A winter breeze takes my life. Takes my soul far away.
Tens of thousands of New York City employees who did not report for work during the snowstorm on Thursday could lose a day of leave — even though Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sent out a predawn message that day saying that all city nonemergency offices and schools would be closed.
A memo went out to the heads of all city agencies on Monday saying that office employees will lose a day of vacation or comp time unless they write an acceptable excuse note.
{ NY Times | Continue reading }
You’re probably wondering how on earth microbes have anything to do with the 3 feet of snow you had to dig your car out from under last week…
I have two “believe it or not” statements for today:
First, believe it or not, microbes are ubiquitous in the Earth’s atmosphere (Bowers et al. 2009, and others). “Ubiquitous” is a fantastic word that simply means “absolutely everywhere” and it’s especially true with microbes. (…) Microbes are also extremely abundant in the air around us, above and beyond our reach, floating in the breeze and being carried thousands of miles on trans-oceanic trade winds. (…)
[Two]: many of those atmospheric microbes have been found to nucleate ice (Bauer et al. 2003). What I mean by “nucleate ice” is that they can serve as the starting point for ice crystals to begin to form.
