{"id":1067,"date":"2020-06-01T15:23:14","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T19:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/?p=1067"},"modified":"2020-06-01T15:23:14","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T19:23:14","slug":"science-in-a-time-of-crisis-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/science-in-a-time-of-crisis-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Science in a Time of Crisis…Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s still a weird time. Massachusetts is slowly re-opening in the midst of a lot of uncertainty. Here at WHOI, our facilities are still closed, except for a few essential functions. I’ve been briefly coming into the lab twice a week to maintain my Nematostella <\/em>colony. After I finished one of these recent visits, I pulled out of the parking lot only to find out that I had a flat tire.<\/p>\n

I fiddled with my phone for a while, deciding between calling AAA, calling a friend to help, and trying to sort out the problem on my own. As I was trying to come up with a plan, a man came up to the car and offered to help.\u00a0I very gratefully accepted. I turns out the my car was missing a jack, I was kind of clueless about how to set up the jack, and I had no idea how to loosen really tight lug nuts. I will be marginally more competent next time this happens…though I still need to buy a jack.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the “good Samaritan”, Daniel Cojanu<\/a> sorted out my problem in a jiffy. And best of all, it turns out that our paths had crossed before. Because it’s the very small world of Woods Hole, and of course they had. Daniel is a cinematographer, and he filmed and helped to produce Science in a Time of Crisis<\/a>, which documented some of the ways in which WHOI scientists and engineers responded to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Along with collaborators, I was studying how oil, dispersant and UV radiation interacted to affect Nematostella <\/em>physiology. I’m featured in the part of the documentary posted here<\/a> (My interview starts around 4:15). I was recovering from a very bad cold at the time (you can tell my scratchy voice), but dragged myself in to do the interview. Seems funny looking back…if that had happened today, I would certainly have been self-isolating and doing my interview virtually.<\/p>\n

The whole incident really struck me. First it was refreshing to talk to a real person (masked-face-to-masked-face). And then it was comforting to be reminded that despite all the current chaos and uncertainty that there are a lot of good people out there. We all do our best to face each crisis that comes our way and continue to produce new scientific knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s still a weird time. Massachusetts is slowly re-opening in the midst of a lot of uncertainty. Here at WHOI, our facilities are still closed, except for a few essential functions. I’ve been briefly coming into the lab twice a week to maintain my Nematostella colony. After I finished one of these recent visits, I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":1068,"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\/1067"}],"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=1067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1069,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions\/1069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}