QUEST Community Science Blog Author: Rachel Zurer

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Playing the Oldest Recordings

June 12th, 2009 by Rachel Zurer

A phonautograph, which made the first sound recordings (playback made possible thanks to Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Last summer, QUEST told you about how scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have developed a technology to playback old audio recordings using visual scans. Along with bringing to life the wax cylinders we featured in our TV story, the Berkeley technology helped the world hear, for the first time ever, the oldest known sound recordings ever made. Now the historians who unearthed those recordings have discovered that they've been playing them all wrong.

The recordings were made by a phonautograph, invented by a Frenchman named Léon Scott more than 20 years before Edison came up with the phonograph. The technology worked by scratching sound waves onto sheets of paper covered with lampblack. Last year, historians used the Berkeley Lab's "visual stylus" to replay an 1860 recording of what they thought was a young girl singing the French song "Au Claire De La Lune". Since then, they've realized that they were actually playing the recording at double speed. Instead, it's likely the inventor himself doing the singing. You can hear both version at FirstSounds.org, or listen to an interview with the historians from NPR. It turns out learning to play old sounds isn't the only challenge — we have to know how to play them right!

Watch "How Edison Got His Groove Back" to learn more about how LBL's innovations are helping restore old sound:


QUEST on KQED Public Media.




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Posted in Engineering, Physics, TV | Please Comment

Where the (Waste) Water Goes

May 26th, 2009 by Rachel Zurer

So where exactly does the water go when you flush your toilet? The short answer, if you live around here, is the San Francisco Bay. But what about the steps in between — where are those plants that clean and disinfect that water first? And which of the treatment plants have had problems with unintentional spills of untreated water into the Bay? To answer those questions, we created the first-ever online map of Bay Area publicly-owned sewage treatment plants and spills.

Our timing couldn't have been better; just this month, the State Water Resource Control Board released its own set of interactive spills maps. These maps, which are updated every 24 hours, show the locations and details of any wastewater spills that come from the sewer lines that lead to the plants. The State's map does not include any spills from wastewater (sewage) treatment plants themselves, however — luckily that's exactly what we've been working on!





(View this map– Wastewater Woes: Treatments & Spills– in a larger size)




The information was not very easy to come by. While spills from treatment plants sometimes get a lot of press, often they slip by mostly unnoticed. And there's no central database that collects all the information about these spills in one place. We combed through news reports, records provided by the State and Regional Water Resources Control Board, and the state Office of Emergency Services incident reports to piece together information about recent spills.

While our map won't get updated every 24 hours, the staff at the watchdog group Baykeeper intend to keep it current with new info. So go ahead, poke around. Find the plant nearest you, see where spills have been happening. And next time you watch water run down the drain, you'll know exactly where it's going.







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Posted in Environment, Health | 5 Comments

Those Intermittent Renewables – Part 2

May 13th, 2009 by Rachel Zurer

To store power for the grid, we'll need some bigger batteries.
Credit: Heather Kennedy

"We believe energy storage is the next big thing," says Craig Horne, CEO of EnerVault, a Sunnyvale startup. His company is developing a battery that could help solve a renewable energy problem (check out our previous post): how to keep electricity flowing when we need it, even as more of it comes from sources we can't control. Horne was a panelist at a UC Berkeley-Stanford sponsored CleanTech Conference about energy storage held last week at Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science.

Proponents of energy storage think it has a key role to play in the future energy grid. A network of storage systems could act as a kind of shock-absorber, balancing the spikes and troughs of production that can come from solar and wind power. For example, if we had a way to store the power generated by wind turbines during a storm, we could release it later when demand gets high, making the power supply more constant.

We all use batteries daily – in cell phones or electronics – so it’s clear we already have the technology to store electricity and use it later. Unfortunately, that technology doesn't scale up very easily; batteries that can store enough energy to help smooth the grid are expensive, though company's like Horne's are hoping to change that. (For more on the challenges facing battery technology in particular, check out the QUEST TV story, Waiting for the Electric Car).

Batteries are just one strategy on the table, however; there are lots of ideas for how to store power at a large scale. One that's already in use in California is pumped-hydroelectric storage, which uses excess power to pump water from a low reservoir to a higher one. To get the energy back, you let the water flow the other direction, turning turbines to generate electricity as it drops in elevation. Compressed air energy storage (CAES), features a similarly clever use of the laws of physics, using excess power to compress air, which then releases energy as it expands later.

Another scheme includes using the sun – but in this case, it’s used to heat molten salt, which retains heat for a long time and can generate power even after the sun stops shining. Even electric cars could become a storage device if they become widespread, using their relatively small, distributed batteries to help feed power back to the grid at peak times.

So why aren't these technologies already being used all over the place?

"There are three obstacles to storage: Cost, cost, and cost," jokes Haresh Kamath, a Senior Project Manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, and also a panelist at the conference. Energy storage on the scale we'd need with the technology we have today is prohibitively expensive.

That may start to change, however. The stimulus package includes about $600 million for energy storage demonstrations, a 30% investment tax credit that applies to energy storage projects, and $2 billion for battery development and manufacturing. Venture capital firms are looking to invest. And there's a bill currently before the California legislature that encourages utilities to invest in and build storage.

Those injections of money and attention may be enough to get more energy storage projects off the ground – or at least get people thinking about them. Hopefully the conversations will keep going, and going, and going…

For more on the conference and specific storage technologies, check out this FAQ over at Earth2Tech.







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Posted in Engineering | 1 Comment

Those Intermittent Renewables – Part 1

May 8th, 2009 by Rachel Zurer

California's wind power. Credit: Elizabeth Pepin.

When it comes to renewable power, California has had one main message: bring on the solar power, bring on the wind turbines! California and the country are heading fast towards a clean energy future. But renewables aren't perfect. As wind, solar, and other nature-dependent technologies start to make up a bigger and bigger part of our electricity mix, power providers are thinking about how to deal with a very real problem: you can't tell nature when to produce.

The issue with these variable, intermittent sources of power is that electricity is a "just in time" commodity: you use it as soon you make it. When you flip on the light switch in your house or push start on your electric dryer, a power plant somewhere is whirring away right at that moment, creating those electrons for you to use.

In most of California, that complicated balance is coordinated by the California Independent System Operator, or ISO, a nonprofit that serves as a link between power generators and the utility, such as PG&E. Every four seconds, the ISO "takes the pulse" of the grid to make sure that the supply of electrons flowing out of the power plants matches the demand for electricity. If there's a mismatch, the ISO can tell plants to cut back or ask other ones to turn on.

That's not an instantaneous process, though. What makes the ISO's job complicated is that power plants have different levels of responsiveness. Nuclear plants, for example, are slow to turn on or off, so they usually just hum away at a relatively constant rate, providing "baseload" power – the minimum amount of electricity we always need. Other plants, including hydroelectric and natural gas, can ramp up and down quickly throughout the course of a day, as factories switch on their machinery and air conditioners rev up.

Unfortunately, renewables such as wind and solar are even less accommodating. The wind blows when it blows – often at night, when demand for electricity is low. The sun is more predictable, but passing clouds can change a solar panel's output, and just because we know when the sun will be high doesn't give us any control over it. Put too much of this kind of energy on the grid, and the system stops being reliable (though researchers disagree about how much exactly is "too much").

According to California's policies, more solar and wind is what's in store. The state has an ambitious goal of getting 33% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. So how can power providers make sure the right amount of juice is flowing through the grid when more of those electrons come from sources you can't "dispatch" on-demand? One answer might be energy storage. Stayed tuned for an upcoming post on that.







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Posted in Environment, KQED | 1 Comment

Underwater Update

April 8th, 2009 by Rachel Zurer

New instruments hook to the underwater lab.
Credit: David Fierstein © 2005 MBARI

We heard about the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's new underwater laboratory in a radio story last fall. When that story aired, the lab (known as the Monterey Accelerated Research System, or MARS) was just getting going, with lots of neat experiments planned. Now, few of those have become a reality.

In case you missed the first story, the MARS is essentially an underwater data hub, perched on the ocean floor almost 3,000 feet below the surface of Monterey Bay. A 32-mile cable connects the system to land, acting as a power cord and data link. Several "underwater extension cords" allow a variety of instruments to plug into the hub, getting power from land and sending back data via the cable. That constant connection is a big step forward in undersea science; without it, researchers have had to use boats to stay physically close to their instruments (something hard to do for very long), or have sent the instruments off on their own, relying on batteries to keep them running and collecting data.

Until late February, earthquake scientists at the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory had been using that second method with their seafloor seismic station, the Monterey Ocean Bottom Broadband (MOBB). "We had to wait three months to even know if the instruments were alive," said Barbara Romanowicz, the lab's director. But the MOBB is now plugged in to the MARS system, and is transmitting its information about earthquakes in real-time.

That new stream of information could be especially valuable in California, because the MOBB provides a unique view of the main fault system, the San Andreas, which runs along the Northern California coast. Most seismometers are land-based, and therefore positioned on the east side of the fault. The MOBB is on the west side of the fault, offering a helpful perspective on the fault's shifts and shakes.

The researchers hope that the MOBB's new stream of real-time data will improve their earthquake models, and perhaps eventually help provide early warnings about impending quakes (for more on that topic, see the TV story, Earthquakes: Breaking New Ground).

The MOBB is just one instrument using the MARS hub. A tool that uses sound waves to track fish is currently attached, and within the next six months you can expect to see a robotic DNA lab and a robot that crawls along the seafloor, collecting data on animals that live in the mud.




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Posted in Engineering, Geology, Partners | Please Comment

Quest Topic in the News: The Autism-Vaccine Connection

March 4th, 2009 by Rachel Zurer

Is there a link between childhood vaccines and
autism? Recent news says no. Credit: James Gathany

February was a big month in the debate about the possible role of vaccines in causing autism, a subject we covered in last year's TV story, Autism: Searching for Causes, and several blog posts. The claim-–that there might be a link between the immunizations children receive and the onset of autism–-has recently taken some hard hits.

First, on February 1, two Philadelphia researchers published a scientific literature review that summarized a number of studies from around the world, all of which refuted the claim that there was a vaccine-autism link.

Then on February 8, the news came out that the doctor whose 1998 research had sparked the initial autism-vaccine scare had manipulated his data. Finally, on February 12, a special federal court ruled against three families who argued that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine had caused autism in their children, saying that the evidence was "overwhelmingly contrary" to the claims.

No doubt there will be more debate about this issue in the future, as families and researchers continue the search for the cause.







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Posted in Health, KQED | 1 Comment

The Joys of Citizen Science

February 13th, 2009 by Rachel Zurer

Bay Area birders participate in the Audubon Christmas Bird
Count. Credit: terriem on flickr.com

Though it's easy to forget, any kid with a magnifying glass can tell you that you don't need a fancy degree to be a scientist. All it takes is a curious mind and a keen eye for observation. And in case the mere thought of a world full of wonders isn't enough to get you motivated, there are dozens of ways your personal observations can contribute to formal, published research. It's called "citizen science".

The idea behind citizen science is that ordinary folks, spread all across the country (or the world!), can collect valuable data on a breadth and scale that would be impossible for a single researcher to do on her own. It's particularly suited to projects that require lots of field observations but not a lot of special tools – things like counting creatures or measuring snow. And while the Internet has made the process of recruiting volunteers and reporting data easier than ever, for most projects, no technology is necessary. One of the oldest citizen science projects, the Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count, has been happening for over a hundred years!

In case you have any doubts about whether a scattered group of untrained citizens can really produce valuable data, just check out this week's headlines about how climate change is affecting bird populations (they're moving north). The news is based on an Audubon Society study that looked at 40 years worth of citizen-produced information.

So how can you get involved? There are all kinds of projects, some that are ongoing, others that happen at a particular time. Here are a few to consider:



• From February 13th – 16th, 2009, you can participate in the 12th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, another Audubon Society project (in partnership with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), either on your own or by joining up with the Sacramento Audubon Society's organized events.
• As fellow blogger Ben Burress reported last month, from March 16-28, 2009 you can monitor light pollution through Globe At Night.
• Track a plant through the seasons with Project Budburst.
• Visit AntWeb's Bay Area Ant Survey to find out how to help discover and document the native and invasive ants in the Bay Area.
• Monitor frogs in your area with Frogwatch USA.
• Keep track of the weather with the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, & Snow Network.
• Follow the Monarch butterfly migrations with a variety of projects.

There's so much science out there, just waiting for you to get involved. Go observe!






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Posted in Biology, Environment, Events, Weather | 1 Comment