What ever could I do

For this week’s blog, the research students have provided four question for the Mentors to answer, I felt obliged to answer some of the question provided, and just couldn’t resist some of the others. While the last question of what day would I relive ground hogs style? The answer felt pretty simple a day with lots of good friends around and not much going on. 

Here are my answers to the remaining questions.

1) What direction do you plan on going with your intern(s) research project to continue with it after this summer is over? 

After studying Wild Rice in part of its surviving range I feel even more determined than before to incorporate native aquatic plants into Menomin and Tainter.  Our work this summer has confirmed to me that wild rice is capable of immobilizing part of our Phosphorous problem.  We will need to consider what to do with the dead material so as to prevent the nutrients from re-entering the system as the rice degrades while balancing the ecosystem benefits of having rice present all year round. As well as dealing with the difficulties of growing wild rice in our dammed lakes. I would also like to explore other ways of incorporating plants into the lake system.  There are many unique and amazing ideas where floating plant islands are incorporated into eutrophic waters, I think many of these could be beneficial but they are very costly which is problematic, also that they are run by private companies so I have struggled finding data on exact nutrient extraction numbers.  So maybe next time more collaboration with team econ!

2) If you could research anything in the world, what would it be and why does it interest you? (Imagine you have unlimited time and resources for this research.)

So I am taking the question “anything in the world” lightly, because I would study nutrient cycling on spacecraft and space colonies.  I want to understand how we can create artificial systems that process human waste into food for livestock and plants.  So far when we go to space we have used simplified ecosystems.  I would like to explore how we can carefully complicate those systems in order to process nutrients and provide sustenance to explorers.  

This is also my primary scheme for getting to space, as I doubt I would pass astronaut training, and likely will never have access to the cash to buy a ticket. Because I really, really want to feel zero G, and see the stars unfiltered by our atmosphere.

3) If you could bring anyone to dinner (living or dead), who would you invite and why?

My dinner party of choice, I will start with the easy part the menu: I would serve a 3 course meal starting with a salad soup appetizer of spicy greens, fresh tomatoes, and a simple egg noodle soup followed by a main course of grilled zucchini, sautéed onions and beets on bed of steamed chard with wild rice.  For desert we would enjoy a simple apple pie with a slice of aged cheddar and homemade vanilla ice cream. 

The question of who to invite is the real challenge.  Several thoughts: A relative from sometime around 2300, an academic from the late 19^th century, just to talk about what discourse was like during the early era of modern science, and musicians who I think have made a difference like David Bowie or Henry Rollins.