Category Archives: Features

Features, Science Careers

How To Avoid Retirement

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When biochemist Anthony Norman earned tenure at the University of California (UC), Riverside, he thought he’d never have to apply for a job again. But that was before he retired.

Norman, a professor emeritus, continues to run the laboratory he started in 1963. But he recently became a professor of the Graduate Division, a title reserved for retirees who “are fully engaged in research and/or other departmental and campus activities,” his new appointment letter says. Norman, who will draw his pension instead of a salary, believes the new position will help his post-retirement research career. “It used to be that when you retired your title became X emeritus. That doesn’t help you when you write up a grant application,” Norman says. In contrast to professor emeritus, professors of the Graduate Division prove their value every 3 years by passing the same departmental merit review used to grant pay raises to regular faculty members. “We have to jump through the same hoops as everyone else,” he says.

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Features, Nature

Fieldwork: Close quarters

In the scientists’ lounge aboard the BIO Hespérides one evening last March, Jordi Dachs points at the schedule for the next day’s oceanographic observations. The Spanish research vessel is chugging across the Indian Ocean at a speed of about ten knots. “The storm has put us seven hours behind,” warns Dachs, an environmental chemist at the Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research in Barcelona, Spain, whose responsibilities as chief scientist on the ship include planning researchers’ time and instrument use. About two dozen scientists brace themselves against the rhythmic pitching of the vessel. “We might not lower the sampling rosette all the way on some days,” says Dachs, “to save time.”

His suggestion fills the room with tension. Lowering and retrieving the rosette can take many hours, but the water samples it retrieves from the ocean’s depths — as much as 4 kilometres down — hold the biggest potential for new discoveries. Sampling excursions in the Indian Ocean’s deep waters are relatively rare, making the samples particularly valuable.

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Earth Magazine, Features, Obertraun, Photos

Caves of Ice: The Next Frontier in Paleoclimatology?

It’s early June in the Austrian Alps. Tourists in shorts sweat their way up a trail from the cable car above Lake Hallstatt. But the summer heat doesn’t stop a group of scientists from pulling on brightly colored jumpsuits over their hiking clothes at the entrance to Mammuthohle, one of the many limestone caves that riddle the Dachstein Massif. Lukas Plan, a geophysicist at the University of Vienna, straps on his headlamp and pauses to warn the crowd of researchers about the cave they are about to enter. It won’t just be chilly inside, he cautions; it will be an Alpine meat locker.

The crowd, part of the fourth international ice cave workshop organized by a network of European geophysicists and glaciologists, is gathered to visit the cave’s year-round ice formations.

Plan turns toward the tunnel in the mountainside and opens the metal door. A rush of wind bursts out. The group prepares to enter, hoping to read the history of the region’s climate in the cave’s ice.

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Features, Madrid, Nature Outlook

Big science at the table

José Ordovas sips a mint tea in a languid café in Madrid, Spain. His eyes scan two mobile phones as he confirms his next appointments. In conversation, he switches effortlessly between Spanish and English to find the right expressions. If the geneticist seems to be moving on a different wavelength from the other patrons, he could blame it on the jet lag: he has just flown from Boston where it’s now 5am. This is his third overseas trip this month, but Ordovas contends his frequent visits from Tufts University, where he’s based, to Europe have no adverse effects. “For me the time difference doesn’t matter, I’m up at 4am to make calls to Europe when I’m home anyway, and then I’m up late on calls to California,” he says.

Ordovas embodies the hustle and bustle of the ‘big science’ approach that has changed nutrition research in the past decade. This field, once confined to small groups of researchers studying the effects of single nutrients — such as particular vitamins or proteins — on a few dozen volunteers, is now adopting the heavy-lifting tools developed for genetics and pharmaceutical research. It also has a catchy name: nutrigenomics. And the more that researchers learn how our genes interact with our diet, the more they appreciate the deeper insight gained by an interdisciplinary approach. Such knowledge could lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of risk factors for diabetes and cardiovascular disease or, for example, improve the design of weight-loss diets.

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