QUEST Community Science Blog

On Tuesday, December 4th, 9-11AM PT, KQED’s Forum goes on a live remote to The Buck Institute for Age Research in Marin County to look at the future of aging. QUEST explored the topic of age research on our Eat Less, Live Longer? TV story and Quest for Longevity radio report . The program will be broadcast on 88.5 FM and will also be available via live streaming on KQED.org.

Additiionally, the public is invited to participate by attending in person. Seating is limited. Guests must RSVP to 415-209-2261, and receive confirmation. Guests need to be seated in the Drexler Auditorium by 8:45 a.m.

Program

9:00 – 10:00 am: Topic: Age Research. Guests include Buck Institute faculty members Dale Bredesen, MD and Gordon Lithgow, PhD, and Paola Timeras, PhD, from UC Berkeley

10:00 – 11:00 am: Topic: Aging & Society. Guest include William Satariano, Prof of Epidemiology & Public Health, UC Berkeley; Mary McCall, Prof of Psychology, St. Mary’s College, and John Shoven, Director, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Bad news for housing may be good news for efficiency.

This house, built by students at the University of
Maryland, won second place in the Solar Decathlon, held
on the Mall in Washington DC in 2007.
Photo by Amy E. Gardner.The recent news about home prices has not been good. In the United States, home prices fell 4.5% this year in the third-quarter compared to in the third-quarter of 2006: the largest drop since the National Home Price Index began to measure home price averages in 1988. According to the Contra Costa Times, Solano County is among the worst hit in the nation. Foreclosure rates are quadrupling in some areas of California, and the drop in property tax revenue will increase next year’s budget deficit. This may lead to cutbacks in state services which usually means cutbacks in service to the people most in need of help during a housing crisis: middle- and low-income families.

Inflated home prices attracting speculation have brought us to the shadow side of the housing boom that occurred during the past several years. Get-rich-quick schemes involving buying a house and selling it for a profit a few years later had looked like sound economics, and the nation’s prosperity seemed to depend on housing prices going up forever.

Charlie Wilson, an economics graduate student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, studies the housing industry. The Vancouver area underwent a housing boom over the last several years as well, and homeowners there have been retrofitting like crazy, hoping to add market value to their homes. Wilson found that in 2006 alone, almost half of homes built before 1946 underwent major retrofits–costing $15,000 or more. However, he found no correlation between the retrofits and home prices. Turns out it was the land the houses were built on that is valuable. Wilson did find that “renovations are most commonly motivated by personal desires, aesthetics and social norms [which] are basically irrelevant for energy efficiency.”

When my wife and I were looking to buy a home in Berkeley, we did notice a lot of houses with odd appendages that seemed to fit someone’s idea of aesthetics but not ours. Maybe one seller really believed that adding a second story with a sauna would add to the market value of their home, however, we were pretty sure most of these renovations were performed without the benefit of a permit. These added bumps and humps certainly don’t make the houses function more efficiently.

So if there ever needed to be a time when California’s, and the nation’s, builders, contractors and homeowners turned en-masse towards making homes more energy efficient, more affordable to build and live in, safer, healthier, and more comfortable, I think it is now–like, right now. Most energy efficiency improvements in existing homes pay for themselves within a few years. Replacing incandescent lights with compact fluorescents (CFLs), buying Energy Star appliances when you need to replace your old appliances, and sealing attics and adding attic insulation are economic no-brainers. If you have to replace your windows, replace them with energy efficient ones. If you have to replace your water heater, consider solar hot water or an on-demand water heater. Just make sure you insulate those hot water pipes. Then, when you’ve made your house as efficient as possible, think about adding photovoltaics (PV) to your roof. At least those PV panels will impress your neighbors.

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.

latitude: 38.2861, longitude: -122

San Francisco is studying a London-style plan to charge drivers a fee when they travel to high-traffic areas, like downtown San Francisco, or Doyle Drive during peak commute hours. But is congestion pricing a boon for public transportation? Or the death of downtown?

Take our poll to share your opinion.

You may listen to the “The Traffic Tax” radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources.

Amy Standen is a Reporter for QUEST and Radio News at KQED-FM.

latitude: 37.7871, longitude: -122.412

Adding more straw to the Bay’s back.

Image source: Jim M. Goldstein, JMG-GalleriesTalk about kicking someone when they’re down down.

When the Cosco Busan collided with the Bay Bridge earlier this month, spilling 58,000 gallons of heavy-duty bunker fuel into the Bay, it was a heartbreaking reminder of the Bay’s vulnerability.

But what makes the spill even more upsetting is that it is not the only injury the Bay is enduring: it’s a spike against the already roaring background noise, another burden on an already severely stressed ecosystem. In the past 150 years, about 85% of the Bay’s tidal marshes have been drained or lost to development. About a third—and in dry years double that amount—of the natural freshwater flows that feed the estuary are diverted instead to farms and cities. In effect, the loss of wetlands and massive diversions of freshwater inflows have compromised the Bay’s natural immune system, making it less resilient in the face of disaster. To make matters worse, every year we are “spilling” about 3 million gallons of oil into the Bay and its watershed via polluted runoff and emissions. (Similarly, in the ocean only about 5% of the oil comes from big tanker spills; much more comes from runoff, routine maintenance, and emissions.)

As both a major shipping port and critical wildlife habitat, the Bay is at risk for an even more catastrophic spill. Obviously we need stronger regulations and stiffer penalties to prevent future spills. But we also need to continue working everyday to restore the Bay’s wetland habitat and freshwater inflows, and to reduce pollution, so that our Bay will be better able to protect and heal itself.

It was heartening to see the public outpouring of concern for the Bay in the wake of the spill. Now it only remains for us all to harness that energy to continue working for a healthy Bay, even as the media coverage of the spill fades away.

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.”

latitude 37.8002, longitude -122.379

Image source: Chris 73If you could know more about your DNA, would you want to? And if you want to know more, is now the time to find out?

You might think so given the flurry of company launches in the last few days. These companies promise to help “decode” your genetics (deCODEme). Or reveal vital information about your 23 chromosomes (23andMe). Or help you navigate your personal genomics (Navigenics).

What makes these companies different from older genetic testing companies is that they look at lots of DNA all at once instead of just a single gene. (They aren’t looking at all of your DNA– for that you need to contact Knome who will do this for a mere $349,000.) This means they can look at many different genes and DNA markers at once giving a broader view of the genetic you.

For around $1000, these companies will take this deep look at your DNA and tell you a bit about your ancestry. They will also be able to tell you a bit about your risk for some diseases. And maybe tell you how likely you are to have a child with blue eyes or red hair. They might even find a genetic reason why you hate Brussels sprouts (take that mom!).

Given how little we know right now about our DNA, I am not sure if these results are worth $1000. A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. And scientists don’t know much yet about our DNA.

You’d think they’d know more given that they sequenced the human genome back in 2003. But just because we have the six billion letters, it doesn’t mean we know what they do. Or how different bits influence each other.

Our DNA right now is a little like Egyptian hieroglyphics were before the Rosetta stone was found. We know a bit about our DNA but not a whole lot. Scientists probably won’t find a magic stone that unlocks the secrets of our DNA in one fell swoop. Instead they’ll need to painstakingly create their own Rosetta stone. This will take time and we are not very far along yet.

Unfortunately since we won’t find a magic decoder ring, we will find things out in fits and starts. And results will change over time. This means that there may be times when the incompleteness of our information means we have the wrong information.

One study might tell you that a certain version of gene X increases your risk for breast cancer. Later you find that you have a certain version of gene Y that cancels out that risk. So you were very worried before when you didn’t need to be. And who knows if they’ll find gene Z that cancels out gene Y and puts you at risk again!

Possible results like these suggest to me that some of the older companies that look at single genes may be the best bet for now. It sounds stodgy, but if a strongly genetic disease runs in your family, then a genetic test that looks at a single gene may be right for you. Unless you want to do your bit for these new companies (and science).

These companies will learn from your DNA– in essence you’ll be funding their research. As they learn more, they’ll be able to offer their customers (and hopefully science) more information. You’ll need to decide if that combined with the broad but shallow information they offer is right for you.

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

latitude 37.3316, longitude -121.89

A wishbone from a theropod and a turkey.This week, many of us celebrated one of the most American of holidays: Thanksgiving. Following tradition, most of us probably had a bite or two of turkey — if you were one of the fortunate to get your hands dirty, you may have used this New York Times video as a guide.

What you may not know is that we can find homologies of many birds parts — thigh bones, arm hones, and even wishbones — in our own skeleton, and it’s not happenstance. The ultimate reason for this similarity is ancestry: birds, mammals and all other tetrapods (four-legged, air-breathing vertebrates) share a common ancestor, over 300 million years old. And, as the descendents, we all exhibit the same basic body plan, with additional anatomical refinements specific to each evolutionary history. Whether a tetrapod’s arm is a fin, a wing or a limb throwing a baseball, a common structure is shared among them because of their evolutionary past.

Back to turkeys: in your holiday meal, you may have come across a very particular y-shaped bone: the wishbone. (The one from my turkey is drying on the counter above the kitchen sink). Humans actually have homologues of wishbones, but we don’t call them that — they’re our collarbones, or clavicles. These bones are long and slender, and they form a key part of complex of bones and muscles that allow us to move our arms. Living birds are unique among tetrapods in having clavicles that are fused together into the y-shaped structure called a furcula, and it plays a key roles in allowing birds to fly. Furculae stiffen the thoracic skeleton, and, in conjunction with a keeled breastbone (or sternum), they provide key muscle anchors for the unique flight stroke of the bird arm.

So, how did two bones get fused into one? Birds are descended from one particular line of dinosaurs called theropods, which includes dinosaurs like T. rex or Velociraptor. Over the last 20 years, paleontologists have assembled a detailed picture of the family tree, or phylogeny, of these animals, showing the exact anatomical changes that occurred along the lineage of theropods to living birds. The changes in the furcula plays a key role in this evolutionary sequence: it turns out that relatives of T. rex and many other theropods had fused furculae, but clearly these animals did not use the fused furcula to fly. Some paleontologists have suggested that fused furculae in theropods increased the mobility of the forelimbs. Then, as birds evolved flight, a fused furcula turned out to be wonderfully useful as a brace for a flapping limb.

Evolution often works in this manner: recruiting old structures to use in a new context, and many examples of such improvisation have been shown in the fossil record. Together, phylogeny and the fossil record reveal more about evolution that might not have been apparent when you were first biting into that savory chunk of turkey meat. To check find out more about your holiday dinosaur, check out this link too.

Nick Pyenson is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, in the department of integrative biology and the museum of paleontology.

latitude: 37.7819, longitude: -122.286

Artist concept of a Neptune-sized planet
orbiting the star 55 Cancri. Credit: NASAAnother milestone has been reached in the two-decade old search for “extrasolar planets,” a.k.a exoplanets– planets that orbit stars other than our Sun. In November it was announced that the leading exoplanet research team– the California and Carnegie Planet Search Team, led on the California side by U. C. Berkeley’s Dr. Geoff Marcy– has succeeded in detecting five, count ‘em, five planets orbiting the same parent star.

The star, 55 Cancri, a Sun-like star in the constellation Cancer, has been under exoplanet surveillance for 20 years, and yielded the secret of its first planet in 1996. Over the years of continued observations, one by one more planets in its retinue have been coaxed out of the data.

Personally, moments like this are an impetus to step back and reflect on the state of our understanding of the universe. How much more we know now than we did when I was a starry-eyed child back in the 1960s! We knew of no planets beyond our Solar System when I was a kid. In fact, further observation of our own Solar System has, ironically, reduced the number of planets at home from nine to eight! Even pictures of places like Mars, and certainly the moons of outer solar system planets like Jupiter and Saturn, were blurry, grainy images lacking much detail.

Now, more than 260 planets orbiting other stars have been found (although we don’t have actual pictures of them at this point). Still, going from my childhood, when exoplanets were theoretical and the question was still asked whether our Solar System is somehow special, even unique, to have planets at all, to today’s solid body count of “worlds out there”…is simply breathtaking.

Most exoplanet detections are made by the measurement of the slight wobbling motion a star makes due to the gravitational pull of any planets it might possess. You might be imagining astronomers taking video of a star and playing it back at high speed to see it slither like a snake– but that isn’t how it’s done. Instead, the measurement is made using the Doppler Shift– observing changes in the star’s speed by measuring the corresponding change in the wavelength of its light. (This is the same way that the Highway Patrol nabs speeders on the freeway, using radio-frequency waves.)

So what’s the 55 Cancri system like? Well, by virtue of the fact that current exoplanet detection techniques can only reveal large planets–gas giants like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune– all five of the 55 Cancri planets are such. One of them, in fact, is four times the size of Jupiter–and another, Neptune-sized world orbits so close that it only takes only 2.8 days to make one circuit around its star. Not much like the Solar System we know and love–but there’s plenty of room for variety in the universe, after all.

The next big move in the exoplanet hunt will be for Earth-sized planets orbiting their stars at Earth-like distances– a feat to be attempted by NASA’s Kepler mission coming up in 2008. As always, stay tuned…

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

latitude: 37.8148, longitude: -122.178

Ting explores Halloween enrichment. No, that is
not a real giant candy corn. Zoo guests and especially young students often ask us how we get our animals, imagining myself or a zoo keeper running after zebras in the savanna sun with nets and ropes. Of course, this is quite illegal these days and I would never work for an institution that did such things. Accredited zoos acquire animals through a variety of means, from purchasing an individual from another zoo, to breeding them on-site, to rescuing an animal in need of a home or even finding a hedgehog in a Tupperware dish outside the door to your office (yes, this happened).

If I were to take you on a tour of our animals with a focus on where they came from, you would be amazed. Our tigers came from a circus, our juvenile lions from an illegal situation in Texas, our rabbits from a humane society, our pot bellied pigs from a family discarding a pet. Each tells a story of animal welfare or conservation – and it is this aspect of the Oakland Zoo that I am most proud of. In many ways, we are a sanctuary.

Ting naps in straw atop her tree house,
her huge, green and peaceful enclosure
in background. One of the most telling stories is that of Ting Ting, our Sun Bear from Borneo. Ting had not had an easy life. She was captured by poachers as a cub in her native country of Malaysia on the island of Borneo. They likely killed her mother to sell parts of her body on the black market and captured the young cub to sell as a pet. If so, she likely spent the first few years of her life in various homes, alone, in small enclosures and without appropriate food and care. Eventually Ting was confiscated by government officials when she was approximately three years old. She was put into an over crowded rescue facility where she spent the next six years. Like many wild animals, once in captivity, Ting had lost her natural fear of people and had not developed the necessary skills a bear needs to survive. Ting was too dangerous and ill-prepared to return to the wild. Due to the stress of these poor captive environments Ting developed stereotypic (abnormal repetitive behavior) pacing. This behavior develops to alleviate stress but typically continues as a habit even when the stress is gone.

In 1996 and again in 2000, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums coordinated two importations for a total of 20 Malaysian Sun Bears of the Bornean subspecies to help relieve the over crowded conditions of the rescue facility and to maintain our captive population. Ting Ting was sent to the San Diego Zoo in 2000 where she lived for six years, before she came to her home with us at the Oakland Zoo at the end of 2006. We plan on seeing her through to the end of her life, giving her tree houses to nap in, enrichment to play with, honey to eat, a pool to catch fish in, room to roam in her giant enclosure and eventually, a friend. It has been a long journey for Ting and we are glad she is home for good. We hope her story inspires guests to find out more about Sunbears and explore other conservation issues, as well as look at the role of zoos with fresh eyes.

To hear more about the plight of Sunbears and biodiversity in all of Borneo, please join us for a lecture on December 12th with Cynthia Ong and Heather Pierson of LEAP (www.leapspiral.org). Check www.oaklandzoo.org for details.

Amy Gotliffe is Conservation Manager at The Oakland Zoo. Cathy Keyes, Sunbear Keeper also contributed to this post.

latitude: 37.7502, longitude: -122.148

Many people spend their holiday seasons inside shopping malls. More and more, kids, in particular, are passing up the opportunity to play outdoors during the rest of the year too. The trend could be contributing to serious health risks such as obesity. And so a movement of parents, teachers and lawmakers is trying to get young people back into nature.

You may listen to the “Nature Deficit” radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources. Also see Photos from the kids’ “Camping at the Presidio” trip on flickr.com.

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

latitude: 37.797, longitude: -121.638157

The Forest

Venus Landing. Credit:
Soviet Planetary Exploration ProgramIt’s time to get back to some of the reader’s questions. Over the last couple of months I’ve focused on the easy ones like “how big is the universe?”. Now, people are asking the tough ones, like that from Mike:

“There’s been a recent debate in our local papers regarding Venus’ high planetary temperature being related to the dearth of carbon dioxide on the planet. Apparently Venus is much, much hotter than Mercury, even though Venus is twice as far from the sun. Could you explain a bit about our system’s planets and how they differ compositionally? What is it about the Earth’s composition of elements that makes it just right for 99% of the life on the planet? I say 99% because it seems 1% of the life is strange enough to exist in all sorts of harsh conditions.”

When it comes to the landscape of our own neighborhood, it gets a little more complicated for me. I have a tendency to look right past the solar system in my research of the distant Universe. I’m sure there’s an explanation for this in the cliché of missing the forest for the trees. I just do it in reverse.

The Trees

Hubble Deep Field. Credit:
R. Williams, The HDF Team (STScI), NASATruth is, the trees are quite intriguing in their own right. I think people are more impressed with the observations of our solar system because the proximity lends to very detailed images and observations. Compare an image of the surface of Venus to one of the deepest images from Hubble Space Telescope. The image of Venus fits within our sense of scale that we established in our time here on Earth. You can even see familiar rocks and the feet of the Soviet robot. The Hubble Deep Field… needs a bit of explanation.

For the rest of the year, I am going to pull back from the farthest reaches of the universe and focus on Venus and the other planets. It will give me a chance to learn a little about what the Solar System actually looks like. It will also give me a chance to explore some of the most breath-taking images that NASA has created. I’m just going to have to do a little research to get it right.

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.

latitude: 37.6797, longitude: -121.698