Classroom
Ultimate Survivor
A geology class looks for life in all the wrong places.
When Thomas Hobbes wrote that life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” he was talking about man, not, say, a colony of single-celled organisms known as archaea. But it turns out the existence of archaea can be pretty nasty, too.
Consider the microbial archaea that reside in Lake Tyrrell, a salt-choked body of water surrounded by the Australian outback. Bathed in water with eight times the salinity of seawater, with no organic material to eat — save for the occasional broken twigs and particles of sheep excrement carried in by winds — the archaea of Lake Tyrell manage to get by just swimmingly. In fact, they thrive.
“It’s really an amazing example of adaptation,” says geology professor Eric Roden, who collected samples from the lake during a research trip two years ago. “By all rights, these guys shouldn’t be living there. But they have figured out the mechanisms they need to survive in that environment.”
Something can be learned from the stubborn refusal of archaea to succumb to their surroundings — and if you take Roden’s Geology 117 course, you’ll learn it. Titled Life in Earth’s Extreme Environments, the course surveys some of the most bizarre and unlikely life forms that exist in some of the harshest conditions on the planet. Each lecture highlights an organism living where it shouldn’t — in places too hot, too cold, too salty, too acidic, or too barren to be considered hospitable.
Roden created the course in 2005, when he joined the geology faculty after a decade of teaching at the University of Alabama. A microbiologist by training, he was something of a fish out of water in his new department — or maybe an archaea out of salt — and he was seeking a way to marry his expertise in microbial life with the earthier aspects of the geology curriculum. A colleague suggested a course focused on extremophiles (the scientific term for organisms that live in harsh conditions) becau
When Thomas Hobbes wrote that life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” he was talking about man, not, say, a colony of single-celled organisms known as archaea. But it turns out the existence of archaea can be pretty nasty, too.
Consider the microbial archaea that reside in Lake Tyrrell, a salt-choked body of water surrounded by the Australian outback. Bathed in water with eight times the salinity of seawater, with no organic material to eat — save for the occasional broken twigs and particles of sheep excrement carried in by winds — the archaea of Lake Tyrell manage to get by just swimmingly. In fact, they thrive.
“It’s really an amazing example of adaptation,” says geology professor Eric Roden, who collected samples from the lake during a research trip two years ago. “By all rights, these guys shouldn’t be living there. But they have figured out the mechanisms they need to survive in that environment.”
Something can be learned from the stubborn refusal of archaea to succumb to their surroundings — and if you take Roden’s Geology 117 course, you’ll learn it. Titled Life in Earth’s Extreme Environments, the course surveys some of the most bizarre and unlikely life forms that exist in some of the harshest conditions on the planet. Each lecture highlights an organism living where it shouldn’t — in places too hot, too cold, too salty, too acidic, or too barren to be considered hospitable.
Roden created the course in 2005, when he joined the geology faculty after a decade of teaching at the University of Alabama. A microbiologist by training, he was something of a fish out of water in his new department — or maybe an archaea out of salt — and he was seeking a way to marry his expertise in microbial life with the earthier aspects of the geology curriculum. A colleague suggested a course focused on extremophiles (the scientific term for organisms that live in harsh conditions) becau
The topic is also a perfect fit for UW-Madison, which has a storied history of studying life’s outliers. In the 1960s, former UW bacteriology professor Thomas Brock startled the scientific world by finding communities of bacteria living in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, where it was assumed the water’s near-boiling temperature would kill off all life. Brock’s discovery sent researchers scurrying off to all kinds of places where they’d never thought to look for living things. And they’ve found plenty — previously unknown organisms that survive in the driest parts of the desert, the deepest reaches of the ocean, and even at the bottom of abandoned mine shafts, where bacteria live in pools of acid and eat metal for lunch.
But scientists aren’t alone in their curiosity about life on the edge. With its reality-show focus on the extreme — and because it counts toward co-recurriculum requirements — Roden’s course draws students from all over campus, many of whom have little formal footing in biology or geology. Just nine of the thirty-five students who took the course last semester were science majors.
“I was definitely attracted by the title,” says Carolyn Sredl x’09, a chemical engineering major who took the two-credit course in the fall. “I needed a few more credits, and it sounded a lot more interesting than a gym class.”
Roden says it’s been a challenge building a syllabus that lives up to that promise. With no money for lab sections or teaching assistants, he relies mainly on lectures and demonstrations to acquaint students with a select handful of extremophiles. Three times during the semester, he opens his own research lab so that students can conduct basic experiments that bring them face-to-cell with the microbial life that surrounds them.
But scientists aren’t alone in their curiosity about life on the edge. With its reality-show focus on the extreme — and because it counts toward co-recurriculum requirements — Roden’s course draws students from all over campus, many of whom have little formal footing in biology or geology. Just nine of the thirty-five students who took the course last semester were science majors.
“I was definitely attracted by the title,” says Carolyn Sredl x’09, a chemical engineering major who took the two-credit course in the fall. “I needed a few more credits, and it sounded a lot more interesting than a gym class.”
Roden says it’s been a challenge building a syllabus that lives up to that promise. With no money for lab sections or teaching assistants, he relies mainly on lectures and demonstrations to acquaint students with a select handful of extremophiles. Three times during the semester, he opens his own research lab so that students can conduct basic experiments that bring them face-to-cell with the microbial life that surrounds them.
“That’s the most valuable thing we do,” says Roden. “I can stand up there and talk about these things all day, but it’s really far more valuable for them to get into the lab and see it for themselves.”
Early in the semester, for example, students are assigned to collect a jar of muck — anything from sediment from Lake Mendota to a neighborhood mud puddle. In the lab, they trigger a reaction that causes the microbes within to multiply, forming visible patches in a glass tube. Often students are surprised by how many things live in such surroundings.
“I never really thought about how extensive microbes really are,” says Sredl. “They’re everywhere. They’re even in a trash can. You don’t really think about how these things are living all around you.”
And while there’s a definite ick factor in that realization, there’s also a message about the amazing adaptability of life. “When you’re talking about microbial life, this is how you observe evolution,” says Roden. “As opposed to growing wings or developing funky colors, microbes evolve by changing their metabolism and their cellular structure to allow them to survive in the myriad environmental conditions on our planet.”
In other words, if survival is the ultimate game of life, then at least in Roden’s class, the archaea that thrive in Lake Tyrrell are the big winners. They have learned that though life can be nasty and brutish, it need not always be short.
— Michael Penn MA’97
Early in the semester, for example, students are assigned to collect a jar of muck — anything from sediment from Lake Mendota to a neighborhood mud puddle. In the lab, they trigger a reaction that causes the microbes within to multiply, forming visible patches in a glass tube. Often students are surprised by how many things live in such surroundings.
“I never really thought about how extensive microbes really are,” says Sredl. “They’re everywhere. They’re even in a trash can. You don’t really think about how these things are living all around you.”
And while there’s a definite ick factor in that realization, there’s also a message about the amazing adaptability of life. “When you’re talking about microbial life, this is how you observe evolution,” says Roden. “As opposed to growing wings or developing funky colors, microbes evolve by changing their metabolism and their cellular structure to allow them to survive in the myriad environmental conditions on our planet.”
In other words, if survival is the ultimate game of life, then at least in Roden’s class, the archaea that thrive in Lake Tyrrell are the big winners. They have learned that though life can be nasty and brutish, it need not always be short.
— Michael Penn MA’97
CLASS NOTE: Sweating in the PRC
Kinesiology 508: Physical Education and Sports in China
What can you learn from getting beaten up by a thirteen-year-old girl? Plenty, say the enrollees of this traveling seminar. Offered for the first time in summer 2006, the course centered on a two-week trip to China, where students received an insider’s look at sports culture in the country of tai chi, Yao Ming, and the 2008 Olympic Games. Led by Professor Li Li Ji, a native of Shanghai and chair of the kinesiology department, students learned ancient Chinese sword fighting, visited two universities that teach sports medicine, and — most surprisingly — squared off against prospective members of the Chinese national judo team.
With its deep traditions and emerging presence on the international sports scene, China is one of the most intriguing places to study physical activity, says Ji. “Chinese people use physical exercise as a means to treat disease and to promote fitness, but it’s also a reason to get together socially.” The course will be offered again this summer, and Ji says he hopes it becomes a touchstone for expanding cultural exchanges between UW-Madison and China.
According to Ji, the class was received warmly at every stop — except perhaps the judo mat, where the teenage trainees tumbled each of the visitors within seconds. “That was kind of embarrassing,” admits graduate student Brent Johnson. “But those girls were good — really good.”
— M.P.
What can you learn from getting beaten up by a thirteen-year-old girl? Plenty, say the enrollees of this traveling seminar. Offered for the first time in summer 2006, the course centered on a two-week trip to China, where students received an insider’s look at sports culture in the country of tai chi, Yao Ming, and the 2008 Olympic Games. Led by Professor Li Li Ji, a native of Shanghai and chair of the kinesiology department, students learned ancient Chinese sword fighting, visited two universities that teach sports medicine, and — most surprisingly — squared off against prospective members of the Chinese national judo team.
With its deep traditions and emerging presence on the international sports scene, China is one of the most intriguing places to study physical activity, says Ji. “Chinese people use physical exercise as a means to treat disease and to promote fitness, but it’s also a reason to get together socially.” The course will be offered again this summer, and Ji says he hopes it becomes a touchstone for expanding cultural exchanges between UW-Madison and China.
According to Ji, the class was received warmly at every stop — except perhaps the judo mat, where the teenage trainees tumbled each of the visitors within seconds. “That was kind of embarrassing,” admits graduate student Brent Johnson. “But those girls were good — really good.”
— M.P.
EXTRA CREDIT
Law professors Marc Galanter and Stewart Macaulay are proving to be big guns in their profession. Their work is featured in The Canon of American Legal Thought, a new book from Princeton University Press that highlights the twenty most important works of legal writing since 1890. Galanter’s 1974 essay titled “Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change” and Macaulay’s 1963 article “Non-Contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study” are included among works by Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Dewey. Grad Kimberlé Crenshaw LLM’85 also earns inclusion, as a co-author of the article “Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement.”
Computer games have come a long way since Pong helped a generation of children enjoy the challenge of tennis without the unpleasantness of exercise. Today’s games, according to education science professor David Williamson Shaffer, can help kids build successful futures. Drawing on a decade of research into technology and game science, he argues in his new book, How Computer Games Help Children Learn, that games teach modern survival skills, helping players learn to think like engineers, urban planners, lawyers, and other innovative professionals.
David Beebe ’87, MS’90, PhD’94 won a big honor in a little field. In November, the biomedical engineering professor was awarded the first-ever Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize from Corning, Inc., and Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry. Beebe holds more than twenty patents or patents pending and has cofounded three biotechnology companies.
Computer games have come a long way since Pong helped a generation of children enjoy the challenge of tennis without the unpleasantness of exercise. Today’s games, according to education science professor David Williamson Shaffer, can help kids build successful futures. Drawing on a decade of research into technology and game science, he argues in his new book, How Computer Games Help Children Learn, that games teach modern survival skills, helping players learn to think like engineers, urban planners, lawyers, and other innovative professionals.
David Beebe ’87, MS’90, PhD’94 won a big honor in a little field. In November, the biomedical engineering professor was awarded the first-ever Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize from Corning, Inc., and Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry. Beebe holds more than twenty patents or patents pending and has cofounded three biotechnology companies.
