I'm not a gambling man but I suppose living in the Bay Area is a gamble in and of itself, given that the likelihood of an earthquake here of magnitude 6.7 or greater in the next 30 years is 67 percent. As our QUEST TV segment on the Hayward Fault, produced by Amy Miller, and an upcoming QUEST radio segment produced by Andrea Kissack attest, the greatest seismic risk posed to Bay Area residents is the Hayward fault, which last ruptured 150 years ago. The fact that the fault ruptures on average every 140 years, offers a sober reminder of the seismic risk that people working and residing in the East Bay face every day, including Amy and Andrea, as well as several other QUEST colleagues who reside in Berkeley and Oakland. As Mary Lou Zoback stated during the interview, a major earthquake along the Hayward fault would be economically much more catastrophic than Hurricane Katrina, coupled with the difficulty of coordinating relief services in communities like Fremont, where more than 100 languages are spoken.

So we know – or should know – the seismic risks of living in one of the most vibrant, diverse places in the U.S. Short of leaving the region, what can we do?

Well, one of the most illuminating things about working on this story for me was learning a bit about retrofitting one’s home to make it withstand the lateral and vertical forces that accompany a strong earthquake. In short, you need to build shear walls – made of reinforced plywood and shear transfer ties – and bolt them to the walls in the foundation of your house. Suprisingly, there are no official codes as to what constitutes a proper seismic retrofit of a residential unit in California, nor is there a dearth of licensed contractors who will offer quotes and purport to retrofit your home but without any standards in place, homeowners are often at a loss to evaluate the quality of the retrofit which can easily exceed ten thousand dollars, depending on the size of the home and its location. Still, homeowners can avail themselves of a few retrofit resources online, such as Plan Set A, a guideline for retrofitting one's home that has been approved by building departments of several Bay Area municipalities such as Oakland and Hayward. Also on the Association of Bay Area Government's web site is a set of schematics illustrating shear wall construction. If you are interested in retrofitting your home, you should get quotes from several contractors, consult your city's building department to inquire about permits and possibly consult a structural engineer to perform a building analysis on your home.

If you're like me, though, and don’t own a home but want to prepare for "the big one," it's imperative to get an earthquake survival kit. The sells earthquake survival kits but why not make your own, provided that it has water, first aid supplies, a flashlight, food rations and other essentials for you to survive 72 hours while waiting for emergency help. If you want to make your own kit, try the USGS, the city and county of San Francisco, or helpful suggestions from the San Francisco Chronicle and LA Times.

Living in earthquake country, it pays to be vigilant. I applaud the 1868 Hayward Earthquake Alliance, a consortium of agencies that are raising awareness of the risk posed by the Hayward fault with a series of events aimed at educating the public about the importance of preparedness, including a city-wide drill in San Francisco on October 21st, the 140th anniversary of the 1868 Hayward earthquake. We may not be able to predict when exactly the next earthquake on the Hayward fault may occur but we can start planning today to mitigate its effects.

For those who aren't familiar with the Hayward fault, check out our this link to the USGS Google Earth tour over the fault.

Editor's Note: Guest blogging for Producer Joan Johnson is QUEST team member and sailing fanatic Sandy Schonning.

The real physics of sailing are so deep and so complex, people
are still debating it.

It was another average Tuesday. I was sitting at my desk, looking at my calendar. Another day of budget meetings, returning emails, reviewing contracts, yawn. The usual buzz of production was going on around me, a crew going out to do a story about… sailing. Ah sailing, my favorite topic. My husband and I had recently moved both ourselves and our Tayana 37 up the coast from Long Beach. Okay, a well-qualified captain had actually moved the boat to San Francisco for us… but since Polaris had gotten here, we had become a bit obsessed about Bay sailing. Sailing in So Cal had not prepared us for the currents, tides and winds of the Bay, so we tried to get out there as much as possible.

Okay, back to Tuesday morning. The buzz moved over to my desk… the shoot was supposed to show a group of beginners on a sailing lesson, but the family that was booked for this purpose had suddenly cancelled that morning. Could I fill in? I considered my clothes… skirt, heels, not really sailing clothes. And moving all those meetings… but a day on the Bay… the beautiful, sunny, windy Bay. Plus, sailing with an instructor, there is always something to learn about sailing, how could I pass this up? Okay when are we leaving? No wait, what am I going to wear… isn't there a West Marine near the sailing school. Can we stop to get me pants and a pair of shoes? Yes, that's how much I really wanted to go out that day, I bought new clothes to do it.

It was a great day on the Bay. Stan, our instructor from the sailing school, was great at explaining the physics behind why a boat sails. At the direction of the producers, I asked every sailing question I could think of. Who has the right-of-way, what is this line for, what do we do when the wind blows harder? Okay, I knew many of the answers, but I babbled on anyway. Was I having fun? In much of the segment, I have the goofiest grin on my face. I wish I had a job that took me sailing every day…

Anyway, it was over too quickly – and then it was back to my meetings. But I'll tell you the biggest surprise of the whole experience: I though the physics behind sailing were pretty simple – a little Bernoulli Principle, a little lift generation. But what I learned made my head spin. It turns out that most of the simple explanations of sailing physics are ‘helpful models' that make sailing understandable to sailors. The real physics of sailing are so deep and so complex, people are still debating it. If you'd like to see what I mean, check out Arvel Gentry's website. Gentry was an aerodynamicist for 40 years, is an avid sailor, and an America's Cup boat designer. His technical papers will give you an idea of what's really going on:

http://www.arvelgentry.com

Love is in the airI love you. Because you smell different than I do. Not quite Titanic or Casablanca or even Olivia Newton-John in Grease. But smells may be part of the reason why we fall in love with a certain person. At least that is what a new study argues.

We've known for awhile that animals find their "true love" partly through smells. One of the things they are sensing is whether the potential mate has a different set of MHC genes.

MHC genes are a big part of our immune system. These genes are used to create the huge number of antibodies that we each make to battle bacteria, viruses, etc. Everyone has a different set of these antibodies.

The more varied your MHC genes are, the more invaders your immune system can recognize and defeat. So two parents with very different MHC genes will have kids with immune systems that can recognize (and so defeat) lots of different kinds of bacteria and viruses. Parents with similar MHC genes will have kids with less varied immune systems. (This is a big reason why inbred animals are so sickly.)

Animals can tell about a potential mate's MHC genes through smell. And people might be able to do this as well.

Lots of experiments have been done where men or women sniff the sweaty t-shirts of members of the opposite sex to see which t-shirt smells better. If the potential mates are of the same ethnic group, the sniffers tend to prefer mates with very dissimilar MHC genes. If the potential mates were of different ethnic groups, the sniffers preferred mates with somewhat but not wildly dissimilar MHC genes.

The new study looked at a group of 30 European American couples from Utah and 30 Yoruba couples from Nigeria. Thankfully there was no sweat smelling involved. Instead the researchers compared the DNA between the spouses of each couple in many different places throughout their genome.

What they found was that for the Utah couples, the DNA around the MHC genes was much less alike than the DNA almost everywhere else. This did not appear to be the case for the Yoruba couples. This suggests that at least for these 30 couples from Utah, having a very different set of MHC genes may have been part of picking a spouse.

Why the difference between the Utahans and the Yorubans? It is hard to say without more data but one possibility has to do with how much of a role social factors play in picking a spouse in each society. Perhaps the European Americans are freer to choose a mate. If this is the case, then they might be more likely to follow some sort of biological imperative.

Another possibility is that this smell test is only a big deal if the potential mates are all very similar to start with. The Utah couples all had pretty similar DNA to each other to begin with. The Yoruba couples' DNA was less alike.

Of course, this is a total of 60 couples and so is in no way exhaustive and may be proven wrong tomorrow. But it adds to a growing pile of evidence that suggests how mate selection works at the biological level. And it shows the wide range of things we can learn about ourselves by studying our DNA in great detail. Maybe it even gives perfume companies some ideas too.

For these notes, I thought I'd focus on something that didn't make it into the sea lions radio broadcast: the necropsy.

Each year the Marine Mammal Center treats somewhere between 600-1000 animals, including California sea lions, Pacific harbor seals, Northern elephant seals, and steller sea lions. About half of them are treated successfully at the center and released into the Pacific. The other half either die naturally or have to be euthanized.

Most of them end up at the center's hospital after passersby spot the animals on the beach and sense something's wrong. (The Marine Mammal center responds to calls anywhere between Mendocino and San Louis Obispo Counties — some 600 miles of coastline.) Some problems are human-caused, like boat-propeller injuries or ingested fishing nets and hooks. Other times, it's cancer, domoic acid poisoning, or increasingly these days, leptospirosis. Sometimes, it's hard to tell exactly what happened — hence the need for necropsies.

On the day that Quest intern Jennifer Skene and I visited the center, veterinarian Nicola Pussini performed two necropsies, both on sea lions. One animal seemed to have died from a tumor underneath his fin; the other was a suspected domoic acid intoxication.

Each necropsy takes about an hour and a half. First Pussini measures the animal, then he slices it open and inspects every part, from tongue to tail. He inspects the teeth, pulls out all the organs, checks to see how much fat the animal has. The data, along with tissue samples, are archived and shared with other research institutions. This is the kind of basic research that Marine Mammal Center staff cite when people ask why they devote so many resources (most of it from private donations) to animals whose populations are neither threatened nor endangered.

I should mention that I didn't exactly see this entire process firsthand. Let's just say that after my first strong whiff of sea lion intestine, I felt a compelling need to go check on things outside the necropsy room. Luckily for me, Jennifer has the stomach of a true scientist and managed to both hold the microphone and take photos. Luckily for you, we’re sparing you her gorier shots.

Watch the Sea Lion Rescue audio slide show online.

Artist concept of lightning on Venus. Credit: NASAVenus has reentered our sky in its part-time job as the Evening Star, appearing as a uniquely brilliant white beacon over the western horizon after sunset.

With all the attention that the exploration of certain other planets has received lately, I feel that Venus exploration has fallen off our radar a bit, and that it is high time for an update.

There is no lack of exploration of Venus today: NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, bound for Mercury, flew by Venus twice (2006, 2007), making observations on the fly; Japan is currently planning to send a climate orbiter mission ("Planet C") there in 2010; and the European BepiColombo will perform a couple of Venus flybys of its own, in 2013, on its way to Mercury.

Most notably, the European Venus Express orbiter is in the middle of a two-year mission of exploration, and has revealed new and fascinating things about Venus–a planet whose cloud-shrouded surface kept us mostly ignorant about it until recent decades. (Before the 1960's it was even speculated that Venus might be a steamy swamp or rain forest world!)

Here's a quick recap of some of the highlights of Venus Express's findings:

"Hurricanes" at the poles: Venus Express's VIRTIS instrument, which is able to probe several different layers of the atmosphere, has put together a detailed picture of wind behavior at different latitudes and different altitudes. What was discovered from these observations is that Venus has giant, hurricane-like vortexes capping its poles. Winds within these systems all flow in generally the same direction, as you'd expect with hurricanes, circling mostly windless "eyes" at their centers at the poles.

Lighting: Evidence of lightning on Venus was detected by earlier orbiter and lander missions, and Venus Express has confirmed it–maybe more lightning activity than on Earth. What makes Venus's lightning unique among the planets with lightning (Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, as far as we know) is that it's the only case where lightning is formed by something other than clouds of water droplets–in Venus's case, sulfuric acid droplets do the trick. Lightning can be an important factor in that it breaks up atmospheric molecules and allows them to recombine in different forms.

Active volcano search: It has long been suggested that there may be active volcanoes on Venus today, though no direct evidence (like images of erupting volcanoes, for example) have yet been obtained. Venus Express has measured large variations over time in the concentrations of sulfur dioxide in Venus's atmosphere–a compound that on Earth comes from volcanic eruptions.

There's a lot more to say about Venus, as it is a world as varied and fascinating as the Earth (minus the life forms, as far as we know). Though it may not be the hottest vacation spot in the solar system, with its pressure cooker of a toxic, acid-laced atmosphere, it is one of those great mysteries that we actually get to watch unfold before us as exploration of it moves forward.

Credit: California High Speed Rail AuthorityThe devil's in the details, so the details aren't entirely in the proposition. There are still many open questions about Prop. 1A on the November ballot, the proposal to bring high speed rail to California – and that makes sense, since there are a billion details, many of them contentious, in any $9.95 billion initiative and $45 billion project.

One of those outstanding questions is: Where will the train go?

In the Bay Area, that has been a huge issue. There are two proposed routes (check out an interactive map here) — one through the East Bay and the Altamont Corridor toward Sacramento, and the "preferred alternative," which runs down the Peninsula, through San Jose, Gilroy and the Pacheco Pass, and then loops back around to Sacramento.

Some rail advocates filed a lawsuit, pushing the state to do more study, particularly environmental study. The Pacheco Pass route cuts through some pristine landscape, and that worries environmentalists. And the Altamont route runs through some of the heaviest traffic corridors in the Bay Area, so a high speed train could relieve some of the East Bay's congestion. In addition, the Peninsula communities of Menlo Park and Atherton joined the lawsuit, because they're concerned about the potential of massive above-the-street construction there.

The Rail Authority says it's working with communities to answer their concerns. For instance, it's possible that some of the high speed rail stations could go below ground on the Peninsula — and that they hope to build BOTH routes eventually. Right now, they say, the Pacheco Pass route is preferred, but they point out that it's a long way till the tracks go down and the train starts running, and there will be a lot to work out over the next decade.

Listen to the Fast Trains radio report online.

Photo credit: California Academy of Sciences LibraryThere has been a lot of buzz about the innovation of the California Academy of Sciences building as of late. Yet as the opening date draws near it is the nostalgic and historical aspects of the Academy that hold my attention. There are three iconic exhibits of the Academy that have been revived – the Alligator Swamp Tank, African Hall and the Foucault Pendulum. Each exhibit has its own special history and anecdotes but I quite like the science and Academy history of the Foucault Pendulum.

The Foucault Pendulum first demonstrated in February 1851 that the Earth rotates by turning on its axis when French Philosopher Leon Foucault unveiled it in the Meridian Room of the Paris Observatory. His most famous pendulum was exhibited beneath the 279-foot dome of the Pantheon in Paris, hanging from a 219-foot wire. A replica of this famous pendulum swings in the East Pavilion of the Academy, though from only a 30 foot cable. A weight known as a "bob" on the end of a wire swings in a straight arc in relation to the laws of inertia and gravity. Below the constant back and forth arc of the bob a circle of pins set 6 degrees apart rotates. As the Earth rotates the pins come into contact with the constant arc of the bob and are knocked over.

At the Academy located in San Francisco (latitude 37.7°N), the pins will be knocked down every 39 to 40 minutes over a 24 hour period. In twenty-four hours, the pendulum will only knock over 220 degrees worth of pins. Knocking over 360 degrees worth of pins in San Francisco would take 39 hours, where at the North Pole (90° N) it would only take 24 hours.

Why is there a difference? This is because at the North & South Poles, Earth's rotation is enough to explain the change in the pendulum's apparent direction of swing. But as soon as you leave the poles and change latitude, something called the Coriolis Effect comes into play. The Coriolis Effect is an apparent deflection of moving objects when they are viewed from a rotating frame of reference, and its strength varies with latitude. Freely moving objects on the surface of the Earth experience a Coriolis force, and appear to veer to the right in the northern hemisphere, and to the left in the southern. Over time, this continual veering-off-course causes the swing of the pendulum bob to gradually precess, or rotate. This precessing is tracked as the pendulum knocks down pegs set up in a circle beneath it. The farther a pendulum is located from the pole, it will take gradually longer and longer for the pendulum's swing to precess a complete 360°. At the equator, the Coriolis effect is so weak that the pendulum is unaffected – the swing would never precess and therefore the pendulum would never knock over any pegs.

Intestingly, the Coriolis Effect also explains the spiral shapes of hurricanes, cyclonic weather systems, and oceanic gyres and which way they spiral in the northern or southern hemispheres, so the physics works for various natural phenomena, not just for pendulums.

Over two hundred Foucault Pendulums around the world were made in-house at the California Academy of Sciences. In 1958, Academy staff built a Foucault Pendulum for the Smithsonian. In 1960, Foucault Pendulums began to be produced en masses for clients around the globe. Four to five a year were produced in the instrument shop and are still being created today by a retired staff member – Cary Ponchione under "Academy Pendulum Sales". So the Foucault Pendulum on display at the Academy today is just one of many that demonstrate the axis rotation of the Earth and the specific laws of physics that affects arc, tilt and rotation.

Do compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) really save energy?

When you replace incandescents with CFLs, you use less electricity for lighting, but you use more energy for heating your home in the winter, since hot burning incandescents–which produce a lot more heat than light–decrease the heating load. This is called the take-back effect. Anil Parekh, who does research for Natural Resources Canada, and his colleagues, studied the take-back effect. They wanted to know if CFLs really saved energy in a home over the course of a year.

The Canada study, which took place at the Canadian Center for Housing Technology (CCHT)–two identical homes that allow researchers to compare different technologies–showed that even in heating dominated climates, such as in Fairbanks, Alaska, you save energy overall by swapping out incandescents with CFLs. And in cooling climates, such as in Los Angeles, you save on lighting electricity and there is an added bonus (as if Southern Californians deserved it) you use less to cool your home in the summer, since cool CFLs, which put out 90% less heat than incandescents, are not adding to your cooling load.

Some readers may have noted that I declared my allegiance to light-emitting diodes (LEDs), in a recent blog, since they are potentially much more energy efficient than CFLs. But we'll have to live with CFLs until LEDs become more cost effective… kind of like driving my pretty-fuel-efficient 1997 Geo Prizm into the ground before investing in a newer, hybrid car, or until I quit driving. It takes a lot of energy to make a hybrid car.

Sometimes the most efficient car, or appliance, or light bulb, is the one that's already been made.

Did John's genes make him cheat on Elizabeth?
Photo by Mike MurphyI've brought up before how genes can affect our behavior. They don't necessarily determine what we do but they can make doing the "right" thing easier or harder. A new study suggests that having a certain version of a certain vasopressin receptor gene makes a man less likely to cheat on his partner.

The gene commonly comes in three different versions — RS1, RS3, and GT25. Men with GT25 and RS1 reported more infidelity and had unhappier marriages on average than men with RS3. Which version a woman had didn't seem to matter.

Scientists don't know why men with the RS3 version are more faithful but it makes sense that this gene would be involved. It has been implicated in pair bonding in other animals with the best and most comprehensive work having been done on little rodents called voles.

There are many different kinds of voles but we’ll focus on prairie and meadow voles. Prairie voles stick with one female. Meadow voles are a bit more like men in country music songs — they tend to love them and leave them.

A bunch of wonderful experiments showed that the voles' different behaviors were because they had different versions of a certain vasopressin receptor gene. People don’t have the exact genetic difference that meadow and prairie voles have. But the exact same gene is involved in this new study.

The vole experiments showed that if the vasopressin receptor works less well in prairie voles, the boy voles develop a wandering eye. And male meadow voles with extra potent vasopressin receptors settle down.

So at least in voles this vasopressin receptor gene is important for pair bonding. We'll need more studies in humans to nail down whether it plays as big a role in human male monogamy. But this study does bring up some interesting ideas.

First off, we aren't voles so having this gene is no excuse for cheating on a partner. It just means that it is harder for these men to remain faithful. Sorry John but even if you have this gene version it doesn’t let you off the hook for cheating on Elizabeth.

Second, if the study proves to be correct, then it suggests that there may be a pharmaceutical way to modify men's behavior. A pharmaceutical company would need to come up with a drug that targets this receptor. Now men who take this drug would be more likely to be faithful. I don’t know about you, but this form of pharmaceutical behavioral modification seems a little scary to me.

What is the most compelling reason to use QUEST resources in the science classroom? "They are local", "I can download them", and "short is good." These are a few of the quick responses given by science educators attending QUEST's first 2-day institutes this summer. Forty science teachers from Vallejo to San Jose attended one of two Institutes entitled "Using QUEST Multimedia in the Middle and High School Classroom to Enhance Teaching and Learning" (yes, it’s a mouthful, but you probably get a good idea of what we focused on…). The Institutes were held in partnership with CTAP Region IV at both the San Mateo County Office of Education in Redwood City and the Alameda County Office of Education in Hayward in mid-August.

Participants spent an intense two days discussing the importance of incorporating 21st century skills and multimedia into the science curriculum, learning about and practicing with the science resources on the QUEST website, and ultimately, planning a unit and lesson that incorporate one or more QUEST resources into their curriculum for the upcoming year. They streamed, podcasted and downloaded, left comments on the QUEST blog, explored Explorations, created Google Maps, searched the QUEST Flickr Group, learned about RSS feeds, and started their own social network. Did I mention they only had 2 days?

And of course the hard work paid off with some very creative plans for the '08-'09 school year: students at Centerville Junior High in Fremont will be reading and commenting on the QUEST blog each week, and students at Terra Linda High School in San Rafael will be using QUEST and Google Maps to learn about and locate the most powerful telescopes on Earth. Students at Gompers Continuation High School in Richmond will view QUEST video and use a QUEST Exploration before a field trip where they will collect photos and video to make their own short media piece! These are just a few of the innovative ideas that teachers came up with at the institutes.

In addition to a stipend for their time, these forty teachers will now be the recipients of follow-up support from QUEST Education for the duration of the '08-'09 school year. As the provider of that support, I couldn't be more excited to work with these amazing teachers. In an era of high stakes testing and underfunded, overcrowded classrooms, it is a privilege to work with such dedicated and creative individuals.

To receive updates on opportunities for educators to connect with KQED, sign up for the monthly KQED Science Education Newsletter newsletter at www.kqed.org/newsletters.