This article was originally posted on the IPM Innovation Lab website.
Advancing technology has indisputably sharpened the tools of scientific inquiry. The most powerful telescope can see 15 billion light years away, particle accelerators can drive a proton to the speed of light in a matter of hours, and the newest microscopes have a resolution that’s more than 20 million times that of human sight.
These incredibly precise instruments are extensions of human faculties: The computer extends our brain, microscopes and telescopes extend our eyes, lasers and accelerators extend our hands. In many cases, we don’t even have to physically observe anymore. Our machines observe for us, and they tell us what we would see if we could see that far, that close, that deep. Scientists connect the dots, draw conclusions, and fit these conclusions into our growing understanding of the world.
Although this rapid technological evolution has given the scientific process a face-lift, it’s still the same underneath. The scientific method (hypothesize, test, analyze, etc.) is the foundation, but, depending on the discipline and the experiment, many of the steps are now digitized.
As a science communicator, this can make my job difficult. It’s tricky to get the general public psyched about an excel file of experiment results.
But one of my favorite things about working with the
Integrated Pest Management Innovation Lab is that, although we do stare at computers most of the day, occasionally we get to see
sciencehappening. And that people bring snacks to the office. It’s really cool when those two things combine.
Here’s how it happened today:
It was a slow, rainy Friday morning in the
Office of International Research, Education, Development. But someone (cough-me) brought in a giant bucket of wild pears for colleagues to munch on and take home. They’re pesticide-free, but, in order to preserve the integrity of the pears, I did not wash them.
Naturally, IPM Director Muni Muniappan snags a pear and pops it, not into his mouth, but under his microscope. I don’t know how long he pored over the puckered surface of the fruit, but before I had finished eating my first one, he found what he was looking for: a tiny insect.
When Muni called me into his office, IPM Associate Director Amer Fayad was peering into a microscope crooning, “I don’t know what it is, but it is so cute!”
It was cute. Even after Muni informed us that it was a wingless psocid, or in laymen’s terms, a booklouse. On my pears. So embarrassing. Good thing it was so darn cute.
In a few minutes, most of us working in the IPM quad had crowded into the office. The insect was difficult to pin down, so to speak. It was too small to be seen by the naked eye, and it could move fast. Muni explained that it probably didn’t like the bright microscope light and was searching for shadows. I thought that perhaps it was a little camera shy. Finally Amer got it in focus, and we snapped a few pictures.
Booklice, we learned, are not true lice. While they resemble lice in size and shape, they feed only on fungi or mold. In fact, Muni told us that this little guy was probably eating the fungi growing on the pear skin. If you find them in grain or other stored food products, it is an indication of high humidity, which encourages mold growth. They can also be found under wallpaper, in furniture, along the sides of windows or in — you guessed it — books!
The starchy paste of old books can support mold growth and booklice. But thankfully, outside of annoyance, their damage is insignificant.
And, yes, on fruit, they can be taken care of with a quick rinse in the faucet.
And, after all the lousy excitement, I went back to the kitchen and stuck a post-it note on the pears.
“Help me eat these pears! But, please, wash them first!”
Happy pear-season and have a great weekend!
Booklice information from:
http://ento.psu.edu/extension/factsheets/booklice
My uncle is friends with a couple who are both scientists. He invites them to my cousins’ birthday parties, so we get to chat a few times a year. The couple met during their school days, fell in love over textbooks and microscopes, got married, and support themselves by teaching and researching. Best of all, they get to travel. They travel all over the world to interesting places like the Gunib plateau in the Caucasus, the rainforests of Borneo, and the deserts of the high Arctic in pursuit of their science.
What do they study?
Lichen.
Lichen – like in those weird, mossy splotches that grow on rocks.
When they told me this over cake and hamburgers on my uncle’s back porch, my jaw dropped. I was incredulous and envious, and immediately stopped listening in order to re-evaluate all of my life choices.
Where did I go astray? Should I have studied lichen? I guess so. Or hydrogeology, definitely. I could have been scampering through the hills and valleys, pressing my ear to the ground to listen for water (or whatever they do).
And did you know that there are people who study tidal marks to determine how the revolution of the moon has changed over the course of millions of years? These scientists bounce from beach cliff to beach, rocky island to lagoon, tracing the moon’s shifting signature along the coastline.
Of course I know these representations are fantasies – the “what-other-people-think-I’m-doing” version of careers that have their fair share of bureaucratic frustrations and computer-staring. I also suspect that I probably wasn’t cut out for any of these pursuits because I seem to be more excited about the places they would take me than the work they entail. (Travel writer? Photographer? Or a combination: National Geographic photographer. Boom. I’m waiting for the call.)
There was in fact a time when I claimed the descriptor “scientist.” I studied astronomy when I was an undergraduate, and I remember many long summer nights at the observatory followed by many long days of data crunching. I learned valuable lessons during that time, not the least of which being that in order to be a scientist, you have to have a passion for your science. Until recently, people have been slow to associate the words passion and science. But let me tell you, only the greatest of passions (or a complete lack of it) would get a person through the mountains of error analysis that are necessary to put forth a hypothesis.
In the end, I re-purposed these experiences into communications. My lack of commitment to a single scientific subject is a boon in this career, where I get to write about research that runs the gamut, from microscopic black holes to beneficial insects.
But during these cold winter days, I have moments of weakness where I huddle in my office, muttering bitterly about the adventures I’m only writing about.
For instance IPM Innovation Lab Director Muni Muniappan is currently on a two-week trip to Kenya and Ethiopia, where he is making connections, touring farms, and working very hard to lay the groundwork for the next phase of our program.
It’s 70 degrees in Kenya.
Should have been an entomologist.
