在人们印象中，科学家是令人羡慕的职业，然而科研工作的艰辛往往不为外人所知。美国著名杂志Popular Science（《科技新时代》）总结了本年度最让人瞠目结舌的科研工作，包括猴子性生活观察者、理论物理学家、飓风猎人、医疗垃圾焚烧工、水蛭研究者……本文节选了其中五类工作的介绍，更多内容可登陆/node/30908阅读。
It might seem sad, after years of study, to wind up gathering 1)sewer rats or burning great, 2)stinking heaps of urine samples and bloody 3)gauze. But that’s the path some professionals choose—and you’re lucky they did.
If you 4)freak out when 5)turbulence threatens to 6)topple your 7)ginger ale, you probably won’t get into the U.S. Air Force Reserve’s 53rd Weather 8)Reconnaissance Squadron. Based at Keesler Air Force Base in 9)Biloxi, Mississippi, the 20 pilots and their crews fly into the eyes of dangerous hurricanes, usually four times on missions of up to 12 hours. Think of it: After making it through, they circle around to do it again. Why risk it when satellites and radar do a 10)bang-up job of tracking storms? Because it’s hard to 11)gauge the strength and growth of a hurricane without measuring the pressure in its eye, and although radar can map the center of a storm to within 60 miles, being inside it brings accuracy to within two miles. Missions are 12)round-the-clock when a storm is on, and the goal is to 13)parachute two-foot-long instruments called 14)dropsondes through the storm to measure 15)barometric pressure, wind speed, and so on. It’s a 16)maniac’s job. Since the 1960s, four flights—36 people—have been lost. One plane returned so damaged that it was sent directly to the 17)scrap heap.
Ever wonder where your 18)tonsils and 19)gallbladder go once the 20)anesthesia 21)wears off? If your doctors are following the law, those go out the door as medical waste. At BioMedical Waste Solutions, based in Port Arthur, Texas, a fleet of 22)leakproof trucks brings tons of trash each day to its processing facility, where a technician wearing gloves, 23)goggles and a protective suit pulls the bags of waste from the tubs and loads them into a plastic-lined stainless-steel 24)hopper, which is wheeled into a 6-by-13-foot 25)autoclave. The operator vacuums the air out of the chamber before injecting it with 45 psi of 300ºF steam, cooking and 26)sterilizing the 27)syringes, bloody gauze, and bottles of 28)semen and urine for 40 minutes. (Limbs and 29)chemo supplies go to specialty 30)incinerators.) The aroma is what 31)gets to you. “It smells like dog food mixed with burning plastic,” says Wes Sonnier, who began the company in 2005. The steaming 32)glop, which is full of melted rubber gloves, bandages and syringes, is then machine-compacted before being dropped off at the municipal dump.
For Mark Siddall and his colleagues from the leech lab at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the primary tool for field research is a pair of shorts. “Fieldwork involves wading through swamps, allowing leeches to crawl onto us,” explains Siddall, the museum’s 34)curator, whose subjects are increasingly being used in 35)reconstructive surgery and in the development of 36)anticoagulants. In the past decade, Siddall has led leech walks everywhere from Argentina to Thailand. He says, “You can collect hundreds on your body just over one walk.” To remove a sucker, he simply peels off the edge with his fingernail, since burned leeches tend to 37)regurgitate into the wound. Why, God, why? Siddall has discovered or studied dozens of new species, including a leech that prefers frogs and one that likes hippo 38)anus. And the danger? “So far, no leech-borne diseases have been identified,” he says. “And to the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever been 39)exsanguinated.”
Dying is easy. The study of how an animal wandering the 41)tundra becomes a fossil underground: That’s hard. To familiarize themselves with the mechanics of death and decay, taphonomists study the 42)disintegration of worms, elephants and even humans. Travis Rayne Pickering, a taphonomist and 43)paleoanthropologist at the 44)University of Wisconsin, concentrates on big cat kills in Africa. The idea is to create a reference to help figure out whether fossil animals were killed by early humans or by predators like big cats. Pickering and his team 45)scour the countryside for the remains of a kill to assess the aftermath and 46)flay the 47)carcass. “Sometimes the flesh is loose enough to get your fingers in there and pull it off. But it usually takes quite a bit of boiling to get the skin off the head, and there’s the brain tissue to get out as well,” says Pickering.
There are plenty of technical problems on the way to Mars: how to avoid excess radiation, maintain food supplies, and generally not die. But the real 48)hazard between here and there is 49)going nuts. That’s why this spring, six participants in the European Space Agency and Russia’s Institute for Biomedical Problems’s Mars500 program are going to lock themselves in a series of metal tubes in a facility in Moscow for 520 days, roughly the time it should take to travel 100 million miles to Mars, spend 30 days there, and return. That’s a long time without a shower or a window. Psychologists and biologists will be observing the effects of cramped quarters and social isolation on the four Russians and two others chosen from an applicant pool of 5,000 pilots and scientists from 45 countries. The winners will drink reprocessed urine and eat freeze-dried food and whatever grows in the greenhouse. Any breakdowns, engineering or otherwise, must be remedied by the crew, who will be constantly recorded by 18 cameras. The reward: After 250 days, three lucky Marstronauts will be allowed to leave their 2,100-square-foot capsule, in spacesuits, to explore some other unit dolled up to look like Mars for a month, before crawling back inside for the final 240 days.
苦学经年，最后却得跑去收集沟渠老鼠，或者得负责把那些堆积如山、臭气熏天的尿液采样和沾满血的纱布烧掉，这看起来似乎很可怜。但那就是一些专业人士选择的路——你该庆幸他们做了如此抉择。
如果你那瓶姜汁汽水被大风刮倒了也会吓坏你，那你恐怕无法进入美国空军预备役第53气象情报中队工作。该中队总部位于密西西比州拜洛希市的基斯勒空军基地，每次飓风来临，20名飞行员和他们的机组成员驾驶飞机冲进危险的飓风眼，通常得4次穿越飓风眼，每次穿越的时间长达12个小时。设想一下：飞机穿越风眼，在飓风圈周围盘旋，再找机会冲进去。如今，卫星和雷达已能很好完成风暴跟踪工作，为什么还要冒这个险？因为，只有通过测量飓风眼的压力才能精确推算出飓风的威力及其发展趋势。虽然用雷达勘测风暴中心的位置精确在60英里以内，但直接进入风暴内测量，精度在两英里之内。当风暴来临，气象情报中队得不分昼夜地工作。他们的目标是用伞投的方式把一个两英尺长的下投式探空仪投进风暴眼，以测量大气压力，风速等数据。这是一个疯狂的职业。自上世纪60年代以来，4架飞机、36人在执行任务时葬身。一架飞机回来时遍体鳞伤，直接被送去了垃圾堆。
手术后从麻醉中苏醒过来，你是否曾想过自己被摘除的扁桃体或胆囊去哪里了？如果给你做手术的医生遵纪守法，那些东西都变成了医疗垃圾，被运出医院。在得克萨斯州亚瑟港的生物医疗垃圾处理公司，一个防泄漏卡车队每天将数以吨计的医疗垃圾送进其处理工场。在里面，一名戴着手套、护目镜，穿着防护服的技术员把成袋的垃圾从桶里拿出来，装进一个有塑料衬里的不锈钢料斗车，再运进一个6×13英尺的高压消毒锅。操作员将锅内的空气抽空，再按着45磅力/平方英寸的标准注入300华氏度的蒸气，将注射器、沾满血的纱布、装精液、尿样的瓶子蒸煮消毒40分钟（被摘除的肢体器官和化疗用具则会由专业焚化炉另外焚毁）。干这个工作最令人受不了的是气味。“闻起来就像是狗粮混合燃烧着的塑料的味道。”2005年创立这家公司的韦斯·索尼尔说道。经过蒸煮的胶状物——满是熔化了的橡胶手套、绷带和注射器，接着经过机器压缩，再被送往市垃圾堆填区。
对于马克·斯达尔和他在纽约美国自然历史博物馆下属水蛭实验室的同事而言，野外研究的主要工具就是一条短裤。“野外工作涉及穿越沼泽，故意招惹水蛭爬到我们的身上。”该博物馆负责人斯达尔解释说。他的研究对象被日益广泛用于重建外科手术和抗凝血药物的研究。过去十年里，斯达尔到野外考察研究水蛭的足迹遍布阿根廷、泰国等众多地方。他说：“走一趟，身上就可以收集到几百条水蛭。”要把一个吸附在皮肤上的水蛭弄下来，他只需用指甲把它边上的锯齿状的牙齿拔出，因为如果你用烧的办法，水蛭会往伤口吸附得更紧。天啊，为什么，为什么要这样？斯达尔已经发现并研究了几十个水蛭新品种，其中包括喜欢吸青蛙血和专找河马肛门下手的种类。危险性？“迄今为止还没有发现任何通过水蛭传播的疾病。”他说，“据我所知，还没有人因被水蛭吸了过多的血而致死。”
死亡来得很容易。要研究某只本来在冻土地带行走的动物如何最终变成地下一块化石，则难得多。为了了解生物死亡与肌体腐化的原理，埋葬学家研究蠕虫、大象甚至人类尸体的腐化分解过程。特拉维斯·莱尼·皮克林是威斯康星大学的埋葬学家兼古人类学家，专门研究非洲大型猫科动物杀戮觅食的过程。他的目的在于创造一个参照标准，帮助探究已成化石的那些动物当年究竟是死于早期人类手下，还是被大型猫科动物所猎杀。皮克林和他的研究小组在荒郊野外四处搜寻被猎杀动物的残骸，对当时双方激战的结果进行估定，他们还会拿那些残骸扒皮拆骨。“有时那上面的皮肉已经很烂很软，手指很容易就插进去，一下就能扒下来。但若要把头上的皮扒下来，通常得把兽头放进锅里煮一煮，那也会把脑组织给煮出来。”皮克林说道。
在探索火星的过程中有各种技术问题：如何避免过度辐射，如何保证食物供给，总的来说就是如何确保生存下来。但从地球到火星的漫漫征途中，真正令人头痛的问题是如何保持精神健康，不发疯。因此，今年春天，欧洲航天局和俄罗斯生物医学问题研究所的6位“火星500”计划参与者将连续520天，把自己封闭在莫斯科一个设备里的一系列金属管道中。飞行一亿英里抵达火星，在上面停留30天，然后返回，整个旅程的总时间大概就是520天。在无法洗澡，及没有窗户的情况下，那可真是一段漫长的时间。心理学家和生物学家将时刻观察这个狭窄空间及与世隔绝的环境对人的影响，参与者包括4名俄罗斯人和两位从45个国家的5000名飞行员和科学家中挑选出来的志愿者。这些中选者将饮用经加工处理的尿液，食用经冷冻干燥的食物及在温室里种的任何蔬菜。所有故障——包括机械故障或其他问题——必须由6人自行解决。18台摄像机将时刻记录他们的一举一动。至于“奖赏”：250天后，3名幸运的“火星宇航员”将被允许身穿宇航服离开2100平方英尺的模拟太空舱，去一个模拟火星地貌建造而成的区域“探索”一个月，然后又爬回“飞船”，完成最后240天的返回地球之旅。
