Spectrometer Requisition

2018/03/20?

Alma meets Arthur.

Date: 03/20/2018	Requistion office in the Hall of Science
Cast: Alma Arthur Tori
Arthur has his coat on, buttoned up, as he enters this science building. Led by a young woman, very perky, blonde hair in a pony tail, brightly colored fashionable clothes, messing with her phone the entire time. "Tori," he says. "Put the phone away please. Where's the research supply office?" She rolls her eyes, does NOT put the phone away, and in fact says into it "He's as bad as Mr. Adamescu, maybe I shouldn't have quit," before leading Arthur into the office, hands her his pass, and then goes off to the side to start talking some more. Alma is at the checkout desk conferring with the student there. Those weather mats in building entrances never soak up all the wet and grime from hiking boots, and her hiking boots have tracked in some dirt. "Look," she puts the equipment on the desk, and holds up a bag with a rat carcas. "Something is wrong with this equipment. The readings don't make sense. I'm getting absolutely no readings. I should see some slight noise in the readings, not 0. I need to tell whether the rats around here are getting poisoned." She taps the equipment. "I want a replacement." Arthur hears that, and chuckles. Rubbing his his head, shaking his head, he cracks a smile at the way she's having to complain about this. "For a scientific institution, one would expect a greater understanding of the needs of science. Maybe I shouldn't be renting my spectrometer here after all." Alma looks up at the scientist. "To be fair," she says, "this *is* the first time I've used one of these things. And they've got a lot going on here. Some student problem checked this out before me, and they just haven't had a chance to repair it yet. It happens. You see this at any place, not just Wayne State. Hell, we always had trouble getting someone to fix the laser cutter for us at the University of Aukland. And they have more people there!" It's not fair that this place has to scrape by on the budget they have. She feels compeled to defend it and the honor of people who work here. It's a bad situation, and she's impressed at how well people make due here. Arthur winces. "I don't know what I'd do without a functioning laser cutter. But I rarely have need for a spectrometer. I don't often need to measure the chemical makeup of river water. No sense buying such a thing for a one shot experiment though." Alma looks a little wistful and sad, then bucks up. "My brother worked in wetlands preservation here. You should check with the zoo, they might be able to help you since they do active work in that. I haven't gone through all his papers yet to see where he was in his work." She looks up to see if they are holding up anyone trying to check out equipment. She turns to the student behind the desk. "Look, I'll just turn this in and come back later. Do you have any advice on who I can go to to analyse these remains?" The student hates putting up with this type of stuff. Why is this person even here? "Maybe the biology department?" They shrug. "Uh, thanks. Sign here." She signs and steps aside, to the student's clear relief. "Don't forget your rat!" Alma absolutely does not forget her rat. She packs it back in to her satchel. "What are you doing, exactly? Which department are you with?" She asks Arthur. Arthur points to Tori outside. "She's a student here, and I've hired her as an intern. Technically she's the one renting it. I'm a research engineer with Bridgewirth, Schmitt, and Brice LLP." He then goes into his pocket, pulls out his card, and hands it to her. "As a public service project I'm studying the effects of Zug Island on the river." Alma takes his card and frowns at Arthur. "Are you collaborating with any professors here? I encourage my interns to do the work and guide them when they lack experience. And we learn from each other. I've worked with students in the past who know R or pandas. Or they are better at electronics." She gestures to Tori, "you could have her check out the equipment, and step in when she doesn't know something." She waves his card around. "I see you are not a professor or instructor; though, so it might make sense to have one of your collaborator take over that part. Experts often have expert blindness. Have you heard of that?" Alma hands Arthur her card. Arthur takes the card, glancing at it, and slips it into his coat next to his own cards. "I am working informally with Dr. Emma Durov. Nice to meet youer, Ms. Hunter. So your doctoral research is in... small mammals? I'm not sure I've heard of expert blindness though." Alma pats her satchel. "Oh, the rat. No, I study corvids. I'm working on social cognition and tool use in New Caledonian crows. I'm in Detroit due to a family emergency. I'm finishing up my dissertation, and with my advisors help I was able to get a grant to study behavioral ecology of corvids in Detroit. For now we are setting up sensor networks to augment human field work, and we'll be establishing a baseline for the corvid population in the area." She goes on to explain how some corvids use audio and visual cues for social recruitment to feeding sites and how urban pollution affects this. Detroit and Baltimore are examples of depopulating cities with economic downturns and future research will establish differences in corvid behavior in these cities compared to other environments, such as Seattle. "It's not a perfect analogy but you get the idea. I happen to be recruiting my own interns and am seeking collaborators in general. I would like to find some experts in audio analysis, as well as drone and visual recognition. I'm sure someone would be excited to use deep learning ont his stuff. The grant is very buzzword compliant." Arthur takes all this in. She's talking about her research. Of course this is going to go on a while But he listens to it all, nodding. "Birds. Very messy. My work tends to be in research engineering on a large scale. Energetic flows and mechanisms. This is unusual but again, it's a special collaboration with Dr. Durov who is here at Wayne State." Alma wonders if Dr. Durov is in the physics department. "Are you studying the Great Lakes watershed and modeling toxic dispersal? Interesting stuff. ...Yes field work can be messy. If you enjoy studying flow and fluid dynamics you'd probably find the equilibria modeling more approachable." She realizes she forgot something. "Oh, expert blindness, it's a cognitive bias thing. I didn't study it. I did undergrad work in cognitive psychology with a focus on memory and attention. I branched out in to animal cognition, then ethology, thus here I am." What is Dr. Durov's speciality, if you don't mind my asking?" She looks startled. It just occured to her that this person meant to check something out. "Oh crap, I didn't mean to keep you from your work." Arthur shakes his head at her first question. "No this is very localized, specifically to detroit and the facility at Zug Island. Dr. Durov works in Astronomy and Physics. So this is outside what either of us normally do. Anyway, good luck Ms. Hunter." Alma glows with happiness. "I LOVE it when people from multiple disciplines come together and do work outside of their normal boundaries! This is where science really gets down to business!" This is the best thing of the bestest things. "Oh you must both give a talk! Please do let me know when you do." She looks at her watch. "Ouch, I need to run or I'll be late"