Through the Microscope Lens: A medical scientist's perspective on medicine, science, and life.

Growing Future Urban Farmers

2009-02-25T21:17:00.019-05:00

Standing at 6’7” tall, Will Allen’s height is obviously one of the first things people notice about the CEO and founder of Growing Power, Inc. I had the privilege of hearing Allen speak at a Yale University sponsored Sustainable Food seminar. The aspects of Allen that stuck out most to me were not his physical height, but the height of his character. Symbols of that character were his wide grin, faded blue hoodie, and cracked, rough hands. Shaking those hands, I caught a glimpse of the type and magnitude of life that Allen has lead and the service he has rendered to his community in Milwaukee, WI and throughout the world. For his work, Allen was recently awarded a MacArthur Genius Fellowship and invited by former President Clinton to speak on a large discussion panel at the University of Texas- Austin on “The Future of Food”. With all the acclaim and fanfare, Allen simply and humbly carries on his work, working daily in the fields and greenhouses at Growing Power. Allen showed numerous images of himself working hard in the fields and greenhouses, training people, getting his hands dirty, and loving every minute of it: “I have to touch the soil everyday to feel like a human being.”

Allen started Growing Power in a rundown section of Milwaukee as a place where he could grow his dreams of healthy food for the urban poor. Allen described Growing Power’s mission as producing healthy soil and food for urban areas, developing efficient and cost-effective urban farming technologies, and most importantly, educating the world’s future urban farmers. Regarding their mission, Allen said, “We know that our food system is broken…We have to change that…We have to redo this whole system…We need 50 million new food producers to even begin to put a dent into the industrial farm system…A lot of the work that I do is around that question, ‘How do we grow farmers?’” During Allen’s presentation, he made it clear that education and community involvement were key pieces to Growing Pow er’s activities, “You can actually learn how to do something, so you can take it back to your community and roll it out in your community…Youth are the very key…they are a very powerful piece of what we do, in terms of how we proceed in the future, because these are the future farmers. They won’t come from rural America. They’ll come from universities like here, and other universities around the country and from our young people that live in central cities, not from rural America.” Growing Power takes in children, teenagers, and their families as interns until they graduate and go off to college. Part of Allen’s education is training the young people to work hard, study hard, and excel at their chosen profession, “When the youth come to our facility, the expectations is so very high. They can’t have radios. They can’t have stuff in their ears. They come here, it’s not a playground. It’s an adventure, an experience for them to learn. So if we set those expectations, I try to make it as hard on them as I possibly can, because many of those kids are going to have tremendous struggles in their lives. So we are really preparing them for that. Not all of them are going to make it. That’s why when I take on kids, I take on their whole family and then I am honest with them. I tell them…this will be the hardest job that you’ll ever have…It really starts with the kids.” It was apparent that Growing Power not only trains these young people to be farmers, but it trains them how to be self-sufficient, hard-working, and successful.

Another aspect that struck me about Allen was the ingenuity, wisdom, and calculating cunning with which he approaches challenges in his company. Growing Power pulls in food waste from many different sources and churns out nutritious, productive soil from the decomposing food and the help of millions of worms. They then use that soil to efficiently grow food in their fields and greenhouses or sell the soil to garner funds for the support of their programs. Allen’s years as a marketing executive with Procter and Gamble became clear as he described the competitors his company faced (Waste Management and food wholesalers), the profit that each square foot of soil needed to make, and the numerous contracts that he had setup for collecting waste, organizing the community, and distributing Growing Power products. Surrounding themselves with simple, yet brilliant, individuals, Growing Power has developed low cost and effective methods for building and maintaining greenhouses, aquaponic assemblies, and even “green” energy generators in urban areas. Aquaponic systems use recycled water to grow fish and vegetation. Growing Power uses a motor to pump the water from a fish breeding area up to the roots of plants, which clean and filter the water for reuse by the fish. It is a self-contained apparatus that allows for the production of fish, water cress, and other leafy plants. Allen also explained that by heating the water slightly, the entire greenhouse is kept warm during the cold Wisconsin winters through the ability of the water to trap and slowly release heat. The energy generators use pureed food waste and anaerobic bacteria (bacteria that live without oxygen) to generate acetic acid (diluted acetic acid is vinegar). The acetic acid can be used for fertilizer or the production of methane/natural gas. These are just some of the simple, yet efficient, devices that Growing Power has created and distributed throughout the world.

Despite increasing threats from global warming, industrial pollution, contaminated soil, and dwindling food health and supply, Will Allen’s Growing Power is thriving to grow farmers and farming supplies to meet the farming needs of large cities across the world. Through his techniques in teaching young people, hopefully we will also have many more generations of Will Allens to stave off the destructive direction humanity is heading towards.

Images: 1. Flickr/NatalieMaynor 2. Flickr/grifray 3. Flickr/mjmonty 4. Flickr/mjmonty 5. Flickr/grifray 6. Flickr/{just jennifer}

Global cooling or global warming: Pick your poison.

2009-02-01T01:05:00.015-05:00

I found the 2008 Presidential elections memorable for several reasons, not the least of which was the list of characters playing out the drama. One of the most interesting was the Republican vice-presidential nominee, a little-known, spunky governor from Alaska, Sarah Palin. Among Palin’s more memorable and disturbing comments was her belief that global warming was not man-made, scientifically proven, or important. In an interview with Newsmax, Palin stated, “I'm not one though who would attribute [global warming] to being man-made.” Her spokesman was also quoted as saying that “she's not totally convinced one way or the other. Science will tell us ... She thinks the jury's still out."

I could not understand how anyone could possibly believe that our decades of disregard for the environment were not directly contributing to global warming. The evidence for global warming and man’s influence on global warming is overwhelming. I was also deeply concerned that millions of Americans were hearing this from a vice-presidential nominee and might actually believe it.

Reflecting on this impossibility, I came across a radio show transcript by Mark Levin, who cited research showing that the earth was heading for a new ice age, and that the greenhouse gases we are trying to control may prevent this disastrous global cooling. In the cited Nature paper from 2008, Thomas Crowley and William Hyde use data from geological core samples (samples of ice and rock bored from the earth that date back millions of years) and mathematical models to support their global cooling theory. The mathematical models use the geological core data and data on ice volume, ice movements, and global temperatures to simulate past global climate events and predict future events.

The Crowley and Hyde model accurately simulated the large variations observed in the global climate over the past million years. It also predicted that the global climate was approaching a crossroads that would lead to a more stable, cold climate with glacial ice covering large swaths of the Northern hemisphere. The authors briefly state that greenhouse gas emissions, which have resulted in global warming, may disrupt this process and block the invading ice. Naturally, this detail was not lost on all of the global warming naysayers and therefore became “evidence” for Palin, Levin, and others.

Global warming opponents misinterpret Crowley and Hyde's work, ignoring two key caveats in the model. First, the rapid shift to the glacial climate will not occur for another 10,000 to 100,000 years, which is rapid on the earth’s geological timescale, but extremely slow on the human timescale. Crowley has asserted that this time frame is certainly long enough for mankind to develop ways to deal with the encroaching ice age. Second, the model does not take into account the influence of man on the global climate. This is important, because the rate of global warming induced by man-made pollution may heat the earth to uninhabitable temperatures long before the ice age will begin.

So, while all the Palins and Levins out there still mistakenly believe that we should not worry about global warming, Crowley, Hyde, Gore, and many others continue the crusade to reduce the damage we inflict on the earth and its climate. If we do not solve this man-made global warming problem, Crowley warns that we will be “creating a situation at least as dangerous [as the Ice Age], only going in the opposite direction”. The question becomes would we rather ignore the data on global warming and rapidly fry ourselves into extinction or take the next 10,000 to 100,000 years to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and carefully prepare for life in a colder climate? I think that the logical answer is as clear as ice.

Paper: Transient nature of late Pleistocene climate variability. Nature 2008.
Images: 1. Flickr/wili_hybrid 2. Flickr/Alaskan Dude

The Who, What, and Why

2009-01-31T02:09:00.006-05:00

I am beginning this blog as my preliminary foray into the world of science writing. I hope that readers will find the blog amusing and fascinating as I delve into the amazing world of science, my life as a scientist, and the inextricable link that binds society to scientific discovery.

As prologue to this epic undertaking, I begin by describing my entrance into science. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when I knew that I wanted to be a scientist, because I know that many events contributed to my early childhood desire to learn about and understand the world around me. However, I vividly remember my first light microscope (see an example to the right). I was so excited when I finally figured out how to angle the light just right, so that I could see the specimen through the eyepiece. I quickly tried to find bugs, plants, feathers, and other items that I could observe with my scope. I can't quite explain the rush that comes from seeing something that is blurry and obscure finally come into crystal clear focus, so that details, patterns, textures, colors, and the composite beauty of nature is revealed in all its glory. Ironically, as I am writing this post, I just finished an experiment on another microscope, a high powered scope that can magnify individual groups of proteins within cells, take movies of cells moving along a surface, and illuminate features of the cell in beautiful arrays of color (see examples of my cell images below). However, even with the power of this microscope, it does not compare to the spirit that was ignited with that small light microscope purchased from a local thrift store.

These humble yet exciting beginnings continued through my high school and college career to my current position as a PhD student at Yale University in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. I still feel the rush of observing nature under the microscope and discovering something that no one has seen or thought of before. I think it is this rush, this overwhelming desire to discover something new that drives most scientists. I think it is very similar to the rush that Da Vinci must have felt when he finished the last stroke on a painting, that Barack Obama felt when the last state secured his majority for the presidency, that Dr. Shumway felt when the heart he just transplanted beat for the first time, or that Michael Phelps felt when he won his record eighth gold medal in the Beijing Olympics. These feelings are common to the human experience, and I hope to portray scientists and their lives in a way that will feel familiar to you, the reader. I will also highlight important and enlightening discoveries that will directly impact the way we think and live. Lastly, I hope to illuminate and bring the beauties of life and nature into crystal clear focus through the lens of my life.