{"id":1060,"date":"2020-04-02T15:10:41","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T19:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2020-04-02T15:13:36","modified_gmt":"2020-04-02T19:13:36","slug":"science-in-an-unusual-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/science-in-an-unusual-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Science in an unusual time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like most other Americans, and many people around the world, I&#8217;ve been &#8220;sheltering in place&#8221; for a couple of weeks now. I&#8217;m still getting used to this enormous change&#8230;just a few weeks ago, I was struggling to keep up with the hustle and bustle of daily life, and now&#8230;well, things look a lot different.\u00a0 I&#8217;m very impressed by the actions taken by our WHOI senior leadership. They showed foresight and wisdom in implementing travel advisories and restrictions and greatly limiting on-site work. We&#8217;ve all learned a lot very quickly about the pro&#8217;s and con&#8217;s of various virtual meeting platforms. Without minimizing this very serious global crisis, I&#8217;m also enjoying a reduction in the amount of time I spend in daily meetings. In my &#8220;normal&#8221; professional life, it can be hard to find time for quality thinking. I have some time now, and am hoping to put it to good use. As I&#8217;ve dug into some of the projects that require &#8220;deep thinking,&#8221; I&#8217;ve been reminded that deep thinking is hard!<\/p>\n<p>A few things I wouldn&#8217;t have predicted I would be doing:<\/p>\n<p>Last week, I packed up all our unopened boxes of lab gloves and donated them to our local hospital.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1062 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/79\/2020\/04\/standing_desk-229x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"229\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/79\/2020\/04\/standing_desk-229x300.jpg 229w, https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/79\/2020\/04\/standing_desk.jpg 281w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 229px) 100vw, 229px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This week I decided that all the time I&#8217;ve been spending curled up on my couch with my laptop isn&#8217;t good for my posture. I&#8217;m working on improvising a standing workstation. I&#8217;ve never tried a standing desk before, but I guess this is a particularly good time to try new things. My first &#8220;prototype&#8221; (below) doesn&#8217;t seem perfect, but it&#8217;s a start.<\/p>\n<p>And the quirkiest adaptation I&#8217;ve made&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been continuing to go into the lab occasionally to maintain our <em>Nematostella\u00a0<\/em>cultures. To reduce the risk to myself and others, I&#8217;m only going in twice a week. To make this possible, I&#8217;ve been culturing brine shrimp in my spare bathroom! I&#8217;m wondering if I&#8217;m the only person in Massachusetts (the US? the world?) with a brine shrimp culture in my bathroom.<\/p>\n<p>Strange times. Stay safe out there my friends!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1063 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/79\/2020\/04\/IMG_0273-e1585854619303-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/79\/2020\/04\/IMG_0273-e1585854619303-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/79\/2020\/04\/IMG_0273-e1585854619303.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like most other Americans, and many people around the world, I&#8217;ve been &#8220;sheltering in place&#8221; for a couple of weeks now. I&#8217;m still getting used to this enormous change&#8230;just a few weeks ago, I was struggling to keep up with the hustle and bustle of daily life, and now&#8230;well, things look a lot different.\u00a0 I&#8217;m&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":1061,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1066,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions\/1066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}