Lyceum
Volume II Spring 2019
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Lyceum A literary science journal Created by Sarah Jean McPeek, Miriam Hyman, Graham Ball, and Anu Muppirala
Edited by Katherine Crawford Jonah Dominguez Miriam Hyman India Kotis Sarah Jean McPeek Anu Muppirala
Featuring Graham Ball Rand Burnette Samantha Colbert Katherine Crawford Jonah Dominguez Courtney Felle David Han Miriam Hyman Maddie Johnson India Kotis Erin Marshall Sarah Jean McPeek Anu Muppirala Daniel Olivieri Kristen Pitts Franny Wiggins Kylie Writer
Front Cover by Katherine Crawford
Back Cover by Rand Burnette
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Table of Contents Table of Contents………………………………………………….……………4 Flowers by Kylie Writer………………....…………………………………………5 Editor’s Note by Sarah Jean McPeek……………………………….……………....5 Water Strider by David Han……………………………………..………………..6 Nature Walk by Miriam Hyman………………………………...…………………7 Interview with Nia Imara ’03 by India Kotis……………………………………....8 Southwest into the Ground by Courtney Felle……………….……………….…...14 The Potatoes of Science by Rand Burnette………………………………………14 Ursa and Aquila by Maddie Johnson………………………………………….…...15 Blue Beard by Daniel Olivieri……………………………………………...……..16 An Unpublishable Study by Sam Culbert………………………………………...18 Technology by Erin Marshall……………………………………..……………..19 Hepatica by Franny Wiggins…………………………………………..…….........20 All for One and One for All by Kristen Pitts…………………………………….21 Two True Bluebirds by Sarah Jean McPeek……………………………………...26 Blue Bird Blue by Miriam Hyman………………………………………..…….…27 Paranoia by Jonah Dominguez……………………………………...………….….28 Garter Snake by David Han………………………………………………….…28 Summer Science Lab Notebook by Miriam Hyman…………………………..…29 Bacteria by Franny Wiggins……………………………………………………...31 A Science Breakup by Anu Muppirala……………………………………….….32 Our Resting Potential by Miriam Hyman………………………………………..33 Invaders by Sarah Jean McPeek…………………………………………..……....34 The Million Dollar Inclusivity Initiative by Graham Ball………………….…….36 Caption Contest by Rand Burnette………………………………………….…...37 4
Editor’s Note
Kylie Writer At Kenyon, we understand science as a creative and deeply personal process. We are storytellers and artists, inspired by the spark of observation to pursue deep and puzzling questions. Through our practice, we build complex connections between the known and the imagined. Lyceum is a community of curious and diversely passionate people who love their work, learn from each other, and care for an astonishingly weird and wonderful world. We publish science and nature-inspired fiction and non-fiction prose, poetry, photography and artwork online and in semesterly print editions. We also host events that further our mission to help the Kenyon community find inspiration in science. Thank you to everyone who made this dream possible. Thank you to those who showed up for those early meetings last January before any of us knew where ‘What are birds?’ could go. Thank you to the talented students who contributed work to this anthology. Thank you to the tireless editors who worked through computer glitches and editing foibles to produce a beautiful second volume of our magazine. Thank you to our faculty advisor, Robert Alexander and all of the faculty who support our work and foster our development as thoughtful and creative scientists and citizens. Thank you to the English department for honoring our humble contribution to the rich literary life on this Hill. Thanks most of all to Miriam, Graham and Anu for being the most wonderful co-leaders I could have hoped for. Anu and I could not be leaving this group in kinder, more capable hands.
There is so much still to discover about our world and ourselves. Cheers, Sarah Jean McPeek Co-founder and President of Lyceum 5
David Han
Nature Walk There may be no birds now, but a scattering of blue feathers suggests that a blue jay may have suffered a similar fate to the one I’m imagining for the spider. Gently, I pull what looks to be a wing feather from where it is camouflaged among the needles and roll it between the pads of my thumb and forefinger. The head of the quill is translucent and hollow, interrupted every few millimeters by what looks like white growth rings. They remind me of the less elegant growth markings etched into my door frame. Towards the tip, the quill darkens, black-blue and fine as a hair. Though disheveled, the barbs fanning upwards from the quill are rich cobalt. Perhaps a reflection of the resources needed to produce such a startling color, the blue barbs are all short- the length of my pinky’s fingernail. The barbs that would have pointed inwards, towards the bird’s skin are much longer dull, grey and clumped like roots.
The periphery of the pine grove pulses with the dissonant whir of a chainsaw, but a spell of silence enshrouds the rows of equidistant trees. Occasionally, a disembodied tap-tap-tapping punctuates the air., but there is no fluttering among the branches, so I am unsure whether the rhythm is produced by beak or bug. Under the shadow of the canopy, the forest floor rests in a perpetual twilight. Scattered among the twigs, pine cones are dormant with the lives of giants, and my footsteps are dulled on the soft blanket of needles. Walking soundlessly, I have the eerie sensation that I am unanchored from my body, adrift among the pines. A felled branch brushes against my leg, and the sensation of drifting recedes. I crouch down to dig beneath the dense mat of brown and green. Underneath, the soil is cool, and gritty like sawdust on my fingertips. It seems to deter everything but these trees, some audacious moss, and the spiders who treat the bedding like a playground. There are at least five of them scuttling about, and one dangles precariously from the twig that brushed against my calf. I prop myself on my elbows so that I am eye-level with the spider. It is about the size of a poppy seed, black, with a red dot barely visible on its abdomen. The spider is so light that the wind blows it upwards so its silk strand is nearly horizontal to the ground. I imagine if the strand broke, the spider would be flung high into the air, where a vigilant bird could snatch it up.
A cool wind breathes down my spine, and I return the feather to the forest floor, but it no longer camouflages among the quill-shaped needles. Instead, it’s on display. A blue flag marking my interference with the landscape, along with the imprint of my shoes, and perhaps a curly blonde hair or two. The sun has drifted discreetly behind the clouds, and the promise of rain whistles in the wind. As I stand, I disturb the branch again, swinging the spider from side to side like a pendulum. I turn, and walk towards the muffled rushing of cars. When I reach the edge of the grove, I can just see them speeding by between a dip of hills. Further still, two wingless cranes are poised against the sloping clouds, a startling metallic red against the blue haze of the horizon. The cranes mark the pit where the library will be, but from this distance they are two flags announcing our presence to the sky. Descending the trail that leads back to campus, I listen for my footsteps, but they are drowned out by the clamor of construction below.
Miriam Hyman
David Han
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“Pursue Your Love. Stay Hopeful. You’re Needed.” An Interview with Nia Imara Nia Imara (‘03) is a visual artist, advocate for equity in STEM, and astrophysicist specializing in star formations at Harvard University. Last year she founded the Equity and Inclusion Journal Club at Harvard, which strives to “(1) To open a dialog amongst students and educators about the causes of the dearth of diversity in academic and professional science; (2) to help participants understand how the special challenges experienced by the underrepresented student can effect his or her learning in the classroom; and (3) to seek solutions that can be implemented at Harvard to make the scientific community more equitable.” Imara majored in Physics and Mathematics at Kenyon, and was a member of the swim team. NIA IMARA: I was in high school with my first physics class and pretty much knew from then that physics would be a major part of my life. I remember this teacher, he was a physics teacher, he was so dynamic and he had hair like Albert Einstein, coming to our math class to tell us about his physics class, about how challenging and how fun it would be. I was convinced, and I signed up for the class, and it was probably the first class of the semester when I realized that studying physics would help me find solutions to the questions that I had had for a long time. Questions about the universe, and fate; Questions about the nature of time. I would say that one of the things that keep pulling me back is that sense of having my mind expanded by new discoveries. Personal discoveries for me, both about the orderliness and strangeness of the universe. It’s the strangeness of the universe that has always been my favorite part of physics. It felt good to be challenged then, and it feels good to be challenged now.
know, affects my thinking. And my thinking translates into how I live my life.
INDIA KOTIS: Has studying physics informed the way you live your life at all?
IK: Do you think the same goes for art, and making art? Does that inform how you live your life?
NI: It’s a good question. It’s informed how I think. And I believe how we think informs how we live. So I wouldn’t be able to say in any sort of conscious, or any sort of specific way, how physics has affected how I live my life, other than the very practical things like I went to school for physics and grad school for astrophysics. But in sort of more fundamental ways, I wouldn’t be able to say other than I think my training as a scientist, you
NI: Absolutely. I think that with art, maybe more so than science, it’s like for me a way of seeing the world. So always seeing things and experiencing things that I know even consciously and subconsciously will come out in my art. So, yeah, I would definitely say that as well. IK: What draws you to painting?
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Astronomers are masters of light; light we can see and most of which we can’t see. And as a painter, and in my everyday life, I’m always thinking about light.
NI: My art is an extension of my preoccupation with color and light. Also with people, and beauty. I paint a lot of portraits. I’m fascinated with faces, with what’s showing up externally due to things
IK: Do you have specific artists, or astronomers that inspire you in either realm of practice?
that are happening internally. And I think because I have images, and ideas in my head that want to come out, and play and be seen. So that’s what compels me.
NI: The people around me generally inspire me; both in art and science. I’m a big reader, so folks in literature inspire me a lot. I would say characteristics of people that inspire me are originality and fearlessness. So if I see that in a scientist, that inspires me. One of the fun things about science is the collaboration. You’re generally working with other people. So I have colleagues that inspire me. I’m also inspired by history. My own history, and history more generally. My history as a black person in this world. So those are definite sources of inspiration for me, both in the arts and in science.
IK: Do you think it brings you closer to yourself? NI: I think experiencing art in general helps us to think about ourselves in ways that we wouldn’t have otherwise. I don’t know what that means in terms of being closer to myself. I think it brings me closer to other people.
“ As a painter, and in my everyday life, I’m always thinking about light.”
IK: I saw on your website a portrait series you did of people in Oakland. NI: Oh, yeah.
IK: Do you think art and astronomy have anything in common?
IK: What was the impetus for that?
NI: The thing they have in common is me. Other than that, I don’t think they have anything inherently in common. On the other hand, it isn’t so difficult to find connections between most things in the world. But I find the way that academia and culture are in our society, everything is highly specialized and people tend to want to put things in boxes. But it hasn’t always been like that. And one of the things that I’ve been really interested in is how different cultures across history has naturally integrated the arts and sciences, and it wasn’t even a question what they had in common. But in the abstract, art and astronomy don’t have that much in common. I think the commonalities arise from the people who practice them and experience them, and for me, light is one of the things that draws me to both.
NI: I was born in Oakland, California, and I started this project, Generation of Oakland, a few years ago now. It’s a multimedia project that documents the story of black and brown people living in Oakland, California. People who were born and raised there, or people who have lived there for a long time. The impetus is that the city has been undergoing so many changes in recent decades. Like many cities in this country where you find black and brown people, those changes have often been to the detriment of the poorest and the most vulnerable. I think it’s important that we tell our own stories on our own terms. So that was the impetus; this changing city. I’d actually like to expand it to other cities, because these stories are unique but they’re also representative, and they’re similar to what other people are going through
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around the country. A big part of the project was the audio interviews. On the website from Generation of Oakland you see the images but you can also hear the interviews, and we ask them a series of questions about their experience of Oakland. One of the questions was about dealing with gentrification, so I would say that specific question was a motivator behind that project.
So, quite far from the field that I normally work in. It was a real challenge to work on something so new, but it was exciting too. The idea was really innovative. It had to do with a new way to search for planets around x-ray binary stars, which are an extra special kind of binary stars. So this was not only a new topic for me, but a new and exciting idea. So that took a lot of new learning, it took a different sense of, even from what I’m normally doing, normal, in quotations, as an astronomer, and it was a tough process from beginning to end but we ultimately did it and we published a paper last year. So that paper is something that I’m particularly proud of.
IK: Do you have a science project that you’re particularly proud of? NI: One of my main focuses in astronomy is star formation and cosmology. Last year, or actually before last year, I started working on this project with a collaborator having to do with exoplanets.
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how do we eradicate inequality in our society? And what is the level of commitment to eradicating inequality? Because the inequalities that we have in science are a reflection of the inequalities that we have in society as a whole.
IK: Congratulations. NI: Thanks. IK: Do you have any advice for Kenyon students who are here now?
IK: You were the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in astrophysics from U.C. Berkely, and you are also an advocate for equity in STEM. Last year, you founded the Equity and Inclusion Journal Club at Harvard. If there was a word you could give to other young people of color who want to be scientists, what would you tell them?
NI: Just to enjoy your time there.
IK: You mentioned earlier that fearlessness is a quality you admire in people who inspire. What does this mean to you in a scientific context? Are there things in your scholarship that scare you?
NI: Pursue your love. Stay hopeful. You’re needed. IK: You said in an article for Oaklandnorth.net that you want to be defined as somebody who is “a force for love, a force for good.” How do you think your work as a scientist, and your work as an artist helps you be that person?
NI: My collaborator, who is a woman who has been an astronomer much longer than I have, is one of these people that exemplifies both fearlessness and originality in a scientific context. That can often mean having the courage to pursue an idea that is new and or unpopular, because even though scientists have a reputation as being very creative, out-of-thebox thinkers, in many ways in our field and subfields, people can be very conservative, especially when exposed to a new idea. But when you can stand your ground, and be willing to pursue and stand up for that idea, or new ideas publicly, that’s really important. And I think it’s important for younger scientists to see that too. One example that I think is important would have to do with the social aspect of science and standing up for what you believe in in terms of who has access to science, and talking about and exposing the way science culture needs to change.
NI: I hope that my intention comes through in my art and in my work, and I hope the people who see and experience it feel elevated.
Interview By India Kotis
Paintings by Nia Imara p. 8 "Existence. II." Oil on canvas.
p. 11 "Chicken Pox." Oil on canvas.
IK: How do you think the science culture needs to change?
p.13 "Nerland." Oil on canvas.
NI: I think the question for me really starts at a more basic level. The educational system has to be changed. And I think the real question is,
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Southwest Into the Ground every science class starts with you: fourteen & faking physics expertise to study with me, sixteen & sizing up cell charts in the back of biology, senior & squeezing my hand in chemistry. our first teacher gives us pictures of car crashes & tells us to analyze their inertia, & i can’t see any speed beside my falling for you. i confuse southwest with diagonally into the ground, the drawings all flipping a horizontal plane for vertical. i can’t reorient. i want directions that make sense. come pass. the one lesson we learn is to memorize the names: ampere, coulomb, joule, all measurements of power we can’t pronounce. hold electricity & it hurts. after we break up, i imagine our teacher calling us his flock again, & when i find the scientific name avis i say it as vice, as almost advice but not close enough. all categorization attempts quantification, but between the lines something becomes lost. is this why we call it taxonomy? i got gravity confused for brevity. i got ampere confused for amplification. i stop taking science classes in college the semester i get into my first car crash. i can’t reorient. i got confused. i want to fly full-speed up from here, away from you, northeast until the lessons learn & flip.
Courtney Felle
Rand Burnette 14
Ursa and Aquila
(Yo-na and A-wa-hi-li)
This piece takes inspiration not only from the Ursa Major and Aquila constellations, but also from Cherokee creation stories that describe the beginning of life starting with animals living in the sky, leaving behind the constellations we see today.
Maddie Johnson
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Blue Beard h
A Poem in Code
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Daniel Olivieri 17
Unpublishable study Abstract
Procedure
My professor tells me this study has value. I’m not sure.
Many late nights scrutinizing over psych journals, sending emails, organizing data.
Introduction
I can’t remember the last time I sat quietly.
The more people present during an emergency, the less likely anyone will stop to help. This is known in psychology as the Bystander Effect. Responsibility diffuses through a crowd until the amount of accountability each individual carries is miniscule.
Results The moment of truth: I run a bivariate correlation test. No significant correlation was found. I run a one-way ANOVA. No significant difference was found. Another bivariate correlation test. No significant correlation between variables was found. Another ANOVA No significance was found. I spent all semester on this project only to feel betrayed by my data.
Sometimes though, compassion interferes with social norms. In a crowded room, an outlier steps in to help. Can we cultivate this compassion? I’d like to think so. Maybe if we were less saturated with stress we could care more about others. (I’ve been trying to sit quietly more often. Meditate towards a more selfless state, I suppose.)
Discussion I hand in my literature review: an overview of meditation studies in psychology, background on the bystander effect, and my own ideas as a hodgepodge of wishful thinking. I do not do well. My professor says I just throw my readers into the deep end and hope they can swim. I need to situate them better within the material.
Maybe a longitudinal study would have significant results. Maybe the sample was too small, too homogeneous. Maybe I’m crazy for thinking meditation could make us nicer. While studying for finals in May, I receive an email with the subject line: FINAL PAPER FEEDBACK. I do well on this project despite its null findings. As my professor notes in the comments, this is an undergraduate research methods class after all, not the editorial process for a scholarly journal. Still. I feel wildly disappointed. I meditate on what my study means and come up with nothing. Have I wasted a semester’s course work on insignificant research? Have I wasted hours sitting in silence naively believing it made me a better person? Anxiety starts swirling around me, causing the words of the text book in front of me to blur. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, focus on physical sensations: my feet on the ground, cool air moving through my nose and out my mouth. I open my eyes, and I get back to work.
The following study looks at the relationship between meditation, social anxiety, and prosocial behavior. Participants 76.2% white. Mostly affluent. 70% female. Limiting, I know. Method Online surveys. Completely anonymous. I try to build people out of numbers.
Sam Culbert 18
Erin Marshall
Franny Wiggins
All for One and One for All: The Emergent Intelligence of Ant Colonies Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. (Proverbs 6:6-8) For the past thirty years, Deborah Gordon has returned to the same patch of desert in northeast Arizona to visit old friends. They are the most loyal companions, always emerging from their clay-lined huts in the earth to greet her (and the annual treats that she brings). To Gordon, the desert represents a community far removed from her home in Silicon Valley. She celebrates the birth of new members and the death of old matriarchs. She rejoices with old friends when they become mothers, grandmothers, and greatgrandmothers, doting over the resemblances she observes. She takes note of those who perish to floods, droughts and famine, as well as those who survive. She is mindful of rivalries. It is a bustling village – a bustling oikos, to use the Greek translation of the word. There is perhaps no one better than Gordon to explain why oikos is the etymology of modern day ecology. Deborah Gordon is a Professor of Biology at Stanford University, so perhaps you are unsurprised that her old friends are not human. You might, however, be surprised to learn that they are not individual ants, either. Gordon goes back to the desert every year to check up on colonies. A single ant lives only for about two years, but a colony may live well into its early-30s. And, like all reproducing organisms, colonies have the potential to live on through their offspring. “Ants never make more ants; colonies make more colonies,” Gordon explained in her acclaimed 2003 TED talk. Every year, on the same day, winged reproductive ants emerge from their colony and carry out a mating flight, during which a single female mates with many males before landing in the sand and burrowing into the ground. She then begins laying her eggs, and she will lay eggs from that very mating event for the next 15 to 20 years, never again emerging from the earth. She has become a queen, and a new colony
carrying the same genetic material – a daughter colony, so to speak– has been born.
Gordon is not the first scientist to consider the possibility that the colony itself functions as a unified organism. Throughout the history of biological study, there have been many definitions proposed of what it means to be an “organism.” In 1852, Aldous Huxley defined an organism as “the sum of the phenomena presented by a single life.” This definition was amended over time to include notions such as the assimilation of substances, reproduction of similar systems and subjection to the laws of natural selection. Perhaps the most prevailing definition today, however, is that an “organism” is any combination of parts that acts in nearly complete cooperation and has no affiliations outside the self. By this definition, in particular, the ant colony certainly qualifies. You may be thinking: What of the individual ant? Surely an ant is an organism. And while this is true by most all definitions, studying an ant in the context of its colony requires a shift in perspective. Individual ants are rather simple. They are designed to integrate local signals in order to make binary decisions – to act or not to act. Some ants patrol the nest perimeters, others forage for food. Some ants maintain the cleanliness of the nest, others take out the waste. Still others lie dormant in the earth, providing a living shield to protect the queen and her precious eggs. But all ants are dependent on other ants. In a community, they can survive. In isolation, they will most certainly die.
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Although ants are simple-minded, the colony itself exhibits remarkably complex behaviors. Take, for example, the way in which ant colonies respond promptly and collaboratively to the appearance of food, and in numbers that precisely reflect the amount of food present. How does a colony know how to “behave,” and how is this behavior so flexible? It might seem reasonable to believe that the queen is in control, perhaps by sending out specialized chemical cues to various parts of the nest in order to govern the ants in any given vicinity. This, however, is not the case. Even if the queen were able to send out specialized chemical signals to specific groups of ants, it would be impossible for her to have enough information of the outside world (or of the nest conditions itself) to offer effective instructions to the other thousands of ants in the colony. Importantly, an ant colony is able to respond to environmental conditions without centralized control. It is an organization made of up thousands of parts all operating collaboratively within a complex network of interactions. The dynamic communication between ants in a colony allows for the emergence of collective, intelligent behavior; and in this way, ant colonies are exquisitely similar to animal brains.
When this model of ant colony foraging surfaced in biological journals, it caught the attention of one prominent neuroscientist working just south of Deborah Gordon. Michael Goldman is a neuroscientist from UC Davis who has spent much of his career working to understand the decision-making properties of neurons. Before reading Gordon’s study, Goldman had worked using computational modeling to understand the relationship between neuron properties and network function. Specifically, Gordon was interested in how the willingness of individual neurons to fire affected the behavior of circuits.9 When he read Gordon’s work, he was inspired by the collective behavior of the ants as well as their striking similarity to neurons in a brain. He reasoned that it was perhaps possible to use ants to study the brain – and the brain to study ants.
In order to understand what I mean, let us start by considering how a Red Harvester colony in the Arizona desert employs forager ants to find seeds. The underlying principle is simple: a forager ant will leave the nest in search of seeds and it will not come back to the nest until it finds one. If there are many seeds in the nest vicinity, then the forager ant will return quickly. Its prompt return to the nest will signal to other forager ants that there is food within close proximity, triggering their own deployment. Thus, the rate at which forager ants return to the nest determines the rate at which forager ants leave the nest. In this way, the colony does not waste individuals when there is no real promise of food in its environment.
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Imagine for a moment, that a colony is a brain and that each neuron is a forager ant at the nest. A returning forager ant is the equivalent of an incoming action potential; when it makes contact with a sedentary ant back at the nest, it “excites” it, triggering a new departure – a new “action potential,” so to speak, that will eventually come back and reach another “neuron.” The more food there is, the more forager ants will return to the nest to excite new waves of foragers. This positive feedback will continue until the food source dwindles, the rate of returning ants slows, and the activation of new forager ants falls back to a “resting state.” Importantly, just as a forager ant might be “excited” to pursue food in its environment, it might also be “inhibited” to retreat back to the safety of the deep nest if a lack of returning ants signals that there is no food around to respond to. This operating system parallels the way in which neurons respond to environmental stimulus; through simple networks of excitation and inhibition.
To reflect the decision-making process of the individual ants, Gordon and Goldman developed a stochastic accumulation of evidence model to predict the rate of incoming, outgoing ants and retreating ants. Stochastic accumulation of evidence models are used quite often in neuroscience and psychology to understand how noisy environmental information is processed when deciding between two competing choices. From the perspective of a neuron, “noisy environmental evidence” refers to the rate of input it receives from the hundreds or thousands of others neurons to which it might be associated, and the two decisions are to fire or not to fire. From the perspective of the ant, “noisy environmental evidence” refers to the rate at which it encounters returning forager ants, and the two decisions are to leave or to retreat.
Taken individually, a single part means nothing, but… together, we see patterns of remarkable emergent behavior. How, though, are ants able to identify foragers that are returning versus those that are simply wandering around the nest? When observing an ant colony, the dynamic character of ants is readily apparent; what is less apparent, however, is their tendency to make direct, physical contact with the antennae of other ants in their vicinity. This finding led researchers to investigate the mode of communication employed between members of a colony during brief periods of antennal contact.11 Scientists discovered that ant communication was first and foremost, chemical, but more specifically, dependent on unique cuticular hydrocarbon profiles present on each ant’s antennae. Literature has found cuticular hydrocarbons to be critical for maintaining the social coherence of colonies. In the context of Red Harvester forager ants, cuticular hydrocarbon profiles are even different between those who have left the nest and those who have remained. Though the difference is subtle, it is significant enough to be detected by arrays of sensitive receptors on the surface of an ants’ antennae such that returners may be identified.
Gordon and Goldman applied mathematical models to understand the dynamics of ant foraging feedback. Intuitively, Gordon and Goldman found that ants that left the nest to forage had experienced a higher rate of interaction with returning forager ants than those that returned to the depths of the nest. They also found that forager ants at the nest accumulate experience with returning ants, weighing experiential evidence in order to “decide” whether or not to leave or retreat – synonymous with the “decision” of a neuron to fire or not to fire.
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Cuticular hydrocarbons present on each ant’s antennae allow us to complete our understanding of Gordon and Goldman’s colony-brain model: each colony is a brain, each ant is a neuron, and each cuticular hydrocarbon is a neurotransmitter that serves as chemical communication. Neurons operate in complex networks of branching dendrites and traversing axons; ants operate in complex networks of random movement and stochastic interactions. Both, however, exhibit emergent intelligence as the sum of positive and negative local interactions.
We see behavioral evolution in nature all the time: crickets tune their song in response to sexual selection; birds adjust their migratory patterns in response to climate change; squirrels modify their caching behavior in response to resource availability. Although evolution can be observed by comparing traits at the organismal level, the mechanism of evolution is the propagation of certain genes in a population over time. This is perhaps easy to understand in an animal system, but it is complicated when thinking about the evolution of “super-organisms.” Can ant colonies evolve in the same way as a squirrel? Is there anything about colony behavior that is, in fact, heritable? This is a question that Deborah Gordon and her research team set out to answer in the fall of 2010. First, remind yourself that ants never make more ants; colonies make more colonies. In order to understand the family tree of the community she had been studying for decades, Gordon took genetic samples from each of the many hundreds of colonies living within her 250 by 400-meter research site. She was then able to determine which colonies came from which – in other words, which queens were mothers and which were daughters. The ultimate goal was to uncover resemblances between related colonies. The results were fascinating. She found that one of her favorite colonies – colony 154 – had recently become a great-grandmother, and that its daughters, granddaughters and greatgranddaughters contributed more significantly to the community structure than any other lineage. It seemed to Gordon that there must be something about colony 154 that made it particularly successful at surviving and reproducing, and that whatever this trait was must be in some way passed on to offspring. But what, in fact, was this trait? What made colony 154 so much more successful than other lineages competing for the same resources? The answer was rather counter-intuitive. Colony 154, more than any other colony, was particularly lazy. While other colonies were out and about in the heat of the day searching for food, colony 154 was resting.
Let us return now to the idea of the colony as an organism – an organism composed of collaborate parts that functions much like a brain. Throughout her time in the desert, Deborah Gordon has worked to understand how environmental pressures lead to the evolution of ant colony behavior. In order to be subject to evolution, a particular trait – be it behavioral or physical– must be subject to natural selection. Natural selection was originally coined by Charles Darwin in the late 19th century and defined as “the principle by which each slight variation in a trait, if useful, is preserved.”14 In other words, a particular trait, if beneficial to the organism, will be passed on to offspring, and over generations it will become increasingly prominent in the population as a whole. Importantly, not only must differences in a trait allow for differential survival and reproductive success, but these differences must also be heritable. That is, they must be encoded in genes so that offspring may experience the same fitness benefits.
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Its nest-bound foragers were slow to move and required a much higher rate of antennal contacts with returners to rally a search for food. The foragers of colony 154 seemed less inclined to waste away in the hot sun on a hot day than their competitors, and this, it seemed, was serving to their advantage. So, Gordon was compelled to ask: Could “laziness” be a heritable colony behavior? She found that, indeed, it was. When it came to the willingness to forage, the offspring of colony 154 exhibited undeniable resemblance to their mothers; and when Gordon looked further, she found that these resemblances were rooted in the number of interactions forager ants at the nest must have with returning foragers before they were willing to set out themselves. In other words, the decay rate of antennal interactions was faster in foragers ants of colony 154, requiring that they experience a higher rate of “excitatory” antennal interactions before deciding to leave. Gordon further found that the required rate of antennal contacts was not only consistent between colony 154 and her offspring, but also between the mothers and daughters of other lineages as well.
She concluded, therefore, that there must be a genetic component to forager ant response, and that this genetic component offers variation in foraging behavior that produces differential fitness among colonies in a community. If we return again to the idea that we can use ants to understand the brain, and the brain to understand ants, we might discover a whole new perspective on what it means to ask questions about collective behavior. Ants may be considered neurons in a brain, but they might also be considered cells in an embryo, fish in a school, or even humans in a mob. Taken individually, a single part means nothing, but taken together, we see patterns of remarkable emergent behavior that may be acted upon by natural selection. Ants show us how understanding the properties of parts sheds light on the function of the whole. And this might just make the thirty years Deborah Gordon spent in the desert entirely worth her time.
Kristen Pitts
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Two True Bluebirds Through my binoculars, I watch two male Eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) in the heat of the summer breeding season. While out catching insects for his breakfast, the first male suddenly spies a house wren investigating his nest. No doubt she is eyeing her chances of stealing the box, puncturing his eggs and building her own nest on top. Exploding in a fury from the bushes, he careens towards the intruder, wrenching her backwards off the ledge with a violent bite and chasing her off into the scrub. Once she has given up for good, he returns and settles on top of the box. He puffs out his breast and preens his brilliant blue wings. His nest is safe another day. The second sits alone on a telephone wire. Silhouetted against the grey morning skies, he looks dull and disheveled. He gazes at his box in silence, his mate nowhere to be found. Yesterday, he brought plump caterpillars to his four noisy nestlings. Today, the nest has a stale smell. The straws that his mate wove so carefully into a perfect cup are in disarray, and their babies are gone. Across the summer I find cold, flea-bitten nestlings shoved against the wall under a teetering pile of new sticks as often as I find soft blue eggs or parents carrying insects back to their hungry children. For every successful fledging there are two failed attempts. Another bird can tear out every last blade of grass and replace the nest with their own in a matter of minutes. A snake can slither up the pole and devour a mother and her healthy brood of hatchlings overnight. In my lab notebook, bluebirds fly, perch, sing, forage and preen. Simple descriptive actions. My notes record two aftersecond-year male S. sialis, one a failure, the other a success. As a student of evolutionary biology, I have been trained that the events of an individual life matter little. One nest, even one pair’s nesting season, is inconsequential compared to the total reproductive output of a population. Yet when I look up from my page, I see two fathers struggling desperately for their family’s survival. I empathize from afar as they celebrate their victories and grieve their losses. It is more than mere instinct to care.
Sarah Jean McPeek 26
Blue Bird Blue Where amino acids link and side chains banter The building blocks of blue begin. Waves of light reflected by the folds Of alpha-helix coiled keratin. The stuff of hair re-styled into feathers Needs no dye to dazzle or surprise, Nor do the barbules exploit the physics Coloring our brilliant azure sky. Yet blue is blue is blue when I'm enraptured By feathers fluttering from limb to limb Although we know the structure and the function What paints the beauty into blue bird wings?
Miriam Hyman
Dr. Natalie Wright Instead of pigment, the protein structure of bluebird feathers gives them their distinctive color. Recent research suggests this is not Rayleigh scattering, which makes the sky look blue. Instead, the keratin is ordered at the nanoscale to selectively reflect blue and ultraviolet light.
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Paranoia When five minutes is announced, I begin to panic- I’m certain I’ve been stuck on the same line since we’ve started, and I’m far from finding them all. At most, I’ve found four, and that’s a sorry turnout for twenty minutes of work. I could blame it on my overly careful handling of the feathers, or my abysmal vision.
Falsifying results. A treasonous act in the sciences. A crime punishable by exile. A crime I’m terrified of committing while I sit at my desk, turning a rough feather over in my hands. We’re supposed to be finding growth lines in bluebird feathers, which can give us an indication about the time it took the feathers to grow, and I’m terrified of deceiving myself and those who wait for my measurements. If that isn’t bad enough, I’m already worried about crushing the feather.
By the time I’ve got a minute left, I think I’ve found six. I do another sweep of the feather, tilting it to see if I’ve somehow missed another one. Two more appear, but odds are that I’ve just deceived myself. I am paranoid that my eyes or my mind have lied to me, an intentional deception so I don’t feel the shame of being the only one who can’t find the lines. I dearly hope my results are true. I turn in my counts, wondering if I’ve wildly missed. No one will correct me if I’m wrong, but the paranoia remains.
The feathers are a dark blue, which might be part of the problem. We’re supposed to be able to find lines of alternating light and dark, but I just see blue on blue. If you tilt these feathers ever-soslightly, the blue vanishes and is replaced with gray, and a moment later the gray will morph back into azure. It’s slow work. I’ve lost track of the same growth line six times, only to re-find it, then lose it once again.
Jonah Dominguez
David Han
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Summer Science Lab Notebook Failed Transduction #1
one successful colony appears on the plate, I’ll be able to start my mission. Unfortunately, even if I do everything right, transductions are about as cooperative as my ten year old brother.
Grow. Please grow. I fixate on the incubator the moment I walk into the lab. Inside that metal box is the verdict of a week’s worth of labor.
“How’s Aaron?” I ask, hoping to redirect the conversation.
“I could just not open it” I think, but already I am in front of the metal door, pulling blue latex over my fingers. The magnetic latch clicks open, and with a twist of a knob, the glass door opens too. The petri dish is warm against my clammy hands. On the surface of the agar is a constellation of tiny white dots.
“Is he liking summer camp?” “He’s fine. Want to talk to him?”
“Sure”
“It worked!” I grin, thrusting the dish under the Lab Assistant’s nose. Katie looks down at the dish and then up at me. Before she speaks, I know I have celebrated too soon.
“Aaron! Your sister wants to talk to you!” We pause, and I hear the clatter of toys but no footsteps. Mom sighs, and asks again how things are going.
“That looks wrong. There are too many.”
“Good. I made myself a chickpea salad for dinner!”
I throw the metropolis of E. coli into a red bin to be autoclaved; I’ve switched the donor and recipient strains.
“Sounds good.”
When my mom calls that evening to ask how things are going, I’m not sure what to tell her. My mission is to show that E. coli without a specific gene grow worse on antibiotics, but before I can begin my mission, I need to make a strain of E. coli missing that gene. This requires a week long transduction, and a lot of chance. In the best case scenario, a bacterial virus called a phage infects and kills a donor strain of E. coli containing a replacement gene, or a marker. While replicating its own DNA, the phage mistakenly packages a fragment of the donor E.coli’s genes instead, which just happens to be that marker. Then, the phage infects recipient E. coli containing the gene I want replaced, and those E. coli agree to swap their gene for the donor’s marker and live to tell the tale. When the recipient E. coli are grown on agar that kills anything without the marker, only the mutant E. coli survive. If just
“Aaron!” Mom softens her voice. “I’ll call you back.”
“Yeah” I say. I hear a muffled crash.
Failed Transduction #2 Over the past week I have called Katie every twenty minutes to double check my procedure, and my lab mates to triple check it. They aren’t happy with me, but this time I’ve gotten it right. With shaky fingers, I twist open the door of the incubator and scan the tops of the plates. The agar is shiny, smooth and desolate. Damn. Katie looks over my shoulder. “Don’t worry. Transductions are tricky. This happens all the time.” “I know.” I say, but the words scratch my throat and come out sharp.
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Two colonies rise up from the agar like braille. I want to touch them, but instead I hold the petri dish against the light.
Again, I toss the plates into a red bin. “Mom. Nothings working.” It’s evening, and the fireflies are just beginning to wink at me as I walk down middle path. I’ve been out of the lab for hours, but the knot in my chest has lingered. It would be easier if the campus wasn’t as deserted as my plates. Easier if I had family to go back to instead of an unairconditioned apartment. Mom listens. Aaron says hi, and then runs off. My chest unravels.
“Katie, can you look at this?” We marvel at how small they are, and yet each is an oasis of life. Maybe billions of cells. “Do you think they’re good?” I ask. “We’ll see.” Katie says, “We have to make sure they grow on kanamycin first.”
“It’ll get better” Mom tells me. “Why don’t you invite your lab mates over for dinner?”
“Right.” After the call, I spend an hour looking up recipes. I cradle the petri dish in my hands. Tomorrow, I’ll streak them onto kanamycin plates. I can already feel my disappointment if they don’t make it.
Failed Transduction #5 Are those air bubbles or colonies? I’m scanning another empty plate when I realize that I am calm. No tight chest. No inner demeaning dialogue. Last night, I learned how to make carrot coconut soup. It may have not been a successful transduction, but my lab mates and I will be having the leftovers for lunch.
I walk past the red bins, and open the door to the freezer where they’ll stay overnight. A blast of cold air. The E. coli will be dormant here, but still I whisper to them. Grow. Please Grow. ****
“Failed again.” I call out. My whispers go unheard. Summer science ends with a count of exactly zero successful transductions. When I go back to college in a couple of weeks, I’ll start analyzing someone else’s mutants instead, but first I get to go home.
“Huh.” Katie is analyzing a growth curve. She doesn’t even turn away from the computer to make sure I’m right. Now that much of the procedure is in my muscle memory, I’ve been listening to Drug Hunters on audiobook. The book gives me something to talk about during calls home. Aaron stays on the phone when I tell him how hundreds of dog’s pancreases were sacrificed during failed isolations of insulin.
When I arrive at the front door, Aaron opens it before I can knock and catapults himself on to me. “Miriam’s home!” He shouts. I drop my suitcase on the porch and carry him into the living room. When I set him down, I realize his head comes up to my chest.
Drug Hunters is entertaining, but it’s a comfort too. As I throw out another set of petri dishes, I remind myself five weeks of dead E. coli is nothing compared to a decade of murdered dogs.
“When did you grow so tall?” I ask him, ruffling his unruly blonde hair. Aaron grins. “I dunno.”
Failed Transduction #8
Miriam Hyman 30
Franny Wiggins 31
Science Break Up Two weeks. For two weeks I did everything I could to make things work. I showed up to see them every day. I used all of my resources to find information on how to keep them happy. I never dismissed our time together even if they were clingy and I wasn’t getting the ideal amount of sleep. I promised myself that if I showed them how dedicated I was, everything would turn out okay, and I would get to show them off to the world. But all of it went to waste. I thought we were growing together, but after the two weeks, my love just wasn’t enough. They left me—torn up in little pieces.
I looked at the clock in a slight panic. Lab meeting was in a few hours. Great. My timeconsuming experiment left me little to show for it. What was I going to say? Gee. Sorry Professor…my ability to properly commit to a 2-week experiment is severely inept? I walked in to lab meeting with my head down. I didn’t know what I was feeling. Probably a mix of emotions really—embarrassment, anger, frustration, sadness—nothing short of a conflicted heart. The Professor looked at me. I could feel the dreaded question coming. “So, what have you been up to in the lab?” Screaming at inanimate lab equipment for the last two hours. “Well…my in situ hybridization experiment didn’t end up so hot.” “What happened?” “I followed all of the staining procedures carefully! But the fish tissue fell apart.” The Professor gave me a sympathetic half smile. “Did you adjust the Prot K step? If your tissue was younger and you didn’t change the time specified on the protocol sheet then the tissue could’ve been damaged from being degraded.” I stared at her blankly. Of course. The Prot K step! That wasn’t outlined clearly in the protocol! It said times may vary, but I was too afraid to mess with anything so I used what was recommended. I should’ve treated my fish tissue more personally, and perhaps I could have prevented the damaged result. I guess when it comes to the things you love, it pays to learn not to be too “by the book” at times. Well, I could try to be a little more edgy and maybe adjust the protocol next time. But after that whole endeavor, I think I need a break from committing to any experiments at the moment— my heart can only take so much.
*** I mean, DAMN. The tissue I’d been developing for the last two weeks had completely fallen apart! What were supposed to be intact fish larvae looked like an accumulation of food remnants I could find in my teeth from lunch that somehow miraculously ended up on the microscope plate. Frustrated, I sat back in my chair and turned off the microscope. I literally didn’t know what could have gone wrong. The protocols were sound, I had been extremely gentle every time I moved the fish tissue between tubes during liquid washes, and I made sure my measurements and timings were right. I put my head in my lap and sat there. I had spent two weeks in that lab room, coming in every few hours, checking on my fish tissue, making sure everything was going well. The experiment was always on my mind and I gave it all of my attention. The world was just being cruel. For all of that work I had hoped to see some fish larval tissue intact, with a beautiful purple stain that developed along the spinal cord. Hey—I have standards.
Anu Muppirala 32
Our resting potential Charged to move We ions flow A hurried dance To light your soul Electric Back and forth we go All endlessly for you You know Potentially, If we were bold And ceased our dance Or lost control Then you would be Potentially Potential-less A corpse. Of course, We wouldn’t dare (Just making sure You know we’re there.) Anu Muppirala
Miriam Hyman
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Invaders Earth sprays as I wrestle with a young budding tree. This particularly stubborn plant has rooted itself deep into the ground with a vertical taproot as thick as my wrist. It refuses to budge. I dig like a badger, clawing the sod to expose the plant’s fleshy green roots. I wrench another from the ground and another, turning over wriggling pink worms and fat black centipedes. Standing, I wrap both hands around the trunk and jerk the tree from side to side, sticks thwacking my face and dirt exploding in every direction. The tree groans. I spit out the grit and give one last enormous heave. Pop! I stagger backwards holding my trophy aloft. It meets its grave on top of my growing pile of naked, dying plants. Feeling accomplished and murderous, I turn to survey the narrow trail I’m clearing. The view is sobering. Hundreds of alien trees flood the understory of the forest, suffocating ferns and wildflowers and shadowing sapling oaks and maples from the warm energy of the sun. Spirits dampened, I wipe the sweat from my brow and turn my sights to the next tangled mess of twigs. The victim of my wrath is privet, a shrub with waxy teardrop-shaped leaves and a flexible slate grey stem. If left to its devices, it can grow twelve to fifteen feet tall. Privet is endemic to Eurasia but spreads rapidly from American landscaping plots into the surrounding forests. Privet is nasty for biodiversity, especially in riparian corridors along rivers and streams like the one I’m currently tackling at the Brown Family Environmental Center. The Center has been working to eradicate
privet for over a decade. Though patches are thinning, there are still many dense thickets crowding the forest floor, shrouding every living thing underneath in impenetrable darkness. The stillness and silence of the forest is unnerving. Over the trickling of the river I hear nothing; no birds chirping, no frogs croaking, no beetles buzzing, no squirrels scurrying. Though the woods are vibrant and green, they feel empty. As an invasive, privet is off the menu for native leafmunching creatures who can’t digest its foreign chemicals. Birds that rely on caterpillars and other folivorous insects to feed their young can’t find enough in privet-overgrown forests, so they must seek their nesting grounds elsewhere. Those few birds and rodents who can nibble privet’s watery black berries receive sparse nutrition and only succeed in dispersing the seeds further. Sometimes, all it takes is one out-of-place ornamental to fuel a local epidemic. Trekking back up the hill to campus after a particularly rewarding afternoon of pulling, I glower at the neat row of privet bushes lining the Kenyon Inn. Elegant cedar waxwings dart in and out of the crevices between leaves, berries clenched between their beaks. They are as oblivious to their role in precipitating the forest’s doom with their seed-rich droppings as the college landscaper was when he shoveled mulch for the shapely green bushes.
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I still say privet is nasty. I still don garden gloves in the endless struggle against its spread. Nevertheless, I’m cognizant that my battle cries are tinged with hypocrisy. Humans are perhaps the most successful invasive species the planet has ever known. Like privet, we carve a place for ourselves wherever we can manage, rarely pausing to consider whether we need all of this space. Perhaps the best thing we can do for the forest is simply to leave it alone relinquishing control to the natural cycles of forest succession. I take solace from the thought that my work helps to recover a healthier, more biodiverse ecosystem. Surely that community-wide balance outweighs the ecological success of one particularly aggressive species? We each must judge when it is just to dig down and uproot our mistakes, and when it is better to just uproot ourselves.
The Land Lords and I crash into the woods armed with pick axes and hedge clippers to free native plants from privet’s evil clutches. We hack the invaders to stumps and pump them full of poison. As fervent conservationists, we say that we are fighting the good fight and that we are the heroes restoring natural order, but who disrupted that order in the first place? Who planted privet hedges around the Kenyon Inn? Who plopped their pet lionfish into the Gulf of Mexico or released starlings in Central Park? Who brought stowaway zebra mussels home to the Great Lakes from their voyages on the European high seas? Every time I wrestle with privet, I wrestle with my conscience as well. When I tug another prickly seedling from the soil, I imagine for an instant that I hear a shrill child’s scream. Shuddering, I quickly slough off my unease with the dirt and drape the little plant over the crook of a low-branching elm. Uprooted privet must be kept off the ground because any stems left near the earth will snake their way down and replant themselves. You have to admire their resilience. I feel a twinge of guilt when I see the brittle remains of last year’s kills dangling from the trees. These plants didn’t mean to hurt anyone. They were completely innocent of their destructive power. All they wanted was a little patch of earth, a little beam of sun, a safe place to sow their seeds and have their offspring grow tall. In the end, isn’t that what we all desire?
Sarah Jean McPeek
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The Million Dollar Inclusivity Initiative Professors Smith and Powell also received a grant to study how testing affects student performance and persistence in their Intro Biology II course. Other faculty have encouraged the formation of student inclusivity groups like OStem for queer students and SACNAS for students of color. These organizations are designed to provide minority students and allies opportunities to come together, be heard, and feel support. Professor Hofferberth holds “Inclusivity Hours” most Fridays from 3:004:00 p.m. where he invites all students to read and discuss a paper on pedagogy or diversity. These new groups that foster spaces where students can feel comfortable talking about issues that marginalize them with their faculty and peers are key to making students feel included by the division. ‘Action Groups’ made up of dedicated faculty have also been created to dismantle specific institutional barriers to inclusivity. One such institutional change that will be implemented across all departments at the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year is a change to faculty evaluation criteria. The newest faculty handbook says that faculty will be evaluated on their “promotion of an inclusive classroom environment that values diversity, takes into consideration students from a broad variety of backgrounds and learning styles and challenges students to their best efforts”. When professors are under review for tenure track positions, they will now have to demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity. It would be disingenuous to claim that the HHMI grant was the only reason this amendment was passed, but the formation of the Action Group on collegiate criteria of evaluation undoubtedly set this change in motion. Though Kenyon is at the beginning of this five-year funding period, we can already see positive change in the science quad and the campus as a whole. Based off of these early successes, we can expect to see even more Kenyon faculty contributing to an atmosphere of total inclusivity in the future.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has given Kenyon a million dollar grant to promote inclusivity in the natural sciences. Kenyon is one of just two liberal arts colleges that received this award to use over a five year period. The grant is intended to break down institutional barriers to inclusion over the course of several years. The HMMI website says that “[Kenyon] faculty will transform their pedagogical practices and refine tenure and promotion criteria.” The process began in the fall of 2017, which begs the question: how far has Kenyon STEM progressed towards these goals in the past eighteen months? Several concrete goals have been achieved, with more progress on the horizon. To begin with, a strong majority of the science division faculty attended a two day retreat in May of 2018. The retreat increased awareness of the need for proactive inclusion in the classroom and cultivated a social atmosphere of positive change among the faculty. Attendees learned that when they take time out of their day to work on inclusivity initiatives, they are financially rewarded with additional research funds. More than 80% of faculty have taken advantage of this reimbursement program. Additionally, there are course innovation grants which faculty can use to get larger amounts of funding for specific projects. For example, Biology Professor Jen McMahon wrote a grant to train TAs in inclusivity through weekly lab discussions and pedagogical literature readings.
Graham Ball 36
Lyceum Caption Contest Every season, a-la The New Yorker, Lyceum provides a new caption-less cartoon. Submit a caption to lyceum@kenyon.edu or as a comment on the Lyceum Caption Contest page on our website, lyceum.kenyon.wordpress.com when you can also vote for your favorite submission from the previous issue.. Comics will be provided Rand Burnett.
Spring 2019
Fall 2018
Submissions:
"Is that your head or mine?" "Unclear. More tests are needed.“ Are you sure this is the only way to prove that I won't use facebook for a week? 37
Like Lyceum? Get Involved! Go to our website kenyonlyceum.wordpress.com to read our publication online, learn about upcoming events, or submit your work for publication on our website and in our upcoming Fall 2019 issue. Lyceum will also be soliciting students this fall to assist in the design and production of the magazine. If you are interested, please feel free to email us at lyceum@kenyon.edu. You can Follow Lyceum on our Facebook page and on Twitter at @KenyonLyceum Most importantly, be curious, be creative, and share your passions!