Hydrogen is not exactly a fuel. That is, we don't burn it to make energy. It's used more as a medium for storing and transporting energy.

The science of hydrogen fuel cell systems is based on a simple concept. When you combine hydrogen with oxygen, energy is released. You get electricity. What makes it such a clean technology is that the byproducts of that chemical reaction are just heat and water.  So when a fuel cell takes hydrogen from a fuel tank and combines it with oxygen in the air, it produces electricity and emits only a wisp of heated water vapor from the tailpipe.

Hydrogen is combustible (remember the Hindenburg?), and needs to be handled carefully. However, there are easy ways to demonstrate electrolysis, which breaks water apart into oxygen and hydrogen, and the opposite process of joining those chemicals. In fact, you could make a type of fuel cell in your kitchen, with a popsicle stick, battery clips, Scotch tape and a few other household products. You do need one item that can't be found in your kitchen: platinum wire or platinum-coated nickel wire.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. And hydrogen fuel cell conversion is a squeaky clean technology. But the production of hydrogen for use in fuel cells — that can produce a lot of carbon dioxide. In fact, most hydrogen is currently made by stripping, or re-forming, natural gas. That's one of the ongoing criticisms of fuel-cell technology, that it generates greenhouse gas emissions just to get the hydrogen in the first place.

Fuel cells also can store energy generated by solar-powered electrolysis, as well as similar energy generated by wind and hydropower. That's the kind of hydrogen generation that advocates hope to eventually use in fuel cells. But being able to store energy also makes it extremely attractive to harnessing wind, solar and hydropower.

For example, California could generate a lot of wind energy at night, but since electricity has to be used right away, that nighttime, offpeak energy is less valuable. But if it could be stored in a fuel cell through the electrolysis process, that would make it much more lucrative.

Listen to the Where's my Hydrogen Highway? radio report online, and watch our Web Extra Slideshow.

Cal Poly's CP-4 mini-satellite in orbit. Credit: The Aerospace
Corporation.

It's a classic engineering story - a garage inventor spends years working in isolation, only to produce something that gets the attention of the world. Ok, the CubeSat story may not be quite as romantic, but it does have a lot of the same ingredients.

Professors at Stanford University and Cal Poly created CubeSats - 10 by 10 by 10 centimeter mini-satellites - as enginneering projects to give their students hands-on experience. Compared to standard satellite missions, which can run hundreds of millions of dollars and take years to complete, CubeSat missions are mean to be done cheaply and quickly.

CubeSat is also a standard - a basic blueprint that any university program can use. CubeSats are actually known as "FedEx satellites," since universities can mail them to Cal Poly to arrange a ride into space. They've created launching devices called P-Pods (a box that fits the CubeSats perfectly) so they can piggyback on larger rocket launches. Once the main cargo is deployed, the P-Pod releases the CubeSats into orbit. Depending how high they are, CubeSats can orbit for more than a decade before they burn up in the atmosphere.

What started at universities has spread - NASA, Boeing and other aerospace companies all have mini-satellite programs. Despite the small size, CubeSats are actually able to do valuable research. They can space test new technology, submitting it to all the rigors of space travel like solar radiation and launch stress. Recreating those conditions on the ground can be very expensive.

CubeSats can also gather scientific data. On Tuesday, NASA will be launching Pharmasat, which they hope will be their second nano-satellite in orbit. It will carry yeast samples, and once in orbit will hit them with an anti-fungal to see if their resistance is increased in space. NASA has previously observed that some bacteria are more resistant to antibiotics in space, something that could be dangerous for future human space travel.

You can tune in on Tuesday evening for the Pharmasat launch. Three other CubeSats from Cal Poly and other organizations will also be getting a lift into space.

Listen to the Do-It-Yourself Mini-Satellites radio report online, and see our Web Extra: Mini-Satellites Slideshow.

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.

The Stanford Linear Accelerator. Credit: SLAC.

On the heels of the opening of the Large Hadron Collider last year, I was curious about these particle accelerators: how they work, what research is conducted there, and most importantly why.

Luckily, there is a particle accelerator right here in the Bay Area. Last year, I took an intrepid group down to the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) to learn more about the these giant expensive research labs.

SLAC maintains an extensive public outreach program. An extensive tour (mine was 2 hours with very in-depth exploration of the facility), public lectures, weekly colloquia, and even science competitions for high schoolers.

I was surprised to find a wealth of research beyond the typical particle colliding at the facility. Many researchers use the state of the art facilities to study basic elements of our life, including water.

On Tuesday, Anders Nilsson is discussing his research on water at SLAC, an in-depth look at some of the stranger properties of water: its high heat capacity, how it is more dense than ice, even insight on using water as a power source (by splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen). Water: The Strangest Liquid, Tuesday February 24th 730-830PM at the Stanford Linear Accelerator.

However, our continued economics woes are threatening physical science research. SLAC is getting the brunt of money cut, missing out on $23 million of requested funding. In response, SLAC laid off 125 of its 1600 employees and shut down its PEP-II collider last year.

SLAC Public Lecture Series
The SLAC Public Lecture Series opens the doors to the inner workings of SLAC for the local nonscientific community. Find out what SLAC is all about: the research, the facilities, and the people that make this a world-class research institute.

SLAC Colloquium
The intellectual watering hole for the entire laboratory, where you can hear talks intended for a general audience on a wide variety of subjects. The colloquium will be returning later this year.

SLAC Science Bowl for High School Students
SLAC hosts an annual Regional Science Bowl for teams of high school students. The Science Bowl is a question-and-answer competition with buzzers, judges, and time keepers for high school teams of 5 students and 1 faculty coach. This year's competition is on February 28th.

SLAC Tour Information
Tours of SLAC will be available again later this year. On the tour, you get an extensive look at the operation of the accelerator, including a peek into the Klystron Gallery.

My favorite Make projects all seem to have something to do with things that other people might say "Don't try this at home." In this case we went out to the Make Magazine "Test Lab" to learn how to make a small steel ball fly across the room using magnets… good clean fun in my book. This Make project called "Gauss Rifle" by Simon Quellen Field is actually a really good way to demonstrate the transfer of kinetic energy from one object to another. When each nickel-plated steel ball hits one of the lined up magnets, its kinetic energy is passed on to the next ball in the line, making it move to the next magnet. The energy builds up with each collision until the last ball bearing is shot across the room. I keep thinking about when my brother and I played croquet in our backyard growing up and I'd send his croquet ball flying across the yard.

Probably the hardest thing to get your hands on for this project will be the four gold-plated neodymium-iron-boron magnets. Not something you usually find at the local 5-And-Dime. (Or maybe I was just looking in the wrong aisle.) But I'm sure Make Magazine can point you where to get them. Once you do, here's a safety tip: The magnets are very powerful, so make sure they are securely taped down or they might slam together and shatter. Then you'll have to go out and find more gold-plated neodymium-iron-boron magnets.

Do try this at home. But be careful out there. Adult supervision is always a good idea. And make sure to aim your Tabletop Linear Accelerator away from your little brother.

Download Instructions for the Tabletop Linear Accelerator (419.3 KB .pdf)

Watch the Make At Home Tabletop Linear Accelerator television story report online.

I was a biologist once, before I got into television, so I find these times particularly trying when I see schoolteachers and otherwise intelligent people calling evolution into question. That's part of the reason that I jumped at the chance to co-produce a story about bio-inspiration (the other reason being that I LOVE geckos…which will make more sense if you watch our QUEST Bio-inspiration segment).

Bio-inspired design borrows its creative inspiration from models and systems in nature, that is, plant and animal parts that have been slowly tweaked for over 3.8 billion years. But that doesn't mean that nature's designs are perfect. In fact, that's what makes the process of engineering things based on natural models so difficult. You have to figure out how to pull the aces from the evolutionary discard pile. As professor Bob Full at U.C. Berkeley explained in our first phone conversation, that's also why scientists now use the term "bio-inspiration" rather than the more commonly known term "biomimicry." Biologists and engineers are not looking to simply mimic nature, because there are all kinds of dead ends and redundancies in natural systems that would be pointless to recreate in an optimized, man-made piece of technology. One of the examples he gave me is a kind of grasshopper that if you were to copy it, you would copy neurons that go to nothing, they don't connect to any muscles, and that's because during evolution the adults lost their ability to fly. The neurons going to the muscles are still there, but the muscles aren't there anymore. No need to copy that, right?

So what a biomimeticist does is look to nature to find plants & animals with remarkable performance abilities, and studies their adaptations for inspiration to design something new. For example, if you want to make a tiny robot that can fly, then look at the best fliers. If you want to design a blade that moves quickly through fluids, or an Olympic swimsuit that minimizes drag, then look to the most efficient swimmers. Now that's what I call "intelligent design!"

Watch the Bio-Inspiration: Nature as Muse television story report online.

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.

A confession: When I first got the assignment to do a story about air conditioner efficiency, I didn't exactly leap from my seat in excitement. (Which is why extra kudos go to those who've made it as far as this web page!) But, really, I should have known better.

AC seems mundane because it's ubiquitous – but because it's ubiquitous, its impact is astonishing. If you took air conditioning out of the picture, there might not be such thing as the California energy crisis. We could put dozens of power plants offline. In terms of global warming, it would be like taking hundreds of thousands of cars off the road, permanently.

Why air conditioning and not, say clothes dryers or refrigerators? Well, partly because AC sucks lots of power (especially central AC systems though, bought new, even those may be more efficient than your old window unit), partly because of the way we use them: all at once. When heat waves hit, Californians turn on their ACs practically in unison, hitting up a beleaguered electricity grid that fires up every creaky last turbine to handle the load.

So, it comes as no surprise that a number of Californians are putting serious energy into making air conditioning work better. At the top of that list is California Energy Commission Commissioner Art Rosenfeld, the efficiency guru who, perhaps more than any other person, can be credited for California's remarkable efficiency gains over the last 30 years. We also hear from AC inventor and entrepreneur John Proctor. And thanks also go to Jeff Scalier, of Antioch-based Blue Star Heating and Air Conditioning, who introduced me to his very satisfied customer, Al Mason, and whose mother I hope enjoys the CD we send her.

If you want to retrofit your central AC system to tailor it to California climate (and make it 20 percent more efficient) a number of Bay Area installers are ready to do it. Here are some of them, courtesy of Proctor Engineering:

– Vtech HVAC Services, Antioch, 925-752-6075

– Bland A/C & Heating, Inc., Bakersfield, 661-836-3880

– Herrera Heating & Air Conditioning, Bakersfield, 510-750-6972

– Action Air Conditioning, Clovis, Fresno, 559-292-8640

– California Indoor Comfort, Fresno Area, 559-276-7457

– Certified Heating and Air Conditioning, Fresno County, 559-273-8048

– ReNu, Marin County, 415-462-0245

– Queirolo's Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc., San Joaquin County, 209-464-9658

– Leo's Heating & Air Conditioning, San Joaquin Valley, 209-271-7873

– Air Solutions Heating & Air, Stanislaus County, 209-380-3032

– Air Flo Pro, Stockton, 209-915-4730

– University Refrigeration, Stockton, 209-609-8400

– CPR Sheet Metal, Inc., Vacaville, 707-628-7495

– Right Now Air, Vacaville, 707-447-3063

Listen to the Air Conditioning Reinvented radio report online.

Harvey O. Banks Pumping PlantI'm standing in the Harvey O. Banks Pumping Plant, part of the State Water Project (SWP), looking at a set of huge pumps that slurp water from the Delta and hoist it 244 feet to the mouth of the California Aqueduct. The sensation is a little akin to the how I felt when, not long after college, I rode a sailboat through the Panama Canal: a kind of jaw-dropping wonder (dismay?) at the scale of this engineering feat. When we humans set our minds to re-arranging the landscape, we don't kid around.

In my last post I wrote about visiting a treatment plant to see where our water goes after we've washed the dishes. Now, on this tour of the Banks plant, I'm getting a glimpse "upstream" of the kitchen tap and learning more about where our water comes from.

The scale of the SWP is mind-boggling: More than two in three Californians rely on it for at least part of their drinking water. It is the largest publicly built and operated water project in the country, encompassing 17 pumping plants, more than 30 storage facilities, and over 660 miles of canals and pipelines. At the south end of the San Joaquin Valley at the Tehachapi Mountains, the huge Edmonston Pumping Plant raises the water 1,926 feet-the highest single lift in the world. (If you're driving to Southern California, check it out on the right side of I-5 just before the Grapevine). Moving all that water around and hoisting it over mountains doesn't come easy (water is heavy, after all): The SWP is the largest single user of electricity in the state.

The Banks plant is named for Harvey O. Banks, Director of Water Resources when voters approved funding for the SWP in 1960. The project was ostensibly conceived as a solution to the problem that most of California's water is north of the Delta, while most of its people are to the south and west. Big agricultural interests in the southern San Joaquin Valley also benefited-hugely-from "surplus" water shipped south. (And lest we Northern Californians start feeling smug, keep in mind we receive a greater percentage of our total water supply from the Delta than does Southern California.)

The Banks plant draws water from the Delta through intake gates into Clifton Court Forebay. From there, the water is pulled up a channel to the Skinner Fish Facility, where delta smelt, Chinook salmon, and some 90 other species of fish are, theoretically, screened out so they won't get sucked into the pumps (More on fish screening in my next post). But getting squashed in the pumps is not a fish's only worry: The pumping actually alters the habitat by impacting salinity and flow, disrupting natural rhythms that serve as vital cues for migration and spawning. The old joke that in California water flows uphill toward power and money is not far off the mark: The pull of the pumps is so powerful it causes rivers to flow backwards-literally uphill.

Crashing fish populations, poor water quality, the vulnerability of Delta levees and our water supply to earthquakes or other disasters-all have added to the growing realization that we can't keep quenching California's thirst through big straws stuck in the Delta. Obviously the SWP is not going to stop pumping anytime soon. But we do need to find ways to reduce our reliance on the Delta-through conservation, water recycling, and increased regional self-sufficiency-and to restore the functioning of an ecosystem so devastated by our radical retooling of our waterways.

There are times when you are in the production trenches, plumbing the depths of a story, that you realize how lucky you are to work on QUEST. Assisting QUEST Producer Amy Miller on this segment was yet another occasion to experience such a sentiment, as we found out about the amazing work of Ashok Gadgil and his colleagues to help the women and families who've been displaced as a result of the genocide in Darfur.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the story, in 2005, Ashok Gadgil, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, led a team of four people to north and south Darfur to determine how families were cooking their meals. This may seem like an odd fact-finding mission but it had very real consequences for alleviating the suffering and violence the Darfuri women experience. Every other day, many women leave the relative safety of the refugee camps to travel six to seven hours to collect fuel wood for their meals. In the process, they risk rape and mutilation at the hands of the Janjaweed, a state-sponsored militia which has been lodged in a genocidal fight against Darfuri rebel groups pressing for more autonomy from the government in Khartoum. Three years later, Ashok Gadgil and Ken Chow of Engineers Without Borders are on version eight of the Berkeley Darfur stove, an elegantly simple yet effective ten pound metal stove which is four times more efficient than the traditional three-stone fire with which the Darfur refugees have traditionally cooked. Ashok and his colleagues on the Darfur Stoves Project hope to have five to six manufacturing plants operating in north, west and south Darfur, producing hundreds of thousands of stoves a year from the flat-pack kits of the stove Ken Chow has engineered.

For me, this QUEST segment highlighted how scientists with the brilliance and dedication of Ashok Gadgil can think up solutions to problems that have the potential to alleviate suffering and help the economic lot (each stove saves roughly $250 dollars in fuel wood annually for a Darfuri family) of hundreds of thousands of people existing within the margins of survival. Fortunately, there are organizations, in addition to the Darfur Stoves Project, that are also helping to get more stoves into the hands of Darfuri refugees, including The Hunger Site, Global Giving, The Child Health Site. You can visit these non-profit organizations and purchase a Berkeley Darfur stove on behalf of a family in Darfur, and also make a donation to the U.S. chapter of Engineers Without Borders to support their projects in Asia and Africa.

On a final production note, our QUEST segment about the Darfur Stoves Project was immensely helped by U.N.'s archival footage department and the U.N. Mission in Sudan, both of which gave us footage of the stark conditions in the Darfuri refugee camps. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees also accepts donations for their international humanitarian activities.

Watch the "Darfur Stoves Project" TV Story online, as well as find additional links and resources.


Sheraz Sadiq is an Associate Producer for QUEST on KQED Television.