On July 16th, my Mom and I left San Francisco by boat to tour the Southeast coastal islands of Alaska. I have been hearing stories about the untamed Alaska since I was a small child. My mom lived in Kodiak as a girl. Her father and my grandfather had his last tour of Naval duty on Kodiak. His assignment was to survey the numbers of Kodiak bears for the sake of conservation. So I was more than eager to see the wildness and wildlife of Alaska.

While at sea, I've seen common Alaskan wildlife. Humpbacks have spouted and breached, raven and eagles have dived at the water for a dinner of spawning salmon. But I keep looking at the water, hoping to glimpse Orcas. The next opportunity to do so will be tomorrow coming out of the port of Victoria, British Columbia. Orcas, or killer whales as they are commonly known, are not whales at all. They are the largest species of the dolphin family and they are prominent along the Southeast islands of Alaska. They have captured the spirit of natives in these lands. They are alive in their legends and are carved into totem poles that are being preserved in the towns and museums along the coast. Both the native people here and Orcas form matriarchal societies and many native people believe that members of their tribe are reincarnated as killer whales.

Resident Orcas are just one type of Killer Whale. Three groups of Orcas have been found to be genetically separate on the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA level here. Resident Orcas stay close to the shore of the Alaskan islands in herds of up to 200. They have strongly bonded familial ties and are the fisherman of the Orcas, as their diet consists only of fish. Transient Orcas, on the other hand, live also in groups of up to 200 but will split off for the sake of the hunt. They hunt small marine mammals and migrate a great deal more, going where they can find food. While residents have a small and predictable migration route, transients are harder to research because of an unpredictable migration route. Researchers in Alaska have been able to collect more data on resident pods because of their predictability. They identify each individual by their Saddle-patch, or the white markings adjacent to the dorsal fin. It is like a fingerprint, identifying individual Orcas. The third group of Orcas is even more elusive than the transient pods. They are known as the Offshore Orcas. They are known as the rogue of the species and have been very difficult to research because of their unpredictability and often solo migration.

I am most interested in Orcas because of the question of Orca culture. They are seen as very intelligent animals by Native tribes as well as researchers. There is a controversy in the scientific field if Orcas have culture. Traits of fishing or hunting seem to be passed down to offspring denoting learning and hence culture. However, the science community is still split on learning behavior. One story I heard while here paints them as creatures of learning and remorse. One sick Orca was found in a pod. Fisherman noticed the other pod-mates line up and the sick Orca went through the line giving attention to each pod member and then left the pod after what looked like "saying his goodbyes". Was this a goodbye ritual for sending off a dying pod-mate? Whether is was or not, such unusual behavior is well worth more research. Hopefully, I will be able to see some of their behavior myself before returning to San Francisco.

Humans produce 500 billion plastic bags annually.

In China, they recently banned it. Australia, Bangladesh, Ireland, Italy, South Africa,Taiwan, Mumbai and India have either banned it or discouraged its use by raising taxes. And on March 27, 2007, San Francisco became the first city in the USA to ban it from large grocery stores.

More people are ditching plastic bags on a local and national level with good reason: we produce about 500 billion plastic bags world-wide, and less than one percent of that is recycled.

A recent QUEST report shows that plastic bottles are straining our environment, too: each year the USA alone produces 50 billion plastic bottles. Some would say to switch from plastic to paper bags - but reports show that paper bags aren't the most sustainable solution.

Plastic can have a longer shelf-live than humans do: it can persist in the environment for anywhere between 20 to 1,000 years. But a 16-year-old from Waterloo, Canada figured out to decompose it in only six weeks.

Daniel Burd, a student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, discovered the key to decomposing plastic bags for a school science fair. Needless to say, he won.

"Almost every week I have to do chores and when I open the closet door, I have this avalanche of plastic bags falling on top of me," said Burd to The Record, a Waterloo newspaper. "One day, I got tired of it and wanted to know what other people are doing with these plastic bags."

First, Burd decided to isolate the microbes that break down plastic in polyethelene plastic bags. Burd ground plastic bags into powder and created a solution to break it down using tap water and yeast. Six weeks later, he found that the plastic weighed 17 percent less than the control group.

Burd then isolated the effective strains that caused the degradation - Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas - and tried the experiment again, adding sodium acecate.

Six weeks later - as opposed to 1,000 years - the plastic decomposed by 43 percent.

For his final report, Plastic Not Fantastic, Burd wrote that his process of polyethylene degradation can be used for large-scale plastic bag biodegradation.

"As a result, this would save the lives of millions of wildlife species and save space in landfills," wrote Burd.

Nunavik territory, home to the Kuuvik River.This week I am taking a break from the usual astrophysics and cosmology to write about that other hot topic: climate change and global warming. Last summer I went out for an extremely remote 215 mile canoe trip for the International Polar Year to help raise awareness of climate change. I want to share some of that experience now that our website for the trip has been launched.

I was inspired to take this trip by my experiences leading similar, somewhat less extreme trips in northern Ontario and northern Quebec. During this time, I worked summers at a canoe camp located six hours north of Toronto. My job was to put a dozen teenagers on a bus, drive 24 hours to the end of the road, and head out into the Canadian bush for six weeks of travel by canoe and portage. You never know what to expect with these kids when you're several hundred miles from the nearest road, hence the sarcasm implied by my use of the italics above.

At this job I chased down the most remote rivers in Ontario and Quebec that my boss would allow. Each summer I got more into the lifestyle and each summer I wanted to go a little further out. I started to plot my own personal trips into the far-flung reaches of northern Canada that I couldn't reach through this job.

A beloved portage.

Almost ten years later, I was finally offered the opportunity to take one of those trips. A friend from this camp arranged a 3-week long canoe trip and complete sponsorship for four people. The sponsors completed the greenhouse circle from plane flights to carbon offsets. Seasoned canoe trippers, the four of us would run like a well-oiled machine. This was exactly what I had been craving after all those years of teenager drama.

The trip took us into the subarctic tundra of the Nunavik territories of northern Quebec. Here we would do what we love best– travel through nearly uncharted waters, explore the desolate tundra, and document our journey. Now that documentation is complete.

Without making any apologies for self-promotion, let me point you to my main contributions to this site: my first Google Earth creation and my first short film. Of course, both of these would have been total disasters without true expertise. The source for some of this expertise is responsible for the amazing public outreach for the Atlas Experiment. Another source of expertise is producing equally good footage at Al Gore's cable station.

The area we chose is particularly susceptible to global warming. In current models, the regions of permafrost and long winters experience the most significant climate change. The feedback loops here are most extreme: a modest increase in average temperature leads to shorter winters which lead to less snow cover which lead to darker terrain which leads to another modest increase in average temperature which leads to…

The purpose of this website is to convey our own experiences in this amazing area and to outline the threats posed by climate change. As my friend states in the press release:
The site will help North Americans to further appreciate the significance of global climate change, while offering ideas about how people can easily reduce the impacts of climate change. Those who visit will be treated to an interactive public education showpiece which utilizes audio, live animation and photography to share a compelling story.

Kyle S. Dawson is engaged in post-doctorate studies of distant supernovae and development of a proposed space-based telescope at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.