Latest news with #SANAEIV
Mint
3 days ago
- Science
- Mint
What space, submarines and polar research teach about teamwork
If you are fed up with the other people on your team, remember this: it could be so much worse. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, two American astronauts, returned to Earth on March 18th after a planned days-long mission to the International Space Station turned into a nine-month stay. At the SANAE IV research station in Antarctica, reports have emerged of assault, death threats and intimidation among a team of South African scientists who arrived there in February; they are due to leave the base only in December. Submariners on Britain's nuclear-armed subs can be at sea for six months or more. Spacecraft, polar-research stations and submarines are among a set of environments classed as isolated, confined and extreme (ICE). They put that two-day off-site retreat you're dreading into perspective. They also put very specific stresses on teams. Most obviously, there is no real escape from each other. If you storm out of an Antarctic research station, you will storm back in again fairly quickly. Privacy will always be limited: a British nuclear sub has a crew of 130 or so in a vessel whose length a sprinter would cover in under 20 seconds. Its absence is likely to be particularly obvious to women in male-dominated teams. Family members are a very long way away; any future missions to Mars would involve crews spending years away from home. These are plainly not typical team environments. You cannot tell a story that no one else knows about you, do a few trust falls—and then blast off. NASA, America's space agency, simulates the conditions of space at a facility in Houston called the Human Exploration Research Analogue (HERA), a 650-square-foot structure where crews can spend weeks at a time on mock missions. A paper by Mathias Basner of the University of Pennsylvania and his co-authors reports on a 520-day simulation of a mission to Mars that was conducted in Moscow in 2011. Of a multinational crew comprising six male volunteers, one reported symptoms of depression almost all the way through. Only two crew members reported no sleep disturbances or psychological distress, which makes them the weirdest of the lot. Extreme though these situations are, they provide a magnified lens on more quotidian team problems. One example is tedium. Missions to ICE environments can be a curious combination of danger and monotony. Antarctic explorers report that it is preferable to follow someone on the ice than to lead, because at least there is something to look at. But there are ways to inject meaning into the mundane whatever the workplace. A paper by Madeleine Rauch of the University of Cambridge looks at the disconnect experienced by UN peacekeepers between the abstract ideals of their work and the humdrum reality of it. She finds that people cope better with boredom if they are able to reframe tedious tasks as steps towards the larger goal. Another magnified problem is conflict. Small things can lead to great friction among colleagues in every workplace. ('Wow, you want to see crew dynamics," reads one entry in a journal kept by an astronaut on the International Space Station, about an attempt to take a group photo. 'I thought we were going to lose a member of the crew during that one.") But defusing conflict is much more important if there is nowhere for an angry worker to cool off. Personality obviously matters here. Some of the traits that seem to predict successful team members in ICE environments include agreeableness, emotional stability and humour. Empathy also matters. In his book 'Supercommunicators", Charles Duhigg describes research conducted at NASA to test would-be astronauts for their instinctive capacity to match the emotions, energy levels and mood of an interviewer. Tactics can help mitigate conflict, too. Regular team debriefs are a constructive way to bring simmering issues to the surface, especially if crews have very limited contact with mission control. A paper on long-duration space exploration by Lauren Blackwell Landon of NASA and her co-authors suggests that debriefs can be effective hurtling away from Earth as well as on it. ICE environments plainly place very unusual demands on people. But they can teach some lessons about boredom, team composition, conflict resolution and more. And knowing that they exist might just make you feel happier about the daily commute. Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our Opinion newsletter, which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Researcher "Threatened to Kill" Colleagues Trapped in Antarctic Base
Things seem to be going nightmarishly bad at an isolated scientific base in Antarctica, where a researcher has been accused of assaulting and threatening to murder colleagues. As England's The Times reports, an unnamed climate researcher at the South African National Antarctic Expedition (SANAE IV), a scientific base on Norway's Queen Maud Land region of the frozen continent, allegedly threatened the life of one of his colleagues, physically attacking one coworker and sexually assaulted another. In a pleading message shared with South Africa's Sunday Times, one of the man's coworkers begged their superiors for rescue. According to that letter, the researcher's behavior "has escalated to a point that is deeply disturbing" after he "physically assaulted" and "threatened to kill" at least one of the unnamed team members with whom he'll be stranded on the base for at least ten more months. "His [behavior] has become increasingly egregious, and I am experiencing significant difficulty in feeling secure in his presence," the letter reads. "It is imperative that immediate action is taken to ensure my safety and the safety of all employees." According to that same letter — the name of whose author, as with the subject, was withheld to protect their privacy — the alleged attacker has created "an environment of fear and intimidation." "I remain deeply concerned about my own safety," the author wrote, "constantly wondering if I might become the next victim." As moving as that plea is, it remains unclear when or even if a rescue mission will be deployed to SANAE IV, which is located on the top of a remote cliff and takes nearly two weeks to access. On average, the temperature stands at nearly 10 degrees Fahrenheit at the base, and the winds surrounding it can shoot up to 135 miles per hour, the report notes — which makes getting there all but impossible. In a statement to the Times, South African environment minister Dion George said that he plans to speak to the SANAE IV team personally "to assess for [himself]" what's going on. According to George, a "verbal altercation between the team leader and this person" — the alleged attacker, seemingly — broke out, and that individual did eventually assault the team lead. "You can imagine what it's like, it is close quarters and people do get cabin fever," he said. "It can be very disorientating." The minister added that an initial investigation into the matter found that the person who did the assault did not have "dangerous intentions," whatever that means. Should they need help, however, George said that his counterparts in Norway and Germany have been contacted "in the event that we need to do an urgent intervention." Be that as it may, these accusations seem incredibly serious — and the minister in charge of the SANAE IV team's safety doesn't seem to be handling it with the proper gravity. More on research gone wrong: Scientist Who Gene-Hacked Human Babies Says Ethics Are "Holding Back" Scientific Progress
