Negligence or stupidity?

There have been several out-of-bounds skiers stories the past few months. This is the current hubbub. This couple was skiing in the backcounty, had only a few granola bars, and didn't have very warm clothing. They got lost then stamped a "SOS" or 2 in the snow. Search and rescue were notified that there were strange signs in the area by heli-ski guides twice. They checked if anyone was reported missing and when finding no missing person report decided not to launch a search. A week after the couple got lost, someone finally reported them missing and the man was rescued but the woman had already died.
Now there is outcry that S&R and the RCMP decided not to search based only on the SOS. Clearly I think this is a case of stupidity-not prepared, didn't let someone know that they were going into the backcounty and when they'd be out. But this whole case is making me very angry. How loud would the outrage be if S&R started launching expensive searched every time there was some vague sign that someone might be in trouble. They did try to find out if anyone was missing-in my mind that is their due diligence.
Am I being overly harsh? What could be done to keep people from being lethally stupid? Or are these people right in expecting S&R's to be launched just incase someone has gotten themselves in trouble?

And the winner is...

Fortunately, I didn't actually bet any money on this question cause I would have lost. The amicon filter concentrated/purified replicates had 3 times as much DNA as the alcohol precipitated replicates. The alcohol precipitation resulted in cleaner DNA but the little bit of organics contamination doesn't seem to interfere with downstream processing so filters it is.

old vs new

Subtitle to this post is: Change, EEEKKKKKK. I'm extracting DNA which is something that I can nearly do while sleeping, but it's an case in point of the issues that I'm having changing from phd lab to postdoc lab. Everyone is very nice and the equipment and lab space is wonderful, but there are lots of things that I've done for a long time that now I'm having to tweak to fit in with new lab group. I'm sure this is something that everyone who changes jobs goes through but I haven't changed jobs for quite a while. Settling in is taking some time and I want to be settled already.

Anyway, back to the DNA. New lab uses a similar protocol for the
extraction but a fancydancy filter system for cleaning and concentrating the DNA. Old lab uses the cheap (but in my mind, just as good if not better) alcohol precipitation. I'm testing out the difference between the two methods using samples from the most recent cruise. We don't have all of the depths for this particular station because the weather got bad before our second cast of the rosette, therefore these are fairly safe samples to test methods on. They wouldn't be used for the big analysis anyway.

Any bets? Fancy filter or cheap alcohol which will yield more and/or cleaner DNA. I'm betting alcohol.

Pink? Really? You expect me to wear...

I'm back to lab work (happy dance, happy dance). Today I started extracting the DNA from some of the samples we collected while on the boat. However, I was distressed to learn that the lab only has nitrile gloves. AND the only type of nitrile gloves that fit me are bright pink. I think I need some type of girlification/princess therapy to suppress my revulsion of wearing something that pink.
The boys (the other postdocs) and I had to go for beer to watch tonight's game to help me deal with hours and hours of wearing pink gloves.

Pics from the great blue

Our lab area: Herbie (the mass spec) on the left and the pumps for filtering on the right

Catching the rosette at one of the early minor stations, the sea was still relatively calm.

Leaving Papa, 50 N 145 W

The sea gets rougher

A storm behind us

Many of the more incredible sights from this trip weren't possible to capture in a photograph. The motion of the boat, looking up and seeing the moon and stars swinging overhead, the color of the ocean-especially the swirling mixture of blues at night when the lights were shining down on the cable when the rosette was in the water. Maybe I'll come up with better ways to take pictures during my future cruises.

Phylogenetic trees

Here's an pretty good piece in the NY times talking about the type of trees that I build and how we're at a point in research where we have lots of data but no way to really display it.

Home again, Home again, jiggety jog

I'm loving being back on dry land, but it's very strange because everything still feels like it's moving. My brain had to rewire to adjust to the ship's movement (sea legs). Once I had my sea legs, I could "see" the motion of the ship even when I was in rooms where there actually weren't any visual clues that there was movement. It's really difficult to explain how that felt. But now my brain is trying to unwire and it's equally disconcerting.
We got back to the dock yesterday just before lunch. I haven't talked about the food have I? It was generally good-sometimes very good. Although I have to say I'm fairly tired of grilled fish.
Thairo is still waiting for projects to start so isn't in the field yet (yeah). He came over with a couple of people from the lab to help us move all our stuff off the ship and back to school. I gave him a quick tour of the boat, the main lab (where I spent most of my time filtering water) was empty and some of the benches had already been removed by the time that he got there but at least he saw in general what I was talking about. All in all I'm looking forward to the May/June cruise and I'm glad that it's a few months away rather than next week.
I'm still finishing up the edits to my diss (must finish today) but after I get that done I'll play with pictures and put some up.

Penultimate day

It finally calmed down last night around 10 or so. We did end up collecting from that last station so I was filtering till about 10. Then we had a little knitting and knot tying session till about 1, good times.
Today we're running some calibrations, packing up the filtering stuff, and I'm working on my diss edits.
Oh and it's sunny and the sea is a lovely dark blue.

And we're back

Well not really back, but we have internet again. The weather has been sketchy most of the past few days. We got all of the samples that we wanted at Papa (ocean station papa), as did most of the others. But nearly every cast was questionable until the minute we had it in the water. It takes the rosette about 2 hours to get down to 4000m and another 2 hours to get back up, so the boat has to maintain a very tight position for at least 4 hours. Which isn't easy when the wind is somewhere between 20 and 30 knots.
We we going to try to pick up some of the stations that we skipped getting out to Papa, but the weather has been too rough still. We've only gotten 3 the 7 that we were trying for.
I haven't been sea sick at all which is good but I'm still tried. It's hard to sleep when every 10-15 minutes a big wave sends you rolling across the bed into the wall. As I look out the port hole for a few seconds all I'll see is water, then we roll back over and only see sky, then only water...