A microbial perspective

By Kelly S Ramirez

This past winter went by in a hurry. Workshops, data analysis and proposals, combined with a few weekend trips resulted in surprise and slight panic when I realized on Monday that it was already April 1st. We all tend to get caught up in work and our daily lives, and I sometimes question if I make enough time to appreciate the science I work on.

Currently, I am working on a project surveying the biodiversity in the soil in Central Park NYC. We are examining all the life- bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes -in the soils of Central Park, and this is one project where I really do appreciate the underlying science.

Soil Equality

Forest soil under lodegpole pine in Lyons, Colorado. Photo courtesy of Andrea Borkenhagen, 2013.

By Kelly S. Ramirez, PhD

As a soil ecologist, I am inevitably asked about dirt (and lawn care), but mainly dirt. Depending on the person and my mood and the event, I may quip back, ‘dirt is under your fingernails.’* Some inquirer’s eyes will glaze over, realizing I was the wrong person to make small talk with at said event. Others will eye me apologetically.

Soil, not dirt, is the foundation of our terrestrial ecosystems, maintains our food sources, cleans and cycles our water, regulates climate change, controls disease, and supports our cultural activities and recreation (Wall and Nielsen, 2012).

Taking time to learn

By Lindsay Reynolds, PhD

Blogging is a powerful avenue our society has developed as a way to communicate ideas, but 15 years ago the word didn’t even exist. And now, some people are already asking, has blogging hit its peak? The first Blackberry smartphone was introduced in 2002, and for a long time the only people I knew with smartphones were my friends in med school. Then, the iPhone emerged in 2007, and now smartphones are ubiquitous. None of us need to be reminded how much technology has changed our world and the breathtaking pace at which it continues to change. Not only is it changing our social world and the way we communicate, but it has changed how we do science. How do we keep up as scientists and how do we figure out when and where to allocate time to learning new tools?

This is a question every scientist has to ask themselves. Its not a new problem, either. It’s as old as science itself. In the end, it is an issue that is less to do with learning the shiniest new technology and more to do with maintaining a mindset as a constant learner in your career.