Here it is. Election Day in the United States. I’ll be so glad tomorrow. Relieved. Who ever wins, I’ll be glad it’s done.
There’s only so much mud-slinging I can take. It seems that all the candidates are concerned about is the character of their opponent. That’s all I see in the ads anyway. You have to dig to find out what their stances are. I’m tired of it.
I’m tired of the endless barrage of candidate names. I’m tired of seeing “So-and-so likes Barack Obama” or “So-and-so likes Mitt Romney” on Facebook. Even though most of my friends on Facebook and Twitter are silent about politics, I am still sick of hearing about it.
I don’t broadcast my political views. I have friends of all creeds and preferences. I don’t want to step on their toes. Any person who spends a moment following my Twitter-feed or reading my blog can probably figure out how I stand, anyway. Well, maybe. I’m a scientist. That should say everything.
Elections are so polarizing. That’s the problem with a two-party system. One side’s gotta win. I hate it. Why can’t we all just get along? What’s a greater problem is that we’re not actually a two-party system. There are multiple parties, just no-one knows about the others until they get their ballot and say “Who the hell are these guys?”
Luckily, this morning’s ballot was pretty simple. No big issues to vote on. Just people. I try when I can to vote for my candidate of choice where he or she is running as the candidate for a party other than the Democrats or Republicans. That way, I still get my candidate, and maybe there’s hope that another party can enter the big scene and participate in the debates and raise money and what ever.
Tomorrow, the sun will rise and it’ll be another day. Maybe we’ll have a new president, maybe we won’t. I just hope there are no hanging chads or similar issues this year. The disruption from Hurricane Sandy is sure to cause someone to cry “liar!” if the election is even remotely close in stricken areas.
In the meantime, I’ll keep my TV off and try to ignore any political or newsy tweets and Facebook posts for the rest of the day. No spoilers, please. I voted. Now leave me out of it. I’ll find out tomorrow.
As a scientist I am frequently asked to review other people’s writing. Typically, it’s a scholarly journal article that I need to read. Other times it’s a textbook that needs a review. These things don’t pay (though sometimes they have perks) and take time, sometimes lots of time. So why bother?
Why should I spend hours and hours reading someone else’s paper when I could be working on my own? My job might depend upon me publishing something scholarly every year. Sometimes more than one paper. And the work I might do on reviews isn’t ‘billable,’ so if you have that kind of job, why waste your time?
Well, here’s some reasons why:
1) You get to read the latest in research even before it’s published.
2) You can keep BAD science from getting published.
3) You can learn the difference between a well-written paper and a poorly written paper, thereby improving your own work.
4) You can help someone make a good paper much, much better.
5) You can save a scientist from accidentally publishing something that has a blaring error.
Really, the peer review process is intended to make sure that anything that makes it to publication is grounded in reality. Published scientific papers should report ‘truth,’ or at least as close to truth that is possible given the current state of knowledge. Peer review is a necessary part of the scientific process. If scientists stop reviewing each other’s papers, science stops. If you’re not willing to review someone’s paper, then I’m not sure you’re doing science right.
So I keep reviewing papers whenever I’m asked. I do the best I can. And when I publish something, I’m grateful to the reviewers who looked at it, whether they remained anonymous or not, or even if their entire review is snarky. That’s okay. I learn something anyway.
So this morning we set our clocks back an hour. Well, OK. My phone automatically set itself back, as did all my computers. All these other clocks in the house are now officially one hour off. I suppose I’ll get around to changing them eventually.
I’ve never fully understood the point of the time change. I suppose I could research it, but I’m feeling lazy. It gives us more daylight in the morning, which I guess is nice, but then it gets dark so darn early that it’s impossible to accomplish anything in the evening. And in those darkest months of winter, it doesn’t make any difference at all, because it’s dark when I drive to work and it’s dark when I drive home. It’s just dark all the time.
I’m one of those people whose awake-ness is directly related to the amount of light outside. Actually, most of us are that way, it’s a natural way to be. Just some are better at fighting the natural urge to sleep once it’s dark than others. Once it’s dark, I just want to be in bed. Makes it hard when you’ve got class preparations to do for the next day. Winter is awful because of this. I can’t get anything accomplished. The time change doesn’t make any difference in this regard. It just gives me a temporary jet lag that lasts for a week.
The only nice thing is that one day a year we seem to get an extra hour to sleep. I took advantage of that this morning. I needed to. I’m feeling a little rough this morning. Of course, in the spring we lose that hour. That day sucks. I hate that day, and the whole week that follows.
I’ve been fascinated with swordplay for the better part of my life. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if as an embryo I was trying it out. Well, OK. Maybe not. I’ve also been intrigued by the martial arts, though not so much that I ever wanted to try them out.
In the last year or so (call it a mid-life crisis or maybe mid-life enlightenment!) I finally that maybe I should pursue this interest and see where it goes. I thought initially that maybe it was little more than a passing fancy. You know the sort: something grabs your attention and you get excited about it. And then you throw a lot of money at it to buy all the equipment. And then, a month later, the interest is gone, and you realize that you’ve wasted your money.
Well, I’m old enough to know that these things can happen (thankfully), so I let my interest simmer in my heart for a while, bought a bunch of books, and after a few months I realized it hadn’t gone away.
So I pondered. I was still interested in swordplay, but I was in bad shape. I knew there was no way I could actually handle a sword. I’d collapse in exhaustion in ten minutes. I started a workout program, and after a few months of that I realized I was in better condition than I had been twenty years earlier, and I was STILL interested in swordplay (and as a bonus, I was also 25 pounds lighter!)
OK, now what? I, of course, had spent a fair amount of time on line during this time idly reading about swordplay and swordsmanship to see what I could learn and came across the web page for the Higgins Armory Museum. Well, shoot! It’s even got my name on it! I found out that they had sword classes and I immediately wanted to participate. However, the museum is a six-hour, one-way drive from my house, so that wasn’t going to happen. They did, however, have a full day symposium called “The Sound and the Fiore” which focused on the knightly martial arts of 15th century fencing master, Fiore dei Liberi. It included a workshop in which participants would be allowed to work with long swords for a quick lesion. I went, naturally, and came home positively chomping at the bit to learn more. I was excited to have learned something about wielding a sword, but I was also excited at the realization that swordplay was part of the “Western Martial Arts.” That is to say, using a sword and being a ‘knight’ was properly a martial art just like karate! This is what I wanted.
Then the search began. I tell you, there is nothing-doing around Rochester in the form of Western martial arts. Someone finally suggested the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) as an organization where I might get to learn some swordplay. I’ve met up with the local group and have also gotten involved in what they call “Heavy Weapons,” which is the SCA equivalent to fighting with a broadsword. This has been fun, making armor and bashing on people with sticks. I figured out pretty quickly that despite all my training, I still didn’t have quite enough upper body strength to fight well, but at least I was fighting now!
Something was missing, alas. As much fun as the SCA is, it lacks all the martial aspects of proper martial arts. Plus, while it sort of looks like real swordplay, it isn’t. I renewed my search. This time, I had the benefit of Twitter, on which I seem to spend far too much time. But I do follow some swordsmen who participate in swordsmanship as the martial art that it is. A month or so ago, one of them pointed me toward an instructor nearby who could actually teach me what I want to know!
Today, I made the drive to Ithaca and took a lesson from Adam Crown, Maître d’Armes. Let me tell you what. It was a great experience, and unlike what I learned at the Higgins Museum, nor anything like SCA heavy weapons practice.
Here’s what was different. The Higgins Museum workshop most likely intentionally put swords in the participants hands knowing that was what participants were paying for. It wasn’t meant to be a lesson. It was a demonstration. It was to give a flavor for true swordsmanship to the participants, and so the most ‘romanticized’ of the weapons, the longsword, is the one that was pulled out and presented. The SCA practice is all about just jumping in and fighting. There isn’t any formal instruction, just short spurts of fighting with occasional stoppages to help explain the SCA rules and SCA fighting styles. And, in the end, it’s pretty basic. The SCA is not about reenactment or historical accuracy, at least in terms of fighting techniques. SCA heavy weapons fighting is not a martial art. I won’t say it’s not fun (because it is), but Western martial arts, it ain’t.
In the class I took today, everything that was done was calm and controlled. Much of it was about footwork and posture. It was a two-hour lesson and no-one even touched a sword until the second hour. I never even put on protective gear. I spent an hour learning how to properly draw a sword and salute my opponent, because you’ve got to get that right before you do anything else.
So what’s next for me? Well, I’ll be going back to Ithaca for lessons as often as I can make it. I’ll continue to meet up the the SCA heavy weapons group too. It’s a fun workout and enjoyable social event for me. However, if ever it comes to a point where the things I do for SCA style fighting interferes with what I’m trying to accomplish with the Western martial arts, well, the martial arts will win.
Earlier this week, Hurricane Sandy (an anomalous late-season hurricane) made landfall in the United States near Atlantic City, NJ (also anomalously far North). Because of the timing of Sandy (near Halloween), and it’s coincidence with another strong system moving across North America from the West, the weather event was given the moniker “Frankenstorm”.
This storm was a big deal, and my heart goes out to everyone adversely affected by its aftermath. My own heart broke with each image the popped up on my Twitter-feed that night. Yet there were some heartwarming stories, and certainly some good will come from this unfortunate event.
Much of the discussion of Sandy revolved around how unusual it was and how it might be related to global warming. I even got a call from a local journalist wondering if I would be willing to comment on that. (I said no, because it’s really outside of my realm of expertise, but hopefully might be contacted later regarding ancient episodes of global warming which really are my specialty.) There are plenty of web resources on the topic, which cover that question better than I can. This is one of my favorites.
This is all interesting, but is not why I was kind of excited about Sandy (in the way only a geochemist can be). For me, Sandy provides an opportunity to verify what we think we can learn about ancient weather patterns using chemical tracers in rocks. That is, Sandy is a natural isotopic experiment. I’m not the only person who thought this. Gabriel Bowen of the University of Utah thought of it first. I’ll explain below.
Before you get upset about the term ‘isotope,’ remember that all atoms are isotopes and that not all isotopes are radioactive. Most atoms are ‘stable’ meaning that they don’t undergo radioactive decay. It’s just that the term ‘isotope’ makes people think of nuclear reactors and meltdowns (and somehow Homer Simpson).
So then, what do I mean by an isotopic experiment? I’ll save the details of how isotopes work for a later blog post, and just start with a simpler story of just water. Different isotopes have different masses, or weights. Most water molecules have a weight of 16 atomic mass units. Let’s just say most water has a mass of 18. Some water molecules have a mass of 19, where one of the hydrogen atoms is ‘heavy’ (but stable) and some molecules have a mass of 20, where the oxygen atom is ‘heavy’ (but also stable).
When the mass of the molecule is heavier than most (19 or 20 versus 18) the molecule is, well, heavy! That means that if water evaporates, the lighter (mass 18) molecules evaporate first, because they’re lighter, leaving the heavier water (mass 19 and 20) behind in the puddle. This seems very common-sense, and it is. Vapor that evaporates from puddle is lighter than the water that remains in the puddle and, in fact, the remaining water gets heavier. This process is called fractionation.
Now, if we have a bunch of water vapor, like a cloud for example, and the vapor condenses, the heavier water condenses first and falls as rain (because it’s heavier). The rain is heavier than the vapor in the cloud and the cloud’s water gets lighter and lighter as it rains more. Again, this is fractionation.
When we’re talking about isotopes, we use this crazy delta notation. If we want to say something about the oxygen isotopes in water we use δ18O. For hydrogen, we use δD or δ2H. The number we report is really a ratio, but we tack on the permil symbol (‰) to make the numbers easy to talk about (again, this is something to talk about later). What’s important is that if the delta value is more positive, that means that the water is heavier. If the delta value is more negative, the water is lighter. Everything is measured relative to ocean water which has been assigned a delta value of zero for both hydrogen and oxygen. δ18O = 0‰ and δD = 0‰ for ocean water.
A hurricane, like Sandy, gets all its water from the evaporation of the ocean – so the clouds forming over the ocean will have delta values more negative than zero. As long as the storm is over the ocean rain from the hurricane and falls back on the ocean and new water evaporates keeping the isotopic value of the clouds stable. But once the storm moves over land, the addition of new water vapor from the ocean stops, but lots of water is lost as rain.
The result is that as a storm moves across the landscape, the isotopic value of the cloud gets lighter and lighter over time. The precipitation coming from the cloud also gets lighter and lighter over time, though it’s always heavier than the cloud it came from.
This is called Rayleigh Distillation, and is one of the basic concepts in isotope geochemistry. It seems pretty straight forward and reasonable, and has been used as the basis of isotopic interpretation for many years. But it’s been difficult to test… Until now. With electronic messaging and, more importantly, social media, it is now possible to recruit a fleet of people of a broad geographic area with only a few hours notice to collect rain samples that can then be measured for their isotopic values. We can finally ground-truth this important hypothesis!
This was tried for the first time with a storm called “Snowzilla” (now less creatively called the ‘Groundhog Day Storm’) that happened in 2011. Snow fractionates from clouds just like rain does, so would be expected to show a similar isotopic pattern as rain water. When this huge storm that hit much of the eastern United States, and Gabriel Bowen, then at Purdue University, put out a call for people to collect snow samples and send them to him. The results are detailed here.
The pattern of hydrogen isotopes from the Groundhog Day Storm in 2011. Warmer colors represent isotopically heavier water.
Looking at the figure, we see that the isotopic values shift from more positive in the southeast to more negative in the northwest. From this, it’s easy to see that the vapor moved in from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean.
What might we expect to see from Sandy? Well, this time when the call went out, Dr. Bowen asked participants to collect samples over specified time intervals and to record those times, meaning that it will be possible to make an isotope movie and perhaps watch Sandy move across the continent.
So… Why does this matter? Oxygen isotopes from rain can be preserved in rocks. As rain water is exposed to carbon dioxide and percolates through the soil, it forms carbonate (CO32-)which is then bound into carbonate minerals like calcite. This calcite can form little nodules in the soil or a calcrete layer. The oxygen in the carbonate records the oxygen in the water (with a little more fractionation). Later – as in millions of years later – geoscientists like me can analyze the oxygen from the carbonate and get back to the original distribution of oxygen isotopes in the rain water. From there, we can then figure out ancient air-flow patterns around the world.
With this knowledge, we can start answering other questions. How does the uplift of high mountains (like the Himalayas) affect global air flow? What happens to air circulation when climate changes rapidly, whether it be warming or cooling? We can address these questions and more, which might help us understand what the future might bring if projections of warming bear out.
In the meantime, I’m a participant in the project myself and am still collecting waters. Sandy’s not quite dead, though her destructiveness is well past. We’ll see what the data tell when all is said and done!
***UPDATE***
Here they are: the sample set from my house. I’m done sampling, so the analyses can begin!
Nine rain water samples I collected for the isotopic study of Hurricane Sandy.
Marshall Thomas has an exciting career as an action-adventure star of movies and television. Coming from an acting family, Hollywood life is completely normal to him. He has never really experienced anything but comfort and prosperity. On the outside, he seems a well-adjusted man, but this masks the torment beneath that even he is unaware of. Disconnected, divorced parents left him uncertain how to engage others on an emotional level, which in turn leaves him in his late 40’s still single and unable to form a properly loving relationship with a woman. While considered a perfect gentleman by some, others think of him as a womanizing bad-boy, but the truth is that only once has he caught himself courting two women at once: Allison (his then-fiancee) and Katrine Duncan. His life starts a downward spiral with a car accident, including a DWI arrest, after which his fiancee meets his girlfriend. From there he falls into ever-worsening self-destructive habits, which may wind up costing him dearly.
Marshall is the main character for the novel I’m writing for the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge this year. The working title of the book is “The Masters.”
Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist 