As well as battering New York and much of the east coast, superstorm Sandy has taken its toll on vital scientific research and equipment.
At New York University鈥檚 Medical Center, almost 10,000 genetically engineered mice perished in the flooded cellars of the Smilow Research Center, destroying a decade鈥檚 worth of work into heart disease, cancer, autism and schizophrenia. 鈥淚t鈥檚 an absolute tragedy any way you look at it,鈥� says Gordon Fishell, head of a neuroscience lab at the centre, who has lost more than 5000 mice.
Fishell said he had been from other labs to help replace and rebuild Smilow鈥檚 lost equipment and animals. Nearby Weill Cornell Medical College has cleared 1000 tanks to house the centre鈥檚 zebrafish, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has promised to replace some of the lost mice.
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鈥淲e were fortunate to come through this better than some of our colleagues in the region, and our researchers have been reaching out to colleagues who did suffer losses,鈥� Dagnia Zeidlickis of CSHL told 快猫短视频.
Even equipment designed to study the superstorm wasn鈥檛 spared. Of 28 radars in the coastal network stretching from North Carolina to Massachusetts, 17 were silent after the storm.
Silent radar stations
Each radar station consists of an antenna that measures the speed of ocean currents by receiving reflected radio waves from the sea surface. The antennas are controlled by nearby 鈥渟hacks鈥� full of electrical equipment that log the data. Head of the project, Scott Glenn of Rutgers University in New Jersey, says that Sandy washed four shacks out to sea, as well as 17 of the antennas, but all the others remain and should be easily repaired.
That鈥檚 a relief as Glenn describes the records as 鈥渁n amazing data set鈥� that could potentially save lives in the future. 鈥淚t will be critical for how we study hurricanes over the next few years by revealing how the ocean responds in unprecedented detail, and how the intensity of a storm is set by the ocean,鈥� he says.
As much data as possible was downloaded remotely, but Glenn is confident there will be more stored in the remaining shacks.
Encouragingly, the team successfully retrieved an instrument on Monday from New York harbour, designed to record data on temperatures, salinity and sediment levels as Sandy hit.
