Winter begins at the University of Tennessee

I love the end of the fall term here at UT. The libraries are all full of students cramming for their final exams. The University actually starts to feel like a University, as its members wake up from the football season and remember that they are here to study, not just be a Vols fan. It's a time when geeks like me, graduate students high up on "the hill", feel that the tables are turning once again in our favor. Students in the class we teach actually start to show us respect, even sucking up to us for hints on the final, instead of asking to get out early for "the big game". You see as educators/researchers we must share the stage at big American Universities with all the other departments and interest groups. But the most prominent attention getter on campus is football. This has its advantages. It creates a climate of enormous energy and enthusiasm. All the girls tend to look like cheerleaders. The guys are real guys able to throw a football, not weak, socially inept nerds like at Waterloo. The last comment might sound a little gay, but I'm just including my female readers (of which I hope there are many!).

So the latest news is that I have been taken off a project that was to form my dissertation here. I had been working on it for about 6 months when, over time, it became clear that my funding supervisor (I had two) really wanted a lab technician, not to supervise a PhD student. He had this "if anyone is to do the thinking around here, it'll be me!" attitude. Of course a PhD is suppose to be primarly about developing critical thinking, experiment planning and writing skills in the student. After working in several labs over the last 5 years, I was suppose to be moving on to these more philisophical aspirations. The truth is though, I have never been much for hands on things, unless it involves playing with chemicals in the lab under minimal supervision. And the American government gave me a visa!.

So now I have realigned my supervisors and dissertation project, going off in a new, but related direction. It was not all lost I think. I still got to try a path that had a definate dead end. That's useful information. See my July, 2006 blog post for some more background on this type of trial and error thinking. Coming to the University of Tennessee may have been the biggest experiment I've done yet, and the outcome of that experiment will only become clear many years from now. Someone once said "we must live forward, but we must understand backwards", and I don't care who said it because I experienced it myself when I lived in Leipzig for a year.

Maybe I will discover some really useful and exciting equation here and have my name on it, like the "Knappster Equation" describing time dialiation in groundwater flow under ultra-high gravity conditions. Or maybe I will end up working for the Canadian government, if nothing else works out. Whatever happens, I'm sure I will end up doing what it was that I was suppose to do. A pastor at a church in Virginia last weekend said "the very breath you take at this moment was given to you because God has a purpose for your life". It's nice to remember that when everything seems like it's going wrong.

Trips Around Tennessee

In mid September a visit from Carine was all the excuse needed to do some exploring around Tennessee. We visited Burgess Falls on our way to Nashville, country music capital of the world. We did some line dancing at the Wild Horse Saloon, listened to a lot of live music and while shoping for Cowboy hats I met a die-hard country music fan from Bergen, Norway (i.e. the most beautiful country in the world!).

Burgess Falls

Nice geologic formations

Nashville Skyline

Pedestrian Bridge

One of the best Ivy League Universities in the Country

Downtown Knoxville viewed from the Hill the historic location of the Original East Tennessee University founded in 1794. The globe is the World's Fair Park

Smoky Mountains

Tree House

Nice shady street

The Fainting Goats of Tennessee

Here is a news clip to let y'all know what's new in Tennessee.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/faintinggoats.html

Thank you to Jens Hopfer for the tip!

Our Last Moves?

"All past civilizations...have been localized and have had, therefore, the divergent mutative quality to which we have referred. They have offered choices to men. Ideas have been exchanged, along with technological innovations, but never on so vast, overwhelming, and single-directed a scale as in the present. Increasingly, there is but one way into the future: the technological way. The frightening aspect of this situation lies in the consriction of human choice. Western technology has released irrevocable forces, and the "one world" that has been talked about so glibly is frequently a distraught conformity produced by the centripetal forces of Western society. So great is its power over men that any other solution, any other philosophy, is silenced. Men, unknowingly, and whether for good or ill, appear to be making their last decisions about human destiny. To pursue the biological analogy, it is as though, instead of many adaptive organisms, a single gigantic animal embodied the only organic future of the world."
Loren Eisely, The Unexpted Universe, pp. 38

In my narrow world of research and courses, I am not qualified to comment on such a vast intellectual statement as that above. Elsewhere in his book Dr. Eisely says "science has not prevented war it has perfected it". There is so much I could say about this passage, but that might drown out your voice in your head, which is more important to you than mine anyway. All I will say is that I love this Archeologist's writings on natural history and it's implications for humans. It's not all doom and gloom, he also brings out the wonder in fossils, rocks and our humanity.

A Hydrowha?

Picture of a Hydrogeology Field Camp along the Tennessee River

I am a Hydrogeologist. This is what I have worked at and studied for 9 years now. The University I studied at in Canada (U Waterloo) houses the primiere research/teaching groundwater institute in the world. I did not know this when I started at UW in 1996 as a lowly Geophysics undergrad, rejected from my first choice of Civil Engineering. I knew we Earth Science undergrads were outnumbered by the Engineers by about 50:1, but we still had successful, inspiring professors to lead the way into our chosen professions.

Coming to the University of Tennessee has been a big eye opener for me. Most people that I have met since leaving Waterloo don't know what a Hydrogeologist is and can't imagine why we need "experts" in such a field. Isn't it as simple as drilling a hole and installing a pump and there's your groundwater supply? Being part of a smaller research department here at UT, has caused me to evaluate the importance of systematic (e.g. scientific) study of this unseen resource.

I have come up with a few facts to bolster my decision to delve deeper into a subject that few people acknowledge exists.

1) The National Groundwater Association (NGWA) has 14,000 members in the USA and abroad.

2) The International Association of Hydrogeologists has 3,700 members in 130 different countries.

3) 50 % of Americans rely on groundwater for their drinking water, a similar number in Canada and Europe. For example 99 % of drinking water in Bavaria comes from groundwater, (after extensive field work studying the social behavior of Bavarians, I believe most of this water is consumed in the form of beer during two weeks in October, refer to blog post September 2005).

4) Although it has long been known that groundwater is more pure than surface water, shallow groundwaters near rivers, lakes and farmer's fields may not in fact be safe to drink at all times. Several disease outbreaks due to groundwater are reported every year, many more are not reported.

5) This shallow groundwater represents the most accessible for small farmers and families throughout the developed and developing world.

6) Government regulations, designed to protect public health, have in recent years required many people to install expensive treatment systems for their drinking water supply wells.

7) Research in understanding how pathogens travel from rivers to groundwater can, on a case by case basis, permit natural filtration processes to remove pathogens, without the addition of expensive/undesireable treatment methods.

This is where my research and my reason for being in Tennessee comes in. I am here to work with leading world experts who study the transport of pathogens and colloids through groundwater aquifers. Truth be told, there is only about 10 places in the world where this kind of research is currently being done. I came to UT because to the best of my wits and knowledge this place was on the cutting edge of experimental research in this field.

My hopes and dreams of the future are still in some flux. The best thing about science is that it is an adventure, a true experiment, once conducted will likely alter your course. If it doesn't then you already knew what the outcome would be, or you didn't ask the right question. I consider every life risk, every friendship made, every trip taken, an experiment. If I get it wrong this time, it is better to have tried and failed rather to have never tried at all. Fellow scientists, more experienced than I, have gone so far to say that "you ONLY learn in failure".

"I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work" - Thomas Edison

Christian visits Tennessee

On the day of my last final exam arrived Christian from Karlsruhe, Germany. After carrying on the tradition of burning the meat on the BBQ with friends, the next day we went to explore a local cave near Tennessee’s northern border with Kentucky. We drove into a dirt road surrounded by sparse forest that had been logged which reminded me of tree planting in the wilderness of northern Ontario. After walking downhill for one hour, past Jimmy Hoffa’s car with bullet holes in the side and through a swamp we reached the base of a large cliff and the entrance to the cave. Unfortunately due to heavy rains, the entrance to the cave was flooded with icy cold water. After considering taking off our clothes to swim through the passage, we decided to first try another entrance, attempting to find the main cave system.
The pictures speak for themselves, but the work was hard crawling on my stomach through passages with sharp rocks on the bottom and spiders falling onto my neck and arms. Like an Indiana Jones movie! As a hydrogeologist I have fair imagination for rock formations, however, within this limestone formation I could not comprehend what I was looking at, there were caves within caves within caves. It was like there were more than 3 dimensions. Terri, our guide, is a local karst hydrogeologist and lifetime caver. She told us amazing stories of cave surveying, people that take off their clothes to fit through the smallest cracks hundreds of feet long, and 18 hour underground expeditions in Alaska!
We had a laugh about measuring the retardation of hydrogeologists traveling through a cave system. Based on size I estimated my retardation at 300 and hers’ at about 20. Retardation is a measure of how well a chemical or colloid is slowed as it moves through groundwater (velocity of water/velocity of particle). This was quite fun, pretending I was a bacteria flowing through a pore space in rock.
After crawling out a hole in the side of a the cliff a few hundred feet above where we entered, I had that familiar feeling of feeling glad to be alive after 5 hours underground feeling completely lost in a three dimensional maze of tunnels and caverns.




Car in the middle of the woods with bullet holes in the side

Entrance to the cave was flooded with icy water

Our fearless leader

Cave "Crickets", looking nothing like crickets I have seen

A sleep snake and a cave salemander

big cavern

Bats!

A Walk through Zinal

This is a village in Valais, one of the french speaking Cantons in Switzerland. I miss it, even though when I was there, I was feeling quite alone. After my friend dropped me off there, I found a bed and breakfast and went to bed early (9 pm) to prepare myself for the climb the next day when I would get up at 7 am. For those of you who know me, this is an ungodly hour for me.

This village and surrounding peaks were incredibly beautiful! After getting up at 7 am and packing my small backpack I walk through the sleep village of Zinal towards the glacier and Besso the main peak in the background of this picture.

The snow had fallen overnight, it was in late September, the low season for this ski/resort town, where hiking is dangerous because of frequent snow storms and skiing isn't yet feasible. I walked along a river for a couple km towards a deep canyon. Beyond that was a glacier and the base of Besso.

There is something about the Swiss culture in the Alps that wraps me up in its hundreds of years of rich tradition. The feeling comes back to me when I see a picture from there. Makes me feel secure and stable. I know that these deep cultural roots will not be so easily altered.

On the other hand, North America has a feeling of searching to me, of a more equal blending of many cultures. Canada's history is short indeed, and the future is wide open and still maleable. It's exciting to be part of a culture where the choice is still in our hands to decide what will be important about our people.

A New Hope?

"If NASA gave me the chance to go to Mars, even though I wouldn't come back and have to die there, I would go", said Craig my next door grad student in Earth and Planetary Sciences at University of Tennessee. This topic had not so randomly arisen since Craig is doing his Phd on Mars. At this point in time, NASA is fully capable of sending a manned mission to Mars, what they lack is the funding. However, if that trip were to be a one way trip, it would be much cheaper. So I have heard of crazy people that are willing to die for such a journey, but today, I met one! And what makes matters more complicated for me, this guy doesn't seem crazy and he has a lot to loose here on earth. A graduate of Georgia Tech, a sweet girlfriend, rosy career prospects since he works with a leading world expert on Martian geology.

He has wanted this since he was a boy and explained that he put a lot of thought into it. His theory is that humans have got to colonize other planets in order to have a hope for survival. Rather than a anthro-centric (I made that word up) view of humans, Craig believes that we may be the only concious life in the Universe (or Galaxy) capable of comprehending basic laws of nature, and this makes us very special.

He has a point I think. However, it was depressing for me to think of leaving my friends and family behind to go and die alone on a planet for a bunch of data. I find it hard enough to work a whole weekend when I have to instead of going out with friends or going to Starbucks (which may be the closest to the stars I ever get). Is this a saviour, messiah complex? That one dying for the good of humanity is worth the cost? Craig doesn't see it that way. He is driven from something within him. What is the source of this drive? Concern? Curiosity? Love?

Whatever the reason, I felt that I lacked something, or had too much of things. I revel in life. I feel like a decadent Philistine now. I have no desire to sacrifice myself for the good of many. I think that if I do my job well and am a good boy, I won't have to and everyone wins! And if I have to drive a whole hour for a research field site, it pretty much rules it out for me. I've lost this idealism (or is it realism?). I'm a businessman academic. A pirate on the seas of journal articles, looking to pull together some ideas and make a killing someday.

Craig and I both recognize that nature needs to be utilized (exploited, managed) for humans to prosper. There is a difference though. While I hope to win big and so I work towards that prospect of opportunity, Craig is willing to die in the process and let others benefit from his success. I want to revel in my success, in the pleasures or status boosts that come from speaking in front of a room full of experts in your field. He believes in what he does so much, he is willing to lose his life for it. The only paralell I could think of would be the Curies, who, in the process of discovering radioctivity, inadvertantly lost their lives.

I would miss Craig too. He doesn't talk much, but he's really good at Halo on X-box, (which means I always loose...wait a sec....).

Is this how the dinosaurs went extinct?

I was thinking maybe this is how the dinosaurs went. They started standing out instead of blending in. You can see the look of disapproval over my left shoulder in the face of an Opa (German for Grandpa). Society sends me mixed messages about this, should I stick out or blend in? One thing's for sure, if I was a dinosaur I would be dead by now.

In the mood for data

Sometimes I just love crunching data, when a spreadsheet of numbers turns into a playground for me. This must be an engineer/scientist thing. Tonight I want to start a Soil Science assignment and I'm so happy that there is data to crunch. T-tests, variances, the ultimate high is multi-variate non-linear regression. All this listening to Robbie Williams to set the right mood.

Machu Picchu

No I wasn't here, but I bet you wish you were too! I think those Incas were seriously out trying to impress someone, maybe their rival civilization in the north, the Mayans. Whatever it was they were probably overachievers and workaholics and died out from stress related diseases like heart attacks and insomnia. Who needs buildings that will outlive your needs by 1000 years? This is why I live in cheap student housing and use disposable dishes.

Scandalous pre-affairs and a novel scoring system for dating

These are friends of mine who will kick my a_ _ when they see that I posted this pic.

"Peter what is that look in your face?" was the beginning of the end of a growing attraction for a friend of mine who studied Journalism in Stuttgart. The first time in 27 years that I had been pre-rejected. Before this I didn't even know it was possible. She read me before I read myself and knew that at some point in the future I would make a move. So what did she do? Shut me down! I could blame it on the fact that my thoughts were distracted by writing my thesis or trying to function with the German culture and language, but at the end of the day I have to admit I took it hard. It is like she didn't even taste the goods before saying "no thanks". Take that any way you want. Now I know that anything is possible in this crazy universe!

Fast forward 2 months to Christmas, 2005

While sitting in a bar in Swinging London's West End with Philip and Eloise, we devised a scoring system for dating. The idea started with Philip's observation on human nature "you know, you always feel better about yourself when you break up with someone than when you are broken up with". If you get one point for breaking up with someone but minus one for getting broken up with then you can figure out if you are in the positives or negatives and get some insight into how you should be feeling or your dating ego if you will. I still remember racking my brain over the last 15 years of my dating life counting the rejections that I had handed out and received. For a while I was in the negatives, but after the evening wore on I kept remembering occasions where I had done the rejecting. I actually stood up and yelled "I'm a plus two!" when I got there. Philip congratulated me by buying a round of beers.

We also decided that there must be some people are at the extremes. This came from the familiar high school experience of that girl that seems to break the heart of every guy that came within a 10 m radius of her. It is a fact, some girls are in the positive 3 digits. It follows logically that some guys receive more than their fair share of rejections, and are down in the basement. Does the distribution of this ration follow a normal distribution, such that for example, 66 % of the population lies between +/- 10. Or is it assymetric, with the average centred on -5, made so by the few girls out there breaking hearts their entire lives.

From my experience, although I have dated at least two or three of those super-heartbreakers (> +50), I have never met anyone with - 50, that has admitted it that is.

So go ahead and calculated your dating quotient. And don't forget that if you are in the negatives you can always go find someone to break up with that will make you feel better about yourself. And don't worry about them, this gives them valuable experience so they can start winning at some point in the future.

Conference in Knoxville

This is what a plate of bacteria look like after being infected with a water sample containing bacteriophages (viruses which exclusively infect their host bacteria). The clear spots (plaques) are where at least one bacteriophage has landed and started an infection which has grown to neighbouring cells.

Lab bench in Waterloo where I did column experiments on the attenuation of viruses and microspheres in sand.


Last week there was a conference in Knoxville, Tennessee for the Geological Society of America, southeastern division. I presented my masters research there and I had some good feedback from other grad students, professors and consultants as far away as New Hampshire and Ohio. It was quite difficult to discuss three years of research in 15 minutes, but with the help of my new supervisor (Dr. Larry McKay) I think we pulled it off.

I don't want to bog down this blog by posting the whole presentation but I will attach a few of the highlights.

Weekend in Atlanta with ex-U Waterloo-exchange Student Carine

I'll take two of those!

Downtown Atlanta, a very big, clean and beautiful City!

Stone Mountain

This is a huge Granitic Outcrop (also called a Pluton, an Intrusive Igneous Rock) several hundred metres high and over 2 km long. It jutts erratically out of the relatively flat terrain around Atlanta. It has been fully developed as a tourist attraction, complete with a pioneer village, Arial Tram and petting farm.

Hiking up the Pluton.

That's downtown Atlanta behind us.

Muskoka, Canada and the Trip to Knoxville, Tennessee

Brothers Brian and Graydon

I had to dig my car out of the snow!

Canyon in West Virginia

Downtown Knoxville along the Tennessee River

Baptist Hospital along the Tennessee River, Knoxville (I live behind the hospital)

London, England

Going into the London Ungerground

Museum of Natural History

London on the Thames River

Friends from Stuttgart

Parliment House, Big Ben and the London Eye

Sherlock Holmes Museum, 221B Baker Street

Nelson's Column, Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square

"I'm on my way to London Engaland"