Journal articles on the topic 'Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, Mass.)'

Our boss, the Nobel Prize winner Dr. Albert Szent Gyorgyi, believed in working hard and playing hard. He expected dedication and esprit de corps to come from the intermingling of work and special moments of relaxation. Our respect and dedication to him and his philosophy was never more evident than on April Fool's Day.The Institute consisted of 12 to 13 scientists, each working on some aspect of muscle structure or function. Its location in Woods Hole, MA, at the tip of Cape Cod was ideal. Dr. Szeni Gyorgyi had gazed out the window of my laboratory on my first day saying, “if I ever walk in and see you staring out the window at the sailboats and fishing vessels I will know you are just recharging your battery.” His warm friendly approach, the seashore and the visiting scientists from all over the world made me feel that this was as close to heaven as I would ever get.

Several summers ago, while working at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, George Augustine (Duke University) and I wished to look at the circulation in the giant synapse of the squid, Loligo pealei. At that time, Dr. Eugene Copeland suggested the use of India ink in order to see the circulatory system. The ink contains carbon particles that are visible under the EM. In addition, it is visible to the naked eye.

Charles Wesley Hargitt was born near Lawrenceburg, Indiana, USA, and died at Syracuse, New York. After a brief career as a Methodist Episcopal minister, he carried out graduate studies in biology at Illinois Wesleyan University and Ohio University. He served briefly on the faculty at Moores Hill College and later at Miami University of Ohio before receiving an appointment at Syracuse University. Hargitt spent 36 years at Syracuse, and for 21 years was a trustee of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts. His research encompassed animal behaviour, cell biology, development, ecology, natural history, and taxonomy, as well as education, eugenics, and theology, and he wrote or contributed to more than 100 publications in science. Approximately half of these were on Cnidaria, with 41 of them on Hydrozoa. His most important works in hydrozoan taxonomy were on species of the Woods Hole region, the Philippines, and south China. Hargitt was author of three genera and 48 species and subspecies ascribed to Hydrozoa, seven species of Anthozoa, and one species of Cubozoa. Four species of hydroids are named in his honour.

Oscar Riddle, born in Indiana in 1877, was an ardent evolutionist and a key player in the founding of the National Association of Biology Teachers in 1938. He studied heredity and behavior in domestic pigeons and doves with Charles O. Whitman of the University of Chicago, received his Ph.D. in zoology in 1907, and in 1912 began a long career at the Carnegie Institution. He is best known for his 1932 discovery of prolactin, the “mother love” hormone. Whitman founded and directed the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole and cared for Martha, the world’s last passenger pigeon, who died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

Abstract This essay relates my odyssey in exploring enzyme reactions as oceanographic rate proxies and describes my scientific contributions since 1963. To elucidate biogeochemical processes in marine ecosystems I explored calculating respiratory oxygen utilization (OUR) and nitrate respiration from activities of the respiratory electron transport system (ETS), assimilatory phytoplankton nitrate uptake from nitrate reductase activity, and respiratory CO2 production from isocitrate dehydrogenase. This exploration began at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute doing a thesis on Krebs-Cycle-based respiration in the quahog, Venus mercenaria, for my B.Sc. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It continued at the Friday Harbor Marine Laboratory (FHL) of the University of Washington (UW) developing a biological oceanography MS thesis testing succinate dehydrogenase activity as a respiration proxy in Artemia salina. Upon realizing that the ETS, not the Krebs-Cycle, controlled the electron flux to O2, I developed the ETS idea to determine seawater OUR for a Ph.D. thesis at UW. The resulting assay led to the first direct measurements of deep-sea metabolism and allowed biochemical calculations of OUR profiles in the Costa Rica Dome, in the Peru upwelling, and in other ocean water columns. I continued this research at Maine’s Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science (BLOS), and at Quebec’s Institute Maurice Lamontagne (IML). Then, after moving to Spain, I used the stability of my pension to continue this research at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) where I am catalysing new thinking about ocean metabolism. Here, these topics are integrated into an autobiographic history of this science.

Wood is subject to degradation by biological agents. Therefore, studies are necessary to ensure its appropriate use, avoid economic losses. The objective of this study was to assess the natural resistance of Spanish cedar (Cedrela odorata), yellow ipe (Handroanthus serratifolius) and tauari (Couratari sp.) woods exposed under laboratory conditions to Pycnoporus sanguineus fungus, which causes white rot. The decay test was conducted according to the method defined in the American Society for Testing and Materials, and the intensity of biodeterioration was determined by mass loss of the three test woods and one control wood, pumpwood (Cecropia sp.), which has low natural resistance. Analysis of variance and Tukey’s test (p < 0.05) were used in the analysis of results. The wood species were classified as highly resistant and resistant to P. sanguineus. Yellow ipe was the most resistant species to fungus attack, whereas tauari was the most susceptible.

A new method for calculating the optical model potential from One Boson Exchange Potentials (OBEPs) is developed. The G-matrix is calculated by solving the Bethe-Goldstone equation in momentum space. Using vector brackets these G-matrix elements can be transformed from the center of mass representation into the laboratory system. This allows the evaluation of the (r-matrix interaction between nucleons in bound states and those in a plane-wave state. The lowest order contribution to the real part of the potential comes from the Hartree-Fock term, while the lowest order contribution to the imaginary part comes from the two-particle-one-hole (2p1h) diagram. Calculations for 16O and 40Ca have been carried out. Local approximations are obtained by describing the results for the central part in terms of a Woods-Saxon potential and those for the spin-orbit part in terms of the corresponding derivatives. The dependence of these potentials on energy and angular momentum is discussed. The parameters for these local approximations are in good agreement with empirical fits.

Quantitative methods and approaches have been playing an increasingly important role in cell biology in recent years. They involve making accurate measurements to test a predefined hypothesis in order to compare experimental data with predictions generated by theoretical models, an approach that has benefited physicists for decades. Building quantitative models in experimental biology not only has led to discoveries of counterintuitive phenomena but has also opened up novel research directions. To make the biological sciences more quantitative, we believe a two-pronged approach needs to be taken. First, graduate training needs to be revamped to ensure biology students are adequately trained in physical and mathematical sciences and vice versa. Second, students of both the biological and the physical sciences need to be provided adequate opportunities for hands-on engagement with the methods and approaches necessary to be able to work at the intersection of the biological and physical sciences. We present the annual Physiology Course organized at the Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, MA) as a case study for a hands-on training program that gives young scientists the opportunity not only to acquire the tools of quantitative biology but also to develop the necessary thought processes that will enable them to bridge the gap between these disciplines.

Colin Russell Austin, English by birth, initially graduated in Veterinary Science from the University of Sydney in 1936. The Second World War limited his career options, but he was fortunate to be employed by the CSIR Division of Animal Health in Sydney. In 1954 he was invited to join the staff of the Medical Research Council's laboratory in Mill Hill, London to study fertilization and early embryonic development in rats and rabbits. As a result, in 1962 he was asked to teach Fertilization and Gamete Physiology at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and subsequently became Professor of Embryology in the Medical School at Tulane University, New Orleans. This alerted the University of Cambridge to his potential and they created a special Charles Darwin Chair for him in 1967. This enabled him to support the work of his young student Robert Edwards on human in vitro fertilization and embryonic development that culminated in the award of the Nobel Prize to Edwards and Patrick Steptoe in 2010. Austin also devoted a great deal of his time to editing the 13-volume Cambridge University Press series of textbooks, Reproduction in Mammals, completing the series from his retirement home in Buderim, Queensland in 1986.

Over nearly five decades, David Christopher Gadsby pioneered biophysical research that advanced our mechanistic understanding of ion-transporting proteins in biological membranes. His passion for hands-on do-it-yourself electrophysiology, his depth of analytical rigor, and his idiosyncratic scientific aesthetic expanded the edge of discovery in two areas: the electrical character of the Na + pump, and the molecular workings of ‘cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator’ (CFTR), the chloride ion channel whose mutations cause cystic fibrosis. His approach was flavoured by an appreciation for common underlying features between these ostensibly distinct types of membrane-transport systems. While David's focus was first on the basic molecular biophysics of a problem, he was always attuned to implications of his discoveries for human health. Based in New York at The Rockefeller University throughout his independent scientific career, and at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, as a squid-season research-scientist, he was proficient in wrestling with problems spanning a wide swath of membrane biology: from determinants of the cardiac electrical waveform, to microsecond-timescale ionic currents in squid axons, to details of structure–mechanism relations in membrane pump and ion-channel proteins. He wore his eminence lightly and never distanced himself from the laboratory, where he often performed experiments with his own hands right up to his retirement. His reserved scientific personality, which demanded equally from his colleagues and himself immaculate data, unclouded logic, and substantive pertinence to the issues at hand, contrasted with his palpable joy in a good experiment and in his sea-loving life outside the lab.

Samuel Fessenden Clarke was the leading specialist on hydroids (phylum Cnidaria) in North America over the last quarter of the nineteenth century. During that period he published taxonomic papers on hydroids from both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the continent, from the Gulf of Mexico, and from the eastern Pacific off Central and South America. He also authored a section on hydrozoan biology for “The Riverside Natural History” series. Most of his papers on hydroids were published while he was in his twenties. Clarke described as new 61 nominal species, three nominal genera, and one nominal family, as well as two “varieties” of hydroids. A list of these, and their current taxonomic status, appears in the present work. Clarke consistently provided sound descriptions and locality data for all supposed new species, and drew accurate illustrations of most of them. His research on Hydrozoa, beyond alphataxonomy, was directed towards faunal distributions and the use of hydroid assemblages as biogeographic indicators. In addition to investigations on hydroids, Clarke carried out research on the developmental biology of amphibians and reptiles. His doctoral dissertation at Johns Hopkins University was based on the embryology of the “Spotted Salamander” (=Yellow-spotted Salamander), and he published a major paper on the habits and embryology of the American Alligator. Most of Clarke's career was devoted to academic duties at Williams College, Massachusetts, where he was recognized as a dedicated and inspiring teacher. He served the American Society of Naturalists in various capacities, including a term as its president, was an influential trustee of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, and promoted the study of science in American schools.

In the 19th century, the concept of experimental physiology originated in France with Claude Bernard, evolved in Germany stimulated by the teaching of Carl Ludwig, and later spread to Britain and then to the United States. The goal was to develop a physicochemical understanding of physiological phenomena. The first International Physiological Congress occurred in 1889 in Switzerland with an emphasis on experimental demonstrations. The XIIIth Congress, the first to be held outside of Europe, took place in Boston, MA, in 1929. It was a watershed meeting and indicated that American physiology had come of age. Meticulously organized, it was the largest congress to date, with over 1,200 participants from more than 40 countries. Getting to the congress was a cultural adventure, especially for the 400 scientists and their families from over 20 European countries, who sailed for 10 days on the S.S. Minnekahda. Many of the great physiologists of the world were in attendance, including 22 scientists who were either or would become Nobel Laureates. There were hundreds of platform presentations and many experimental demonstrations. The meeting was not without controversy as a conflict, still not completely settled, arose over the discovery of ATP. After the meeting, hundreds of participants made a memorable trip to the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA, which culminated in a “good old fashioned Cape Cod Clambake.” Although not as spectacular as the 1929 congress, the physiological congresses have continued with goals similar to those established more than a century ago.

In mid autumn 1992 the South American leaf-miner Liriomyza huidobrensis (Blanchard) was firstly recorded on greenhouse cucumbers, melons, beans and outdoor beans, broad beans and lettuce in the following locations of Crete: 1) Mires, Tymbaki, Antiskari at Messara valley of Southern Crete 2) Filissia in the midland and 3) Platanias and Kokini Chani in Northern Crete. The following year L. huidobrensis had spread all over Crete (Ierapetra, Stomion, Koutsoura, Chania etc.) while melon and potato leaves which were sent to our laboratory from mainland Greece, Pirgos (Peloponissos) and Chalkida (Evia island), were found heavily damaged by the same leafmincr. The different types of mines (it usually mines the leaf alongside the veins), the colour of pupae (blackish) and the sudden attack of some plants (lettuce, broad beans, onions) which have never been damaged by the known local leafminers as yet, indicated that it was a newly introduced species. The new leafminer alerted the growers due to the high crop losses on outdoor and greenhouse vegetables (lettuce, broad beans, beans etc) despite the frequent application of registered insecticides. In the following year an extensive survey started to investigate its distribution and host plant in the greenhouses and outdoor vegetables and ornamentals in Crete. L. huidobrensis, a quarantine insect, is a polyphagous leafminer distributed in most biogeographical regions. It is native in South American countries from which it was spread soon in North America, Asia and Europe. In Europe it was first noticed in Holland, England and France in 1989 causing considerable damage to vegetables and ornamentals. It mines the spongy mesophyll reducing the photosynthesis more than the other leafminers. This type of mines is not easily visible, unless the leaf is observed through transmitted sunlight or artificial light. This method was applied to ensure accurate detection of larvae and their parasitoids under a stereoscope. In our observations we found mines in leaves and cucumber fruits as well. Studies of its life cycle on greenhouse beans and melons revealed that most pupae (98%) remain on the bean leaves outside a hole in the autumn, while a few fall on the ground. The number of pupae collected from ten leaves per 24h was: 5.7±1.6 on lettuce, 17.07±4.1 on beans, 24.2±7.3 on melon, 6.0±2 on broad bean leaves. During the survey the following host plants were recorded: Chemical control could be effective by applying certain insecticides (abamectin, triazophos, imidacloprid, heptenophos etc.) while biological control seems to be rather effective by the known parasitoids, which are already used against the tomato leafminer Liriomyza bryoniae Kalt. Biological control of L. huidobrensis was effective on lettuce by means of repeated releases of Dacnusa sibirica Telenga and Diglyphus isaea (Walker) but so far native parasitoids proved to be able to control the pest. Mass trapping with coloured sticky traps seems to be also a potential method in IPM programmes. The mortality of pupae collected from heavily treated greenhouse plants with insecticides varied from 65 to 74% while that of untreated plants was between 18-25%. No pupal parasitoids were recorded but D. isaea and D. sibirica were both recorded as larval parasitoids. D. isaea was abundant all over the year while D. sibirica only in spring-summer period. These two parasitoids were able, in certain cases, to control sufficiently the leaf miner in untreated greenhouse cucumber and bean plants. The neem seed extract (Azadirachta indica) applied on outdoor tomatoes in Antiskari (Southern Crete) proved harmless both on hymenoptera and on the mirid predator Macrolophus caliginogus Wagner. Despite its weak larvicide action on L. huidobrensis it was very effective in conjuction with parasitoids consisting of a promising candidate in IPM programmes.

Here, we present the 3,443,800-bp complete genome sequence ofCurtobacteriumsp. strain MR_MD2014 (phylumActinobacteria). This strain was isolated from soil in Woods Hole, MA, as part of the 2014 Microbial Diversity Summer Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.

ABSTRACT Here, we report the genome sequence of Tenacibaculum mesophilum strain ECR, which was isolated from the river/ocean interface at Trunk River in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The isolation and sequencing were performed as part of the 2016 and 2018 Microbial Diversity courses at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

We report here the draft genome sequence of a strain of Tenacibaculum discolor (Bacteroidetes) that was isolated from the river-ocean interface at Trunk River in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The isolation and genomic sequencing were performed during the 2016 and 2018 Microbial Diversity summer programs at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

ABSTRACTTerrestrial fungi play critical roles in nutrient cycling and food webs and can shape macroorganism communities as parasites and mutualists. Although estimates for the number of fungal species on the planet range from 1.5 to over 5 million, likely fewer than 10% of fungi have been identified so far. To date, a relatively small percentage of described species are associated with marine environments, with ∼1,100 species retrieved exclusively from the marine environment. Nevertheless, fungi have been found in nearly every marine habitat explored, from the surface of the ocean to kilometers below ocean sediments. Fungi are hypothesized to contribute to phytoplankton population cycles and the biological carbon pump and are active in the chemistry of marine sediments. Many fungi have been identified as commensals or pathogens of marine animals (e.g., corals and sponges), plants, and algae. Despite their varied roles, remarkably little is known about the diversity of this major branch of eukaryotic life in marine ecosystems or their ecological functions. This perspective emerges from a Marine Fungi Workshop held in May 2018 at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. We present the state of knowledge as well as the multitude of open questions regarding the diversity and function of fungi in the marine biosphere and geochemical cycles.

0. IntroductionIf we follow the line of much literature surrounding airports and urban mobility, the emphasis often falls on the fact that these spaces are designed to handle the mega-scale and super-human pace of mass transit. Airports have rightly been associated with velocity, as zones of rapid movement managed by enormous processing systems that guide bodies and things in transit (Pascoe; Pearman; Koolhaas; Gordon; Fuller & Harley). Yet this emphasis tends to ignore the spectrum of tempos and flows that are at play in airport terminals — from stillness to the much exalted hyper-rapidity of mobilized publics in the go-go world of commercial aviation.In this photo essay I'd like to pull a different thread and ask whether it's possible to think of aeromobility in terms of “uneven, differential mobility” (Bissell 280). What would it mean to consider waiting and stillness as forms of bodily engagement operating over a number of different scales and temporalities of movement and anticipation, without privileging speed over stillness? Instead of thinking mobility and stillness as diametrically opposed, can we instead conceive of them as occupying a number of different spatio-temporal registers in a dynamic range of mobility? The following is a provisional "visual ethnography" constructed from photographs of air terminal light boxes I have taken over the last five years (in Amsterdam, London, Chicago, Frankfurt, and Miami). Arranged into a "taxonomy of differentiality", each of these images comes from a slightly different angle, mode or directionality. Each view of these still images displayed in billboard-scale light-emitting devices suggests that there are multiple dimensions of visuality and bodily experience at play in these image-objects. The airport is characterized by an abundance of what appears to be empty space. This may be due to the sheer scale of mass transport, but it also arises from a system of active and non-active zones located throughout contemporary terminals. This photo series emphasises the "emptiness" of these overlooked left-over spaces that result from demands of circulation and construction.1. We Move the WorldTo many travellers, airport gate lounges and their surrounding facilities are loaded with a variety of contradictory associations and affects. Their open warehouse banality and hard industrial sterility tune our bodies to the vast technical and commercial systems that are imbricated through almost every aspect of contemporary everyday life.Here at the departure gate the traveller's body comes to a moment's rest. They are granted a short respite from the anxious routines of check in, body scans, security, information processing, passport scanning, itineraries, boarding procedures and wayfaring the terminal. The landside processing system deposits them at this penultimate point before final propulsion into the invisible airways that pipe them into their destination. We hear the broadcasting of boarding times, check-in times, name's of people that break them away from stillness, forcing people to move, to re-arrange themselves, or to hurry up. Along the way the passenger encounters a variety of techno-spatial experiences that sit at odds with the overriding discourse of velocity, speed and efficiency that lie at the centre of our social understanding of air travel. The airline's phantasmagorical projections of itself as guarantor and enabler of mass mobilities coincides uncomfortably with the passenger's own wish-fulfilment of escape and freedom.In this we can agree with the designer Bruce Mau when he suggests that these projection systems, comprised of "openings of every sort — in schedules, in urban space, on clothes, in events, on objects, in sightlines — are all inscribed with the logic of the market” (Mau 7). The advertising slogans and images everywhere communicate the dual concept that the aviation industry can deliver the world to us on time while simultaneously porting us to any part of the world still willing to accept Diners, VISA or American Express. At each point along the way these openings exhort us to stop, to wait in line, to sit still or to be patient. The weird geographies depicted by the light boxes appear like interpenetrating holes in space and time. These travel portals are strangely still, and only activated by the impending promise of movement.Be still and relax. Your destination is on its way. 2. Attentive AttentionAlongside the panoramic widescreen windows that frame the choreography of the tarmac and flight paths outside, appear luminous advertising light boxes. Snapped tightly to grid and locked into strategic sightlines and thoroughfares, these wall pieces are filled with a rotating menu of contemporary airport haiku and ersatz Swiss graphic design.Mechanically conditioned air pumped out of massive tubes creates the atmosphere for a very particular amalgam of daylight, tungsten, and fluorescent light waves. Low-oxygen-emitting indoor plants are no match for the diesel-powered plant rooms that maintain the constant flow of air to every nook and cranny of this massive processing machine. As Rem Koolhaas puts it, "air conditioning has launched the endless building. If architecture separates buildings, air conditioning unites them" (Koolhaas). In Koolhaas's lingo, these are complex "junkspaces" unifying, colliding and coalescing a number of different circulatory systems, temporalities and mobilities.Gillian Fuller reminds us there is a lot of stopping and going and stopping in the global circulatory system typified by air-terminal-space.From the packing of clothes in fixed containers to strapping your belt – tight and low – stillness and all its requisite activities, technologies and behaviours are fundamental to the ‘flow’ architectures that organize the motion of the globalizing multitudes of today (Fuller, "Store" 63). It is precisely this functional stillness organised around the protocols of store and forward that typifies digital systems, the packet switching of network cultures and the junkspace of airports alike.In these zones of transparency where everything is on view, the illuminated windows so proudly brought to us by J C Decaux flash forward to some idealized moment in the future. In this anticipatory moment, the passenger's every fantasy of in-flight service is attended to. The ultimate in attentiveness (think dimmed lights, soft pillows and comfy blankets), this still image is captured from an improbable future suspended behind the plywood and steel seating available in the moment —more reminiscent of park benches in public parks than the silver-service imagined for the discerning traveller.3. We Know ChicagoSelf-motion is itself a demonstration against the earth-binding weight of gravity. If we climb or fly, our defiance is greater (Appleyard 180).The commercial universe of phones, cameras, computer network software, financial instruments, and an array of fancy new gadgets floating in the middle of semi-forgotten transit spaces constitutes a singular interconnected commercial organism. The immense singularity of these claims to knowledge and power loom solemnly before us asserting their rights in the Esperanto of "exclusive rollover minutes", "nationwide long distance", "no roaming charges" and insider local knowledge. The connective tissue that joins one part of the terminal to a commercial centre in downtown Chicago is peeled away, revealing techno-veins and tendrils reaching to the sky. It's a graphic view that offers none of the spectacular openness and flights of fancy associated with the transit lounges located on the departure piers and satellites. Along these circulatory ribbons we experience the still photography and the designer's arrangement of type to attract the eye and lure the body. The blobby diagonals of the telco's logo blend seamlessly with the skyscraper's ribbons of steel, structural exoskeleton and wireless telecommunication cloud.In this plastinated anatomy, the various layers of commercially available techno-space stretch out before the traveller. Here we have no access to the two-way vistas made possible by the gigantic transparent tube structures of the contemporary air terminal. Waiting within the less travelled zones of the circulatory system we find ourselves suspended within the animating system itself. In these arteries and capillaries the flow is spread out and comes close to a halt in the figure of the graphic logo. We know Chicago is connected to us.In the digital logic of packet switching and network effects, there is no reason to privilege the go over the stop, the moving over the waiting. These light box portals do not mirror our bodies, almost at a complete standstill now. Instead they echo the commercial product world that they seek to transfuse us into. What emerges is a new kind of relational aesthetics that speaks to the complex corporeal, temporal, and architectural dimensions of stillness and movement in transit zones: like "a game, whose forms, patterns and functions develop and evolve according to periods and social contexts” (Bourriaud 11). 4. Machine in the CaféIs there a possible line of investigation suggested by the fact that sound waves become visible on the fuselage of jet planes just before they break the sound barrier? Does this suggest that the various human senses are translatable one into the other at various intensities (McLuhan 180)?Here, the technological imaginary contrasts itself with the techno alfresco dining area enclosed safely behind plate glass. Inside the cafes and bars, the best businesses in the world roll out their biggest guns to demonstrate the power, speed and scale of their network coverage (Remmele). The glass windows and light boxes "have the power to arrest a crowd around a commodity, corralling them in chic bars overlooking the runway as they wait for their call, but also guiding them where to go next" (Fuller, "Welcome" 164). The big bulbous plane sits plump in its hangar — no sound barriers broken here. It reassures us that our vehicle is somewhere there in the network, resting at its STOP before its GO. Peeking through the glass wall and sharing a meal with us, this interpenetrative transparency simultaneously joins and separates two planar dimensions — machinic perfection on one hand, organic growth and death on the other (Rowe and Slutsky; Fuller, "Welcome").Bruce Mau is typical in suggesting that the commanding problem of the twentieth century was speed, represented by the infamous image of a US Navy Hornet fighter breaking the sound barrier in a puff of smoke and cloud. It has worked its way into every aspect of the design experience, manufacturing, computation and transport.But speed masks more than it reveals. The most pressing problem facing designers and citizens alike is growth — from the unsustainable logic of infinite growth in GDP to the relentless application of Moore's Law to the digital networks and devices that define contemporary society in the first world. The shift of emphasis from speed to growth as a time-based event with breaking points and moments of rupture has generated new possibilities. "Growth is nonlinear and unpredictable ... Few of us are ready to admit that growth is constantly shadowed by its constitutive opposite, that is equal partners with death” (Mau 497).If speed in part represents a flight from death (Virilio), growth invokes its biological necessity. In his classic study of the persistence of the pastoral imagination in technological America, The Machine in the Garden, Leo Marx charted the urge to idealize rural environments at the advent of an urban industrialised America. The very idea of "the flight from the city" can be understood as a response to the onslaught of technological society and it's deathly shadow. Against the murderous capacity of technological society stood the pastoral ideal, "incorporated in a powerful metaphor of contradiction — a way of ordering meaning and value that clarifies our situation today" (Marx 4). 5. Windows at 35,000 FeetIf waiting and stillness are active forms of bodily engagement, we need to consider the different layers of motion and anticipation embedded in the apprehension of these luminous black-box windows. In The Virtual Window, Anne Friedberg notes that the Old Norse derivation of the word window “emphasizes the etymological root of the eye, open to the wind. The window aperture provides ventilation for the eye” (103).The virtual windows we are considering here evoke notions of view and shelter, open air and sealed protection, both separation from and connection to the outside. These windows to nowhere allow two distinct visual/spatial dimensions to interface, immediately making the visual field more complex and fragmented. Always simultaneously operating on at least two distinct fields, windows-within-windows provide a specialized mode of spatial and temporal navigation. As Gyorgy Kepes suggested in the 1940s, the transparency of windows "implies more than an optical characteristic; it implies a broader spatial order. Transparency means a simultaneous perception of different spatial locations" (Kepes 77).The first windows in the world were openings in walls, without glass and designed to allow air and light to fill the architectural structure. Shutters were fitted to control air flow, moderate light and to enclose the space completely. It was not until the emergence of glass technologies (especially in Holland, home of plate glass for the display of commercial products) that shielding and protection also allowed for unhindered views (by way of transparent glass). This gives rise to the thesis that windows are part of a longstanding architectural/technological system that moderates the dual functions of transparency and separation. With windows, multi-dimensional planes and temporalities can exist in the same time and space — hence a singular point of experience is layered with many other dimensions. Transparency and luminosity "ceases to be that which is perfectly clear and becomes instead that which is clearly ambiguous" (Rowe and Slutsky 45). The light box air-portals necessitate a constant fluctuation and remediation that is at once multi-planar, transparent and "hard to read". They are informatic.From holes in the wall to power lunch at 35,000 feet, windows shape the manner in which light, information, sights, smells, temperature and so on are modulated in society. "By allowing the outside in and the inside out, [they] enable cosmos and construction to innocently, transparently, converge" (Fuller, "Welcome" 163). Laptop, phone, PDA and light box point to the differential mobilities within a matrix that traverses multiple modes of transparency and separation, rest and flight, stillness and speed.6. Can You Feel It?Increasingly the whole world has come to smell alike: gasoline, detergents, plumbing, and junk foods coalesce into the catholic smog of our age (Illich 47).In these forlorn corners of mobile consumption, the dynamic of circulation simultaneously slows and opens out. The surfaces of inscription implore us to see them at precisely the moment we feel unseen, unguided and off-camera. Can you see it, can you feel it, can you imagine the unimaginable, all available to us on demand? Expectation and anticipation give us something to look forward to, but we're not sure we want what's on offer.Air travel radicalizes the separation of the air traveller from ground at one instance and from the atmosphere at another. Air, light, temperature and smell are all screened out or technologically created by the terminal plant and infrastructure. The closer the traveller moves towards stillness, the greater the engagement with senses that may have been ignored by the primacy of the visual in so much of this circulatory space. Smell, hunger, tiredness, cold and hardness cannot be screened out.In this sense, the airplanes we board are terminal extensions, flying air-conditioned towers or groundscrapers jet-propelled into highways of the air. Floating above the horizon, immersed in a set of logistically ordained trajectories and pressurized bubbles, we look out the window and don't see much at all. Whatever we do see, it's probably on the screen in front of us which disconnects us from one space-time-velocity at the same time that it plugs us into another set of relations. As Koolhaas says, junkspace is "held together not by structure, but by skin, like a bubble" (Koolhaas). In these distended bubbles, the traveler momentarily occupies an uncommon transit space where stillness is privileged and velocity is minimized. The traveler's body itself is "engaged in and enacting a whole kaleidoscope of different everyday practices and forms" during the course of this less-harried navigation (Bissell 282).7. Elevator MusicsThe imaginary wheel of the kaleidoscope spins to reveal a waiting body-double occupying the projected territory of what appears to be a fashionable Miami. She's just beyond our reach, but beside her lies a portal to another dimension of the terminal's vascular system.Elevators and the networks of shafts and vents that house them, are to our buildings like veins and arteries to the body — conduits that permeate and structure the spaces of our lives while still remaining separate from the fixity of the happenings around them (Garfinkel 175). The terminal space contains a number of apparent cul-de-sacs and escape routes. Though there's no background music piped in here, another soundtrack can be heard. The Muzak corporation may douse the interior of the elevator with its own proprietary aural cologne, but at this juncture the soundscape is more "open". This functional shifting of sound from figure to ground encourages peripheral hearing, providing "an illusion of distended time", sonically separated from the continuous hum of "generators, ventilation systems and low-frequency electrical lighting" (Lanza 43).There is another dimension to this acoustic realm: “The mobile ecouteur contracts the flows of information that are supposed to keep bodies usefully and efficiently moving around ... and that turn them into functions of information flows — the speedy courier, the networking executive on a mobile phone, the scanning eyes of the consumer” (Munster 18).An elevator is a grave says an old inspector's maxim, and according to others, a mechanism to cross from one world to another. Even the quintessential near death experience with its movement down a long illuminated tunnel, Garfinkel reminds us, “is not unlike the sensation of movement we experience, or imagine, in a long swift elevator ride” (Garfinkel 191).8. States of SuspensionThe suspended figure on the screen occupies an impossible pose in an impossible space: half falling, half resting, an anti-angel for today's weary air traveller. But it's the same impossible space revealed by the airport and bundled up in the experience of flight. After all, the dimension this figures exists in — witness the amount of activity in his suspension — is almost like a black hole with the surrounding universe collapsing into it. The figure is crammed into the light box uncomfortably like passengers in the plane, and yet occupies a position that does not exist in the Cartesian universe.We return to the glossy language of advertising, its promise of the external world of places and products delivered to us by the image and the network of travel. (Remmele) Here we can go beyond Virilio's vanishing point, that radical reversibility where inside and outside coincide. Since everybody has already reached their destination, for Virilio it has become completely pointless to leave: "the inertia that undermines your corporeity also undermines the GLOBAL and the LOCAL; but also, just as much, the MOBILE and the IMMOBILE” (Virilio 123; emphasis in original).In this clinical corner of stainless steel, glass bricks and exit signs hangs an animated suspension that articulates the convergence of a multitude of differentials in one image. 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