QUEST Community Science Blog

When you fire up your computer in the morning and go online, chances are you’re not thinking of the environmental impact of the Internet. You might be surprised. The server facilities that keep us all connected gobble up nearly two percent of the electricity used in the U.S. Generating all that power carries a big price tag – in the form of greenhouse gas emissions. As David Gorn reports, scientists and engineers in Silicon Valley are working to reduce the impact of a global network that we have all come to depend upon.

You may listen to the “Server Farms Radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources.


Lauren Sommer is an Associate Media Producer for QUEST.

I’m the third from left to right.I’m in my late teens in this undated photo. I’m the third from left to right. It’s very likely one of the last times I went camping as a member of the Girl Guide and Boy Scout Association of Costa Rica, which I joined when I was 11. I was very lucky growing up in Costa Rica because the association’s national campground, called Campo Escuela Iztarú, where this photo was taken, was in the hills near my house. From the backyard of my childhood home in Tres Ríos, you can see the national campground. It’s the hill in the background, dotted with a few trees. I thought a lot about this campground while I was working on our QUEST Nature Deficit Disorder TV segment about how kids nowadays in the United States aren’t spending enough time out in nature.

Every year, during the decade or so that I was a Girl Guide in Costa Rica, my fellow guides and I would trek up the steep hill, usually carrying our own sleeping bags and supplies. Once we got to the top, we chopped up wood with machetes and cooked over open fires. We woke up at the crack of dawn and showered in icy-cold water. During the rainy season, we got very wet. During the dry season, we got sunburned.

Camping took precedence over almost everything else. The day I graduated from high school I was in the middle of an international camping trip with girl guides from around the world. My parents drove up the hill, put some ointment on my sunburned ears and whizzed me over to the theater to pick up my diploma. Then they drove me back up the hill to finish the event.

My childhood home in Costa Rica, with the
campground ridge in the backgroundOur trips were always full of that sense of adventure you can only experience as a kid when you’re out in nature and away from your parents. We ran up and down the mountains, crawled in muddy pits, climbed trees and cut ourselves with our machetes. By the end of our trips we were always completely worn out. Once, I sat on my bed and fell asleep with my backpack still on my back.

But all this happiness came to a crashing halt. On Aug. 20, 1988, when I was 16, a young couple my age was murdered in a coffee field on the road to the campground. My sister and I were supposed to go camping a few days later. But my parents wouldn’t hear of it, no matter how much we begged. And who could blame them? The way he had killed his 14 victims was so cruel that it was impossible to incorporate his methods into his moniker, à la The Boston Strangler. So the press simply called him el psicópata, The Psychopath. Fear of el psicópata marked my adolescence and early adult life.

What was near-miraculous was that in time I was allowed to go camping again at Campo Escuela Iztarú. This photo of me is proof, I guess, although it doesn’t make any sense, because my parents were so fearful of everything when it came to their daughters. Perhaps they let me go because they both had good memories of the time they spent outdoors, my mother as a little girl camping all summer long in New England and my father as a teenager pedaling up and down Costa Rica’s mountains to make it to the Pacific coast by sundown. I’m so grateful to them for overcoming their fears (or not - I’m sure they had many sleepless nights). Those fleeting moments of freedom and that sense that anything is possible that I felt when I was camping are so much a part of me that I can’t even really consider them memories. So thank you, Mummy and Daddy, for letting go and letting us go up the mountain.

Watch the “Nature Deficit Disorder” TV Story online, as well as find additional links and resources. Also, please share your own photos of childhood nature experiences in our Flickr Photo Pool.

Gabriela Quirós is a Segment Producer for KQED-TV, and is the producer for this story.

Image Source: luxomediaSan Francisco’s got lofty plans to improve safety and convenience for cyclists. And with gas prices rising, parking a headache, and a desire to reduce their carbon footprint, more and more San Franciscans are cycling in the city to work and to do errands. Cycling rose 15% between 2006 and 2007, and injuries from bicycle collisions are down over a 10-year period, according to municipal studies. But the city’s been spinning its wheels to increase bike lanes because a 2006 injunction has barred their installation. And it’s still an uphill climb, even here where environmental consciousness is high, to convince people to cut their car use.

Quest follows a recent convert as they negotiate the treacherous streets of S.F., guided by a member of the city’s bicycle coalition. We add up the gas and carbon emissions they are saving and find out what has prevented would-be riders from commuting on bike. lastly, we talk with city traffic managers and find out what the most bike-friendly cities are doing. Marjorie Sun reports.

You may listen to the “Bike to Work” Radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources. And please share your San Francisco Bike Commute photos with us in our Bike to Work Day Flickr Pool.

Andrea Kissack is Senior Editor for QUEST at KQED Public Radio.

Why do Moon Bears need you to knit?

Once upon a time in the far away land of Hong Kong, a woman named Jill Robinson discovered that beautiful moon bears where being held captive in tiny cages in China and farmed (through their bellies) as a living source for bear bile, which is used in traditional medicines. She decided to do something heroic about the issue and founded the Animals Asia Foundation. Animals Asia became a thriving organization, dedicated to ending cruelty and restoring respect for all animals in Asia.

For many moon bears, their stories have a happy ending. Jill and the AAF crew have rescued 500 bears, releasing them into their idyllic sanctuary in Chengdu China. Newly rescued moon bears tentatively step on fresh grass, slowly learn to climb, socialize, scamper through bamboo, wrestle and eat honey, finally becoming a real bear.

Of course, the bears can’t go from cages to sanctuary directly; they must endure urgent veterinary care and often surgery to remove the bile equipment from their bodies. Bears must be anaesthetized to receive this care and it is important that they stay warm and comfortable during the process. Just as with humans, the bears’ extremities are the first things to get cold and that is where knitters on the West Coast of the United States, worlds away, come in. They must knit giant bear mittens!

The Oakland Zoo is hoping to have some mittens knitted in order to hand them directly to Jill Robinson on May 21, when she speaks at the Oakland Zoo. We will have a knitting party at the zoo on Friday, May 9, from 1pm-3pm. However, mittens can be turned in to the Oakland Zoo at anytime and mailed to China in the hopes that the thousands of moon bears still in captivity will need them soon.

The mitten pattern allows for several weights of yarn and includes instructions for knitting in the round with one circular, two circulars, double-pointed needles, or knitting flat. Finished mittens are about 7″ wide (14″ circumference) with a 12″ foot and 6″ cuff. The pattern is intended to be beginner level, but if you have any questions about the techniques mentioned, you might find the website knittinghelp.com helpful.

Click here for the pattern and try it yourself:

bearbooties.pdf

The Oakland Zoo will be working with Article Pract in Oakland on more mittens for bears.

Find out more about Moon Bears and their plight, and meet Jill Robinson on Wednesday, May 21 at 6:30 for the lecture entitle, “From Prison to Paradise: Rescuing the Endangered Asian Moon Bear. Bring the family to Bear Day at the Oakland Zoo on Saturday, May 17.

Some of this information is thanks to Twisted, the Knit Shop in Oregon who is helping the Oregon zoo knit mittens.


Amy Gotliffe is Conservation Manager at The Oakland Zoo.

Nobody likes moving. The packing, taping, lifting, shipping… it can be major hassle. But nobody’s experience compares to what’s going on at the California Academy of Sciences. They’re moving to their new 400,000 square-foot building in Golden Gate Park after three years in downtown San Francisco. But they’ve got a lot more to move than most people. Try 38,000 live animals and 20 million scientific specimens.

From fossils and gemstones to bird eggs and a stuffed Kodiak bear, it takes a lot of creativity to pack their collection. Everything seems to have special requirements. Their fish collection is made up of 200,000 jars - all filled with alcohol. And since it’s a flammable liquid, they’ll need a licensed hazmat driver to take it across town.

The live animals take extra care, of course. In this story, we followed the move of three black tip reef sharks. They hadn’t been fed in a few days (so they wouldn’t make any, um, deposits in their holding tank) and they weren’t easy for the staff to catch, but they made it safely to their new exhibit. Even the largest of the three, F3 as she’s known, made it ok, despite being a little groggy at first from too much oxygen.

As curator Bart Shepherd put it, their new Philippine Coral Reef Exhibit is a giant science experiment. The water for the 200,000 gallon tank comes straight from the Pacific Ocean through a four mile pipe. But most impressively, the Academy has been growing coral just for the exhibit. Just managing the water chemistry alone has been a major project, but now several dozen colonies of coral are happily planted in their new home.

Make sure to check out the audio slide show for this story to see how the new building is shaping up. And check out a few of the posts from QUEST science blogger Cat Aboudara, who is an Academy staff member, for more details on what it takes (here, here and here).

Watch the “Moving Day” audio slide show online, as well as find additional links and resources.

Lauren Sommer is an Associate Media Producer for QUEST.

A “penguin suit” doesn’t just refer to a tuxedo anymore.

Why does Pierre, the Academy’s 25-year-old penguin
need a wetsuit?Thanks to an innovative treatment at the California Academy of Sciences. Pierre, the Academy’s 25-year-old penguin was recently fitted with a wetsuit! Pierre’s feathers were thinning and not growing back. Because penguins rely on their feathers for warmth, Pierre was often shivering and uncomfortable without the protection of his feathers. When medical tests concluded there was no medical reason for the feather loss and more conventional treatments proved unsuccessful, senior aquatic biologist & penguin handler, Pam Schaller came up with a more creative approach to keep Pierre warm.

Pam was very familiar with the warmth of wetsuits. She then mused why couldn’t a wetsuit be designed for a penguin? She approached Academy veterinarian, Freeland Dunker with her left field idea. At first, he was dubious but after talking with Pam, he agreed it was worth a try as long as the wetsuit was fitted to insure it did more good than harm. In other words, as long as the wetsuit was fitted not to impede movement or cause rashes, it was worth a shot. Pam knew the best person to design a custom wetsuit would be Celeste Argel, the Early Childhood Specialist at the Academy, who is an excellent and creative seamstress. Celeste was asked to collaborate with Pam to develop and fit a wetsuit just Pierre’s size.

But how do you go about designing a penguin wetsuit? The answer seems to be trial and error. Celeste sat down with me and went over the details about the unusual experience. The process from idea to creation required a great deal of patience and re-fitting.

Celeste, Pam and Pierre met several times in order to customize dimensions. The first fitting consisted of Pam restraining Pierre in order for Celeste to take measurements. From the start, Celeste marveled at the strength of Pierre. “From far away,” she commented, “penguins just look so cute and cuddly but being up close gave me an appreciation for just how strong penguins really are.” With measurements in hand, Celeste drafted up a pattern for the wetsuit and created the first prototype from white cotton bed linens.

On the second fitting, Celeste was faced with a new challenge - getting Pierre’s flippers through the armhole. Pam wanted to keep the armholes as small as possible to maximize warmth. In doing so, Pierre’s flippers had to be bent at the joint and folded in upon themselves in order to thread them though the armholes. While Pam again restrained Pierre, Celeste applied pressure at the joint to fold his wings. “It was amazing and scary to fold up Pierre’s flipper. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t hurting him but to fold his flipper required a bit of pressure at the joint,” Celeste related. With the prototype on, Celeste was able to use a marker and note where the suit had to be taken in or taken out to make Pierre more comfortable. And then again, it was back to the drawing board.

A few more fittings took place to streamline the suit and to ensure that Pierre’s flippers had full mobility. Then Velcro was added to the back of the suit. Pierre was let loose in the penguin enclosure to see how he moved. Both Celeste and Pam sat down to watch his movements and observed where the fabric was bunching. Pierre seemed to be adjusting to his suit quite well but the other penguins, new to a mostly white Pierre, started poking and prodding to investigate the newly adorned bird. Because of the interest from the other birds, the session in the suit only lasted a few minutes. Celeste changed the color of the prototype to a dark brown to see if the other penguins would respond differently and they did. They accepted Pierre with a dark physique. More sessions in the new prototype followed and when Pierre jumped into the water and swam around with the suit on, Celeste and Pam knew it was time for the neoprene fitting.

Celeste conducted research to see how neoprene would act differently than cotton. From her research, she concluded that the whole suit would have to be taken in at least an inch because of the give of the material. However, Celeste didn’t have a machine to sew neoprene effectively so Pam asked Oceanic Worldwide, who supplied wetsuits to the human staff at the Academy, to manufacture a neoprene suit. Pam delivered the working prototype and the patterns to Oceanic who agreed to donate their time and materials. “We were really excited to do it,” said Teo Tertel, company marketing specialist. “We heard most of these penguins only live to 20, and our little buddy there was already 25. Anything we could do to help them, we were all for it.”

When the suit from Worldwide was delivered, it still wasn’t quite ready. The neoprene suit fit differently than expected and had to be re-fitted all over again. However neoprene can be glued instead of sewn so it was a matter of trying the suit on Pierre, marking where it didn’t fit snugly and adjusting. “I would walk behind him and look at where there were any gaps, and cut and refit and cut and refit until it looked like it was extremely streamlined,” Pam remarked on the final alterations. There were hiccups with a penguin being in a wetsuit for the first time and being curious about the Velcro and tabs. So nothing was left unaltered for Pierre’s comfort and mobility.

With all the alterations finally done, a final set of patterns was delivered to Oceanic Worldwide and they again donated their time to manufacture the final wetsuit for Pierre. All the hard work paid off for all involved when Pierre became warm again. It was a huge bonus when he also started to gain weight and his feathers began to grow back. The goal of designing the wetsuit for Pierre was to keep him comfortable and warm and the custom suit worked much better than expected. Having Pierre happy and healthy without the further need of the wetsuit was a perfect outcome for a very unusual treatment.

Cat Aboudara is the Special Projects Manager at California Academy of Sciences and works in the public programs division. The Academy is a wonderful fit for her because of her curiosity about the natural world and her experience in working with native California wildlife.

What does our use of bottled water say about us? View our 2-minute TV short “Future History: Plastic Water Bottles” to take a look from the perspective of an anthropologist from the distant future, and the take our poll below:

Josh Rosen is Series Producer for QUEST on KQED Television.

And live in an aquarium in my living room?

A fish tank calms my nerves. A fish tank connects me to the sea. A fish tank brings peacefulness into my hectic world. These are the words of marine aquarium owners. The lure of a tropical fish tank is clear: they are mesmerizing and colorful, they are relaxing to gaze at and they bring real sea creatures right into one’s home. In fact, between 1.5 and 2 million people worldwide feel this way, and keep marine aquariums, including 800,000 households in the United States alone.1,471 species of fish are traded worldwide, with global trade ranging between 20 and 24 million individual fish annually.

Unfortunately, not enough aficionados of tropical fish know how these beautiful beings got to their local tropical fish store. Fewer than 10% of the fish are captive-bred, meaning most are collected from their coral reef habitats off of places such as Indonesia.

Most collectors are men from small villages, who make mere pennies on their catches. Though they sometimes use nets and their own hands, often they employ squirt bottles full of cyanide. As a result of cyanide use, mortality rates of captured fish are between 5% and 75% within hours of collection, with 20% to 50% of survivors dying soon thereafter. Of those that survive the collection process, another 30% on average die prior to export. Collection using cyanide results in an overall survival rate of less than 1 in 10 fish, at best, and often produces 100% mortality.

For those that make it out of their country of origin and onto a plane, eight out of ten will die en route from lack of oxygen, stale water and trauma. For U.S. export, most of these bagged fish are sent to “fish row” in Los Angeles where they are distributed to fish supply stores all over the country.

The good news is that once tropical fish collectors know more, they tend to act. More and more collectors are asking suppliers about their collection techniques and making informed decisions. Reef Project International is a project of Earth Island Institute (and the supplier of most of this information). They have created a Reef Fish Guide for the aquamarine hobbyist that lets them know if a particular fish falls under “Take it Home” or “Keep it Wild”. The guide is available at (www.reefprotect.org). The hope is that when consumers demand sustainable and humane tropical fish, suppliers will respond, and fish and their habitats will benefit.

By the way, Clownfish, like Nemo, are one of the few species that can be captive-bred.

Amy Gotliffe is Conservation Manager at The Oakland Zoo.

The camera has long been an invaluable tool of field researchers. For example, the initial identification of a new mammal species was initiated by a camera trap set up by Francesco Rovero of the Trento Museum of Natural Sciences in the Ndundulu Forest in Tanzania’s Udzungwa Mountains. Both Francesco Rovero and Galen Rathbun of the California Academy of Sciences followed this photographic proof toward the discovery of a new species of Giant Elephant Shrew - the grey-faced Sengi. Photographs allow researchers to view their surroundings in a more intimate way and extrapolate meaningful data. It can even lead to incredible discoveries.

The California Academy of Sciences is asking youth to get behind the camera to find discoveries in their backyard. On April 15, 2008, the Academy launched a photo contest for youth between the ages of 8 & 12 - “Through the Lens: California in your backyard”. Future photographers, researchers and scientists are right in our own backyard and the Academy is curious about what they are seeing in their surroundings. This contest will give youth a chance to have a researcher’s eye - to “get up close” and document what they observe.

The photographers with the “best eye” will have their work hung in a museum. The work of winning photographers will be exhibited as part of the Children’s Gallery at the Grand Re-opening of the California Academy of Sciences on September 27, 2008 and throughout the inaugural year. Winning photographers will also be awarded cash prizes.

It is up to the photographer how to convey the theme of this contest - “California in your backyard” and the Academy’s mission - to explore, explain and protect the natural world. All photographers entering the contest are encouraged to have lots of fun and be as creative as possible.

The deadline to submit photographs is May 26, 2008. Contest rules and submission instructions can be found at www.calacademy.org/contest. Aspiring and curious youth photographers are encouraged to submit work. It might be the catalyst to another great discovery!

Cat Aboudara is the Special Projects Manager at California Academy of Sciences and works in the public programs division. The Academy is a wonderful fit for her because of her curiosity about the natural world and her experience in working with native California wildlife.

DNA magnified 850,000 times through a scanning electron
microscope
DNA day is coming up on Friday April 25th. This annual celebration of genetics and genomics was set up in 2003 to commemorate the sequencing of the human genome and the 50th anniversary of the solving of the structure of DNA.DNA day was thought of as an opportunity for teachers, students, and the general public to learn about DNA. And to have fun with it.

This should be a chance to pull DNA out of beef, strawberries, kumquats or even yourself and learn that you have around 100 billion miles* of DNA inside of you. In case you’re interested, that’ll reach from the Earth to Pluto and back when Pluto is farthest from Earth. And that is one person’s DNA.

Add up everyone’s DNA in the world and you get 125 million light years of DNA. (At least I think you do… these numbers are getting ridiculous!) That’ll get us to the galaxy Andromeda and back 25 times. Add up all the DNA on Earth and… OK, that’s probably enough of that.

There isn’t just a lot of the stuff but it is amazing to me how similar all human DNA is. The latest estimates are that people are around 99.5% the same at the DNA level. That means that all those light years of DNA are mostly the same old thing just copied over and over.

Notice the mostly. With 6 billion letters of code in every person, a 0.5% difference means 30 million differences between you and me. It is these differences that make me look different than you. And to a varying degree, make me act differently than you.

This code doesn’t work in a vacuum either. The environment can change how it works which is a big reason identical twins aren’t really identical. And one of the reasons why it is so hard to figure out the genetics of complicated diseases like diabetes or heart disease.

Our DNA also changes with time. Things in the environment might damage it. Or our own cells can make mistakes when they make copies of themselves. What this means is that today’s light years of human DNA will be different than the same stretched out DNA in 100 years.

This also means that you have some cells in your body have different DNA than the rest of your cells. And if a DNA change happens in sperm or egg cells, then they are passed on to the next generation. Which is where all the wonderful diversity around us originally came from.

As you can see, there is a lot about DNA to celebrate. It is huge and mysterious and we’re just starting to get a good grasp on what it is all about.

I plan to spend the morning of DNA day at The Tech Museum in San Jose exciting kids (and hopefully some adults) about DNA by running five different hands on genetics programs all at once. It’ll be a blast!

I have searched high and low for a list of DNA day activities here in the bay area but I haven’t come across any. Does anyone know about other DNA day celebrations here in the bay area?

* Each cell has 6 feet of DNA and we are made up of around 50-100 trillion cells.

Dr. Barry Starr is a Geneticist-in-Residence at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA.