Hello All,
I'm well overdue to e-mail everyone. I've got a few topics to note this time.
This past week, I got to hear a bit about how they study the various sponges and sea life that is at the bottom of McMurdo Sound, to find chemical inspiration to build synthetic drugs for use in curing various health and medical problems, including cancer. It seems that simple life forms such as sponges use various chemicals for defense. These chemicals make them less tasty for fish, and other life forms that would love to have a nice sponge lunch. It turns out that these neat chemicals are also the very inspirations for a variety of pharmacological drugs. Obviously, they don't harvest the sponges to use the exact chemicals they produce as drugs, but instead sample them, and study the chemicals and their behavior for finding a slightly better synthetic to tackle the job of killing cancer cells or finding new antibiotics. These scientists working on this project dive into the McMurdo Sound, in front of the station, and scuba dive to sample the sponges, etc.--beneath the ice! This may not seem like an obvious thing to study here in Antarctica, but it is an important item for the medical and pharmacological communities, and those who benefit from the new advances and new drugs.
In the science talk of the week, I got to hear about the Vostok Ice Core that the Russians, the US and the French have been working on for the past several years. The reason for drilling ice cores, especially at location like Vostok, on the polar plateau, is that these cores provide a look back in time to see what the climate of the earth was like hundreds of thousands of years ago. The cores they have drilled at Vostok are as deep as 3.3 kilometers! It is the deepest ice core that has ever been drilled in the world, to date. The amount of time to drill a 4 inch hole, that they drill, takes up to years as the drill only 3 to 6 meter sections at a time. It can take over an hour to drop the drill down the hole, and take a section of ice core, and then bring it back up. When the section of ice comes up I've been told it looks just like glass - transparent and nearly clear. The sections of the ice core are studied to see what kind of dust and gasses are in them, among many tests that are done to ice cores. This year the US is starting a programs to drill an ice core at a place called Siple Dome - it will take about 3 years to complete the project. By the way, the claim to fame that Vostok has is that it holds the record for the coldest temperature on earth--- -127 degrees F!! Brrr! It's a chilly place. The US is flying the scientists to Vostok this week, via LC-130 - the skiied cargo planes. Now that is something you wouldn't see during the cold war!
Speaking
of cooperation, here in the Antarctic, there is lots of international
cooperation that typically doesn't take place in the rest of the world.
Las week a Norwegian crew member aboard the US research vessel--the R/V
Polar Duke--fell ill and needed to go to a hospital. The Duke was sailing
near the Antarctic Peninsula, which is close to the southern tip of South
America, where there are the most bases and stations from many countries.
The ship was unable to get into the US station - Palmer Station - due
to the weather. However, they did the following: the Chileans who have
a base nearby had a C-130 cargo plane in a position to fly to Puntarenas,
Chile - which is the base of operations for the US Antarctic program for
Calmer Station, and has a hospital. Since the weather kept the US ship
from steaming into the Chilean station, a nearby Brazilian ship flew a
helicopter to pick up the Norwegian and fly to the Brazilian ship, which
in turn go to the Chilean station, to get this person onto the C-130 heading
to Puntarenas. Here, in a place that is harsh, cooperation is vital.
That's the scoop from here!
Matthew