Self-promotion for a presentation about my IGY collection and blog

A few years ago I joined my local stamp club, the Philatelic Society of Lancaster County. I finally made it to a live meeting just before the covid era, after which meetings were moved online. And there they still remain.

Meetings via Zoom have been held twice a month, agendas including business of the chapter, a keynote speaker, and sharing of items of interest by attendees. Although there are dues-paying memberships for the local chapter, anyone can drop in on these meetings.

At the meeting this coming Wednesday, I will be the keynote speaker. I'll be leading attendees through a powerpoint (using Google Slides presentation software, which I've been very pleased with) focusing on my IGY collections of philatelic and other materials, and on this blog. The Zoom meeting will begin at 6:30 pm (EDST), and my presentation will start after the business portion of the meeting has been completed. My guess is that I will speak for about 45 minutes. The meeting will be recorded. I hope to have a recording of my presentation that I can edit and make available, along with the presentation file. But in case you would like to attend live, here is the Zoom invitation:

Join the Zoom Meeting, Wednesday 27 April, 2022, 6:30 pm Eastern Daylight Savings Time:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83188544047?pwd=RlhoUDQ0ZkxaU3NGRHdFbmNzaWQ4QT09

The American Philatelic Society lists about 400 stamps clubs from around the world. Maybe there is one near you!

Happy Earth Day; the International Biological Program

Today is Earth Day, first celebrated in 1970, when I was an undergraduate. One might draw a line from the IGY, the most ambitious attempt ever to study the Earth as a planet, to Earth Day a dozen years later. The nationwide events surrounding the first Earth Day were spurred by the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 and the growing concern about the vulnerability of Earth's natural systems to human impact.

The American Philatelic Society has a nice web page for today, on Earth Day Stamps. I'll have to double check if that is changed daily or regularly, in which case I will add it to my blog list in the sidebar. Earth Day stamps would be a nice collecting topic, surely one that has been done. I think I own one such stamp somewhere, but I can't find it. Searching on the colnect web site yields 155 Earth Day stamps.

In writing my last post about biological studies during the IGY, I came across a nicely complementary article on the International Biological Program (IBP):"Big science and big data in biology: from the International Geophysical Year through the International Biological Program to the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, 1957–Present"; Elena Aronova, Karen S. Baker and Naomi Oreskes; Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences , Vol. 40, No. 2, Spring 2010), pp. 183-224; available here if you have access to JSTOR. 

This very well written (so I will use direct quotes below) article was quite interesting in its discussion of "big science," the historical relationship between the IGY and the IBP, and the similarities and differences between these two programs. It states that 

"the Big Science of the IGY was distinguished by its emphasis on and the visibility of Big Data—a synoptic collection of observational data on a global geographic scale." 

It goes on to say that the 

"International Biological Program (IBP, 1964–1974), conceived shortly after the end of IGY, intended to emulate it by setting up a worldwide research initiative to accumulate a vast array of datasets on different living phenomena on a global scale, deploying standardized methods and interdisciplinary collaborations. The IBP is often referred to as one of the first realized Big Science projects in biology, and is often cited anecdotally as a biological version of the IGY."

As the Bulletin article covered in my last post also suggested, Aronova et al. state that 

"in contrast to the centralized worldwide coordination of the geophysical research initiatives during the IGY, the biological activities were without exception the result of individual initiative, with support coming from diverse sources." ... The "biological programs launched under the auspices of the IGY became the first testing ground for the planning of the IBP." 

The IBP came to focus on ecological studies whereby 

"the properties of the Earth were regarded as determined not only by the chemical and physical properties of the Earth but also by biological activities, which in turn were controlled, at least partially, by the physical properties of the environment." 

I like that systemic approach, including the feedback loops.

The IBP seems to have been less successful than the IGY. Not all biologists bought into the emphasis on ecology, a science which seemed more applied and "political" than other areas of biology. Programs were fragmented and idiosyncratic. Data were not centrally archived and shared as had happened for the IGY with the World Data Centers. And the hopes to construct synthetic models based on those data were unsuccessful. 

I was surprised to find that, in contrast to the IGY, only one stamp was issued for the International Biological Program. Maybe that is commensurate with the perceived lack of its success. 

I've just ordered a cover franked with that stamp:

International Biological Program first day cover with a block of Canada stamp 507 (1970)

The stamp shows a microscopic view of the inside of a leaf, not a great design in my opinion. The cachet on this cover showing the sun, soil, oceans, plants, land-based animals, and fish suggests the multifaceted nature of the Earth's biosphere, reminiscent of the interrelated Earth systems covered during the IGY. All these parts, in quasi-equilibrium, that people's actions have often thrown out of kilter. Let's be kind to Mother Earth.

IGY Bulletin, Number 9, March 1958 - Life sciences in the IGY

Research workers in the life sciences were encouraged to utilize access to remote regions during the IGY to pursue work in their own disciplines. Marine biology studies were conducted on all IGY oceanographic cruises. The nature of Antarctic and Arctic studies are very briefly summarized below.

Antarctic

    Dentistry. Polar expeditions had already shown dental disorders such as severe toothaches among participants (NY Times, 1956). The Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery requested Navy dentists stationed at Little America and McMurdo Sound to undertake investigations.

    Human physiology. Extreme cold and long stays posed various health challenges to Antarctic personnel. Physiological measurements were to be made, comparing people who worked outside, inside, and on traverse parties.

    Psychology. Stress, isolation, and deprivation were polar psychology (Nature, 1991) issues for Antarctic personnel (and perhaps scientists were thinking ahead a few years to what astronauts might experience in other extreme environments). Records of such feelings were to be recorded via written diaries and voice recordings from workers at four IGY Antarctic stations and analyzed by the Division of Neuropsychiatry, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.

    Botany. The Arctic Institute of North America was to study the vegetation of Antarctica, specifically lichens.

    Animal physiology. Frozen whole specimens of Adelie and Emperor penguins were to be collected and studied for the anatomy of their respiratory systems.

    Animal migration. The annual migration of the skua is one of the animal kingdom's longest, with round-trip journeys up to 20,000 miles. It was studied by banding these birds during the IGY.

Arctic

    Sea ice studies. The physiology of frozen organisms such as bacteria, diatoms and protozoa were to be studied. Interestingly, millimeter-sized invertebrate tardigrades, or water bears, can freeze and survive, as well as be boiled alive; following the same link will tell you that frozen iguanas fall from trees but live on.

Tardigrade (World Atlas)

    Marine biology. Phytoplankton, zooplankton, and other organisms were to be sampled from drifting ice stations. Here is a video and its transcript I missed in my earlier posts about operations on top of Drift Station Alpha.