The conference kitten

A young cat, apparently very interested in permafrost research has been attending the conference since Tuesday. He or she has been attending both talks and poster sessions and seems to understand English and Russian presentations equally well.

Not your mother's permafrost conference

I'm at the Tenth International Conference on Permafrost in Salekhard in western Siberia. The science talks are just starting this morning but the cultural discoveries have already filled my notebook.

I stayed at the hotel Sputnik in Moscow on the way to Salekhard. I arrived alone at 9pm but miraculously found the hotel without much wandering. 

You can see Yuri Gagarin from the hotel (you can tell he's a spaceman by his frilly shirt).

J.J. Frost gave me a tour of Moscow. 

Workers of the world unite. 

I missed the airport train but this "common taxi" driver from Tajikistan gave me a 125 km/hour roller coaster ride to the airport. 1500 RUR.

There were 150 young researchers (80 from Russia 70 from the rest of the world) who participated in the Permafrost Young Researchers Network pre-conference workshop. The steward scolded me after taking this picture. The three meal options were chicken, beef, or crackers. The rules are communicated with severity and then only weakly implemented. After landing one of the local conference organizers got on the intercom and announced, "Registration ends at 7:30. It is impossible to participate in this conference without registering. You must surrender your poster or slides at the time of registration." I did register (you got a tiny mammoth sculpture and an embossed compass) but I haven't surrendered my presentation yet.

Salekhard is located right on the Arctic Circle and is home to 40,000. It is the capitol of the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district and is the source of 80% of Russia's natural gas. They also supply most of western Europe with natural gas. They had a jaw-harp and skin drum program ready for us on our way from the airport. 

 Our rooms have hand-sewn polyester sheets that cover 3/4 of the tiny Russian beds. I've been using my t-shirt as a towel the last few days but just found my towel in the bottom of my sheet cover this morning.

 The first night they took us to a teepee village where we touched the blue wizard's anti-mosquito staff, hurled traditional axes, and watched the famous soccer-playing reindeer.

 The next day they took us to a cultural program put on by the local boys and girls club. The theater group dressed us up and we all role-played.

Nothing says I love this land like releasing 150 plastic ballons.

 Sunday night we went over to the city hall for the "solemn opening ceremony". The 600 conference attendees were all expecting a home-grown drum circle and Russian dance.

 It quickly became clear that this was more than a ward talent show.

 It was like if Las Vegas were located in Siberia and was run by a junior-high school art teacher. I just kept thinking, "What do they do the other 364 days?" I guess the gas and oil money is pretty concentrated in Salekhard.

It was an incredibly polished and well executed variety show. There was no costume or music separation between Russian and indigenous performers. Notice the jaw-harp hanging from her arctic fox sash. The performance started and ended with the same phrase, "I hope you have nothing but the best impressions of our legendary land."

There was a caviar and eggplant buffet after the solemn ceremony. So far I have nothing but the best impressions of this legendary land.

Coincidence

"An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas." 

Matthew 12:39

"And he that seeketh signs shall see signs, but not unto salvation... behold, faith cometh not by signs, but signs follow those that believe."
Doctrine and Covenants 63:7,9


Because my bike was doing a triathlon in Delta Junction, my good friend Cody lent me his road bike for the Tour of Fairbanks last week. This was particularly generous since Cody's wheelset is worth more than my whole bike.

Before the race on Thursday, While switching my pedals to Cody's ride, I noticed that his bar plugs didn't match. Easton right side, no-name left side. I got a stupid numb-cheeked grin and pulled my bike off the wall to make sure that, yes, I had the same Easton plug on my right bar, mismatched with a Bontrager plug on the left.

As I double checked the contents of Cody's saddle bag I noticed that he had a Topeak Hexus II multitool with a broken tire lever. Just like I do. Unlikely things happen all the time. But do they carry any special meaning or are they just coincidence? 

I remember talking with my Grandpa during my first semester camping out at Utah State. After telling him about sleeping on the NR building and getting stepped on by an early morning jogger, he mentioned that fifty years before as a student at Utah State he camped out too. He lived in an abandoned dumpster corral and then squatted in the field house which had been converted with freestanding dividers into overflow housing for the flood of WWII veterans on the GI bill. I felt like a prisoner to my genes. My cool and edgy idea turned out to be nothing but an unfortunate family history of homelessness. I was an echo of my grandfather, who was likely an echo of an earlier grandfather.

The fundamental purpose of statistics is to answer one question: how likely is it that this event happened by chance? Is this pattern real or just coincidental? If your question was, do joggers really live longer, you would collect age at death data on a bunch of joggers and non joggers and calculate the averages for the two groups. Then you would have to ask, "how likely is it that the differences in longevity between the jogger and the non jogger groups are due to chance?" After all, if you randomly sorted 100 joggers into two groups of fifty, you still would get two different average lifespans. You want to know if the joggers are more different from the non joggers than two randomly selected groups would be from each other.

Your statistical answer doesn't come back as an unconditional yes or no, however, it comes back with a likelihood. Siri's soft voice might say, "Based on your data, there is a 6% chance that the difference in longevity between the joggers and non joggers simply due to chance." This means that there is a 94% chance that the difference is real (or "significant" in science talk). Is that good enough? It depends. Before you plug in your numbers you pick a cutoff value, for example 5%. If the likelihood limbos under that line, you say the joggers live significantly longer than the non joggers. Otherwise, you say there is no difference between the groups. This cutoff, called an alpha value, should be determined by the nature of your question and the seriousness of the possible outcomes (you want to be really really really sure that there's not radioactive dust in your ice-cream, but you only need to be somewhat sure that Romney beat Santorum in Iowa). However, since 1925, most of natural science has used a set alpha value of 5%. The great English biological statistician Ronald Fisher started the convention of using an alpha value of 5% (check out Fisher's Wikipedia article to learn about this brilliant and wacky man and his support of eugenics and denial of the link between smoking and lung cancer) and it has stuck.

Before lending me his bike, Cody dropped off the May edition of the Journal of Plankton Research.

While I'm not a regular subscriber, Cody's article on Alaskan zooplankton was the featured article and a picture I took of his study site made the cover. His article ended up in the Journal of Plankton Research after being rejected by several more prestigious periodicals because he used an alpha value of 10% in his study.

A conservative alpha reduces your chances of detecting a pattern when there isn't one in reality, but it proportionally increases your chances of missing a pattern that is real. Dayton points out in his great paper Sliding baselines, ghosts, and reduced expectations in kelp forest communities, that virtually every fishery worldwide has experienced a crash in the last 50 years because managers have been too cautious in identifying change (for a less colorful but also excellent treatment, check out Peterson's Statistical power analysis can improve fisheries research and management). If we wait to limit harvest until after we are 95% sure that the population is tanking, the population is gonna tank. This is especially true in situations with limited data where it takes a long time to be that sure. On a side note, this is what kills me about claims that scientists are being hasty or irresponsible about ascribing climate change to human activity. Scientists won't make even the most cautious interpretations until it is 95% sure. These people wouldn't admit that Justin Bieber has something going on until Baby gets 800 million views (748 and counting!), and you're faulting them for being premature?

All of this brings me back to my life and my opinions. I went to Utah State because I slipped on a scholarship pamphlet at my high school. I believe in God because a bush caught on fire up Green Canyon. I got a job in Alaska because I played mandolin at the College of Natural Resources awards banquet. I married Rachel because we ran into each other in a dry mountain village after biking 700 miles from Mexico. Was there a purpose or a plan behind those events? A flock of supporting coincidences have convinced me that for at least some of the linchpin coincidences in my life the answer is yes.

I remember driving up to Utah State with my dad before classes. We talked about intellectual humility as we rolled up the I-15 in his dark brown Astrovan. He said, "Ben, you know something that most people will never let themselves know: that no one ever really knows anything." That said, each of us has to decide when we effectively know. What alpha value should we use when evaluating patterns in our lives?

Sarah, her sled, and the Trans Alaska pipeline.

Last spring I was up at the Toolik field station collecting snow and water samples with my friend Sarah. One day on our way back to camp we got to talking about "impossible" coincidences that had happened in our lives and how to interpret them. I told her about the time I felt like I should bring an oil filter wrench up from Orem and then the same day ran into a stranger who asked me for an oil filter wrench. Sarah proposed that you can have just as much wonder and gratitude for a situation without attributing it to a higher power. "That's true," I said, "but it somehow feels truer when I do. Plus they seem to happen more often when I do."

The next day we were fifteen minutes out of camp on our way to the Toolik river thermokarst to check on the weather station when Sarah said, "Shoot! I forgot the zipties."

"I wonder if there are any in here?" We were driving the Lizard, a fifty year old truck from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole Massachusetts. 

"I need the really big, industrial sized ones, we'll have to go back." I opened up the glove compartment and there was nothing there, except a ziplock bag full of industrial sized black zipties. We had to pull over we laughed so hard.

In other news, Ingrid told me yesterday that she could blow her nose all by herself.


"For I am God and mine arm is not shortened; and I will show miracles, signs, and wonders, unto all those who believe on my name."
Doctrine and Covenants 35:8

Henry's first multi-stage mountain bike race

Henry came to his first mountain bike race last weekend.

It had been raining and there was a poor turnout.

Which means I could go head to head with the Tristanator

He beat me on the hill climb (6 miles up Ester Dome)

But with the family's help I took the day. (Here's the full account). He's going to his first multi stage road bike race tomorrow (you can follow the results on the Tour of Fairbanks website). Now for some additional pictures from our week.

If I were a mosquito, I would pick a different cloud berry to pollinate.

The research watershed where my labmates work is in the "drop area" of the rocket range. 

Making out or a meal?

I guess they were making out cause look how embarrassed they were when I tapped on the window.

 This is how far away Ingrid likes to be from Henry whenever they are both awake.

See.

Henry still isn't totally used to this world but he's doing a good job. 

So is his mommy. 

Ingrid is the best big sister. I think she gets it from my big sister.

See.

"Good night little guy."

p.s. His name is officially Henry Atigun Abbott. Rachel signed the birth certificate yesterday.