiveness of the activity using predefined metrics, and suggest improvements.
• DTL: Design Team Leader. Seeing as Kim, Esra and myself have already completed a full cycle of the ISEE PDP, we were asked to return as team leaders. We each proposed the topics we will be developing activities to teach, and manage a group of 2-3 other PDPers during the design process.

Is this what the youths these days are calling a "face-palm"?

The first PDP workshop (the Inquiry Institute) was March 17-21, and the second workshop (Design Institute) starts tomorrow! In fact, one of the main reasons I'm writing this is to procrastinate on the required assignments! I have definitely completed all of my preparation and am ready to go! Esra and myself will be preparing projects for "Research Saturday" at UCSC in October, and Kim's team will be presenting their project at Akamai in Hawaii.

-Steve

The Symbiont

Symbiodinium are small unicellular algae (dinoflagellates) that form symbiotic associations with corals, giant clams, anemones, and other organisms. When I first heard about these organisms I was amazed that Symbiodinium reside within these organisms' cells (INSIDE THEIR CELLS!). Can you get much closer than that?

Symbiodinium enter these organisms typically through the "mouth" and are then moved to cells. At the cellular level, they are "ingested" via phagocytosis. However, the coral cell is able to distinguish Symbiodinium from other food items and therefore does not attempt to digest it. Instead, it incorporates the symbiont and begins establishing a complex relationship.... AMAZING! How does the coral know not to eat the symbiont? Does the symbiont have special markers on the outside of its cell membrane? I found a review paper on this here.

In class the other day I learnt that Dinoflagellates have genomes that are larger than that of humans! Its crazy to think that a single celled organism's instructions for life are more complex than our own!! However, when I went to look up the genome size of Symbiodinium, I saw that it is actually smaller than our own 1.5 vs 3 Billion base pairs. Why do you think that is?

That is all for today. I will get to Clade D soon.

Met some Israelis two weeks ago while traveling

I was in Brazil last month for climate change and ocean education workshops at the University of São Paulo with Adina, and we had the chance to add some days to travel to Amazonia afterwards. We stayed in the city of Manaus, and then took some trips into the jungle (some multi day trips and some day trips). While we were in the jungle, I met several Israeli travelers. They were all super nice and really excited to hear I would be in Eilat this summer. They said that Eilat is a holiday destination for Israelis due to the natural beauty and fun nightlife. They also highly recommended that I visit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, which Adina already has planned for our group (I think). It is always pleasant to meet locals from a place you plan on going to, especially if the experience is positive. It got me even more excited for the summer!

This Week's Preparation for Timna: All Things Hathor

This Week's Preparation for Timna:  All Things Hathor

Hathor's head. Faience, from a sistrum's handle. 18th Dynasty. From Thebes, Egypt. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London

This week in preparation for my research at Timna Park in the Negev, I have burrowed into all things Hathor.  Hathor is typically known as an ancient Egyptian goddess of music, motherhood, sexuality, love...and beer. (I think of her as "the party goddess," whereas I associate the goddess Isis, with whom she is often associated, as being the "intellectual" of the pair.  Isis was about wisdom and invention, along with motherhood.)  When I started looking into the Egyptian link to the copper mines at Timna, however, I was surprised to learn that Hathor was also the patron goddess of copper miners.  This is why today  at Timna park there are remains of a chapel to Hathor.

All pharonic Egyptian gods and goddesses are complex.  First, Egyptian civilization lasted for thousands of years, so the meanings and associations of their many deities were not static.  Second, the culture was not necessarily as dualistic as "Western" culture (whatever that is).  The meanings of any particularly diety can even have, at a superficial level, contradictory aspects or attributes. 

For this reason, I figured the more I can burrow in deeply to understand the nuances of Hathor, the more I can gain an understanding of how she was perceived and revered at Timna -- and why.

I am eagerly awaiting this book via interlibrary loan: Votive Offerings to Hathor  by Geraldine Finch.  It was recommended to me by an Egyptologist at Stanford who works at another Hathor site I love, Deir el Medina (the Arabic name for the "Village of the Workers") in Luxor. It is a very expensive book from England, so our library does not have it, and it is in high demand from UCLA.  I am hoping Stanford Library comes through! 

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Votive+Offerings+to+Hathor.-a054168861  

Our library does have this book, When the Drummers Were Women, A Spiritual History of Rhythm by Layne Redmond. This book contains a chapter devoted to just Hathor, "The Golden One,"  and her relationship to drumming and rhythmic arts.

I have mixed feelings about this book.  It is a wonderful escape, but the author seems, via her tone, to be of the Marija Gimbutas school of thought on goddess studies.  I.e, it's that school of thought adopted by some Second Wave feminists that now sounds dated and essentialist: women are "by nature" more peaceful than men, so cultures where mother  goddesses were prevalent were more peaceful and gave women high status.  I am grossly oversimplifying for brevity, but I think the picture cross-culturally, cross-historically, and cross-temporally is really quite a bit more complex.  In the Near East, a lot of goddesses were goddesses of both love and war, or had other "dual" aspects.  In ancient Babylon, Ishtar was a major deity, but women sure did not have high status (or many rights, if you read the Code of Hammurabi).  And so forth.  

So basically, I look at this school of thought as one that became popular when VietNam Era protest and the rise of Second Wave feminism dovetailed. It resurged in the late 80s/early 90s when Grateful Dead hippies picked up the thread.   I see it as a way of envisioning a more peaceful existence while trying to increase the role of power of women in society.  And that is indeed a laudable use of imagination.  It's just not necessarily 100% archaeologically "accurate" from an academic perspective. 

So from a scholarly perspective, I approach this book critically and cautiously.  As an artist, I gratefully let it inspire my imagination. 

Another exciting Hathor bit, I have located a sistrum, a musical instrument associated with Hathor.  My Egyptologist friend Mary, who lives part-time in Luxor and runs The Egyptian Blue Lotus Foundation, is a big fan of Hathor.  She has FOUR sistrum, each of which she has had commissioned by artisans in Luxor.  She is willing to sell me one when she is back at her East Coast home. 

And I have been investigating a trance dance tradition in Egypt, North Africa and throughout the Middle East called the Zar.  It seems to me that the tradition has a lot of similarities to the rhythm traditions and mourning rituals of ancient Egypt, ala Hathor priestesses, and I would like to pull on this thread a little to see if it goes anywhere.  In some videos of the zar, the traditional way of holding the drum is the same as on Egyptian wall paintings, and the type of drum looks similarly familiar.  Alas, ala the hippy era ideas about peaceful goddess societies where women ruled, sometimes what we want to be true...is untrue or only partly true;  but it is also good to turn over rocks if you are sure there are no cobras or scorpions under them. 

 The Zar is traditionally done by women, often in groups, to expel bad stuff.  Depression, evil spirits, mourning, et cetera.  This drumming and dancing can go on for a whole week.   It is a kind of folk medicine tradition still practiced in poor rural areas where science-based medicine is not necessarily available or affordable.   The tradition is dying out in Egypt because religious fundamentalists are clamping down on it.  It remains alive through belly dance, though, as many belly dance songs have a section of zar music in them.   

Here is an example of the zar in dance, I think perhaps from Israel?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL-SWz3x7HM

And of just the music, courtesy of the Egyptian Center for Arts and Culture in Cairo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdeoLJZXodg

A Day in the Life of an Isotope Geochemist

My PhD thesis research at UCSC involves a hefty amount of method development because I am the 1st graduate student ever at UCSC to attempt to gather lithium (Li) and magnesium (Mg) data here. All of my work is done in a trace-metal clean lab, requires triple-distilled trace-metal clean acids, and odd working hours.

However, despite this level of detail, my family chronically asks me

"So... what exactly does your day look like? What is it that you 'do'...?"

To make it easier on them, I thought I'd video snippits of my day, splice them all together, and call it "A Day in the Life of an Isotope Geochemist."

While these columns may be for Li and Mg, a similar method exists for the separation of barium (Ba) from samples, so this work is similar to what I'll be doing as a part of my IRES project.

The synopsis: 8am liquid nitrogen de-gassing in the hallway, shoe removal (this will happen a million more times during the day!), lab safety equipment donning, pipetting acids, checking the acid stills, going to the Ocean Sciences seminar, lunch, dog walking, a much needed beer from a new microbrewery in town, returning to the lab to continue the column chemistry, and the day ends with a spooky walk through the campus redwoods to get home to work on the following day's science outreach talk. Phew! #adayinthelife #science

For more videos like this one, please follow me on Instagram @TheKauaiKemist

How warm is Eilat?

I have mentioned to several people that I will be in Eilat for two months. On a few occasions, the person I am speaking to has actually had the opportunity to visit Eilat. The consensus?

"It. Is. HOT."

While I appreciated this feedback, I found the information to be...well...qualitative. I had to delve into this myself. Here are some fast facts about the weather we ought to expect in Eilat for the months of July and August:

• The historical average high is 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).
• The historical average low is 79 degrees F (26 degrees C).
• The average monthly rainfall is 0 inches (0 mm, in case you need the conversion).
• The average ocean temperature is 82 degrees Fahrenheit (28 degrees C).

Ok, these are the averages, but what sort of temperature swings can we expect? Will some days be relatively cool, while others blistering? It's difficult to dig up this sort of information, but Weather Underground offers a nice custom search for historical weather data. From this, I found that variation is surprisingly small. For July and August, here is a list of the maximum, average, and minimum daily high temperatures for the past 5 years:

Year                Maximum high                     Average High                        Minimum High

2016                 110 F (43 C)                       105 F (41 C)                           99 F (37 C)

2015                 114 F (46 C)                       106 F (41 C)                           99 F (37 C)

2014                 112 F (44 C)                       105 F (41 C)                           95 F (35 C)

2013                 108 F (42 C)                       103 F (39 C)                           98 F (37 C)

2012                 114 F (46 C)                       106 F (41 C)                           99 F (37 C)

What can we learn from this? Below, I've listed a few takeaway points:

• It. Is. HOT.
• It is consistently, oppressively hot.
• The ocean, while cooler than the surrounding air, is also hot.
• We will all need to take aggressive steps to combat dehydration, heat stroke, sunburn, and spontaneous combustion.
• Did I mention the above temperatures are all shade temperatures?

Wish us luck. I might shave my head before July. Will keep you posted.

-Steve

I will be able to SEE!  --and share in 360 degrees even.

It was a frenetic spring break, but among my many tasks accomplished beyond doing my 

taxes...

I got prescription lenses for my scuba goggles!  Now I will actually be able to SEE under water!  --and see my teacher when I finish up my dive certification in April.  (It has been slow going because of our stormy winter here in California.  Lots of rescheduling due to choppy seas.)

I also took a leap over break and ordered a 360 Fly video camera from B&H.  I am interested in immersive environments and embodiment, so video installation, AR, VR.  And now video is catching the wave.  360-degree video creates an immersive environment for Google Cardboard, Vibe, et cetera.  

If I like this camera, which I can use it as-is at Timna and on land at Caesarea, I am eager to get an underwater housing, which is far far cheaper than the underwater housing I have from my DSLR. Then I can document underwater excavations at Caesarea in 360 to create the feeling of actually being IN the ocean.

Point of specificity:  This camera is actually 360-degrees on the x-axis, but only 240 on the z-axis.  There is a blind spot where the "ground" would be if you were to shoot standing on land and holding it upright.  But for the price, that's still really good.  To get full 360 for good resolution 4K video, not only are you talking a lot of money, you are talking a jump rig that would be extremely difficult to travel with.  

Other news: I will be tele-meeting with my marine archaeology contact in Caesarea soon, but as of our last chat, she was scheduling excavations for late July when I will be there.  So I should get to document actual action.  --and maybe a new discovery!