Karthik is a 3rd year PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology working in the Malhi Lab. His work focuses on dietary, environmental, and social influences on gut microbiomes, specifically in dogs and vampire bats, as proxies for humans.
What have you been working on this past week?
I’ve been preparing to run a soil extraction. The soil in question is from the Janey B. Goode site, where archaeologists previously obtained coprolites (fossilized fecal matter) from dogs. The archaeologists at ISAS (Illinois State Archaeological Survey) were kind enough to later provide soil from similar contexts as the coprolites. I’m sequencing these in the hopes of identifying potential microbial contaminants in the coprolites, which would then allow for a more robust analysis of the coprolites themselves.
What have you been listening to recently?
This may also be a writing ritual, since I almost exclusively listen to this while writing, but I’ve long enjoyed Two Steps from Hell. They’re a music production company, and their tracks are used in movie trailers and events across the world, which leads to a number of their tracks sounding or feeling familiar. If you want to listen to (usually) orchestral music that generally sounds exciting and uplifting, they have a number of publicly released albums.
What have you been reading recently?
I’ve been slowly accumulating the books of my favorite series, Malazan Book of the Fallen, and finally have the 10th, entitled the Crippled God, so I’ve been settling into that recently. It’s a very well-written fantasy epic, and the books are long and convoluted in regards to timeline and plot, which makes it great for reading multiple times.
