Editor's Note: Producer Amy Miller, who was reporting the story on camera in our 7/24 episode on premature births titled "Born Too Soon: Preterm Births on the Rise", was placed on bed rest for preterm labor 2 weeks after filming. She has some good news to report below.

Amy Miller and twin boys:
Felix Alexander Frith Miller
and Devon Keith Frith Miller While I was sleeping on Friday, 7-27, my water broke. My partner was sleeping on a cot next to me. We called the nurse and they started prepping me for surgery. I had spinal anesthesia during the C-section so I was numb from the chest down but awake and alert during the birth. Alex was right there with me through the whole thing. Both boys came out crying and pink. I don't think it could have been an easier birth. I've really been on cloud 9.

The boys are perfect, beautiful, healthy. (they really are amazingly cute). We are thrilled, relieved, exhausted and proud. I get to go home on Tuesday. And because they're so healthy, the babies will likely go home a few days later. Thanks to everyone for the kind emails, calls, visits, support and love through this experience! This has been quite a ride. Now comes the fun part!!!

I'll be "rooming in" here at the hospital until they come home which means that they will make a room available to me if they have one available but I won't be a patient. I can just stay here and sleep whenever I want so that I can feed them regularly. I'll probably stay here during the day, feed them and pump then go home in the evening and catch up on sleep before they come home.

Cheers!

Compared to traditional incandescent light bulbs, new compact fluorescent bulbs use at least two-thirds less energy and last up to 10 times longer. Many say that widespread use would produce major energy savings and reduce global warming emissions. But some people say their lighting is too harsh. QUEST sheds some light on the bulb debate.

You may view the "The Great Switch-Out" online, as well as find additional links and resources.

Sheraz Sadiq is a Segment Producer and Associate Producer for QUEST on KQED Television.

Do other planets like Earth exist? To find out, a team of astronomers from the University of California is building a new telescope in the hills east of San Jose. QUEST finds out what the chances are that there are others like ours somewhere in the cosmos.

You may view the "The Planet Hunters" online, as well as find additional links and resources.
Chris Bauer is a Segment Producer for television on QUEST, and is the producer for this story.

The Napa and Sonoma microclimates produce world famous wines, but what happens if the climate changes? Scientists are predicting that global warming could increase the number of super-hot days in the California wine region, interfering with the way grapes ripen. Local scientists and wineries are beginning to look at how to prepare.

You may view the "Napa Wineries Face Global Warming" story online, as well as find additional links and resources.

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

2:00 AM on the Kuuvik River in the Nunavik region of
northern Quebec. Photo courtesy of my friend,
Drew MacDonald.

Being the token astrophysicist in my social circles, I get a lot of questions from friends and family about what’s going on in the Universe these days. I try to use these questions as an outline to the posts I write for the QUEST web site.

As one example, I have written quite a few posts about dark matter because that is one of the most confusing topics to people, myself included. I also wrote a post on the dangers of gamma ray bursts from nearby supernova explosions after years of questions from my Incredible Hulk obsessed friend.

Recently I was asked "how large is the universe?" and "does a planet orbiting a black hole feel the increased gravity as that black hole grows?" Both of these are very complicated questions, and require quite a bit of explanation, making them the perfect fodder for future posts.

I'm away on vacation right now, paddling down the Kuuvik River, previously known in English and the Larch River and in French as the Rivière aux Mélèzes. A group of four, we are traveling this river in a wooden canvas canoe in the style of 19th century fur trappers and also of my old employer, Keewaydin Canoe Camp. This is one of the most remote rivers in the world, making internet access rather difficult.

Given that I’m so far off the grid right now, I'd like to take this opportunity to dig for some more cosmology fodder and ask the QUEST readers what questions they may have. Post your suggestion below and I'll use it as material when I rejoin society.

Kyle S. Dawson is engaged in post-doctorate studies of distant supernovae and
development of a proposed space-based telescope at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Forgive me reader for I have sinned. It's been two weeks since my last blog. Since then I have received a bill from the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD). We have used an excessive amount of water in the first two weeks living in our new home. By excessive, I mean about 1,600 gallons per day on average, which is about six times the average for a household in the East Bay. There, it's out there. I feel like an overweight doctor admitting to a two-pack a day cigarette habit.

After hearing the news from EBMUD, Michele and I did some soul searching, which led us directly to the irrigation system, which we have pretty much ignored since moving in, since neither one of us could figure out how to program the darn thing. But there is nothing that focuses the mind like guilt. I took out my sword of self-righteousness and cut, cut, cut– to half as much water for half the amount of time on half the days. That’s more than an 85% reduction.

Since the cuts, we haven't noticed a big difference in the lawn and plants. The crabgrass looks as good as ever. If we are right, and I think we are, that it is the irrigation that is using the bulk of the water, and not showers, cooking, and laundry, than the next billing cycle should get us down to at least the average amount of water used. Not perfect for a professional water- and energy-use haranguer, but a good start.

We also contacted EBMUD and scheduled a water audit of our indoor and outdoor water use. Michele called and left a message and they returned her call in an hour! This utility is on our side! (Go the their Web site, www.ebmud.com, and click on the Conservation and Recycling link on the left-hand side of the page to find out more.) Someone is actually coming to our house the day this blog will appear. I’m sure other water utilities in the Bay Area offer similar services.

I firmly resolve with the help of EBMUD to sin no more.

I know some of you are looking at your water bill, comparing it to ours, and feeling a tad good about yourselves. Go ahead, you deserve it. But don't get used to it!

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.

How safe is your makeup, perfume or lotion? Surprisingly, no one really knows. Two years ago, California passed groundbreaking legislation requiring cosmetic companies to report if their products contained toxic or carcinogenic ingredients. This year, the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2005 goes into effect and other states are closely watching California as they consider similar proposals. QUEST explores cosmetic safety and the challenges of making this law a reality.

You may listen to the "What's in Your Shampoo?" Radio report online.

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

Link to Tulare Lake Map for larger imageOnce upon a time, the San Francisco Bay watershed contained the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. The lake is no more, but sometimes, in wet years, its spirit still haunts the cotton fields that have taken its place. Up until the last century, Tulare Lake was a broad, shallow body of water at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. At high water, it was estimated to encompass 790 square miles. Fed by the Kings, Kaweah, Tule, and Kern Rivers from the Sierra Nevada, it was a terminal lake with no natural outlet in dry years. In wetter years, its waters overtopped the basin into the San Joaquin River, from where they flowed northwest to the Delta and into San Francisco Bay.

The lake was so shallow its annual fluctuations could expose or submerge 100 square miles of land. Even a stiff breeze was said to shift the shoreline several miles. The lake and surrounding marshes (thick with the tules from which the lake drew its name) were rich habitat and a key stop for migrating waterfowl on the Pacific Flyway. Settlers pulled an abundance of fish from the waters (so much that they used it as pigfeed), and the lake's Pacific pond turtles were in demand in San Francisco for terrapin soup. In the wake of the Swamp and Overflowed Lands Act of 1852, change came quickly. By the 1860s, settlers had begun to divert the Kings River for irrigation. The last natural outflow from Tulare Lake seems to have been in 1877. By 1900, the lake had been dried up and its bed claimed for agriculture.

Incredibly, the death of the West's largest freshwater lake was not an anomaly. Similar things took place up and down the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Tulare basins. Before European settlement, the Central Valley's river floodplain system nourished some 1.4 million acres of tule marshes and wooded wetlands. The draining of vast sweeps of wetlands and the diversion of entire rivers (for agriculture and later, also, for urbanization) has altered the landscape in a manner and at a scale that is, quite literally, unprecedented. Our staff hydrologist has called California's Central Valley and Delta "one of the most transformed landscapes in the world."

And yet, more than a century after its demise, a spectral Tulare Lake still arises during wet periods– as one writer put it, "like a wet phoenix"–with its most recent reincarnation in 1997. Though there are no plans to restore the lake, there is discussion of restoring some of the benefits it once provided. Already some leveed compartments exist to limit flooding of cropland in high runoff years. Additional wetland areas could further absorb and store floodwaters, while also providing critical habitat and giving some vanishing wetland species at least a ghost of a chance.

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."

Geologists say it's likely that a major earthquake will hit
the Bay Area sometime in the next 25 years.

I woke up to what sounded like mumbling coming from my radio. I thought maybe the alarm had gone off, but it was only 4:40 a.m. and I get up at 6. I lay listening to the humming of the fan, in my bed at my apartment in Oakland on Friday, July 20.

Suddenly, the whole building erupted in violent shaking.

A few thoughts flew through my mind. "Is this the big one? Is our apartment retrofitted? Will it fall off its foundation?" Then the quake was over. I sat up. "Wow, that was about a 6.0," I predicted. Earlier in the year, we had been in several earthquakes that were in the 3.0 range. I thought my guess was accurate, but it turned out I was way off. The quake was a 4.2. It's understandable I was off so far on my guess, though.

First of all, where I live was almost right on top of the epicenter, and its energy hadn't dissipated from traveling a long distance.

Secondly, earthquake magnitude can be hard to guess because it is measured on a logarithmic, not linear, scale. In other words, when a quake is 3.0 on the Richter scale, it isn't merely three times stronger than a 1.0 earthquake. It's actually 100 times stronger. Each whole number on the Richter scale is an order of magnitude bigger than the previous whole number. Thus a 2.0 quake is ten times stronger than a 1.0 quake, and a 4.0 earthquake is 1,000 (1×10x10×10) times stronger than a 1.0 earthquake. Likewise, a 7.0 quake is a million times (106) stronger than a 1.0, which is why it can be so hard to guess actual size.

Unfortunately, there is a high probability that a 7.0 earthquake will hit the Bay Area in the next twenty years. Its source will be the Hayward Fault, one of the branches of the San Andreas Fault. The last time there was a major quake on the Hayward Fault was in 1868. It was known as the "Great San Francisco Earthquake", until S.F. was hit by a major quake from the San Andreas Fault in 1906.

A quake of a magnitude of 7.0 is immensely powerful. When it hits, it will cause major structural damage. The Loma Prieta earthquake, in 1989, was between a 6.9 and 7.1. It wiped out large sections of freeway, and caused all sorts of problems that affect Bay Area residents to this day.

Regrettably, there isn't much scientists can do to accurately predict earthquakes. They have even tried observing the abnormal behavior of animals. But studies done in the 1970's, by the United States Geological Survey, found there is no evidence that this was a reliable predictor. As a result, the USGS has not devoted further resources to similar studies.

Maybe someday we'll figure out how to predict earthquakes, but in the meantime I'm going to get serious about that disaster preparedness plan that I keep putting off. Really I will.

Donovan Rittenbach is the Web Manager for the California Academy of Sciences. He has a Master's Degree in Multimedia, and 12 years of web & multimedia industry experience.

Editor's Note: Producer Amy Miller, who was reporting the story on camera in tonight's 7/24 episode on premature births titled "Born Too Soon: Preterm Births on the Rise", was placed on bed rest for preterm labor 2 weeks after filming. She is at day 27 of mandatory bed rest at the hospital. In this post is an account of the prior week as well, day 21.

7/24/07 Day 27:

Well, the good news is that I'm still pregnant.

Now 34 weeks and 1 day. However, it's been sort of a difficult week. Finding the umbilical cord near my cervix last week triggered some intensified monitoring of one of the babies. They had that baby on a heart monitor around the clock, in addition to my contraction monitor. The contraction monitor is not such a big deal as it's just a strap and sensor that goes around my belly and measures hardening of the uterus, which is what my contractions entail at this point. They aren't painful and in fact, these contractions are pretty normal for a third trimester twin pregnancy. However, my contractions are pretty frequent and may be contributing to the thinning cervix, especially when the weight of two babies is pressing down on it.

So, the issue for me last week was having to keep a heart monitor on baby A. Because of the position of the baby, very low in my belly, near my hip, it's quite difficult to monitor him. I have to be laying flat on my back and relatively still. I accepted the fact that I wasn't going home for a while but when it became obvious that my already very limited movement was going to be even more restricted, I became quite upset. Thankfully, one of my perinatologists saw that I was not coping well with this development and ordered another ultrasound to confirm the location of that umbilical cord. My little boy must have known I was upset because results showed that he'd kicked that cord away from the opening of the cervix. Now we were in a much less dangerous situation. He didn't have to be monitored all the time, I got some freedom and mobility restored and they moved me to yet another room.

So now, although I'm still being carefully watched, everyone seems to feel that they understand my patterns of contraction, my cervix's rate of effacement (or thinning), my babies' patterns of moving and shifting and the things that set me off emotionally. So I have a bit more freedom. I can sit up, work on the computer, take a daily shower and someone can take me out on the deck in a wheelchair for 15 minutes a day. However, they aren't ready to send me home. Today's ultrasound showed that baby A's feet are now the presenting part- the part nearest my cervix, and his cord is right next to his feet. So, because there's still space in there for him to kick that cord back to the scary place, they're going to keep me here. At least until I get to 36 weeks and their sizes don't allow for more shifting and the cord is not at risk of prolapsing.

The babies are still healthy and doing well. I did get a little surprise during today's ultrasound, though. The sonographer pointed out that there is a bit of fluid in baby B's kidneys. They will continue to monitor it over the next weeks. My neonatologist said that the amount of fluid is still considered "normal." They had noticed this a month ago but because the fluid level was not an amount to be concerned about, they didn't mention it to me. That revelation today made me a little worried but it also made me realize that throughout this pregnancy, there has never been anything for me to be concerned about with regard to the babies health. We've all been very lucky.

This is certainly an intense experience. I'm trying my best to count all my blessings every day and take advantage of the opportunities that this experience has to offer to me. But bed rest is definitely not a cake walk. It's a lot of work; emotionally, physically and intellectually. Nearly every day, someone tells me to enjoy the rest and quiet while I can. This sentiment is has a similar effect on me as when someone tells me to "relax" when I'm upset. In other words, the opposite effect. I want to be home, with my man, preparing for the arrival of our twins and enjoying the last few weeks of life before babies. I'm getting weaker by the day as my muscles disappear before my eyes. I worry that a likely c-section in combination with the loss of strength and endurance that 6 weeks in bed causes will make it really difficult to care for newborn twins. I have these thoughts then remember that I'm strong and will get through this with the help of my partner, family, QUEST colleagues and friends. And of course, the joy of bringing two healthy babies home will instantly make all of this seem like a minor inconvenience.
7/17/07 Day 21

My mood has been pretty up and down. Yesterday, it was down. An ultrasound revealed that baby A's cord is beneath his butt, near the opening of my cervix. He's breech, with feet and butt nestled down in the cervical opening. The fact that his cord is where it is means that if my water breaks and cervix dilates, I'm very likely to have a prolapsed cord, which is an obstetrical emergency. In other words, the cord would be the first thing to go through the cervix, which would cut off the oxygen supply to the baby. SO. It's a bit of a setback for me in terms of my overwhelming desire to get the hell out of here. They had moved me to a less critical care room day before yesterday then promptly moved me back up to the labor and delivery floor today. This is my 4th room. The most disappointing thing is that they are much less likely to send me home for bedrest now. Unless baby A turns head down or the cord moves, I'm likely here until I deliver. Which could be 3 more weeks or more. I'm finding it difficult to bear the thought of 3 more weeks.

My OB is talking about having an amnio done next week to assess the babies' lung maturity. She's sort of urging me to consider delivering the babies (c-section) early if their lungs are mature enough. So that would be somewhere between 34 & 35 weeks. I feel weird about delivering them for my own convenience. But she's saying that considering baby A's cord situation, there would be more of a medical reason to deliver early. Still, as trying as it is for me to be stuck here, my inclination is to gestate as long as possible. There are a number of opinions flying around so my challenge is to take one day at a time and talk to all the docs and sort of put the opinions in the pot and stir it around before I decide to serve it up.

On the positive side, the babies continue to grow and are doing well. My cervix is holding steady at "very thin". They measured it today at 9mm. It's been about that length for roughly a week now.
Amy Miller is a Coordinating Producer for television on QUEST, and is the producer seen on camera for this story.