Story by Jonathan Flynn

In front of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia, stands a six-foot-tall statue of a rat. She stands on her hind legs with a cloak draped around her back, spectacles sliding down her nose while she knits together the unmistakable double-helix structure of a deoxyribonucleic acid molecule, or as it is commonly known, DNA. Perhaps the most notable feature is her face, frozen in what I call the “lightbulb face”, an expression one makes when a discovery is made for the first time. In the words of her artist, Andrew Kharevich, “It combines the image of the laboratory mouse and a scientist because they are related to each other and serve as one case.”

She embodies an often-overlooked aspect of science, as she represents a large and rather uncomfortable pill that we students must figure out how to swallow. She is the unsung hero of science, representing the countless rodents, houseflies, and fish in their hurry to make a discovery or publish a paper stepped over and robbed of credit. It can also make one think of (but not equate) the human subjects who have been taken advantage of by science due to marginalized status.

Biology cannot exist without her. Many of us wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for her, and some claim it is undeniable that we will always need her.

I will never forget the first time I was given the responsibility of dissecting an animal. I’m not talking about dissecting a cow’s eye or a sheep’s brain in your seventh-grade science class, I am talking about having a fully grown, dead animal beneath your scalpel. I was 18 years old when I was given a cat to dissect for the month of May in my senior year of high school. At that time, I was set on becoming a doctor like my father, a man who has dissected countless animals (and even humans) for the sake of his knowledge. I was incredibly excited, and as the scent of formaldehyde and desiccating flesh filled my nostrils, I began my work.

Yet in the face of this excitement the class felt, there was always an atmosphere of introspection that fell upon us as we began to meticulously dissect and study our animals. Open up the abdominal cavity of a cat and you will see that the organ placement is nearly identical in humans. Prodding its four-chambered heart and feeling its larynx proved to us that humans aren’t so different from the rest of the animal kingdom. That could be me on the table. A deep reverence for our dead subjects came with that humbling realization, and we became protective of them. We handled them as if they were still alive, and we felt an intimacy with these animals, unlike anything we’d ever felt before. We understood their mortality and soon came to understand our own (in a very limited way). You cannot be a surgeon without practice, and the same logic goes for all of science: you have to get your hands dirty if you are to truly understand what you are doing.

Once, my father told me of the work he did when he was an undergraduate in a lab at the Evergreen State College. A part of his research required that he cut the hearts out of rats while they were still alive. As a result, the grotesque nature of the research, combined with the fact that he was attending quite a liberally-minded school, required that he give a cover story if asked about his research. Now, as horrible as that sounds, you have to understand that the greater goal of the study was to find a method to create a non-invasive way to get immediate results of information pertaining to the subject’s blood and its components. Results in science are rarely immediate, and as a result, my father simply had to tell himself that the work he was doing could save lives and that the dirty work, while horrible, was necessary.

Science is not without sacrifices; rather, it is built upon them. However, it falls to the mercy of the public, which is quick to judge a topic it knows nothing about. Scientists seem to cast as specialized professionals in an entirely separate career field, portrayed vastly different than a businessman or a teacher or even a doctor. Popular culture would have them illustrated as scholars of an amoral field, calculating and hypothesizing, caring more for their test tubes and discoveries than public advocacy. In the world’s eye, they are given little room for spirituality, and to a sensitive public, it cannot abide. When the Russians were able to successfully launch a dog, Laika, into orbit, the world was outraged that they couldn’t bring her back. The scientists and engineers who worked on the project were cast as heartless villains, rejoicing in cruelty. Yet were it not for Laika and the others who died before her, Yuri Gagarin would have met the same fate. Alan Shepard and the rest of the Mercury 7 never would have left the ground. There would be no moon landings, or space shuttles, or an international space station from which innumerable life-changing discoveries were born. No one denied the tragedy of the dog who rode the rocket, least of all the scientists who put her there.

If we appear to be cold and heartless towards these animals, it is because we are defending ourselves from the gruesome reality. We justify the deaths of these animals because we must. Every single researcher and lab assistant who has to kill a rat for observation is well aware of its mortality, and most certainly feels their stomach drop every time they enter that room. We all tell ourselves, we tell each other, that we must use these animals so that our journey towards understanding will continue, and that we might use that understanding to do some good in the world. And should it come to it, I will join the ranks of my scientific siblings in this somber duty.

As I enter my room after a three-hour lab period, smelling of formaldehyde and my appetite gone, I look over to my mouse. His name is Algernon. He isn’t a real mouse, but rather a stuffed animal that I keep on my dresser. He is my statue. He serves to remind me of every discovery and breakthrough that has been made in order to get us to where we are today, and that many such extraordinary discoveries came about from such extraordinary sacrifice. It is to him and all of his forebears who participated in this grim pursuit that we owe our success, and our failures.

“It is hard to understand,
But sometimes painful things like this happen.
It’s all a part of the process of exploration and discovery.
It’s all a part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons.
The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted;
It belongs to the brave.”
-President Reagan, on the Challenger Disaster, 1986

Story by Sarah Francis

It’s no secret that our climate is changing, and there are serious consequences for human civilization all over the world. Scientists are hard at work studying how climate shifts are affecting people and the environment. Scientists are also faced with the challenge of communicating their findings to the public, and some have come up with brilliant and beautiful strategies.

Changes in climate are especially evident in the mountains near my current  home in Bellingham: The North Cascades. Alpine mountain environments are especially sensitive to warming temperatures, and scientists have shown that temperatures are rising much more rapidly at high elevations. These warming temperatures are resulting in shrinking glaciers.

Glaciers are formed in areas where snowfall accumulates year after year, becoming compressed into a dense block of ice. Glaciers are remarkable because they are able to move and flow under their own weight, like silly putty spreading out on a table surface. They are like very cold, slow-moving rivers. In the North Cascades, glacial meltwater feeds our rivers during the summer months when precipitation is sparse. Here, as well as all over the world, glaciers provide drinking water, crop irrigation, energy, cultural resources, and more to millions of people.

Jill Pelto, a glacier scientist and visual artist, has created stunning watercolor paintings documenting glacier changes as well as her experiences researching glaciers in the North Cascades.

Several of her pieces include actual data from her research. Decrease in Glacier Mass Balance is one of my favorites. If you look closely, you’ll notice that this painting is actually a line graph showing how ice mass in the North Cascades has decreased in the last thirty years.

Moments of Observation also includes data points, showing how a glacier has shrunk in the last few decades.

This final piece shows Jill Pelto measuring the depth of a crevasse in the North Cascades. She used measurements like this to monitor crevasse changes over time.

Scientists are still hard at work learning more about glacier change in mountain environments all over the world. Hopefully, with the help of wonderful paintings like Pelto’s, more people will begin to understand the importance of this challenging research field, and provide support to the scientists behind it all.  To see more of Jill Pelto’s works, check out her Glaciogenic Art website.

Story/Opinion Piece by Jonathan Flynn. 

Coral reefs have captivated the eyes of tourists and scientists alike with their astounding beauty and vibrant colors for years. However, their elegance is delicate. With the many problems that our oceans face due to climate change, corals are in growing danger. A study published in Science on January 5th has found that bleaching events are becoming more and more frequent, drastically altering reef ecosystems over time.

Reefs are slow-growing organisms that rely on zooxanthellae, tiny single-celled organisms, to survive. Zooxanthellae collect along the outside of the coral, forming a thin film that converts sunlight into energy for coral. However, when water temperatures rise above a certain threshold, the coral may become stressed and expel the organisms, and a bleaching event occurs. As a result, the coral is at a much higher risk of mortality from disease or malnutrition.

The average surface temperature of Earth has risen 1 degree Celsius since the 1880s and shows no signs of stopping. While that may not seem like much, it means life or death for many ecosystems across the globe. In the face of the seemingly infinite number of problems brought into light by global warming, it is hard to agree on any one solution. What can we do that’s effective in both conservation and cost?

The Nature Conservancy has ten steps for everyday folk to help coral reefs. Most of these focus on reduce/reuse/recycle, activism and living with an environmental conscience. In Australia, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation is involved in a number of restoration projects encouraging the building of reef resistance and protecting existing reef sites. However, even with these measures, reef territory shrinks every single day. Our carbon output is just too high.

That’s the catch. For every environmental problem that arises, excessive carbon dioxide emissions are often the culprit. While pledges like the Paris Agreement make governments feel like they’re headed in the right direction, the fact is that these emissions are not going away. They’re growing at a faster rate every year and there is no single, comprehensive plan in place to halt or slow them.

What are people doing about this? Scientists at the Great Barrier Reef Foundation have begun adding artificial reefs in the shape of cube frames to provide an additional foundation for coral-dependent organisms to thrive upon. While this doesn’t address the carbon dioxide problem, it’s a step in preserving and expanding a fragile yet essential ecosystem. As of January 2018, the Australian government will be investing $60 million into protecting the Great Barrier Reef to address damages from cyclones and coral bleaching. They will focus on reducing the impact of invasive species like crown-of-thorns starfish, pollution, and boosting the number of field personnel directly caring for and monitoring coral health.

In the face of ever-rising carbon dioxide emissions, nations around the globe are re-evaluating the statuses of their native ecosystems. As of 2017, the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List stated that nearly a quarter of all mammals on Earth are threatened or extinct. It’s not going to get much better. In many cases, conservation has become less of a question about how a species can be saved and more about which species can be saved.

A day in the life of a chemistry professor at Western Washington University.

Story and photos by Jonathan Flynn.

A group of undergraduates gathers around Dr. Jennifer Griffith in the organic chemistry laboratory as she begins to explain how to use the RotoVap, a complex machine reminiscent of something from Frankenstein’s laboratory with its glass coils and network of switches. Today, the students are responsible for separating caffeine from tea through a long series of chemical reactions. Griffith’s responsibility is to make sure they do it right.

Griffith has called Western Washington University home for many years. She began her scientific journey at Everett Community College where she worked towards completing the pre-medicine prerequisite courses. She then transferred to Western and began to pursue a chemistry degree after she realized that she could hardly stand the sight of an open wound. Years later, she is now a lecture instructor and professor of chemistry at Western.

Griffith feels that her high school science experience failed to adequately prepare her for college. But once she enrolled at Western, that all changed.

“I totally remember the exact lab that got me.” She leans back in her chair and laughs. “I had two unknown compounds, a neutral compound and an acid, the two of them mixed together, and I wasn’t given any direction on how to separate them. All that it said was ‘you have to separate these two things, figure it out.’ And that was the first time in my academic career that I was asked to figure something out.”

The struggle Griffith experienced is not uncommon. The most recent Programme for International Student Assessment ranked the United States 24th out of 71 countries in science and 38th in math. In 2017, 47.6 percent of students who took the AP Chemistry test received a 2 or lower. Despite being able to claim that we put the first human on the moon, the U.S. consistently lags in math and science education.

Griffith thinks that, simply put, we make science and math too scary.

“One of my students even said it best: that chemistry isn’t hard, we just put a lot of scary-sounding words to these things. So if that part was simplified, it probably wouldn’t be too bad. His best example is ‘I’m going to go elute now.’– that means ‘fall out the bottom’. But we have to make it sound scary in chemistry. And that’s really what it is! All these very simple things that we put these big scary words.”

Organic chemistry gets a bad reputation in college. It is credited with being incredibly difficult and is commonly believed to act as a filter that separates successful scientists from everyone else. Griffith believes this presumption may scare students away before they get a chance to succeed.

“I hear a lot of people come into [organic chemistry] hearing how terrible it’s going to be, and I get a lot of feedback that it wasn’t as bad as someone they knew had made it out to be” Griffith said.

Griffith’s lab sessions go against the preconceived notion that a laboratory is a no-nonsense place of intense work and no play. Instead, she drifts from station to station, cracking jokes and talking with students about their lives as she teaches. Music radiates from the back of the lab, creating an apparently relaxed atmosphere that contrasts with the rigid sterility of the students’ lab coats and rubber gloves.

As the reactions proceed, Griffith checks in with every student to assess their understanding of the day’s work. In one instance however, she diverts from formulas and compounds, instead speaking with a student about raising chickens.

“I try and do that when I teach too. I try and chat with my students, give it a personal level, let them know me more personal than just the scary instructor at the front because I know that’s what helped me when I was in these two classes” Griffith said.

Jonathan is an environmental science major at Western Washington University and an aspiring science communicator. He is also the science editor at the Planet Magazine. He intends to be the second journalist to ever go into space.