Chelsea Wald

A Freelancer's best friend

As a freelancer, I don't have the usual cohort of coworkers. No, my coworker is my dog. He's also sometimes my travel companion, which is why I love the website Dog Jaunt. It's by Mary-Alice Pomputius, who was clever enough to identify and then fill the need for good information about how to travel with small dogs. Ever since I started reading her blog, I have wanted to give back by contributing a tip or idea -- and I finally have!

I wrote Mary-Alice about my idea to give gifts to the flight crew when taking a dog in the cabin. This is what she said about it:

Brilliant, right? Now why didn’t I think of that? I may not do it on a short hop, but I’ll certainly do it traveling across the U.S. or internationally. Aside from the benefit to your soul of being kind where it’s not expected, this may well buy you and your pup some tolerance when she whines, or support when another passenger objects to her presence. It might even win you a blind eye to forbidden behaviors, like letting her head poke out of her carrier.

Aw! I'm blushing.

I don't do a lot of travel writing, but I have written a few times for Budget Travel. If you are interested, here are the links:

• "What $100 Buys in ... Krakow," Budget Travel, 8 Feb 2008
• "The Antarctica One is Really Cool," Budget Travel, 21 August 2007

Vegetable art, two ways

At a seminar I attended recently, two kinds of artists were called in to help put on display the diversity and beauty of radishes and turnips. The organizers from the Horticultural College and Research Institute Schönbrunn (above all Wolfgang Palme from my previous blog post) grew more than 90 varietals in their greenhouses and fields for this event, which was intended primarily for people in the food industry, from farmers to restaurateurs. They gave some of this produce to the artists to work with.

One was Vienna's Vegetable Orchestra. They gave a rare outdoor performance for the seminar participants. They played on heirloom varieties of turnips and radishes in several ways, including as wind and percussion instruments. You might not recognize the vegetables in the photo below, but they're definitely related to the classic versions in your local supermarket.

Another was Vienna-based Chinese artist Lai Ha Leong Rohsmann, who has pioneered a style of carving vegetables (apparently there are traditional Asian versions of this craft -- particularly from Thailand -- but she is self-taught). She treated the participants to a live demonstration of her art, in which she carved several flowers and a mouse out of turnips and radishes. Afterward, she showed participants around an installation she had created especially for the event just hours before, as the artwork does not last long.

As I was watching the presentations, it dawned on me that the vegetable art is not just about beauty and diversity. Indeed, vegetables are an apt medium for exploring the theme of the transience and fragility of life. Rohsmann's creations last a maximum of three days in cold water (and another two if frozen). For her, they represent our lives -- how fleeting and beautiful they are, and how, after they are gone, still serve to foster new life.

Similarly, the Vegetable Orchestra instruments are made the same day of the performance, and many of them are violently destroyed while being played. This can be dramatic and even upsetting to watch. However, the members manage to turn this feeling on its head by serving a vegetable soup made with the trimmings of its instruments after every performance.

Vegetable art is also a meditation on imperfection and uniqueness. The Vegetable Orchestra has fixed compositions, of course, but the instruments are never exactly the same -- meaning no performance could ever be the same. Same for Rohsmann's creations, which are made with vegetables of varying quality, not to mention size, color, and shape. One of the greenhouse-grown turnips she was carving turned out to be rotten in the middle -- causing groans of sympathy to ripple through the audience. Unconcerned, she just threw it away and started on another.

Perhaps the best part of vegetable art, though, is that it's something we all can do. It's fun to watch kids bopping away at a Vegetable Orchestra performance because it's clear what they're thinking: I can't wait to get home and raid the refrigerator!

Do you want to get your hands on some heirloom vegetables -- to eat or to make art with? If you're in Vienna, check out the Terra Madre market next weekend (October 13-15) at the Rathaus.

Pretty, cool places in Vienna

Man, I've been lucky!

Most recently, for a New Scientist CultureLab story, I got to go to the greenhouse of the Horticultural College and Research Institute Schönbrunn, which is behind the Gloriette at the Schönbrunn palace. It's there that the college's students learn to grow everything from vegetables to ornamental plants.

I happened to arrive when the tomatoes were ripe. They were gorgeous -- in every shape and color that a tomato can come in -- and they tasted incredible. The photo above is of the stuff they were throwing away. Yummy trash!

My host, Wolfgang Palme, showed me some of his innovative outreach projects, including the Vegetable Orchestra one I was writing about. I was also impressed by his Michelle Obama-style program for children. He and his colleagues planted a stunning outdoor teaching garden and invited students to come taste everything in it, from lettuce to edible flowers. The kids then got to plant their own window gardens to take home.

As the gardens grow, the children will make notes and then send their notebooks to Palme, who will declare one of them the Young Gardener of the Year. I was sad to hear that Palme is having a hard time finding funding to continue this program. I know some ag company would be all over it in the United States, but apparently corporate sponsorships are less common in Austria.

Thanks to another New Scientist story (subscription required), I also got to visit the Vienna studio of artist John Gerrard. It's not a traditional studio with paint and canvases or whatever, since his work primarily uses computers. Instead it's a flexible, open space that he can use in many ways, including to host dinners, which he does a few times a year.

Apparently the meals smell so delicious that dogs continue to pop their heads in for a sniff for many months after. A very cute one showed up while I was there, and we both stopped our conversation to ogle it. We were sitting at the beautiful table in the photo.

If you happen to walk by, you can feel free to poke your head in, too. They have an open-door policy.

One of the newest buildings in Vienna belongs to the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (CeMM). I profiled one of their investigators for Science Careers. I love this time-lapse video of the building of the facade. The inside looks just as great.

 

The Thermokarst revisited

Almost exactly a year ago, I got caught in a thermokarst. In honor of that awesome adventure, I finally finished my video of it. As I watch it now, my main emotion is guilt -- for having used up so much of Mike Gooseff's time and energy, and for getting him so muddy. He was planning to overnight at the research site for several days. He was really good-natured about it, as you can see.

 

As I was uploading this video, I came across another uploaded by Sarah Godsey (who is also in my video). It shows thermokarst slumping over the course of last summer. I'm pretty sure it's the same site. In any case, it's very cool, and I know that it's the result of a lot of work.

 

To learn more about thermokarsts, why not revisit my Scientific American blog post from last summer?

Art + Synthetic Biology

Last weekend, I covered the opening of a new exhibit in Vienna's Natural History Museum, Synth-ethic, for New Scientist's Culture Lab blog. It's all about synthetic biology, the science that aims to engineer biological functions and systems not found in nature. In other words, it is the intersection of engineering and biology, and it could lead to new developments in energy, drugs, agriculture, and all the other usual suspects, as well as perhaps some unusual suspects, like fashion. And, like any new technology, it could be unsafe and pose ethical problems.

While researching this story, I found several resources on the ethics, safety, and future of synthetic biology, which I thought I'd share here:

• Expert interviews at Synbiosafe, another project by the producer of Synth-ethic
• OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES IN THE EMERGING FIELD OF SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY: A SYMPOSIUM from the National Academies
• Ethical Issues in Synthetic Biology: An Overview of the Debates from the Hastings Center

 

Vienna's got science!

To prove it, I created a feed of science- and Vienna-related news using Yahoo! Pipes. It's in the column on the right -------->

It's not perfect -- it tends to get dominated by press releases by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Statistics Austria, and unrelated items occasionally sneak in. Nonetheless, it has alerted me to some fascinating and important research and events.

The feed is live, so if it's not interesting at the moment, just come back a little later. You can also subscribe to the pipe's RSS feed or go to the pipe's website. If you have any suggestions for improving the feed, please let me know. It's a work in progress.

2010 Science Newsbrief Award winners announced!

This out from DCSWA this week:

Washington, D.C.—The D.C. Science Writers Association (DCSWA) is pleased to announce the winners of the second annual Science Newsbrief Award. 

Most science writing awards go to complex, multipart stories, but those awards often fail to recognize one of the most challenging -- and most common -- tasks of the science writer: writing short. Done well, short, accessible, accurate pieces make an enormous contribution to the public understanding of science.

The winner of the 2010 award is Sarah Zielinski for her blog post "Rare Earth Elements Not Rare, Just Playing Hard to Get." Judges said Zielinski's well-written post showed the potential of blogs to inform while providing an interesting mix of news and science. 

Zielinski, an assistant editor at Smithsonian magazine, writes the blog Surprising Science. She is a graduate of the New York University Science, Health and Environmental Writing Program and Cornell University. 

The judges also chose to honor two entries with honorable mentions.

Sujata Gupta, a correspondent with New Scientist and freelance science writer, was recognized for "How Mussels Hang On," published in ScienceNOW. According to one of the judges, "in very few words, the writer worked in engaging imagery and great word choice."

Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay, a freelance science writer and editor, got an honorable mention for "Microscale Mimic Of Human Ingestion" in Chemical & Engineering News. One judge said: "From a lede that every reader could connect with, this story smoothly walks you through some complex technology."

An award ceremony will take place during DCSWA's annual Professional Development Day on April 23 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science building in Washington, D.C. Zielinski will be presented with a $500 prize and a crystal trophy. Mukhopadhyay and Gupta will receive framed certificates.

All DCSWA members were eligible to submit entries published or distributed between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2010. 

A panel of five judges from the DCSWA Board selected the winner and honorable mentions. They are Robert Frederick of Science Magazine, Carolyn Gramling of Earth Magazine, Jennifer Huergo of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Warren Leary, a freelancer formerly of the New York Times.

The D.C. Science Writers Association is an organization of about 500 science reporters, editors, authors, and public information officers based in the national capital area. For more information or to join, please visit www.dcswa.org. Details on how to enter the 2011 Newsbrief Award will appear on the website by the end of the year.

I can hardly believe that a year has passed since DCSWA announced the last winners. Unfortunately, it's a much farther trip for me this year, so I won't be around to present the awards at Professional Development Day. Congratulations to all!

 

Unicorns in science writing? Oh, yeah.

I’m a science writer, which means I don’t get to write about unicorns all that often. I did this week, however, thanks to an ongoing debate over “realism” in the world of biomedical ontology. I don’t want to get into the details, but suffice it to say, the debaters use unicorns as a hypothetical.

That got me wondering: How often do unicorns turn up in legitimate science papers, like the one I referenced in the Science Careers story? I did a quick search of Google Scholar and PubMed and -- guess what! -- they rear their heads more than you’d imagine.

Here are a few examples:

Spatial Distribution of the Montane Unicorn
Stuart H. Hurlbert
Oikos, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Aug., 1990), pp. 257-271

This is the only paper that really fleshes out the unicorn as a hypothetical in an argument. And by “flesh out,” I mean, “pretend they’re real.”

Excerpt: Analysis of the spatial distribution patterns of five populations of the recently
discovered montane unicorn (Monoceros montanus) yield several surprising results.
Principal among these is the fact that when censused using a grid of 1 km2 quadrats all
populations yielded a variance:mean ratio of 1.0, though each population showed a
different pattern of aggregation and none correponded to a Poisson distribution.
Distributions with these mathematical properties are termed unicornian.

HOW TO SHOW THAT UNICORN MILK IS A CHRONOBIOTIC: THE REGRESSION-TO-THE MEAN STATISTICAL ARTIFACT
Greg Atkinson, Jim Waterhouse, Thomas Reilly, and Ben Edwards
Chronobiology International Jan 2001, Vol. 18, No. 6: 1041–1053.

So, wait: You’re telling me unicorn milk is not real? I’ve seen unicorn meat online.

Excerpt: Few chronobiologists may be aware of the regression-to-the-mean (RTM) statistical artifact, even though it may have far-reaching influences on chronobiological data. With the aid of simulated measurements of the circadian rhythm phase of body temperature and a completely bogus stimulus (unicorn milk), we explain what RTM is and provide examples relevant to chronobiology. We show how RTM may lead to erroneous conclusions regarding individual differences in phase responses to rhythm disturbances and how it may appear as though unicorn milk has phase-shifting effects and can successfully treat some circadian rhythm disorders.

A Unicorn in the Garden and Unicorns Revisited
Franklin W Stahl
Nature, Volume 335, Issue 6186, pp. 112-113 (1988).
Genetics. 1992 December; 132(4): 865–867

The word "unicorn" seems to get used fairly frequently in genetics to represent rare mutations.

Excerpt: How did unicorns get into the act (STAHL1988, 1990)? In defense of Nature’s investigation of analytical procedures in BENVENISTE’S laboratory (DAVENAS
et al. 1988), THE AMAZING RANDI said “...what would you do if I said ‘I keep a unicorn in my back yard?’’ (MADDOX, RANDI and STEWART 1988). RANDI may have been alluding to JAMES THURBER’S delightful short story. My allusion was to RANDI’S rhetorical question, which invited the answer, “I would climb over the fence to have a look!”

Problem Corner: The Lion and the Unicorn
H.J. Ohlbach and M. Schmidt-Schauss
Journal of Automated Reasoning, Volume 1, Number 3, 327-332

Hey, whaddya know? Unicorns come up again here in a topic related to ontologies: automated reasoning.

Excerpt: We will use the ‘lion and unicorn’ example to illustrate two different methods for simulating this behavior in an automated theorem prover.

Research into the origins and characteristics of unicorns: mental illness as the unicorn.
L. Simon
Ethical Hum Sci Serv. 2000 Fall-Winter;2(3):181-92.

What would a blog post about unicorns and science be without something on mental illness? Unfortunately, the abstract doesn’t make it clear what exactly this paper has to do with unicorns.

Excerpt: Basic research, particularly into the psychological and neurological underpinnings of schizophrenia and other "mental illnesses," is flawed because of its adherence to the ideology that unwanted, hard-to-understand behavior constitutes true medical illness. It is argued here that psychiatric diagnostic terms represent moral judgments rather than medical entities.

CONCERNING THE REAL UNICORN.
S. Trotter
Science. 1908 Oct 30;28(722):608-9.

Here’s a paper that’s more than a century old. (Thanks, Science, for putting your archives online.) I’ve excluded other papers about the history of unicorns and science, but I’m including this one on the grounds of its age and the fact that the author’s name is “Trotter.”

Excerpt: It remains to determine, if possible, what species of “Asiatic ruminant” can stand sponsor for the fabulous creature. … Such a beast, I think, may be seen in the male Nilghai.

My editor almost didn’t let me get away with the unicorn mention, but in the end she did because, as she said, “there aren’t enough unicorns in science writing.” That’s true, but doesn’t this list (which is seriously incomplete) suggest that there could be many, many more?

(Photo by Roman Klementschitz, Vienna, from Wikimedia Commons)

Scientific Vienna

I've been based in Vienna for almost 8 months, and I haven't come across a list of its places of science, so I thought I'd put one together myself. What a trove! And I'm sure I've left stuff out. Please alert me if you know of something missing.

Universities
University of Vienna
Technical University of Vienna
Medical University of Vienna
University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna
University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna

Institutions, Institutes, Centers, and Laboratories (Non-university)
IMP (The Research Institute of Molecular Pathology)
Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL)
Campus Vienna Biocenter
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Austrian Academy of Sciences, including the following in Vienna:

• Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI) of Molecular Plant Biology
  
• Institute of Biophysics and Nanosystems Research
  
• Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA)
  
• Center for Geosciences (GWZ)
  
• Acoustics Research Institute
  
• Vienna Institute of Demography
  
• Research Center for Molecular Medicine
  
• Stefan Meyer Institute for Subatomic Physics
  
• The Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI)
  
• The Institute for Social Anthropology 

Austrian, European, and International Agencies
Statistik Austria
The Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES)
International Atomic Energy Agency

Museums, Zoos, and Public Education
Astronomie-Wien (Urania Observatory, Kuffner Observatory, Vienna Planetarium)
Tiergarten Schoenbrunn (Zoo Vienna)
Haus der Musik (Music Museum)
Museum of the Institute for the History of Medicine of the University of Vienna
Natural History Museum
Bestattungsmuseum (Funeral Museum)
Sigmund Freud Museum
Federal Pathologic-Anatomical Museum
Technisches Museum Wien (Technology Museum Vienna)
Uhrenmuseum (Clock Museum)
Zoom Childrens Museum

Social, Fun
Science Slam Vienna
Science Salon Vienna

(Photo of the Hofburg Palace by Marinn Mansell.)

Shoutouts and props

This year, I wrote a lot about the fellowships that I went on. I was so impressed by my fellow fellows that I want to dedicate a blog post to some of the great work that they did.

From Alaska:

Gretchen Weber of KQED in California put together this excellent story on thermokarsts (you might remember my close encounter with one).

For those who read German (and are willing to spend 2 Euros), Julia Gross wrote a long piece on thermokarsts in the FAZ, the New York Times of Germany. The photo above is of Julia and me in Munich in September (extra points to those who know that Oktoberfest is actually in September).

Susan Moran is continuing her fellowship in Antarctica. Her blog about it is funny and informative.

Ben Shaw's Ode to Eriophorum Vaginatum is not so much a work of journalism as a work of art. It's about my favorite plant.

From Germany:

Also in the FAZ, the amazing Krista Kapralos' piece on illegally home-schooled children in Germany. She also wrote a version for an American audience.

German fellow Christian Salewski worked on a ProPublica investigation into the Florida defective drywall scandal.

Dalia Fahmy wrote a nice story about the rise of high-end real estate in Berlin (heaven forfend!).

Aaron Wiener wrote on the politics of nuclear energy for Foreign Policy.

This is just a sampling: I have left out quite a lot, and I may add later as I learn more of my colleagues' accomplishments. My own writing will be up under the "Writing" and "Audio" sections of this website.