QUEST Community Science Blog Author: Amy Standen

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Reporter's Notes: Getting Paid to Go Solar

November 6th, 2009 by Amy Standen

To go solar or not to go solar? Homeowners looking to save money on their energy bills have a number of factor to consider.

It's easy to get excited about installing solar panels on your house – particularly when you find out that state and federal rebates can cut the price almost in half.

But, as we've reported before, you might get more bang for your buck from far cheaper (and yes, far less exciting) fixes. Small things like weather stripping your doors, turning down the thermostat or upgrading your refrigerator, can put a dent in your utility bills.

Even if you've done all that, solar panels still might not pencil out. That's because of something called "tiered pricing", which is how most utilities calculate your monthly energy bills. The idea is that energy is relatively cheap as long as you stay within a certain amount. Exceed that, and you're in the next "tier," where the rate increases. At the next tier, the rate is even higher. The difference between top tier and bottom pier can be as much as 44 cents versus 8 cents per kilowatt hour.

That's why solar panels tend to make more sense for people with substantial energy needs – the big, air-conditioned houses, the heated pools, the multiple flat-screen TVs.

The higher your monthly utility bills without solar panels, the faster those panels will pay for themselves once they're installed. Plus, even if those panels don't meet the complete energy needs of your house, they may be enough to bring you down to a lower tier, where the rate is much better.

If you're interested in making your home more energy efficient, this handy and comprehensive online audit from the people at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs is a good place to start.




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Posted in Engineering, Environment, KQED, Partners, Radio | Please Comment

Reporter's Notes: Predicting the Next Big One

October 9th, 2009 by Amy Standen



Though I don't use it in the piece, the system of earthquake early warning we profiled – developed by UC Berkeley's Richard Allen, among others – has a name:ElarmS. One of my favorite parts of the ElarmS website is the page where visitors are invited to submit their own ideas for how the system might be used.

I mention this because it illustrates an interesting fact about earthquake prediction, which is that it's not the technology technology (i.e., how to predict an earthquake) that's still up for debate, it's what to do with the warning, once we have it.

If Allen is right, three years from now ElarmS will be up and running, supplying some – if not a whole lot – of warning before quakes hit. But whether the rest of us receive that warning is largely out of ElarmS 's hands. Will someone develop an iPhone app that'll announce the countdown in a GPS-like voice: 10, 9, 8? Will BART rig its system to ElarmS so that every train in the network starts slowing down, as soon as countdown begins? Will fire stations allow their doors to be automatically opened every time an alarm goes off? To borrow the USGS's David Oppenheimer's cringe-inducing example, will surgeons hear an alarm and lift their scalpels?

And what happens when false alarms – and they are inevitable – cause people to turn off their iPhone quake-warning apps, or complain about BART slowdowns? At a conference for environmental journalists last night, I chatted with two Mexicans about how their country has invested in an early-warning system. They rolled their eyes. "If it only worked!" Unfortunately, the price for working sometimes might be not working other times.

Here is a nice depiction of P-waves and S-waves, if you want to learn more about how prediction (and earthquakes) work.

And here's a link to the California Integrated Seismic Network, which includes the vault I visited in the radio piece (and featured in the slde show below).




Listen to Predicting the Next Big One radio report online.







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Posted in KQED | 1 Comment

Reporter's Notes: Predicting Swine Flu

September 18th, 2009 by Amy Standen



The last time we reported on Swine flu, or 2009 H1N1 virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was considering whether or not to invest in a vaccine for the new influenza strain.

Now, after several delays, the first batches of vaccines — first, a nasal spray version, then an injectible vaccine — is due to hit hospitals and clinics across the country (and around the world) in the first weeks of October. It's up to each state to decide which groups to prioritize, but pregnant women, young children, and those with certain preexisting conditions such as asthma may be considered priorities. Over the following weeks, the flow of vaccines, produced at five different labs across the country, will steadily increase until, officials hope, any American who chooses to be vaccinated has access to a dose.

To learn more about where to get the vaccine, call: (800) CDC-INFO (800 232-4636) or visit www.cdc.gov/flu.

Here's another good resource for basic H1N1 vaccine info.

In this piece, we profile work taking place at the University of California, San Francisco's Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center. This lab is home to the ViroChip – a powerful viral diagnostic tool that won its inventor, Joseph DeRisi, a MacArthur "Genius" Grant back in 2004. TheViroChip and other tools are critical to the fight against 2009 H1N1 . Among other things, they may be the first to alert us should the virus mutate into a form that's resistant to the leading antiviral drug, Tamiflu. (Several cases of Tamiflu-resistant 2009 H1N1 have already been reported, but so far they appear to be isolated incidents.)

They'll be looking out for another important mutation too: That's if 2009 H1N1 changes enough so that the current vaccine for it — the one coming out in October — no longer works. (This kind of subtle virus mutation is the reason we need new flu vaccines every year.) So far, this does not seem to be the case.

Listen to the Predicting Swine Flu radio report online.







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Posted in Health, KQED, Radio | 2 Comments

Reporter's Notes: Is This Recyclable?

August 28th, 2009 by Amy Standen

Say you consider yourself a top-notch recycler. You buy in bulk as much as possible, compost all your food scraps, can recite the recyclables bin allowable item list from memory. When trash day rolls around, what's in your discounted black mini-can?

According to Sunset Scavenger Spokesman Robert Reed, San Francisco residents should have nothing but "film plastics" (like plastic bags from stores and dry cleaners) and polystyrene, aka Styrofoam.

But the life of a recycling ascetic ain't easy. First of all, it means learning the rules of your particular community, since recycling practices vary depending on where you live. Probably, It means forgoing juice boxes, disposable diapers, complicated, multi-material packaging. It means you've scraped out your cat food cans ("contaminated" recyclables are often tossed). If you're a paper shredder, you've put all the scraps into a paper bag labeled "shredded paper." (Tiny pieces of paper are too hard to collect – sorters usually landfill them.) In short, you've earned a PhD in recycling. (And if you think that's complicated, consider the Japanese.)

Some experts have argued that this is all too much trouble – that instead of aiming for zero waste, we should accept a certain amount of landfilling. Others say that the more citizens recycle, the more efficient the program becomes – hence the movement toward mandatory recycling. One point that nearly everyone seems to agree on is that products on the shelves must be designed to be more easily recyclable than they are today.




Is This Recyclable?

On that note, we interviewed two recycling experts: Mark Murray, director of Californians Against Waste, and Kurt Standen (no relation, amazingly to both of us), general manager of the Sacramento Recycling and Transfer Station. We came armed with six recycling stumpers, including a rubber boot, a juice box, and that much-maligned item of transport, the plastic bag. See what Standen and Murray had to say by clicking on the images below.



Listen to the Getting to Zero Waste radio report online.




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Posted in KQED | 8 Comments

Reporter's Notes: The Economics of Household Recycling

July 31st, 2009 by Amy Standen

The recyclable aluminum in these packed bundles fetches around $1.50 per pound on the commodities market.

There's something about recycling that brings out the OCD in me.

A brown paper bag filled with scrubbed-out cans and neatly stacked newspapers; corn husks and coffee filters in a compost tub; a garbage bag so light it barely makes a thud when it lands in the black bin. Things falling into their rightful place. So satisfying!

And yet for all the care we take with recycling (and I know I'm not the only one), much about the process is mysterious to most of us. Why don't municipal recycling programs pick up plastic bags – even the ones with the chasing arrows symbol on them? What's the deal with yogurt containers? Or bottle caps? Greasy pizza boxes?

Part of the problem is that these rules change depending on where you live, the result of a schizophrenic system wherein local municipalities contract with private companies or non-profits to design their own, local recycling programs. Berkeley, for instance, declines to recycle most plastic on the grounds that while technically recyclable, plastic is an environmentally unsustainable substance that we should use a lot less of. San Francisco, in contrast, picks up everything from coffee cup lids to plastic buckets and flower pots. (San Francisco was also one of the first cities in the country to start picking up compostable food scraps – which emit methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, when landfilled.)

Meanwhile, economic and policy shifts are changing the way recycling happens. In this story, we look at how recycling programs find themselves at the mercy of sudden swings in the global commodities market. Meanwhile, Moore's law and the digital conversion have helped turn toxics-laden e-waste into the fastest growing waste stream. And what about San Francisco's recent decision to become the first city in the country to make recycling mandatory? Is it a PR move, or an enforceable policy? Just some of the issues we'll be looking at later this year.

In the meantime, check out the slide show, below, to see what happens to your recyclables once they leave the curb:

Listen to the Economics of Household Recycling radio report online.







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Posted in Environment, KQED, Radio | 1 Comment

Postpone that Home Depot trip, Household appliances are getting a makeover

July 22nd, 2009 by Amy Standen

Air conditioners are one of 23 home products soon required to be revamped in the U.S. . Photo Credit:

apoptotic / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

According to a new report released today by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, or ACEE , Americans could eliminate 158 million tons of greenhouse gas per year by 2030 – that's the equivalent of shutting down 63 large coal-fired power plants – and $123 billion, by changing the way some of our most common household appliances work.

This is old news to many of the folks at California Energy Commission , who have pushed for such changes for decades. But the real news is that these aren't just recommendations anymore. They're policy, or soon will be.

According to the ACEE, the Obama Administration plans to revamp 23 common household products – everything from battery chargers and clothes dryers to air conditioners – by requiring that manufacturers make more energy-efficient models. The ACEE report (no doubt intended to put a little wind into the White House's sails) adds to the story by calculating just what a difference those changes would collectively make.

For background, check out two of our recent Quest Radio stories, Air Conditioning Reinvented, and Let's Weatherize. You can also read the whole ACEE report, after registering (it's free) with the ACEE.




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Posted in Environment, KQED, Radio | Please Comment

Reporter's Notes: Depression Advancements

July 17th, 2009 by Amy Standen



This radio story tries to cram a lot into five minutes, so if you don't find what you need here, put a comment on the blog, below and I'll see if I can't provide a lead to more information.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation interested me, in part, because of how non-invasive it is. Dr. Bret Schneider, who offers TMS from his private practice in Portola Valley, was one of several experts to suggest that TMS machines might one day be available for home use. Of course, that's a long way off. TMS is expensive: about $5,000 for an initial round of treatment. It's still much easier and cheaper to simply pop a pill each morning. And researchers are still working out how effective it can be.

Studies show that TMS brings a remission in depression to about a third of patients to try it. Another third experience some improvement, and a final third are unaffected. Dr. Schneider says he sees much better success rates on patients who combine TMS with antidepressant drugs (TMS without drugs, he says, is like "trying to drive a car with no gas.") Finally, the FDA approval covers only one TMS machine on the market, Neurostar, although some physicians use other techniques, off-label.

You can find links to the abstracts of clinical studies performed on TMS and depression through a search at pubmed.com. This meta-analysis compares 30 double-blind studies, covering a total of 1164 patients (606 received TMS, 558 received sham treatments).

But TMS is just one in a class of "brain stimulation" depression treatments — an important fact that didn't make it into the story. Others include vagus nerve stimulation, deep brain stimulation and, of course, electroshock convulsive therapy — which is offered here in the Bay Area at the UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute to severely depressed patients (as well as, less commonly, people suffering from manic depression and schizophrenia).

Quest TV will cover TMS and other depression treatments in greater depth later this season, so stay tuned. For a sneak peak at some of what you'll find on the show, check out Stanford scientist Karl Deisseroth's groundbreaking work using light-sensitive proteins to stimulate neural circuits — work that could someday help treat not just depression, but other brain diseases as well.




Listen to the Depression Advancements radio report online or check out the slideshow below of Dr. Bret Schneider, a consulting assistant professor at Stanford University and a practicing psychiatrist in Portola Valley, discussing depression and the brain.




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Posted in Health, KQED, Radio | 1 Comment

Reporter's Notes: Stem Cells and Horses

June 19th, 2009 by Amy Standen



This story marks the first time I've had to use a pseudynm to protect the identity of a horse.

"Disney's" owner's desire for privacy only underscores the stakes here. Performance horses at his level can be worth $60,000 and more. Training, too, is an enormous investment. "Gretchen," as we call her in the piece, has spent years training Disney in English dressage (which, incidentally, makes for some very entertaining YouTube viewing if you have some time to kill). And so when she noticed that her horse's gait had started to suffer, she jumped to find a treatment.

Speed is key here, it was explained to me, because the smaller the injury, the better a horse's chance for recovery. Emphasizing that point is one of the main reasons Gretchen agreed to take part in this program. She says too many owners treat their horses' injuries with ever-greater doses of painkillers, delaying real treatment until it's too late. Gretchen estimated that, including all the preliminary visits and tests, Disney's treatment may reach $7,000.

Davis vets couldn't provide statistics on whether this treatment – injecting a horse's mesenchymal stem cells, drawn from the marrow of the animal's sternum, into the same animal's torn tendon – succeeds in producing new tendon tissue. (Part of the problem is that it's hard to distinguish tendon tissue from scar tissue, seen through an ultrasound.) But if it works, they believe humans may one day have another option for treating our torn ligaments, too.

Listen to the Stem Cells and Horses radio report online, and watch our Web Extra Slideshow.







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Posted in KQED | 2 Comments

Reporter's Notes: Cash for Clunkers

June 5th, 2009 by Amy Standen


As this radio story airs, Congress is debating two Cash for Clunkers proposals, one from the Senate and one from the House of Representatives. (A third proposal, also from the Senate, is almost identical to the House version.) Both would pay consumers to scrap their "clunkers" in exchange for brand-new, more fuel-efficient models. Both define "clunker" as a car that gets less than 18 miles per gallon. But after that, they diverge.

The House version comes from Democrats on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. If it passes, a consumer would get a $3,500 voucher for trading in a truck with 15 miles per gallon in exchange for buying a new truck that gets 16 miles per gallon – a one MPG difference. (If the new truck got 17 miles a gallon, the consumer would earn $4,500). That's why environmentalists complain that the legislation is more about stimulating car sales than it is about getting gas guzzlers off the road.

The Senate version proposed by U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), puts the bar a bit higher. In order to qualify for the $3,500 voucher, that same replacement truck would have to get 20 MPG – five miles per gallon more than the old truck. (An improvement of seven miles per gallon would earn the consumer a $4,500 voucher.)

Interestingly, this is a compromise even for Senator Feinstein herself. Check out her original, more stringent, Cash for Clunkers bill here. Proposed in January, it required stricter efficiency from the replacement vehicle, and would have allowed consumers to use their vouchers for used cars, or for public transit. Those conditions were junked, presumably, because they don't stimulate new car sales.

This article from the Christian Science Monitor, takes the number crunching even farther. Among the details worth considering is the "carbon cost" of making all these new vehicles that consumers will be enouraged to buy, should C4C pass: between 3.5 to 12.4 tons of CO2 per vehicle, according to a Duke economist.

Listen to the Cash for Clunkers radio report online.







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Posted in Environment, KQED, Radio | 3 Comments

Reporter's Notes: Sea Lion Rescue

May 22nd, 2009 by Amy Standen


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 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.

Listen to the Sea Lion Rescue radio report online, and watch our photo slideshow.







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Posted in Biology, Environment, KQED, Radio | 1 Comment
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