Elemental

I'll drink to this

Emily Stone — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:41:00 GMT

Here's a story that I stumbled upon, almost literally, when reporting a different piece for The Antarctic Sun several years ago.

It's about Ernest Shackleton and his crew who were thrilled to see their relief ship arrive at the coast of Antarctica after their failed attempt at the South Pole 100 years ago. So thrilled, in fact, that they left behind two cases of Scotch whisky stashed under their hut. Conservationists working on their hut found the wood crates a few years ago but couldn't free them from the icy ground. They're going back to Antarctica in January to try and extricate the booze.

Little known fact: I was at the hut a couple days after the crew found the whisky. They asked if I wanted to crawl under to check it out. Of course I did. Then we realized that since the conservation crew was all male, and Shackleton's crew was all male, I was the first woman to climb underneath Shackleton's hut at Cape Royds. That's my one proud Antarctic First.

My story in GlobalPost on the whisky posted this week. It's gotten more than 50,000 hits already, putting it among the top 10 GlobalPost stories of all time. I wrote a story on the same topic for Outside magazine that will run in their December issue. I'll post it when it comes out.

A 27-story, adrenaline-fueled fundraiser

Emily Stone — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:32:00 GMT

I wrote this story in today's Chicago Tribune about an unusual fundraiser. People were asked to raise at least $1,000 for respiratory health research to earn themselves a spot rappelling down the 27-story Wit hotel in the Loop. I focused on one amazing young woman, who was afraid of heights, but rappelled in honor of her father who died of lung cancer this summer, only 10 weeks after being diagnosed.

After seeing everyone giddy with adrenaline and accomplishment, I regret that I didn't take up the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago on its offer to let media try the rappel the day before.

SEJ Conference

Emily Stone — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:05:00 GMT

I'm at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Madison now.

The highlight so far was a trip to see Milwaukee's high- and low-tech efforts to keep pollutants out of the lake, because we got to tour a tunnel that's being dug 300 feet underground as part of their sewage system. The 24-foot wide tunnels can hold excess runoff water during storms. (Milwaukee has a combined sewer system, so wastewater from buildings is combined with runoff water.) The problem is that during storms, the influx of rain water overwhelms the treatment plants. So instead of dumping water immediately into the lake or letting it back up into people's basements, it sits in the tunnels until the treatment plants can handle it. The system is not foolproof. There are still storms that overwhelm it and water goes untreated into the lake. But this happens less frequently than before the tunnels were built.

While that was all interesting, the best part was the trip into the tunnel. About 10 of us climbed into a small yellow cage. Then a huge crane that was attached to a cable on the top of the cage picked us up, swung us around til we were over the hole, and slowly lowered us down 300 feet.

I leave tomorrow for a four-day fellowship in Northern Wisconsin to study environmental issues affecting the Great Lakes region. I'll write more from there.

Lessons From "Cold"

Emily Stone — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:45:00 GMT

The Tribune figured that I was the right person to write a review of a book about the world's coldest locales and sent me Bill Streever's new book "Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places."

It's an interesting, if imperfect book, about the impact that cold has had on the earth and human history. It's a collection of often fascinating facts about everything from permafrost to the search for absolute zero to the creation of the bicycle in a year when cold weather ruined crops and made it too expensive to keep horses.

The book's premise is that cold has been the major force shaping geological, biological and anthropological history for millenniums. Given how significant cold's power has been, it leaves the reader wondering what the impact of the coming warming period is going to be. This is all the more urgent a question given the recent study in Science that the Arctic is warmer than it's been in 2,000 years.

Arctic Thriller

Emily Stone — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:40:00 GMT

Sure we learned a lot about Arctic science at Toolik. But we also produced "Arctic Thriller," which we claim as the northernmost tribute to Michael Jackson.

Click here to watch a bunch of scientists and journalists dance in bug nets and muck boots.

Massive Tundra Fire

Emily Stone — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:40:00 GMT

Two years ago a Cape Cod-sized section of tundra burned in a three-month wildfire. It was the biggest tundra fire on record in Alaska (tundra is generally too moist to burn) and provided an excellent research site for the scientists here studying climate change and the future of the arctic.

They're looking at the fire's impact on carbon release, vegetation and the landscape. They estimate that the amount of carbon burned during the fire is equal to 10% of Boston's annual emissions. And the more severely burned the land, the less carbon it's absorbing from the atmosphere and the higher the soil temperature is long after the fire burned out. Warmer soil leads to warmer air which leads to increased lightening when that warm air hits the cold mountain air, which means more fires. (Lightening strikes on the North Slope have risen dramatically in the past 10 years, and 2007 saw roughly 40% more than any year in the past.)

Burning the top layer of the tundra released nutrients that were frozen in the soil, which can give different species a competitive advantage in finding food, thus changing the makeup of tundra vegetation. This, in turn, can alter the tundra's temperature and carbon absorption.

We visited the fire site last week where the cotton grass was in full bloom. The white flowers against the black earth made it look other worldly. And it may be a sign of ecosystem change. The cotton grass near camp isn't anywhere near as brilliant. Researchers think that the nutrients released in the soil may be allowing the plants there to bloom more heavily than in other spots.

Another alarming change is an apparent increase in thermokarst, which occur where ice in the permafrost melts and the ground collapses in on itself like a soufflé. Thermokarsts along lakes and streams dump nutrients into the water, which changes those ecosystems.

All of these changes initiate positive feedback loops that could dramatically alter the arctic. And its unclear if people can do anything to stop these natural processes once they've been set in motion. As one researcher put it, "We can't make a treaty to stop thermokarst and fires."

Mosquito Madness

Emily Stone — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:16:00 GMT

There's the grab, the swat, the stomp, the clap and the always disappointing catch and release. These are the ways we attempt to exert control over the mosquitos here. But it's almost always futile. (In the course of writing that paragraph I had one successful clap and a catch and release – a grab with one hand that you slowly open only to see the bugger fly off – though I think I maimed him.)

This is a photo of one that I killed yesterday.

The mosquitos here are the most enormous and plentiful I've ever seen or dreamt possible. (Just got one in a clap that fell onto my keyboard.) And they have gotten progressively worse each day. I've been heartened to hear from researchers that this is one of the worst years they've seen, and even the tough grizzled ones who refuse to wear head nets have started donning the black veils.

This picture is from a hike this evening. Look at the sky. Those are all bugs.

One of the reporters bought a book on mosquitos at a visitor center on our way up here. From it I've learned that:

• Only the females bite.
• Mosquitos don't need blood for food; they use it to nourish their eggs.
• There are 3,450 species of mosquitos, which contribute to the roughly 100 trillion alive at any moment.
• Canadian researchers in the arctic stood still outside for a minute and counted 9,000 bites. At that rate, a person would lose half their blood – enough to kill them – in about an hour.

(Another journalist just walked into our work tent and pointed out the swarm lying in wait outside the screen door.)

DEET is the only thing that seems reasonably effective against the bugs, though even that doesn't keep them totally at bay. And since the chemical is known to melt through nylon and plastic, most of us don't like to put too much of it on our skin. I thought the three layers of shirts I had on yesterday would protect me from the pack that took up residence on my shoulder, but they managed to get their stingers through to my shoulder. The photo below is of my arm about 10 seconds AFTER it had been wiped clean of bugs. There were probably five times as many before I brushed them off.

(Reporter who just walked inside, spastically waving her arms around her face: "I feel like they're eating my head.")

The windows and ceiling of our van are covered with carcasses, as are the tables and floors in our work tent. One of the journalists posted this video of a slaughter in the van. No one seems much phased by bugs banging into their face mid-conversation, though the ones that go directly into your mouth and up your nose are still disconcerting.

Mostly, it's the constant buzzing and swarming that drives me slowly mad. I keep thinking I'm going to reach a point of Zen when I find myself peacefully accepting the omnipresent bugs. It hasn't happened.

Toolik Humor

Emily Stone — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:38:00 GMT

On the inside of every bathroom door, along with a sign reminding you that "If it didn't come out of you, put it in the trash," illustrated instructions on boarding a helicopter, and amateur poems scribbled in Sharpie is a list of Toolik FAQs.

Is there a fax on station? Yes
How many miles of boardwalk are there on the tundra leading to experiments? 8
Can you switch between eating vegetarian meals and non-vegetarian meals? Nope, got to pick one for the duration of your stay so the cooks know how much food to make.

The last question: Why are all the male staff members so ridiculously hot? The answers: It's a mystery.

Life at Toolik

Emily Stone — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:29:00 GMT

We've been here almost a week, yet I'm still surprised by the same two things each morning when I walk out of my tent: I can see beautiful snow-covered mountains over the buildings of station from the front door, and I have to go to two separate spots to brush my teeth and go to the bathroom.

Life at Toolik is shaped by the remoteness of its location. This means that it attracts a hardy crew who don't mind being dirty and in close confines for weeks on end because they realize how lucky they are to be here. And it means that it's incredibly expensive to ship supplies in and waste out. Hence the lack of flush toilets in camp.

It costs so much to truck out wastewater that we're given water rations. Instead of toilets there are three sets of outhouses, dubbed "the towers," which are raised above large collection tanks with three separated seats each. There are no sinks there, just dispensers of hand sanitizer. A trailer in the middle of station houses the washeteria, with sinks, showers and laundry machines.

We are limited to two, two-minute showers a week and one load of laundry every two weeks. A sign on the washing machines says that each load of costs $22.50.

Most people use trips to the sauna to clean up in lieu of regular showers. There are separate men's', women's' and co-ed hours and the sauna is down a slope at the edge of station where it's hidden from view for modesty's sake. The sauna has a window in it that looks out over the Brooks Mountains. A drum of slightly heated water on the deck is available for washing and rinsing, and most people chose to jump in the lake before or after washing.

Living quarters are mostly half-moon shaped tents that sleep six, though we've got only four in ours. The only furniture inside are cots. There are a few metal-sided dorms with double rooms, which I haven't seen. Most of the labs are in trailers, though we're working out of a tent similar to the one where we're sleeping.

The dining hall is a center of activity. The food has been amazing. Tonight was Indian, last night paella. They leave leftovers in a fridge and you can help yourself to those or the array of cereal, candy bars, fruit and extra homemade dessert anytime you like. (We had to give our weights before a helicopter ride yesterday and we all rounded up.)

I've been thinking a lot about the similarities and differences between Toolik and McMurdo, but I'll save that for a later post.

Solstice in the Arctic

Emily Stone — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:57:00 GMT

I shot this outside my tent just after midnight on the solstice.

Autism Article

Emily Stone — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Switching gears entirely from the arctic, the Chicago Tribune ran my story today on new autism research at UIC. A team of scientists is looking at the role of serotonin in autism, specifically its connection to the trait called "insistence on sameness," which about a quarter of people with autism have. They have a rigidity of routine and insist that daily activities occur in exactly the same way each time. When something goes awry, it can induce anything from anxiety to aggression.

The researchers are using a combination of genetic testing, experimental medication and high-resolution brain scans to try to understand this one piece of the puzzle that is autism. (Contact Kate Ernstrom’s at kernstrom@psych.uic.edu or 312-996-7835 for more information about participating in the study.)

In addition to explaining the research, I interviewed Alec Kedziora, a 17-year-old boy with autism who was part of the study.

Alec was articulate and eager to share his thoughts about having autism and how he's improved since taking the antidepressant that he was prescribed as part of the study. One of the great frustrations for families of people with autism, as well as for doctors treating them, is that people with the syndrome often can't explain what they're thinking or feeling. Talking with Alec was fascinating. Plus he has a great sense of humor and knew how to charm a journalist, often remarking "good question!" after I asked him what was different about his life since he started on the medication or what the hardest thing is about having autism.

I wasn't able to fit in nearly as much about Alec into the story as I wanted, so here is some of what ended up on the cutting room floor:

Alec Kedziora said very little until he was 5 years old. He used drawings to express himself.

Sometimes they were communiqués to his parents, Joe and NiCole Kedziora of Orland Park, like the time he drew a picture of the orange mini-golf ball he wanted to use. Other times they were purely creative pursuits, including his habit of drawing scenes from Disney movies in magic marker on the walls of his house.

Alec was diagnosed with autism when he was 3. He started talking more as he grew, but other problems appeared. He developed a rigidity that dictated that certain routines and situations stay exactly the same.

He was picky about foods, refusing anything new and subsisting on a self-selected diet heavy on Cheerios, Chex Mix and bacon. He insisted that all the doors in the house be kept closed. His morning routine was identical every day and timed perfectly. If he overslept by even a few minutes he would be late for school.

Though he was an affectionate, sweet kid, if a routine went awry, Alec often threw a fit and sometimes banged his head against a desk or wall.

In eighth grade he made a still-life drawing in art class. In soft colors, it depicts a photo of himself with his younger sister, Chloe, a jewelry box he gave his mom, and a stress ball he carried everywhere to help calm himself down. On the bottom he wrote: "I have often dreamed to have peace and happiness."

Around freshman year of high school things took a turn for the worse. His frustration used to be channeled into tears; suddenly he became aggressive.

His parents blame a combination of puberty and starting a new school with unfamiliar people and schedules. One day a boy taunted Alec a couple inches from his face, assuming Alec wouldn't understand. Alec shoved him and the two got in a fight. There were a handful of similar incidents that fall.

"We were mortified," his mother, NiCole, says.

Even Alec realized he was acting badly.

"I was suffering," Alec says. "I was sad about it."

His parents say he would apologize later for getting upset.

"It would be heartbreaking," Joe says. "He would say, 'I'm sorry I'm so difficult. I'm harder than other kids. I'm sorry I'm so sensitive. I can't let it go. I can't move on.'"

Alec's life changed immediately and dramatically as soon as he started taking the antidepressant Lexapro.

"This medicine can calm me down," he says. The best part of the Lexapro, he says, is "getting through my day so well."

He's able to vary his routine. He can change the order of dinner and a shower, something that used to be fixed, and gets to school on time if he oversleeps. He's become an adventurous eater, trying cheddar broccoli soup, which has a consistency that grossed him out in the past. And he's open to learning new things. Alec has played lacrosse for four years, but he's more coachable on Lexapro.

Mostly, he's able to keep his frustration in check and talk through his feelings if something upsets him. He hasn't gotten into fights at school since starting the medication.

He's still an avid drawer, and his room is filled with precise sketches of comic book characters he invented, haunted mansions and fairy tale castles.

He was excited to be part of the UIC study, he says, because it meant, "that I could help children who have autism disabilities."

He particularly enjoyed looking at the images from his brain scans.

"I got to see my own brain," he says, "where there is autism in it."

Thermokarst

Emily Stone — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:18:00 GMT

The trick with having a surface that sits on ice – which is what permafrost tundra is – is that if that ice melts, the ground falls away.

That's what's happening across the arctic in a phenomenon known as thermokarst. The underground ice melts, the water rushes away and the ground collapses into a sinkhole. That's bad news for any buildings or roadsthat straddle a thermokarst. Now scientists are starting to study what it means for the ecosystems around the holes, particularly when they abut a stream or lake.

Yesterday we visited a thermokarst on a stream that feeds into the Toolik River. Above the thermokarst, the stream looked like a marsh as the water ran through tall, bright green grass. At the thermokarst, the stream suddenly opened up into a large, muddy chasm clear of plants. It was obvious that an enormous amount of soil had fallen into the stream. Researchers are interested in what that soil is doing to the water in the stream and in the Toolik River just below it.

We took water samples and started running tests on them to see what the difference in nutrient levels was above and below the thermokarst.We've just started analyzing the data, but it looks like a significant amount of the nitrate in the Toolik River is coming from thethermakarst. More nutrients like nitrates likely means increased algae and moss, which can quickly change the composition of the insects and fish in the river.

The photo below shows the stream with the thermokarst. The green grass on the bottom left is actually the stream, then it opens up dramatically into the thermokarst.

A few photos

Emily Stone — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:57:00 GMT

The view from camp at 12:30 a.m. on June 21, the solstice.

The moose we saw on our drive from Fairbanks to Toolik.

Toolik River, where we sampled for nutrients today. The mountains in the background are in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Changing rivers

Emily Stone — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:41:00 GMT

Linda Deegan, a senior scientist at MBL who studies an arctic fish called the grayling, doesn't need to see temperature stats to know that the climate around Lake Toolik is changing. She just has to check her travel calendar.

When Deegan started coming to Toolik in the 1980s, scientists like herself who are interested in water didn't get to station until late June or early July. In recent years the ice out date has gotten earlier and earlier and she now arrives earlier and earlier to do her science. We spent the day with her on the Kuparuk River today, testing the water for nutrients and insects.

Deegan has noticed a dramatic difference in the grayling population on the Kuparuk. In the mid-90s, when she strung a net across the river for two weeks, she'd collect 2,000 to 3,000 fish. When she did the same test a few years ago, she only caught 700.

"The biology is telling us that the system is changing," she said.

She believes the culprit is a number of dry years that are causing the rivers to dry out in spots. Grayling, like all arctic fish, must get out of the rivers during the winters because they freeze solid. Some fish, like salmon, head to the oceans. Others, including the grayling, swim to deep lakes that retain open water below an icy surface. But if the rivers don't run straight through to the lakes the grayling can't reach their winter homes and they die.

The overall population of grayling in the arctic is healthy, Deegan said. But she's worried that if the Kuparuk population gets hit with many more drought years, they may fall below sustainable levels.

Deegan is also interested in what the earlier ice out dates will mean for trout, which prey on the grayling in their winter lakes. Trout need light to feed, so the start date for their hunting is fixed. (Global warming doesn't change the cycle of daylight, of course.) So if the rivers warm up sooner and sooner and the grayling take off into the rivers sooner and sooner, the trout will have fewer days in which to eat.

First few days

Emily Stone — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:43:00 GMT

They've kept us incredibly busy so far and I haven't had a chance to write before now. We've had a bunch of interesting lectures from researchers, both in Fairbanks and during our first day at Toolik. I'll give some highlights from those talks below.

Our drive to Toolik was long and bumpy, along the mostly dirt Dalton Highway. (Call it the "haul road" if you want to sound like a local.) It was built along side the pipeline, which was our faithful companion the whole 13-hour trip, snaking next to us through spruce forest, over the Brooks Mountains and into the tundra of the North Slope. It was cloudy and drizzly most of the trip, but the scenery, particular through the jagged, craggy mountains was spectacular. We saw one moose, one rainbow and three sheep, along with several alarmingly large armies of mosquitoes. We'll drive up to Prudhoe Bay toward the end of our time here, which is on the Arctic Ocean, and are hoping for some caribou and muskox sightings en route.

The camp sits on the edge of the lake and is made up of metal trailers and half-moon shaped tents, one of which I'm sleeping in and one of which we're working in, neither of which are heated. It's about 40-45 degrees now, but we're bundled up enough to stay warm most of the time. And they feed us enough to generate plenty of fuel. The meals have been amazing so far. Green curry, corn chowder, turkey pot pie, homemade oatmeal raisin cookies, and as much cereal and candy bars as you can eat.

I'll give more details of the station once I've explored more.

As for the science, here are some of the most interesting tidbits from our lectures so far:

* 2004 was the worst year for wildfires that Alaska has ever had and 2005 was the third worst. The number of lightening strikes has increased dramatically in the past 8-10 years and because the state is so big, it doesn't try to put out fires unless they're threatening buildings. Forest fires change the make up of the plants there allowing deciduous trees to thrive in areas previously dominated by spruce.

* The largest tundra fire ever recorded (it burned an area the size of Cape Cod) happened nearby in 2007 and researchers are eager to learn what effect that will have on the ecosystem given that it appears to affect forests quite dramatically. Initial reports are that it released a large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

* In a lecture on strategies animals use to overwinter in the arctic we learned that some animals can cleanse their blood of the things that trigger ice formation and can survive below freezing. One beetle can essentially turn itself to glass and survive down to -100C, then spring back to life when warmed.

* Researchers brought a hibernating, sedated black bear to Fairbanks and installed him in a constructed den. They trained a camera on him all winter and he slept the whole time, except for on New Year's Eve when the boom of the town's fireworks display could be heard in his den. The bear opened his eyes, looked around a few times, appeared thoroughly annoyed, then stuck his paw over his head and went back to sleep.

* Researchers are investigating whether hibernation techniques -- where animals slow down their hearts and need for oxygen -- can be used on humans. The military is funding some of the research to see if, for example, a soldier who is shot could be put into a hibernation state where he doesn't need as much blood or oxygen until he can be treated at a hospital.

* We got a tour of an old mining tunnel dug through permafrost near Fairbanks that's been taken over by the Army Corps of Engineers for research.There's ice at the back of it that's 20,000 to 40,000 years old with bacteria inside that, if thawed, come back to life. Our scientist-guide dubbed it "the real Jurassic Park."

Off to Alaska

Emily Stone — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:22:00 GMT

Tomorrow I head to Alaska for a 2.5-week science journalism fellowship at a small field camp on the North Slope. The camp,

Lake Toolik, is run by the University of Alaska and houses about 100 scientists who study mostly polar ecology.

For example, they're looking at the impact of melting permafrost on future climate change. Permafrost holds an enormous amount of organic matter frozen inside. When it melts it releases CO2 and methane – both greenhouse gases – into the atmosphere, causing more warming and creating a positive feedback loop. (Click here to download a PDF of a story I wrote about a scientist focusing on methane release from melting permafrost. The story starts on Page 3.) Scientists at Toolik are also looking at whether the increase in shrubs in the arctic, which is caused by warming temperatures, might slow warming in the future.

Lake Toolik is above the Arctic Circle, about 350 miles south of the Arctic Ocean. The nine of us in the fellowship will be playing scientist while we're there, doing research in the field and then processing our samples and analyzing our findings back in the lab. The fellowship is run by the Marine Biological Lab, a research institution out of Woods Hole, Massachusetts that sends many scientists to Toolik each summer. MBL's goal for the fellowship is to educate journalists about polar science so we can do a better job of writing about it.

I'm planning to blog as frequently as possible about what we're seeing and learning, as well as my impressions of life at the camp and how it compares to McMurdo Station, Antarctica where I spent two summers as a science writer. (Click here to read my article on life at McMurdo from The American Scholar.) I'll also be blogging for Polar Field Notes, an arctic science newsletter put out by the company that runs the logistics at Toolik.

Welcome to my blog

Emily Stone — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:53:00 GMT

Facebook profile? Check.
Twitter account? Check.
Digital TV converter box? Check. (With 36 hours to spare, thank you very much.)

I've taken a giant leap into the 21st century in the past six months and the next logical step was a blog. So here we are. Welcome.

I picked the name Elemental because it means that which is at the core of or is an essential part of an idea or thing. As a science writer, I try to break concepts down to their elemental parts -- first in my own brain so I can understand them and then in writing so I can explain them in a lively and engaging way.

I plan to use this space as a way to discuss the freelance stories I'm working on and offer more information and depth than can fit into the limited word count I'm allotted in print. I'll also showcase stories that I like from other writers, and offer thoughts about current events in the worlds of science and journalism. I imagine this will be a work in progress for a while, and look forward to your comments and feedback.

Bookmark me. Link me. Pass me along to your friends. And let me know what you think.