January 21, 2019
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about IQ. We are now in the spring semester with new research rotations, new classes, and new opportunities. My third rotation is with Dr. Dan Larremore in Computer Science. It seems this is the Python semester. I’ll be using it for research and for Dr. Lladser’s class, Math Computational Biology. Many of us are excited because we’ll be exploring the mathematical and statistical basis of genetic analyses starting with Mendel through today’s techniques. We spent the first week talking about Mendel’s experiments, confidence intervals, and the Central Limit Theorem. During the recitation, we used Python to run simulations of the Central Limit Theorem. So far, this is the best class I’ve seen for seamless integration of biology, math, and statistics IN DEPTH. Python in Jupyter Notebooks is a surprisingly wonderful tool. Based on last semester’s experience with MATLAB, R, and C++, I expected frustration. But Jupyter Notebooks feels like the tool coding should be. I can keep text, code, and output all together in one document. I can then share all of this with other people easily. I’ve been at it for only a few weeks and feel so much more comfortable with it, and more importantly, motivated by it. Our other class for the semester, Biologically Inspired Multi-Agent Systems, is looking good as well. This is with Dr. Orit Peleg and includes many other graduate students from across campus. On the first day, we went around and said our departments and our interest in the course. It was incredible to see the variety including: geology, archaeology, computer science, chemical engineering, neuroscience, video games, medical, robotics, biochemistry, computational genomics, epidemiology, and human decision making. I think this may be a good way to tell if the course topic is interdisciplinary. The course format is discussion of 3-4 papers each week; we’ll see how the discussions go with so many people and backgrounds. This is a constant balance that must be actively managed—keeping a diverse group of people communicating well and contributing equally to the growth of the group. Not an easy task. We also are getting prepped to welcome new IQ Biology recruits in three weeks to the CU campus. The students come for three days to meet current students, interview, and explore Boulder. The best part of Recruitment Weekend last year was the hike at Chautauqua Park where you can view all of Boulder and miles of the front range. Dr. Cech was the leader for my recruitment weekend hike last year and he told us stories of the environment including the impressively flat land to the east all the way to the Mississippi, the lichen symbioses on the rocks, and the wildlife we might encounter in Colorado. This weekend I went with Jack to Hunter Safety near Denver. I already have my card, but I attended for a refresher and to get started thinking about what we’ll need if we are going to hunt this year. A classroom full of 50+ prospective hunters aged 7-70 sat together talking about things we rarely discuss at school. We talked about survival in the woods, conservation, the importance of habitat, and ethics. We got to put our hands on 5 different guns and felt they way that their mechanisms worked to load, fire, and eject. We identified Colorado species including charismatic organisms (bear and elk) as well as the less visible ones like waterfowl. Many people shot a gun for the first time. More importantly, people of many ages and genders sat in a room together engaged in preserving this fascinating piece of life—hunting for our food, passing knowledge, and relearning how to talk to people you barely know and will never see again after the course (10 hours). The instructor was knowledgeable and excited. He espoused old phrases that kept us engaged in the lessons. Once, he asked a young boy to demonstrate shivering (hypothermia). The kid was shy and did not want to participate. The instructor said, “come on son, the Lord hates a coward”. The kid promptly demonstrated shivering to the delight of the crowd. When discussing hunting laws with the Game Warden, the instructor was asked an ethical question about hunter-hunter conflicts. He said, “better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6”. It took the crowd a while to react, but the truth of the statement became clear. In some cases, it is indeed better to act and then go through a legal proceeding than to be dead. One of the most important take-aways was don’t do anything illegal without knowing the consequences. The example being, your ethical code may be opposite of the law. It is up to you, then, to decide to act, knowing how you will be punished by society for breaking the established law. One example of this may be that you injure an animal while hunting on public land, but the animal runs and enters private land, which is illegal for you to enter or hunt on without prior permission. Depending on who you are, you may decide to kill that animal to end its suffering, but you better know that there are consequences for breaking the law in that way. In the end, I left the class in deep thought. This is one of the only instances I can think of where citizens of all ages come together in one space. I think there is a lot of value in this exercise and I wish we did it more often. A sharing of ideas and political ideology. Apparently, few places allow average citizens the opportunity to hunt, and it was fascinating to see some of the complexity of law, ethics, and conservation that go into preserving that privilege for many generations. There is one test for all ages about hunter safety that all people who intend to partake should know (regardless of age). It is an opportunity for people to overcome fears, to teach others, and to cross paths. The class was made more interesting because I was reading American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by Nate Blakeslee. This story follows an iconic Yellowstone wolf, O-Six, and the politics of wolf reintroduction and management in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. I grew up in Wyoming, near Yellowstone, and feel connected to the wolf debate. In hunter safety, it was obvious that the instructors were anti-wolf for a very common reason, they reduce elk population, which impacts the hunting season. As we flipped through the Colorado Wildlife images and the people around me shouted, “elk, moose, white-tailed deer, mule deer, coyote, wolf”, I hope that the hunters around me will see the many sides of the wolf debate and not just the single perspective of the instructor. Sometimes it is hard for me to separate the different moments, feelings, ideas, and lessons that are espoused from an authority figure, desperately grasping at all of it. I am getting better at holding on to some and letting the rest drift away. This time I’ll keep the funny phrases and leave behind the wolf lessons.
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AuthorSierra is a graduate student in the Barger Lab at CU Boulder studying microbial ecology for dryland restoration. Archives
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