QUEST Community Science Blog Author: Andrea Kissack

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Reporter's Notes: Saving Our Parks

October 30th, 2009 by Andrea Kissack

Henry Coe State Park won't be experiencing any part-time closures, but it will reduce trash and restroom service and has shuttered a new visitor center off the Pacheco Pass.

So you want to reserve that primo camping spot at your favorite California State Park? You might just have to take your chances. Most state parks are not accepting reservations through spring of 2010. It's part of a series of service cuts to slash millions from the State Parks' budget. Remember back in September when the Governor threatened to close 100 parks to balance the budget? Well, after a giant public outcry, he backed off but he still is requiring California State Parks to cut this year's budget by 14-million dollars. Superintendents from the state's 21 parks have come up with a plan to close that budget gap.

More than half of the state's parks will be scaling back days or hours. The list includes inland campgrounds and day use areas, many state beaches, museums and missions. In addition to reduced hours, trash and restroom service will be cut back at many state parks. I visited Henry Coe State Park in Morgan Hill. Because of it huge acreage (87,000 acres) and back country wilderness, Coe won't be experiencing any part-time closures, but it will reduce trash and restroom service and has shuttered a new visitor center off the Pacheco Pass. The park also lost all of its ranger aides. I also took a tour with the Superintendent at Angel Island State Park where they will be closing some restrooms, postponing school field trips and non-emergency repair needs. The situation is not expected to get better right away. The governor has already signed a budget that requires State Parks to cut 22-million dollars next year. California's parks have relied on the state's unpredictable general fund…and that has resulted in a billion dollar maintenance backlog. Park supporters are considering a ballot measure for next year that would impose about a 15-dollar a year vehicle license fee to pay for park operations. Want to hear more? Check out our radio report.




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Posted in Environment, KQED, Radio | Please Comment

Reporter's Notes: The Politics of Green Wine

September 4th, 2009 by Andrea Kissack



I often look at the chemical ingredients in what I buy. I shop at farmers markets for organic produce and use green cleaning supplies. So, it caught me off guard when a friend remarked, "you are so aware of what you eat, why aren't you just as curious about what you drink?" Well, we drink organic coffee but not organic wine. I was worried about sacrificing taste and I just didn't think most vineyards were heavily sprayed with pesticides. Then I learned that wine grapes are the second most sprayed crop in the state. This didn't seem like it could be that good for the farm workers, the Earth, or the consumer. Several studies have found trace amounts of pesticides in wine. They may be at extremely low amounts, but what kind of impact could pesticide residues have overtime?

Armed with a new green cause, I set out to find more information about eco-wines. I learned that organic wine is just one type of green wine — there is also wine made with organic grapes. It turns out I had been drinking some of these wines and enjoying them. The thing is, you can't call it "organic wine" if the wine has added sulfites, a naturally occurring compound. Most winemakers add sulfites to help preserve the wine and make it more stable. If a wine is made from organic grapes but contains sulfites, the world "organic" can only be mentioned as part of the ingredient claim on the back of the bottle. No wonder I didn't know I was drinking wine farmed organically.

It turns out northern Sonoma County and Mendocino county are hotbeds for green wine. In the course of reporting this story, I visited several of these wine makers. Bonterra Vineyards, below Ukiah, has been farming organically since 1987 and now farms one of their ranches, McNab, biodynamically. Their red blend is nicely balanced and tastes very good.

Biodynamic is a novel form of organic farming practice with its roots in France. A biodynamic vineyard is a self-sustaining ecosystem — making organic compost, removing chemicals from the soil and farming with the cycles of the Earth.  Biodynamic has its own international certification. (Here is a list of their certified wines). Just up the 101 from Bonterra is Parducci Wine Cellars. This family run company is farming organic grapes and in some cases, biodynamically. Parducci also claims to be one of the most sustainable wineries in the country.

Sustainable is a squishy term. Sustainable wineries may be running off solar power or doing creek restoration to save spawning salmon but they are not necessarily organic and they are not certified. However, the California Sustainable Winegrowing Program is working toward an industry certification. The idea is to raise the entire industry's practices and help vintners make more eco-friendly choices that often include using less chemicals in the vineyards.

Back to sulfites. This ended up being the main reason for the stigma still associated with green wine. Twenty years ago, green wines were uneven and there were not that many choices. Now, several of these eco-wines are winning high points from the industry. Organic wine can only contain naturally occurring sulfites, under 10ppm. Wines farmed organically must keep the added sulfites below 100ppm. Conventional wine can contain sulfites as high as 300ppm. When I was reporting this story, several folks asked me if I was going to explain why they get headaches from red wine. Isn't it the sulfites? Actually, it is not known why some people get headaches from drinking red wine. It could be the histamines. It doesn't look like it's the sulfites. Less than 1% of the population, according to the FDA, is sensitive to sulfites. The reaction is a respiratory one.

Anyway, if you enjoy wine, I encourage you to think beyond red and white but to consider green, too. To find out more, listen to our radio story and check out our links. Also, green wine pioneer, Paul Dolan together with Parducci has created a green wine handbook which is very helpful.

Listen to the The Politics of Green Wine radio report online.




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Posted in Environment, KQED, Radio | 2 Comments

Reporter's notes: Playing with Lead – Part 1

August 7th, 2009 by Andrea Kissack

The paint on this piggy bank tested for lead at 7253 parts per million (ppm); that is 11 times higher than the legal limit for lead paint. By Oanh Ha, Globalization Reporter for The California Report.

Editor's Note: This week we have the first of two special reports on lead.

As a parent, there is a lot to worry about when it comes to the safety of my kids. Lead wasn't high on my list. Lead poisoning in children has dropped significantly in recent decades since the ban on lead-based paint in homes and the phase-out of leaded gasoline. Then came the record toy recalls of 2007, where millions of imported items coated in lead paint and made by household names like Mattel and Fisher Price violated the 30-year-old lead law.

Suddenly, parents, including me, eyed the toys in our homes and on store shelves with suspicion. Extensive research links lead exposure in children to lower IQ scores, neurological and behavioral problems, even anemia.

The toy recalls prompted congress to pass the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

The Act not only lowers limits for lead and bans certain kinds of phthalates–it makes manufacturers and distributors accountable for products sold to American consumers by requiring items to be certified by third-party labs. But the testing, or certification piece of the Act, was postponed for a year. That raised a lot of questions for me as a reporter and as a parent.

I contacted the Center for Environmental Health, which researches lead, and other toxics, in consumer items and has sued manufacturers and distributors for violating standards.

CEH and KQED were interested in looking at what's sold at discount chains and 99 cent stores because of the history of previous recalls. CEH, through its regular spot testing, also thought that many of the larger retail outlets seem to have improved their process to weed out lead in children's items after the 2007 recalls.

I got some tips from CEH about potentially problematic products to look for. We purchased about 200 items and then CEH did the first round of testing using an X-ray fluorescence (XRF) device. The XRF is a handy tool used by a lot of commercial lead inspectors. It shoots high-energy x-rays at the item and sends back a chemical analysis, including the lead content.

Most items that exceeded the lead limits (600 parts per million) set by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act using the XRF device were then sent to a federally-accredited lab, MACS in Hayward, for detailed testing. At the lab, the parts or components that exceeded the lead limits were cut or scraped off and dissolved in an acid solution. Then tests were run to determine the lead content.

View a slide show of several of the items that violate the new lead limits below. We've also put together a list of items that violate the new lead limits, along with the test results.

So how can parents keep leaded toys away from kids? In addition to avoiding vinyl products, stay away from metal jewelry.

If you can, choose natural wood toys instead of painted items, especially if they are in yellow. Check the recall list posted by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Many companies sell home lead test kits for consumer products. They're not 100-percent reliable and can give false negatives-and false positives too. If you're really concerned about your child's lead level, the best thing to do is to get a blood lead test.

Listen to the Playing with Lead – Part 1 radio report online.







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Posted in Biology, Environment, Health, KQED, Radio | 5 Comments

Reporter's Notes: Museum 2.0

July 10th, 2009 by Andrea Kissack



Hard economic times and changing social trends have some museums undergoing a 21st century re-design. The focus is on creating more visitor-centered exhibits using new media tools and more input from the public. Some technology and history museums in the Bay Area are helping to lead the way, as you will hear in our radio piece.

When the public is invited in to help design exhibits, it can create faster turnover and more affordable exhibits. The Tech Museum in San Jose, for example, held a competition in Second Life. The public was asked to design exhibits on the theme of art, music and film. Entries came from as far away as England and China. Winners were awarded five thousand dollars each and asked to translate their designs into a real life gallery space. That exhibit is now on display at the Tech.  According to the Tech's Director, Peter Friess, the exhibit could have taken three years to design. Instead, it took six months. Museum directors are hoping that asking the public to help generate, share and update content will also create more loyalty and drive up ticket sales.

Some people cringe at the idea of asking the public to design museum exhibits. They point to the unlimited number of cat videos on You Tube and ask, "is this really what we want to do to museums?" The museum directors I spoke with say that there is still a role for the curator in this new model, but as more of an educated facilitator than an autocratic, removed taste-setter. Nina Simon, a participatory exhibit designer who writes a blog called Museum 2.0 thinks about this question a lot and has some interesting ideas.

While the participatory, hands-on movement has been around for awhile, these museums are picking up on a cultural shift – and it's not just Bay Area history and technology museums. The Smithsonian American Art Museum was the first to offer an alternate-reality game. The director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore thinks the mission of museums may be expanding to include social services. The Brooklyn Museum created a temporary exhibit, "Click," using crowd sourcing and the Museum of Minnesota created a permanent exhibition based on nominations from the public. I wonder what Web 3.0 will bring?

Listen to the Museum 2.0 radio report online.







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Posted in Engineering, KQED, Radio | Please Comment

Reporter's Notes: High Tech in the Vineyards

March 27th, 2009 by Andrea Kissack

Wine making is indeed an art form, but it is increasingly becoming more scientific. I knew growing wine grapes requires a lot of attention to detail — there is the terroir, pests and diseases and all those microclimates. But who would have known, driving down Hwy 29, the main thoroughfare through the Napa Valley, that many of those vineyards are totally wired.

In our radio story, we feature the stylishly high tech Vineyard 29 and the Robert Mondavi Winery, but scores of other wineries are using a similar toolbox of technology to help them monitor the soil's water content to grow better grapes. The technology ends up conserving water, too. Remote sensing, ground penetrating radar and satellite technology have helped Mondavi cut back on water use by 30% in recent years.

Winemakers are using some of the same technology that NASA uses to study Mars and engineers use to build hi-rises and freeways. A typical toolbox includes multi-spectral imaging, weather stations, neutron moisture probes, and pressure bombs and there is a plethora of newer technologies in the pipeline. But enough with all the high tech gizmos. How does wine from high tech vines taste? The answer might be found in the success of the winery. Mondavi has won numerous awards over the years and there is a two-year waiting list just to purchase Vineyard 29 wines.

Check out our slide show to see some of these technologies or listen to our radio report on high tech in the vineyards.







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Posted in Biology, Engineering, KQED, Radio | Please Comment

Reporter's Notes: Mass Transit Housing Plan

February 13th, 2009 by Andrea Kissack



By Rori Gallagher.

Even in these difficult economic times, California's population continues to grow, and those additional people are going to need a place to live. Recent legislation in California directs city planners to make environmentally responsible choices for new housing. One way to do that is to create transit villages.

The idea is to design housing near a transit station with easy access to retail and commercial space. That way people can drive less if they want to. Some transit villages are easy to identify as pre-planned developments, like the transit village in South San Francisco. Others developed more organically, like the area surrounding the Rockridge Station in Oakland.

As with all new development and redevelopment, there's always a concern about gentrification. Most cities have a requirement that a certain percentage of new units are offered below market rate. But some longtime residents of established communities, like San Mateo, worry about new development changing the character of the community. In order to make transit villages work, designers have to carefully blend new development with the existing community, creating a truly pedestrian-oriented destination. Check out a map of transit-oriented development in California. Also, here are some fun audio walking tours of transit-oriented development projects in the Bay Area.

Listen to the Mass Transit Housing Plan radio report online.







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Posted in Engineering, Environment, KQED, Radio | 2 Comments

Reporter's Notes: Building Blocks Go Green

December 19th, 2008 by Andrea Kissack



By reporter Marjorie Sun.

I got interested in this story after hearing Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla speak at a conference this fall in Sausalito. He explained how he decides where to invest in green tech and it was fascinating. He and other top venture capitalists think they can help stop global warming and make a ton of money at the same time. You can listen to Khosla's talk on a webcast and listen to all sorts of entrepreneurs and v.c.'s talk about the latest renewable energy projects.

Khosla says to achieve a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions fast, we have to think about solutions that make big cuts in emissions and will be widely adopted. Buying a Prius is fine, he says, but it's really just "fashion." We need solutions that people in India and China will buy, Khosla says. To him, the key issues that guide his investments are cost, scale, and adoption. If a renewable solution isn't cheaper than coal, forget it, he says. Geothermal "is nice, but it doesn't scale."

Same with wind. It's "a great technology, but it's a toy." As for hydrogen fuel, the adoption risk is too high. Again, forget it, he says. The focus should be a war on coal, oil, and the manufacturing of cement and steel, which are huge emitters of carbon dioxide. (He's a major investor in Calera, an alternative cement maker in Silicon Valley.)

One more area for potentially huge gains is to improve energy efficiency, such as lighting. Another legendary venture capital company, Kleiner Perkins, is also racing to develop renewable energy solutions and make a fortune. (Khosla is a former partner there.) Kleiner's efforts were profiled in a cover story in The New York Times Sunday Magazine recently

With the Obama administration, it will be interesting to see what new federal policies– tax, economic and regulatory– will be adopted to accelerate solutions and spur more investment during a double whammy of crises: the economic meltdown and climate change.

Listen to the Building Blocks Go Green radio report online.




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Posted in Engineering, Environment, KQED, Radio | 2 Comments

Green Sushi

October 24th, 2008 by Andrea Kissack

This sushi is good enough to eat.
Photo credit: Andrea Kissack.If you are a sushi lover, they can make your mouth water just thinking about them, bite sized pieces of Hamachi (yellow tail tuna), Ebi (shrimp), red snapper and Toro (Bluefin tuna) over vinegar sweetened rice. Can’t you just taste the raw fish delicacies right now? But, not so fast, these popular sushi items may not be the best thing you could do for yourself or the sea. They are either over-fished, farmed with aquaculture methods that pollute the ocean, are caught using methods that destroy ocean habitats or they are likely to contain contaminants, such as PCBs and Mercury, that can harm human health.

There is a new trend in town. Sustainable sushi. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, and two other ocean conservation groups (Blue Ocean Institute and Environmental Defense Fund), have come out with new advice for making better sushi choices. Modeled after the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s popular Seafood Watch Pocket Guide, the new sustainable sushi guide helps consumers make informed choices by categorizing seafood into three areas: Green (or best choice), Yellow (or good alternative) and Red (what to avoid). Just what kind of sushi you should avoid may surprise you. Until now, Unagi (bbq eel with avocado), seemed pretty harmless and a good choice for reluctant sushi eaters. Well, Unagi is farmed, freshwater juvenile eel so that definitely gets a red light from the Seafood Watch folks. You can try a sustainable alternative to Unagi at Tataki Sushi Bar in San Francisco. It may be the only restaurant of it’s kind in the country. The owners of the all sustainable sushi restaurant say they don’t want to become a niche as much as they want to influence the rest of the industry to change its’ practices. And with sushi a growing multibillion dollar industry, consumer preferences can have a big impact.

So how do you green your sushi? Try Pacific Halibut, farmed scallop or North American Albacore. Monterey Bay Aquarium biologists consider these among the “best” seafood because they come from abundant, well-managed fisheries or are raised using sustainable aquaculture methods.




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Posted in Biology, Education, Environment, Health, KQED, Partners | 3 Comments

Reporter's Notes: The Hayward Fault

October 10th, 2008 by Andrea Kissack

It's been called the most dangerous fault in the U.S. The Hayward Fault runs 40 miles, from San Pablo Bay to Fremont, through some of the most densely populated areas in the country. Every 140 years for the past two thousand the Hayward Fault has jolted the East Bay. Geologists have figured out the regular history of these quakes by carbon dating trenches along the fault. A lesser known cousin of the San Andreas the Hayward fault is a creeper. Basically, it moves, slowly, along the surface but deep inside… it's locked until tension builds up and and it slips. It appears that it is time for the fault to slip again. The last major earthquake on the Hayward fault was 1868. Scientists believe that the temblor registered 7.0 in magnitude. Hayward and San Leandro were devastated. But if the quake were to happen today, it would be a much different story.

I met Mary Lou Zoback out at the Fremont Bart station, which sits right on top of the Hayward Fault. She pointed out cracks in the parking lot from the creeping fault. Zoback is a geophysicist who worked 28 years at the U.S. Geological Survey and who has done catastrophe modeling of risky residential buildings. Her company estimates that a 6.8 quake, or bigger, on the Hayward Fault could cause a disaster on par with Hurricane Katrina, causing 168 billion dollars in damage and leaving at least 200,000 homeless.

A number of public buildings in the east bay are undergoing retrofitting to make them more structurally sound. Area hospitals have until 2013 to meet seismic safety standards. There is a state inventory of public schools prone to collapse in a major quake, but no such list exists for private schools. And retrofitting standards for risky residences are confusing. I talked with Jim Cook, of Bay Area Retrofit. He says existing codes are unclear and there really is no specific licensing for seismic home retrofitters. Cook has been fighting local governments for years to improve seismic safety standards.

Homeowners can have their home evaluated but what if you are a renter? Many apartments and condos can collapse in earthquakes because they have parking or open commercial space on the first floor making this story weak or "soft." According to the Association of Bay Area Governments Earthquake and Hazards Program, soft-story apartment buildings were responsible for about two-thirds of the 46,000 uninhabitable housing units in the 1991 Northridge earthquake. In the Bay Area, unreinforced masonry (older buildings constructed of brick, stone or cement blocks) continues to be a threat.

The thought of a big earthquake is scary enough, never mind the chaos that can happen in the aftermath. But the damage from a large earthquake has repercussions that can last for a very long time. We can still see the scars from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Downtown Santa Cruz is not yet fully rebuilt and retrofitting continues on the Bay Bridge. We can prevent a lot of damage up front by shoring up our buildings and creating a family disaster plan and an earthquake kit. The Hayward Earthquake Alliance has put together some really helpful information on how to prepare for a major quake.




Listen to the Hayward Fault Radio Report and view the recent QUEST TV segment on the fault online.







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Posted in Geology, KQED, Radio | 3 Comments

Reporter's Notes: Exoplanets

May 30th, 2008 by Andrea Kissack

Artistic rendition of exoplanet Gilese 436 b, created in Celestia
In the past fifteen years, the search for other Earths– and possibly life– outside our own solar system has taken off. As of May 2008, 293 extrasolar planets have been confirmed. Most of these planets are big, gas giants like our own Jupiter but new technology is helping astronomers get closer to finding earth sized planets. To find an extrasolar planet scientists first identify a star and then, using different methods, look to see if there is a planet, or planets, orbiting the star. It’s estimated that at least 10% of sun-like stars have planets.

Once astronomers have found an extrasolar planet, also called an exoplanet, they look to see if it is in the Goldilocks zone. This is an area of space in which a planet is just the right distance from its' parent star so that the surface is neither too hot nor too cold. A habitable temperature means that the planet could possibly host liquid water, an ingredient for life.

A number of exoplanet findings have come from astronomy teams in Switzerland and near San Jose at Lick Observatory. Astronomers at Lick made news in the fall of 2007 when they discovered 55 Cancri. The discovery of the five-planet system came after nearly 20 years of observations. Also in 2007, astronomers with the Geneva Extrasolar Planet Search Program discovered the most earth-like planet ever found. Gilese 581 c lies in the Goldilocks Zone, it's surface temperature ranges from an estimated 32 degrees Fahrenheit to 102 degrees Fahrenheit. The research team that discovered the new planet believes it may have a developed atmosphere and be covered with oceans.

Curious to see how astronomers hunt for extrasolar planets, I took the trip up the long, windy road to the top of Mt. Hamilton. It is a beautiful drive up to the observatory and it's wise to take your time so that you can enjoy the ideal California landscape of rolling hills dotted with oak trees and wildflowers. The 365 sharp curves along the 19 mile road will also slow you down.

At the top of Mt. Hamilton are several white domes dotting the 4,200-foot crestline. From Lick Observatory you can see forever– not just across the vast northern California landscape but out into our own galaxy and beyond. By coincidence, the night I was there astronomer Debra Fischer confirmed five new planets outside our solar system. The discovery was the culmination of five years of watching these specific planets from Lick's 3-meter Shane Telescope. Fischer and her colleague Geoff Marcy will publish their findings soon. These two astronomers are obsessed with looking for exoplanets, they just returned from the Andes mountains in Chile, where they spent day and night for several weeks hunting for planets. But Fischer and Marcy are not the only ones who have caught the exoplanet bug.

Scientists at NASA are nearly ready to launch a bus-sized telescope into space. NASA's Kepler Telescope which will orbit our sun, will be trained on a hundred thousand stars at a time. It may be our best chance yet for finding new life in outer space. The telescope is scheduled to launch in February. Kepler will find planets by looking for tiny dips in the brightness of a star caused by planetary transits.

Make sure to check out our photo set on Flickr which includes: photos of Lick Observatory; the Kepler testbed at NASA Ames in Mountain View; the Kepler spacecraft assembly in Boulder, Colorado; and artists' renditions of exoplanets discussed in this report.You can also hear our radio story on the search for exoplanets, watch the Planet Hunters TV story online and find additional links and resources.




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Posted in Astronomy, Engineering, KQED, Radio | 2 Comments
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