Stanford University
California, USA
November 1999
First stop on my round the world sabbatical is at The Carnegie Institution of Washington, Department of Plant Biology, situated on the campus of Stanford University. The research here ranges from cell and molecular to ecosystem level plant biology. I’m continung a collaboration with Dr Joe Berry amd Dr Miguel Ribas-Carbo looking at the cyanide resistant respiratory pathway in plants.
Stanford is situated in Silicon valley and is a very wealthy, private University. The Biology library is great, all the journals I need and free copying - it’s not worth putting in and maintaining the card counters! The major problem facing the university is that even its wealth is as nothing compared to all the dotcom millionaires in the area and attracting new staff to either the University or the Carnegie Institution has become a real problem because of astronomical house prices. However, this is contradicted by the English press who claim that Stanford is still able to lure academics from the UK with its attractive salary packages.
Biosphere
Tucson, Arizona, USA
December 1999
Four of us drive to Phoenix so that I can give a seminar and we can look at this huge research greenhouse in the desert. Built as an experiment to see if humans could set up mini biospheres on Mars, this is a vast greenhouse housing rainforest, desert, savanna, ocean and agricultural biomes.
The original project was a spectacular failure. There were inevitable compromises in the design which mean that the light getting into the biomes is only about one third of full sunlight, the soils were over-manured and the original biospherians had a lot of difficulty growing anything but pumpkins. The final straw came when they realized that the oxygen concentration inside the building was down to 16% and they were all living at the equivalent of very high altitudes. The monitors inside the biosphere were designed to monitor CO2 and it was assumed that the O2 and CO2 would stay in balance. However, the microbial activity was huge and was respiring away the oxygen. The CO2 which was released however was being absorbed by the concrete (!) and the monitors were therefore giving the inmates a false sense of their environment.
Now the site has been taken over by Columbia University for research purposes and they are trying to us it for modeling global climate change senarios. It also has an environmental scholarship program with a number of interesting project based courses. Next stop Scotland.
Sharon Robinson is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Biology at the University of Wollongong and is currently enjoying her first Study Leave.