Balticon 41.48 – Interview with Dr. John Cmarr and Laura Burns
Dr. John Cmarr and Laura Burns
- He’s an infectious disease specialist and MD. She’s a rocket scientist. Together they’re The Power Couple of Science
- Laura works on the James Webb Space Telescope: launching 2013
- Our opinions are our own
- From an intellectual perspective, infectious diseases are cool
- Laura doesn’t want John to bring his work home
- She can’t bring her work home either, it’s the size of a football field
- Lego model of JWST
- The life size mock up of the JWST
- You can’t service this telescope
- It’s at the L2 Lagrangian point, 1 million miles from the earth
- No R2-D2 to make repairs while it’s in service
- The video of the JWST unfolding – Rocket Science Origami
- 6.5 meter main mirror
- The schizophrenic interview, switching back to John
- No Lego models of diseases
- John talks about his daily work
- AIDS, drug resistant bacteria, overuse of antibiotics
- PROMO: Serve It Cold
- PROMO: World Fantasy Con 2008 Podcast
- The current thinking on anti-bacterial soap and other products
- Bottom line: wash your hands
- Some bacteria have adapted to live in anti-bacterial solutions
- Laura’s person pet peeve about how people deal with virus outbreaks
- CDC has official hand washing guidelines
- Diseases we have gotten at work: Norovirus and Whooping Cough
- Using bleach can transfer organisms into the bleach source, so treat it as a single use item
- Back to talking about Space!
- Would you go to space if you could?
- Laura always wanted to work in the field of space
- Hubble pictures disappear faster than free cookies at Balticon
- Laura is working in China this summer. International Space University Summer Session.
- She’s blogging about it
- It’s not just science, it’s also politics
- scifilaura.blogspot.com
- www.jwst.nasa.gov
- www.saintnickanuck.com
August 8th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Fascinating couple. I’m looking forwarad to JWST going into operation.
I really liked the discussion about the overuse of antibiotics and explanation of how soap works. There is a bacteria in soil that helps to fight depression. So, this explains why some people love gardening, working with the earth. http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/raw-data-is-dirt-the-new-prozac
May 20th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
As I have revisited this today, in thinking about upcoming Balticon 42, there were a couple of clarifications I want to make to the interview. (I’ll blame it on it being the last day of an exhausting con at the time of recording
):
1. I completely left out talking about the whole alcohol hand-gel concept – as opposed to anti-bacterial soap, those do work, and kill via direct toxic effect on bacteria and viruses… much in the same way that bleach does. Speaking of which:
2. There are several varieties of bacteria that are resistant to bleach’s killing effects. Fortunately, none of them have caused any significant disease in humans as of yet. Here, I mean “bleach” as in some strong dilution of a pure bleach solution. There are bacteria in hospitals that do cause human disease that have developed the ability to subsist, and thrive, in various cleaning solutions, but these are not typically composed of pure bleach.
See you in a few days!