Penelope (Penny) Boston

Penelope (Penny) Boston, speleo-biologist and Director of Cave and Karst Science at New Mexico Tech, co-founded Mars Underground and then the Mars Society. She was a President of the Association of Mars Explorers, and is now a member of the science team taking part in Mars Arctic 365, a new one-year Mars surface simulation mission set to start in summer 2014 on Devon Island. Boston's work involves studying underground ecosystems extremophile inhabitants on Earth in order to predict environments/lifeforms possible elsewhere in the Universe. She has worked with the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program (NIAC) to develop protocols for both human extraterrestrial cave habitation, and for subterranean [underground] life-detection missions on Mars, which she believes is highly likely to exist. For the last 2+ decades Boston has focused on exploring caves. "The first time I did any serious caving was actually in Lechuguilla Cave ...We trained for about three hours, then we launched into a five-day expedition into Lechuguilla that nearly killed us! ... I had a blob of gypsum in my eye and an infection that swelled it shut. I twisted my ankle. I popped a rib … The bruises faded. My eye stopped being infected. … some of those gooey blobs drip[ed] down into my eye—but, I was like, 'Oh my God. This is biological. I just know it is.' So it was a clue. And, when, I got out, I knew I had to learn how to do this. I wanted to get back in there."

SOURCE
http://v-e-n-u-e.com/filter/379.9-km%252Fsec

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QUOTE: Marie M. Daly

"Courage is like — it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: you get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging." Marie M. Daly (1921–2003), Biochemist & the first African American woman in the US to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry. #ScienceWomen #WLeadership #ewls

800 Facebook Likes!

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According to Sioux legend, as told by Chief Lost Feather, there is a secret and mysterious cave that is located on the West Mountain (near Hot Springs, Arkansas). There's an old woman and a dog that have been living in this cave for many generations. The old woman never grows any older. The dog never ages, either. They both stay exactly the same, and they have since anybody can remember. The old woman spends her days weaving a rug. She is using pine needles that she has collected in the nearby pine forest. The old woman has been weaving now for many centuries, and yet the rug never gets any bigger. The dog watches his mistress weave through narrow slits in his eyes as he appears to just nap in the corner. Occasionally the old woman puts the rug down and leaves it while she goes to stir the pot of soup that she has cooking on a fire at the mouth of the cave. The soup has probably been cooking for several centuries, as well. The minute the old w...

Extraordinary Women Leaders in Speleology (EWLS)

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