Tag Archives: Kodavas in the USA

In Their Different Cultures, They Found Common Denominators

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Sneha Medappa Maruvanda grew up in India, and Dr. Mark Ross Edelstein, in Virginia. But in getting to know one another, they discovered their backgrounds were strikingly similar.

Don Mears Photography

By the time Sneha Medappa Maruvanda met Dr. Mark Ross Edelstein in person, she feared they might not have anything left to say to each other.

“I was having a bit of a panic attack about meeting,” said Ms. Medappa Maruvanda, 30, who matched with Dr. Edelstein on Bumble in November 2019, and soon became engaged in a two-week-long conversation with him on the app. He was living in Philadelphia, and she in Bala Cynwyd, Penn., a suburb of the city.

“We had over talked,” she said. “He was telling me about his heroes when he was four, how a teacher was very mean to him.”

Another concern, said Dr. Edelstein: “Both of us were a little bit worried about our cultural background differences.” He was raised by Jewish parents in Richmond, Va. Ms. Medappa Maruvanda grew up in a Hindu family and was born in Coorg, a rural district in the Indian state of Karnataka, before moving to Bengaluru, formerly Bangalore, as a young girl.

But when they met up that December at a Cuban restaurant in Philadelphia, neither was at a loss for words. As for their cultures, it quickly became clear that they might not be as different as they had seemed.

“Our backgrounds are very similar in terms of sense of community and family, so I think that made it a lot easier to bridge that cultural gap,” said Dr. Edelstein, 32.

A graduate of the University of Virginia, where he received a bachelor’s degree in sociology and bioethics, Dr. Edelstein earned a medical degree from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. He is currently in his fifth year of residency training for interventional radiology at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.

Ms. Medappa Maruvanda received a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and management from Rashtreeya Vidyalaya College of Engineering in India, then earned a master’s degree in industrial and systems engineering at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She is now a project manager in the Wayne, Pa., office of Johnson Matthey, a multinational chemicals and technology company.

After the couple’s first date, Dr. Edelstein texted his sister, who had asked if he was in love. His reply: “Maybe.”

“I was like ‘Yeah, but that’s insane at this point, one date,’” Dr. Edelstein added. “But I was definitely struck by her.”

Don Mears Photography

Later in December, after their third date, the pair became an official couple. Weeks later, when Dr. Edelstein’s parents visited Philadelphia in January 2020, he told them that he knew Ms. Medappa Maruvanda was the one.

“I’d never met someone so selfless and just truly kind,” Dr. Edelstein said. “It’s never been so easy to be myself around another person.”

Ms. Medappa Maruvanda said her feelings for Dr. Edelstein were solidified six months later, in July 2020, when he met some of her cousins and began asking them questions in Kodava thakk, the language spoken in Coorg.

“I had no idea that he had been Googling this language. And it’s not an easy one to learn because there aren’t many of us,” Ms. Medappa Maruvanda said. “It was just this moment of complete shock to me that he put so much effort into wanting to connect with my cousins.”

On Jan. 15, 2021, Dr. Edelstein proposed to Ms. Medappa Maruvanda in the living room of her apartment in Bala Cynwyd, where the two now live together. A year later, the couple was wed at Main Street Station in Richmond on Jan. 22. Rabbi Jake Rubin, the director of Hillel at University of Virginia, officiated.

At the ceremony, the ketubah was read in English and Hebrew by Mr. Rubin, and in Kodava thakk by Ms. Medappa Maruvanda’s mother. The Seven Blessings were read by Ms. Medappa Maruvanda’s sister and two cousins, and Dr. Edelstein’s brother, sister and two uncles. Afterward, the couple’s 160 vaccinated guests enjoyed a cocktail hour with Indian hors d’oeuvres and music.

In April, the newlyweds plan to travel to Bengaluru for a second wedding celebration. In the meantime, the bride said, “I am most excited by having the monotony of a relationship. I want to do mundane things with Mark. I’m excited to have our own little life together.”

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 13, 2022, Section ST, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: Finding Common Ground in Different Cultures.

source: http://www.nytimes.com / The New York Times / Home> Sytle> Mini-Vows / by Kristej Bayrakdarian / February 11th, 2022

Exploring Lake Huron sinkholes may help find life on other planets

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These microbial mats in a Lake Huron sinkhole have finger-like protrusions caused by a buildup of methane gas in small pockets beneath them. Image: Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary

By Daniel Schoenherr

Special microbial mat systems in Alpena, Michigan, are helping scientists search for extraterrestrial life.

“It’s so different, and feels otherworldly,” said Stephanie Gandulla, a diver with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary. She has sampled the mats near the sinkholes on the lake’s bottom.

You may have seen a microbial mat before — the green algae on wet rocks at the beach is an example.

Algae’s green color comes from chlorophyll — a substance that uses sunlight to turn carbon dioxide into energy. Carbon dioxide and oxygen support most of life on Earth.

But under special conditions, like those at three sinkholes just 2½ miles east of Alpena, primitive forms of microbes called cyanobacteria can survive without either of them.

These are white, not green, and they get energy from chemicals in the water.

“They are everywhere, but they are incredibly hard to find,” said Bopaiah Biddanda, a biologist with Grand Valley State University’s Annis Water Research Institute, who has been studying them for 20 years.

Such mats are normally found in ocean waters over 32,000 feet deep, but they can be found only 80 feet below the surface of what is known as Lake Huron’s Middle Island Sinkhole.

The sinkhole’s biologically extreme environment can help simulate sample collection in extraterrestrial worlds where life is based on similar chemicals. A new study by Biddanda models scenarios where robots could analyze material beneath the water of other planets. It’s based on the work in Lake Huron.

The study focuses on two methods: suction devices for soft mats and coring devices for hard mats.

Click on the photo below to watch a video about these mats:

The sinkholes near Alpena provide sulfuric, oxygenless groundwater that creates the conditions needed for the mats to grow. Filaments of cyanobacteria drift together, creating a wispy white-purple flow.

“It almost looks like a mirage,” Gandulla said.

It could be a long time before the experience from sinkholes in Lake Huron will be used to explore the potential of life on planets elsewhere, but Biddanda’s exploration is yielding other finds now.

Recently, for example, his team found an explanation for the mats’ mysterious ability to change colors overnight.

The purple and white cyanobacteria travel upwards to capture energy from the top of the mat, according to the study. During the day, microbes with color capture the small amount of sunlight reaching the seafloor with chlorophyll.

As the sun sets, the white microbes move to the surface of the mat to absorb chemicals in the sulfuric water for their energy. This continuous, vertical shift in microbes causes patches of the mat to change between purple and white in a daily cycle.

The microbial mats thrive off a special soup of chemicals in the groundwater, but changes in land use could disrupt it in the future.

The Thunder Bay sanctuary is constantly combating such threats to coastal ecosystems such as the one near Alpena.

“Development might choke off the water supply,” Biddanda said.

The marine sanctuary offers educational programs and tours to K-12 students and operates a welcome center year-round.

“We work together to protect it as a community,” Gandulla said.

Scientists hope to sample the oceans of Europa, a moon of Jupiter, for microbes with robots pioneered in Lake Huron. Image: NASA

The characteristics of Middle Island Sinkhole’s cyanobacteria could hold the key to much more than planetary exploration. They could lead to advances in other scientific fields, such as evolutionary biology and medicine.

“We have a library of pharmaceutical value here,” Biddanda said “This could help us down the road.”

And, he noted that they look cool: “There is something fascinating and mesmerizing about these colorful mats.”

WHO WE ARE

We’re a project of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.

source: http://www.greatlakesecho.org / Great Lakes Echo / by Daniel Schoenherr / November 22nd, 2022