QUEST Community Science Blog

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.

Concern over global warming and rising gas prices has just about everyone, including presidential candidates, touting biofuels. Taking the energy from plants to make a gasoline alternative that can run our cars has great promise. But there are challenges to meeting the nation’s goal to replace 20 per cent of the nations annual gasoline consumption with renewable fuels by 2017. Today’s radio report is on the next generation of biofuels being developed right here in the Bay Area.

The biofuels we look at in this piece are primarily cellulose-based. Some of the researchers we talked with called the products they are designing, biopetrol because they are trying to mimic, synthetically, what petroleum does. The San Carlos start up, LS9, is making a biopetrol product: http://www.ls9.com. The hope of these researchers is to use plant matter, or biomass, to make a cellulosic biofuel that can be used in the existing petroleum infrastructure without needing to change pipelines, pumps at stations or gas tanks.

There are a number of California companies and research institutions working on developing advanced biofuels. The big, new academic center for research is the Joint Bio Energy Institute out of Emeryville http://jbei.lbl.gov/.

As you will hear in this story, some are tinkering with microbes, others are trying to improve on current feedstocks.

Biofuels don’t have to come from traditional plants in the ground but can come from converting algae or trash into biodiesel. While that is not the focus of this story, we hope to take it up in the coming months.

Algae: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/chevron_backs_solazyme.php

Trash to gas: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/the_ecocomplex.php

You may listen to the “Designer Biofuels” radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources.

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

In Silicon Valley, a battle between neighbors has turned into a different kind of face off: solar energy versus trees. It turns out that growing redwood trees can actually be a crime in California, if they block solar panels… as one couple in Sunnyvale found out the hard way. David Gorn reports on a new kind of legal battle — the struggle over who has the right… to sunlight.

You may listen to the “The Right to Sunlight: Solar vs. Redwood Trees” Radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources.

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