QUEST Community Science Blog

I wonder if homes in the past fifty years or so have undergone a similar evolution in architecture– or devolution, depending on your point of view– as churches.

Dining with FriendsDuring my former career as a Catholic priest, I taught a few Religious Studies classes at a small college. My favorite text in one class was a book by a Capuchin priest, Edward Foley, titled From Age to Age: How Christians Have Celebrated the Eucharist . Foley uses the history of church architecture, vessels, books, and music to tell the story of Christian worship.

In the book, Foley describes how the Christian church was once a home adapted for worship. In the 1920’s, archeologists uncovered the first known Christian church at the site of Dura Europos (in present day Syria), a Roman garrison town destroyed by the Persians in the 3rd century. It had a central courtyard where people could gather and a fountain where baptisms might have been performed. In the 4th Century, when Christianity became the de facto religion of the Roman Empire, worship began to take place in Roman meeting halls, where governors and other higher-ups would address the citizens of the town (this explains the origins of the term basilica, or “king’s house”). The meeting halls were larger and less intimate, but held more people.

Fast forward through the Middle Age monasteries to the great cathedrals of Europe. In these great cathedrals, the presider (the host of the sacred meal) had his back turned to the people most of the time during worship, and the average Christian would get nowhere near the communion meal of bread and the wine. People became even further separated from the true purpose of their worship, and came to church mostly to see the beautiful stained glass windows, to hear beautiful music, and to watch a colorful and dramatic spectacle.

When Europeans immigrated to America, they tended to bring their churches with them– in miniature. An architect friend told me that the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame, in the Prairie Gothic style, could fit inside the church of Notre Dame in Paris. Today, churches are a little more diverse, but most are still a far cry from the small adapted homes of the 3rd century where a few people gathered in an intimate setting to tell stories and break bread together.

Currently, many home owners are renovating for energy efficiency, and architecture is adapting into the new age of “green” design. But scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and PG&E have discovered that some of the most high-tech, energy-efficient new homes use more energy to power things like entertainment centers and home networking systems than for heating, cooling, and cooking. In my own home, I probably spend more time watching television (mostly PBS of course) than I do sitting at table having a meal with my wife, even if we make mealtime together a priority. Much like the less intimate setting of the newly adapted churches, the home too is less adapted for human interaction.

Maybe we need to expand our ideas about healthy housing. Maybe along with having healthy indoor air, infrequent occurrences of childhood asthma, and lack of mold, a healthy house should be a place where people rest, play, work, and eat together on a regular basis. As well as renovating for energy efficiency, perhaps we should also look at ways in which homes can be better designed for human interaction to better promote a truly healthy lifestyle.

Jim Gunshinan is Managing Editor of Home Energy Magazine. He holds an M.S. in Bioengineering from Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, and a Master of Divinity (MDiv) degree from University of Notre Dame.

California is looking at harnessing power from the sea to help meet the state’s energy demand. Although not yet widely used, many believe tidal power has more potential than wind or solar power for meeting alternative energy needs. Quest radio looks at plans for tidal and wave power off San Francisco and along the northern California coast.

You may listen to the “Harnessing Power from the Sea” Radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources.

Andrea Kissack is Senior Editor for QUEST at KQED Public Radio.

In my last post, I wrote about a recent visit to the Aquarium of the Bay at PIER 39 and a couple of the fascinating creatures we encountered there. Here are a few more:

Drifting in slow motion are the otherworldly moon jellies. Found in temperate and tropical waters around the world, they like bays and are found in San Francisco Bay (though they may not be native). You may know a Bay swimmer who has had the experience of encountering one; most humans can’t feel their sting, but it is said to be a strange sensation to feel one scoot from your touch. And here’s an interesting factoid: They haven’t been to the moon, but in 1991 nearly 2,500 juvenile moon jellies flew aboard the space shuttle Columbia.

We enter a second underwater tunnel beneath a tank home to several of the Bay’s cartilaginous fish (rays, skates, and sharks, who lack the bony skeletons of other fish). We look up to see graceful bat rays “flying” over our heads. There are also seven-gill sharks, whose name gives away their distinctive feature (most sharks have five gills). We also see leopard sharks, with beautiful charcoal markings that help them disappear in the mottled light of their preferred habitat: shallow waters with sandy or muddy bottoms, where they feed on worms, mollusks, crustaceans, and small fish. Unlike some sharks, they don’t need to swim to breath, and several that we saw in the Aquarium were resting on the bottom, pumping water over their gills with their lower jaw.

One of the oddest fish we spot is the white sturgeon, an ancient-looking creature that has bony, armor-like plates called scutes instead of scales. They can grow to 20 feet and 1,500 pounds and are the largest anadromous fish in North America (meaning they migrate between salt and fresh water, where they spawn). Their Latin name, Acipenser transmontanus, means “sturgeon beyond the mountains”. Their greatest predators are humans, for whom they are a popular sport fish and source of caviar.

In the final part of the tour we get a chance to reach into the water and touch sea stars, sea squirts, and other creatures. It’s like shaking hands with next-door neighbors we never get to see. And that’s perhaps the most amazing thing: All these animals that seem so alien actually live close by. So next time you’re admiring the beautiful expanse of the Bay or the nearby ocean, take a moment to think about all the life underneath, all the aquatic species in our Bay Area “neighborhood”. You might even decide to drop into the Aquarium of the Bay and make their acquaintance.

The Bay Institute is launching a campaign to acquire and transform the Aquarium of the Bay into a nonprofit institution– a “central address” for Bay education, conservation, and research. To learn more or to get involved, visit www.bay.org.

Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, “from the Sierra to the sea.”

Guest blogging for Donovan is Dr. Wendy Moore of the California Academy of Sciences.

With roughly 350,000 described species, beetles are without a doubt one of the most successful forms of life on Earth. Many beetle species use chemicals to defend themselves, but the true masters of chemical defense are the Bombardier Beetles which deliver their defensive chemicals hot, really hot — up to 212 degrees F (100 degrees C). Yes, that’s right, there are beetles living right here in the San Francisco Bay Area that discharge chemicals at the boiling point of water! They have a two-chambered defensive gland and each chamber contains different chemicals. When mixed, the chemicals react with one another to produce so much heat that it literally explodes out of an opening on the abdomen, and kaboom! It’s a built-in arsenal that deters nearly all predators.

I study a subgroup of these beetles known as the Flanged Bombardier Beetles. This group is incredible not only because they bombard, but also because most species live inside ant nests. That is particularly strange, because ants are extremely aggressive with fine-tuned strategies for keeping non-family members out of their nest. Normally foreigners that try to enter an ant nest are destroyed immediately. Although ants do not have good eyesight, they perceive the world through their sense of touch and taste. Colony members wear an invisible veil of chemicals, which allows them to recognize each other. When a non-family member is in the vicinity of a nest, ants attack first and ask questions later. But ant defenses are not foolproof and many species of Flanged Bombardier Beetles have managed to crack their secret chemical code.

For these clever beetles, going incognito is like going on an all-expenses-paid vacation. Ant nests are stable, dark, moist environments — luxurious accommodations by insect standards. And since they don’t have to worry about the ants themselves, the nests are virtually predator-free, making them safe places for adult beetles to lay their eggs and for their offspring to develop.

What’s more, the beetles eat the ants and their eggs! Despite the fact that they are predators on ants, some behaviors of the host ants indicate that these beetles are not simply tolerated parasites of the ant colonies, but are valued by the ants in some way. For example, the beetles do not bomb their way into the nests, but rather the ants grab the beetles by their antennae and actively drag them inside.

What, if anything, do the ants get out of this arrangement? We do not know the answer to this question, but clues may be found in another chemical produced by the beetles. Species that live with ants have extremely modified antennae, with an astounding variety of shapes and sizes in different species. The antennae function like factories producing the substances that ants love to eat. Is it a drug? Is it food? We don’t know. Whatever it is, it plays an important role in the establishment of beetle-ant relationships, and is one of the many intriguing mysteries I love exploring here at the Academy.

Dr. Wendy Moore is a postdoctoral fellow at the California Academy of Sciences, where her research focuses on the systematics and biogeography of the Flanged Bombardier Beetles of California and Madagascar.

It’s a typical afternoon at a cafe– cappuccinos, conversation… and the science of black holes? Bay Area “science cafes” have exploded in popularity, putting scientists and everyday folk face to face for casual science roundtables, no lecture notes required.

You may view the “Coffee and Pi: Bay Area Science Cafés” TV Story online, as well as find additional links and resources.

Amy Miller is a Coordinating Producer for television on QUEST.

Californians don’t normally see fur seals along local beaches, but lately fur seal pups have been stranding themselves in alarming numbers. QUEST sails out with the Marine Mammal Center as they release these stowaways back into the wild and try to understand their mysterious behavior.

You may view the “Fur Seal Pup Rehab” TV Story online, as well as find additional links and resources. Also, you can see additional photos for this story.

Chris Bauer is a Segment Producer for television on QUEST, and is the producer for this story.

With California’s ambitious renewable energy goal, the state needs wind power. But California’s largest wind farm cluster at Altamont Pass unintentionally kills golden eagles, burrowing owls and other threatened birds. Now, wind companies, scientists and environmentalists are working to bird-proof these massive wind farms.

You may view the “Fatal Attraction: Birds and Wind Turbines” TV Story online, as well as find additional links and resources. Also, you can see additional photos for this story.

Gabriela Quirós is a Segment Producer for KQED-TV, and is the producer for this story.

How deeply do you want to look into your DNA?
Credit: U.S. Department of Energy Genome Programs

Remember Jim Watson? The guy who co-discovered what DNA looks like? Recently he got to look at the 6 billion letters that make up his DNA. And maybe soon you can get a peek at yours.

In a clever publicity stunt, 454 Life Sciences has sequenced Watson’s DNA to show off how well they can sequence DNA. And they’re pretty good at it.

They sequenced Watson’s DNA for around one million dollars and did it in just two months. Compare that to the 13 years and 3 billion dollars or so it took to sequence the first human genome!

This is amazing progress. But 454 and a bunch of other companies are trying to get it done faster and cheaper still. A few companies are claiming they’ll get the price down to 10,000 dollars by the end of this year. And 1000 dollars sooner rather than later. Wow.

This will be a huge deal if these companies can pull it off. But probably not in the ways that you are thinking.

We actually don’t know what most of our DNA does. Essentially we’ll have 6 billion letters of mostly indecipherable code.

Sure we’ll be able to quickly see whether we carry any rare genetic diseases. This will definitely affect DNA testing companies. And make these diseases less common as everyone will know whether they are a carrier or not.

But we won’t be able to predict whether we will for sure get common diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or diabetes or… We just don’t know enough about our DNA and these diseases are too complicated for us to figure these things out anytime soon.

In the short term, the biggest “benefit” of knowing everyone’s DNA will be for identification purposes. Things like figuring out who committed a crime. Or who the real father of a child is. We may even be able to tell which identical twin fathered a child or killed somebody.

But even these sorts of things could have huge impacts on society. For example, some studies suggest that around 4-6% of men may not actually be the father of their children.

Some men are looking at eye or hair color or other supposedly simple genetic traits to try to see if their kid is really theirs. None of these is a particularly effective way to determine paternity. But if everyone’s DNA is known, all of these men will have a real chance to figure this out.

Is this outing of mothers a good or a bad thing? What other effects do you think knowing our DNA will have on our lives? And that of society?

Dr. Barry Starr is a Geneticist-in-Residence at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA.

Have you ever looked at your credit card bill and thought you needed to have your head examined? Stanford University is using complex brain imaging to study how humans make shopping decisions, and are finding that emotions play a large role in everyday purchases.

You may listen to the “The Science of Making Decisions” Radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources.

Andrea Kissack is Senior Editor for QUEST at KQED Public Radio.. KQED’s Lauren Sommer co-produced this story.

The Viking Orbiter’s picture of a hill in the Cydonia region
on Mars that sparked popular speculation of a
monument-building Martian civilization.
Credit: NASA/Viking

When I heard the news flash that came out in early June about the alleged discovery of standing puddles of water on Mars, a part of me was immediately skeptical. Considering how cold and thin Mars’ atmosphere is known to be, standing liquid water simply cannot persist on the surface; it would either evaporate or quickly freeze– something I’ve known since my earliest physics classes.

But, I have to admit, a part of me tried to imagine how there possibly might be puddles on Mars’ surface– like, maybe such puddles could be supplied by a warm spring of some kind, right? It wasn’t the scientific side of me that tried to make this square peg fit in the round hole; it was the part of me that simply wants to find liquid water there…

As it turned out, no puddles were found on Mars; the claim, controversy, and retraction, which all occurred at warp speed, were a temporary blip on the radar screen of space exploration. Taken out of context, out of the bigger picture, images can easily mislead.

History is well-furnished with accounts of people who made an observation of this or that, interpreted what they saw– and turned out to be wrong. The history of astronomy is not an exception.

While astronomers are trained to be objective observers and careful experimenters, and not to jump to conclusions, being human, it’s hard not to guess at the nature of what is seen, not to preconceive notions to some extent, and not to use our imaginations to stretch a bit further than the observational evidence at hand.

When telescopes were first turned to the skies, in 1609, astronomers could see more than before, but also had more to speculate about. Upon viewing Saturn through his telescope, Galileo described seeing what looked like “jug handles” on either side of the planet– and while he probably never thought they were actual handles sticking to the planet, he did suggest they might be two large moons. What he saw, of course, were Saturn’s now-famous rings.

When astronomers first observed galaxies, they were called nebulas (literally, ”clouds”) and believed to be merely composed of gas. The ”spiral nebulas” (”nebulae” for the sticklers of Latin grammar) turned out to be composed of billions of stars, not just gas.

Planetary nebulas — shells of gas sloughed off by certain dying stars — were so named because of their planet-like appearance in early, low-powered telescopes (although they were not actually believed to be planets).

Fast forwarding a bit, the first close-up pictures of Mars, taken in 1965 by the Mariner 4 spacecraft, provided just enough visual evidence to characterize Mars as a barren, cratered world not unlike our Moon– a far cry from the colorful world we know today.

And who can forget the infamous ”face” on Mars?

I get plenty of phone calls and emails from people reporting seeing something completely astonishing and unique in the sky– things that turn out to be known objects, like Venus or Sirius or the like. And, sometimes, it’s a true uphill battle to convince an eyewitness to the inexplicable that what they witnessed was, in fact… well… explicable.

Benjamin Burress is a staff astronomer at The Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, CA.