Between the Tides

A minus 3.2 tide on July 13th turned the beach at Burfoot Park into this shimmering summer tableau (with the help of some cumulus clouds and beachcombers in "photographer's red" shirts). This is the second super-low tide beach visit I've made here in South Sound and I must admit that I have mixed feelings about it. Here, exposed and vulnerable, are a myriad intertidal creatures adapted to survive occasional exposure to the air...and hundreds of trampling feet. Moonsnails, sand dollars, ghost shrimp, sea stars, and hermit crabs were all there for the looking, photographing, poking, prodding, digging, and handling. I loved the sight, last year, of busses of elementary school kids scampering around at low tide, full of glee and curiosity, but is it okay to crush them on our way to learning about them?  

Here (above), the first surge of the incoming tide reaches the beach. The next minus 3.2 tide occurs in 2011.

As if jealous of my attention to what lay at my feet, the sky put on quite a show Of course I aimed my camera upward. But the drama in the sky didn't last for long. The weekend's gray mornings (and early afternoons) made conditions just right for bellyflopping on the dock at Zittel's Marina at high tide (plus 11.1) where bouquets of frilled anemones grow on the pilings and tires (below).

I spent well over two hours gazing at the display of anemones of various sizes and colors (white to bright orange), tube worms, ochre sea stars, nudibranchs, sea cucumbers, comb jellies, and an unfortunate egg yolk jelly. If you look very carefully at the photo below you can see the jelly's tentacles being pulled into the centers (mouths) of the surrounding anemones.

Both the jelly and anemone are members of the phylum Cnidaria (pronounced nye-dare-ee-uh). The anemones are sessile polyps, the jelly's free-swimming medusa. Both are passive predators equipped with tentacles, some containing cells called nematocysts. These cells may contain venom or be barbed or sticky. When they are stimulated--by passing bit of flotsam, zooplankton, or small fish--the nematocysts rapidly uncoil and subdue the prey. The tentacles then maneuver the prey into the anemone's or jelly's mouth.

So, who is preying on whom here? Or is this a case similar to the clown fish and the anemone? Or is the hapless jelly simply stuck in the throat of an overstimulated anemone? Is there some kind of mutualism happening here--both cnidarians feeding off each other's trapped prey? This scene brings to mind the cartoon image of a person unable to let go of an electrical cord that is shocking them. I am sure there is an explanation. I will try to find it.

The Sky is Crying

Because I am temporarily bereft of William Frey's book on crying, I am now perusing another book, Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears, by Tom Lutz (Norton, 1999).
In my last posting, I promised to share my discovery of what exactly makes us cry—the metaphorical equivalent of the condensation nuclei (airborne dust, grit) water vapor condenses on to form a water droplet that may, under the right conditions, become visible to us as a cloud. I knew finding the answer or answers wasn’t going to be easy and that I would probably have to learn something about how tears are formed. I had written paper on the eye in elementary school (sadly, 5th, not 1st grade). I still have this paper and bring out occasionally to read to my family while cringing, laughing (and weeping) at my very unscientific approach to my topic.
Here is what I had to say about tears in my paper, written in my favorite blue felt-tip pen and in all caps:

“IF THE EYE IS VERY DRY OR SOME GERMS GET IN THE EYE, THE TEARS WILL FORM, BUT THEY WILL NOT APPEAR ON YOUR CHEEKS BECAUSE THERE ARE TWO CANALS BELOW THE EYE THAT CARRY THE TEARS OFF INTO THE NOSE. [LOL] THE TEARS WILL COME FROM THE TOP OF THE EYE AND RUN DOWN TO THE LOWER EYELID AND GO TOWARD THE NOSE UNTIL IT REACHES THE NOSE. IT WILL GO INTO THE CANAL AND INTO THE NOSE. IF A FOREIGN OBJECT GETS INTO THE EYE AND CAUSES PAIN OR EMOTIONAL STRESS THE TEAR GLAND WILL 'OVERFLOW' SO IT WILL PRODUCE TOO MUCH LIQUID WHICH WE CALL 'CRYING.'"

Wow.
I seem to be describing some kind of sewage system terminating at the nose.

In fact, the system in the body that produces tears, the lacrimal system, has secretory and excretory functions. That is, it produces tears and drains them away, so while the sewer metaphor is unfortunate, it is partially apt. The lacrimal system includes glands and ducts connected to a network of ganglia and nerves in the brain and spinal cord. Lutz's diagram of the lacrimal system (below, sorry about the focus) is not unlike a weather chart; the lines and direction arrows of neural pathways resembling the lines meteorologists use to indicate the direction and flow of frontal systems across the earth’s surface.

Not to force a metaphor, but dern if Lutz’s illustration of the lacrimal gland and excretory ducts (below) does not resemble a drawing, albeit a primitive one, of a cumulonimbus cloud with rain falling from its base. It even looks like it’s watering a tidy “lawn” of eyelashes!
Since I am interested in how tears are formed not drained, I will focus on the lacrimal gland and avoid the nose since, as I think you will agree, I gave it a pretty thorough treatment in my paper.
The main, cloud-like lacrimal gland is located between the frontal bone and the eyeball and, in conjuction with more than eighty much smaller lacrimal glands, produces basal tears continuously at the rate of 5-10 oz. a day. Basal tears lubricate the eye. Some of the basal tears evaporate between blinks of the eye and some is drained through the puncta—the little pink bump on the nose side of your eye where errant gnats often end up, drowned. From the puncta, the tears flow into the lacrimal sac (which looks just like a drainage canal!) and then into the nasolacrimal sac (another canal!) which empties into the…nose.

Now my mind has completely de-railed and I am thinking of re-writing Nicolai Gogol’s satirical short story, “The Nose,” as a tearjerker. Luckily I have my book of Gogol stories on my shelf downstairs; luckily, after re-reading the first few pages, I decide not to take on Yakovlevich, Kovalyov, and the evils of Russia’s upperclass symbolized by a giant snubbing nose.

Back to tears. In addition to producing 5-10 oz. of basal tears, the lacrimal glands produce exceptional quantities of emotional tears (I am hunting for estimates of exact quantity) causing the puncta to runneth over. Onto the cheeks.

Meteorologically, the runneth over part is the rain. At what point does a cloud runneth over? Several types of clouds produce rain, so my explanation here is simplified. According to my Main Rain Man, Michael Allaby, in his fabulous Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate, a cloud droplet 0.0008 inch across must increase its volume more than million times to attain the size of a raindrop 0.08 inches across.

Depending on the temperature inside the cloud, water droplets grow to this size by colliding with each other or by freezing into aggregations (snowflakes). When droplets are at least 0.04 inches across, gravity gets the best of them and they begins their descent from the base of the cloud to the earth. These droplets are still potential, not actual, rainfall. Like sad thoughts you can stifle before you choke up and get teary, some rain evaporates before it reaches the ground. Raindrops or ice crystals that fall from or are left behind a cloud but do not reach the ground are called virga (below).

Alas, dear reader, I must leave you here--high and dry--as I am now over my head in cloud physics. When I can explain to myself how exactly a cloud droplet becomes a successful, ground-reaching raindrop, I will let you know. Promise.

Will You Cry For Us?

This week, I started reading physiologist William Frey’s fascinating book, Crying: The Mystery of Tears, which chronicles his research on in the 1970s and 1980s. I am interested to learn if there is an emotional equivalent of condensation nuclei—the tiny airborne particles of dust, salt, grit, and soot that water vapor collect and condense on to form a droplet of liquid water. One particle of dust does not a raindrop make—other factors are involved, just as there are in the complex act of crying.

Raindrop making is, essentially, a mechanical process. I was interested in the mechanics of tear making (the workings of the nervous system, lacrimal glands, tear ducts, and chemistry of tears) but more in discovering emotional motes that triggered the production of tear drops. Actor Bill Murray put forth one possibility in the hilarious movie, “The Man Who Knew Too Little,” when he asks a woman he thinks is playing the role of an actress, “How do you people do it? What, do you poke your eye or think about your dead dog?” And then he begins to poke his finger in his eye and fake-sob “My dog is dead! My dog is dead!” to no avail.

To simplify things, I began with an equation that would look like this on an SAT test: dust is to raindrops as ___________is to tears. I picked up Frey’s book to fill in the blank. [NOTE: I borrowed Frey’s book through the Timberland Library’s fabulous Interlibrary Loan Service. Sadly, I had to return the unrenewable book last Friday before filling in that blank. I have requested a second loan. In the meantime, what I learned about how Frey and his colleagues designed his experiment in psychogenic (emotional) tears is quite entertaining and is a great lesson in thinking outside the box.]

In 1977, Frey set out to study how psychogenic tears are different chemically from the basal tears our bodies produce to lubricate our eyes and the reflex tears we produce in response to a stimulant such as onion vapors (actually hydrochloric acid) or an errant and doomed gnat. In 1977, the field of psychogenic tears was a virtually unexplored and Frey had to figure out how to get a supply of tears to study. He placed an ad in the daily paper with the headline “Will You Cry for Us?” He got 110 calls in the first day, withdrew the ad, and then invited his volunteers to his lab for the easy part: the reflex tears.

To get a supply of these tears for chemical comparison to the psychogenic tears, Frey exposed his volunteers to an onion being ground up in a blender (his first try with horseradish failed; the volunteer who swallowed a spoonful of this potent root threw it up.)

Now for the emotional tears. Frey threw out the first idea that came into his head: tell his volunteer weepers that their dog had died, collect their tears in a test tube, and then explain that he had lied in the name of science. Fido is fine, thanks for the tears. Frey next called in a stage actress who claimed to be a pro at crying on demand in front of hundreds of people; for some reason, she was unable to produce any tears in Frey’s lab. Frey thought the ambience of his lab may have been to blame. He thought about asking his volunteers to take a test tube home to collect their own tears in their homes, but this presented problems with contamination, storage, transportation to the lab. He expanded his study group, but a remarkable few could produce tears after being asked to think sad thoughts for a good long while. What was inhibiting them? Frey couldn’t figure it out. He hauled out the big guns: the tearjerker.

Volunteers were outfitted with special eyewear Frey had had an optician and glassblower create. Lens-free eyeglass frames held small glass cups to catch the tears. After a trial run, it was discovered that the one-size-fits-all eyewear did not fit all—and most of the tears flowed to either side of the cups, following the varying contours of each face. Frey decided movie viewers would just have to skip the popcorn and use their free hand to hold a 6mm test tube below their eyelids.

He selected four movies: “Sundays & Cybele” (only 10% of the group cried, though Frey says this was the saddest movie he had ever seen), “The Champ” (15% cried, mostly guys), “Brian’s Song” (50%, again, mostly guys, but I remember crying at this one as a young teen), and “All Mine to Give” (a film I have never heard of, but managed to win the Best Tearjerker Award with a whopping 70% success rate.)

Frey discovered that the most successful tearjerkers were based on true stories and must have long periods of sadness or many episodes of sadness—so long, drawn-out sorrow that allows the audience time to fully engage with the story and characters.

So the tears were pouring and flowing into the test tubes which were then frozen in Frey’s lab. The absurdity of a Tear Freezer caught the attention of the media, and soon Frey was on the national news, including Charles Osgood’s CBS program “Universe.”

What Frey learned was that the tears his volunteers collected during the movies were more voluminous than those collected over the onions and…they had 25 % more protein. Subsequent studies found that emotional tears contain 30 times more manganese than is found in human blood. Manganese is linked to depression. The lacrimal gland (around the eyes) concentrates and removes manganese. Crying, therefore, may actually stave off depression. Frey also discovered several hormones in emo-tears, including ones that are indicators of stress.

Need a good cry? Add Brian’s Song to your queue. Get out your handkerchiefs!

Flotsam and Snarks Tonight in Olympia!

Tonight (Tuesday, July 13) Science Cafe of Olympia welcomes Dr. Curt Ebbesmeyer who will discuss flotsam in the news including the famous Disembodied Feet, Snarks, Garbage Patche, and the latest on the BP oil spill. Dr. Ebbesmeyer has worked in the oil industry for 40 years and is the author (with Eric Scigliano) of the recent book Flotsametrics and the Floating World.(Smithsonian Press). This should be a lively slide presentation and discussion. To see a few short video clips of Ebbesmeyer explaining how he tracks flotsam to learn the secrets of ocean currents, Click here

Science Cafe of Olympia is held at Batdorf & Bronson Coffee House on Capitol Way in Olympia on the second Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. Lectures are free and hours extended for coffee, tea, pastries.