QUEST Community Science Blog

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.

It’s more than the genes that feed us.

Some have dubbed it the “doomsday vault“; others, taking a more positive tone, call it a repository of biodiversity. However you look at it, the Global Seed Vault is a fortress. Buried under almost 500 feet of Arctic permafrost, secured against bomb blasts, earthquakes, and potential thieves, this massive seed bank, which will ultimately include samples of a large portion of the world’s plant varieties, is our high-tech hope for preserving the genetic diversity that underlies the world’s food supply. But despite its scope, the seed vault isn’t enough.

Why a seed bank in the first place? Because industrial farming approaches have made what was once a plethora of diverse crops into something more like a set of monocultures, carefully bred to meet our standards for long distance travel, high yields, and resistance to bug and weed killers. Many scientists fear that climate change will threaten these crops, which provide us with a huge proportion of our food.

To keep growing enough food, we’ll have to breed new plant varieties that fare better in higher temperatures, or in depleted soil, or under whatever challenging conditions a particular crop faces. For that, plant breeders will need to tap the genetic diversity that exists among the many varieties of any given plant. A gene that makes one kind of rice grow well in sandy soil, for example, can be transferred to another kind of rice. This is why preserving each and every variety of plant food is essential to securing our food supply.

But a seed bank, vital as it is, falls short. Why? Because how and what we eat is as much about who we are as it is about the seeds we put in the ground. We’re missing something if we believe we’re saving ourselves simply by saving seeds.

Don’t get me wrong: Genetic diversity in edible plants is the toolbox nature gives us to feed ourselves with, and preserving it by saving seeds is central to our ability to grow and develop new crops. But, as Michael Pollan articulates in his latest book In Defense of Food, the way we eat is attached to our cultures, beliefs, languages, and rituals. We learn about growing and eating food from people who came before us, and that knowledge is as important as the food itself.

The (necessary) sterility of a seed bank doesn’t capture the messy, many-threaded ways in which food and agriculture are incorporated into a society. A seed bank doesn’t preserve the knowledge of how to grow its precious population, or how farming crops cooperatively might produce different results than farming them individually, or even how to make the plants into edible dishes.

If we want to ensure our food supply, we need to do more than freeze seeds. We need to also take careful notes about culture.

I began thinking about this several years ago, when I had the privilege of visiting a seed bank operated by a group called Native Seeds/SEARCHin Tucson, Arizona, when I was working on a piece about seed saving for our Science of Gardening Web site. Native Seeds/SEARCH Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) was founded in 1983, when Native Americans in the region wanted to grow traditional crops and couldn’t locate seeds. Since then, the organization has grown to include 4500 farmers and thousands of seed varieties developed by Native Americans in the Southwest.

NS/S doesn’t just save seeds: they save the knowledge that goes with them. NS/S farmers continually plant and grow handfuls of the seed bank’s reserve, refreshing the seed stock and passing along knowledge of how to best grow a particular plant. NS/S employees also collect stories from and share knowledge with Native people in the region.

Now, I’m no farmer, but it seems to me that safeguarding both the “agri-” and “-culture” of plant varieties will help us get the most out of the seeds we’ve saved. Otherwise, we end up seeing the security of our food as little more than a sterile set of seeds stored in a deep freeze, ready to be accessed for answers when our old farming technologies get us in trouble. But feeding ourselves is hardly a sterile affair: we grow, prepare, and consume food in a complex context of environment and humanity. I, for one, think our tendency to dismiss that larger picture is what’s gotten us into this biodiversity problem in the first place.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

We want to hear from you if you have a great idea for a QUEST story. Review the submission guidelines and fill out this form. If we use your story idea in whole or in part, we would be glad to recognize you in the credits of the piece as a Contributor. Thanks in advance for helping QUEST cover science, environment, and nature in our community.

Please visit our QUEST story Submission Form to participate!

If you have any questions, please email us at quest@kqed.org.

Craig Rosa is the Interactive Producer for QUEST.

If Chicago has deep dish pizza and Boston has cream pie, San Francisco has sourdough bread. And just like the pizza and pie, San Francisco sourdough just isn’t the same outside its hometown.

But that’s because only San Francisco is home to a certain bacterium that bears its name– Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis.

Of course bread uses another microbe– the yeast that turns sugar into the air bubbles that lighten the loaf. For sourdough, though, local bacteria then add their secret ingredient. They eat up the yeast’s waste and turn it into acid, making the bread San Francisco sour.

The bacteria also make the dough inhospitable for other microbes, keeping all that doughy goodness for the yeast and itself. The yeast and bacteria make such great partners because the yeast can’t eat the sugar maltose, which the bacteria absolutely need.

San Franciscans have been noshing on this local concoction since at least the Gold Rush. Boudin Bakery first baked buns in 1849. Some bakeries even claim to have a “starter”– the bit of dough that contains yeast and bacteria– that’s over a century old. They pinch off a piece of starter for every new loaf, and care for the dough with regular feedings of flour and water.

If you’ve got a favorite brand, chances are it’s because of the unique mix of yeast and bacteria from that bakery. Other towns’ sourdough will taste a little bit different because their bacteria aren’t the San Francisco kind.

Want to whip up a loaf unique to your backyard? The Exploratorium has a recipe to make your own starter that will pick up local yeast and bacteria. Or if you prefer that authentic San Francisco flavor, buy the original.

For more on Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis, check out the Berkeley Science Review.

Amber Dance is the Quest Intern and a science communication student at UC Santa Cruz.

Run down

Recent news headlines have been full of Chinook salmon, but sadly the same cannot be said of Central Valley waterways. This fall, only about 90,000 Central Valley Chinook salmon returned to their home rivers and streams to spawn, down from more than 800,000 just a few years ago.

Like most salmon, Central Valley Chinook are anadromous, spending the bulk of their lives in the ocean but hatching and returning to reproduce in freshwater. The journey from the Valley through the Delta and San Francisco Bay to the Pacific, and back again, has always been a long and arduous one. In the past half century it has become even more difficult as the fish have increasingly faced an obstacle course of dams, pumps, and dewatered rivers and creekbeds.

Central Valley Chinook salmon populations include four runs-winter, spring, fall, and late fall-with each spawning not only at different times of the year but in different parts of the watershed. The dawning of the age of dams hit the winter and spring runs the hardest, cutting the fish off from their historic spawning grounds in the upper reaches of the watershed. Both runs are now listed under federal and state Endangered Species Acts.

The fall run, which spawns lower in the watershed, was less impacted by dam construction. In recent decades it has numbered more than 10x all the other runs combined and has been the mainstay of the California coastal salmon fishery. Now, even it appears to be in serious trouble: The count of 90,000 salmon this year was the second lowest on record and well below the minimum conservation target of 122,000 set by the Pacific Fishery Management Council. Also alarming is that the number of 2-year-old “jacks” returning was just 2,000, down from a typical count of 40,000. Since most spawners are 3-year-olds, these early returners are considered a good predictor of the size of next year’s run.

Ocean conditions are one factor in the salmon decline, with rising water temperatures and more unpredictable upwellings-possibly resulting from global warming. But scientists are also pointing to overexploitation of our rivers and Delta-the “highway” for migrating salmon. The abrupt decline in the salmon population comes concurrently with the collapse of other fish species dependent on the Delta ecosystem, including delta smelt and longfin smelt. The salmon returning to spawn this year would have been juveniles headed to the ocean in 2005, the year Delta water exports hit a record high.

Between unfriendly ocean conditions and the degraded condition of the watershed, the salmon are facing a double whammy. But, as Bay Institute Senior Scientist Tina Swanson points out, “Apart from rolling back global warming, we can’t really control ocean conditions. What we can do is drastically improve conditions within the watershed so that more adults can spawn successfully and more juveniles survive the journey to the ocean.”

Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, “from the Sierra to the sea.”

View our original YPOQ pilot
featuring photographer Russ MorrisDo you love photographing Science, Environment and Nature in Northern California? Would you like to collaborate on a 2-minute QUEST TV short about your photography for an audience of over 100,000 viewers?

We’re launching a call for submissions for our new series of TV shorts, “YPOQ: Your Photos on QUEST.” These are broadcast alongside our feature stories. Our pilot YPOQ broadcast in Season 1 featured local photographer Russ Morris.

We’re looking for more than stunning nature photography. We seek to collaborate with a local photographer who is inspired by science, environment and nature in Northern California, and uses innovative approaches to express their unique vision of our region.

Key Dates

Submissions due: February 27th, 2008
Selection announcenment: March 3rd, 2008.
TV Broadcast : May 20, 2008.

Although we can only broadcast one photographer’s work on the air on May 20, we also plan to feature selected submissions here on the KQED QUEST Community Science Blog.

We are running this call through Flickr, a website for sharing photos and much more. It’s free to join and participate. See our discussion topic on Flickr for details!

Craig Rosa is the Interactive Producer for QUEST.

January and February are exciting months for movie buffs like me. And no, I’m not referring to Golden Globes, Oscar nominations, or Screen Actors Guild awards. I’m talking about two wonderful “green” film festivals, both right here in our own watershed: the recent Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival in Nevada City, and the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival.

For The Bay Institute, this year’s Wild & Scenic Film Festival was particularly exciting because it included the first public screening of “Taking Root,” a film-in-progress about our STRAW (Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed) Project. I recently talked to David Donnenfield, who is co-producing the film with Kevin White (Kevin also has two films in this year’s Ocean Film Festival: Restoring Balance: Removing the Black Rat from Anacapa Island and Returning Home: Bringing the Common Murre back to Devil’s Slide Rock.) I asked David how the two came to be making a movie about kids working to save an endangered freshwater shrimp.

Taking Root is part of a larger project entitled How on Earth, which began with the goal to survey the spectrum of restoration work happening across the country. David and Kevin wanted to look at projects large and small, in different regions and involving different constituencies and different issues. They also were interested in documenting projects initiated by kids-one of the things that drew them to our STRAW Project, founded in 1992 by a class of fourth-graders.

David attended film school at UCLA (after he “got the bug” while starring in a high school film), but says he was always more interested in social issues than theatrical production. As to why he finds the topic of environmental restoration of particular interest, David points to the late environmentalist David Brower’s 3-part concept of “Global CPR”– Conservation, Preservation, and Restoration. While we’ve all heard about conservation and preservation, David notes, “We felt that very little of the story of restoration had been told.” That’s a critical oversight, since “in the face of worldwide environmental decline, there is less and less to preserve but more to restore.”

In talking about their process for making films, David explains that they do a lot of research up front to understand the issues, the players, and how the story fits into the “big picture.” But there is also that sense of “serendipity and discovery” when they actually get out into the field, and that’s a large part of what they bring back to the editing room.

And, in fact, editing is the next big challenge for Taking Root. Production on the full-length film (which will run about 1/2 hour) is nearly complete, but David and Kevin are still raising funds to complete the editing. Meanwhile, folks around our office are already looking forward to next year’s Wild & Scenic Film Festival, where we hope to be nibbling organic popcorn and cheering the completed film’s premiere.

Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, “from the Sierra to the sea.”

How can you tell when someone’s smile is fake?

See if you can tell from the 2 images below:*

A real, spontaneous smile incorporates tiny muscles around the eye that are nearly impossible to contract at will. You can see this for yourself in an exhibit called “Polite Smile, Delight Smile” part of the Exploratorium’s new Mind exhibition.

This corners-of-the-eyes giveaway, as well as many other subtle, yet revealing, facial gestures, was discovered by Paul Ekman, now a professor emeritus of psychology from the University of California, San Francisco. Ekman’s been studying the universality of facial expressions and the secrets our faces reveal for over four decades. The notion that certain expressions of emotion are programmed into us wasn’t so well received when he proposed it in the 1960s. At that time, social scientists believed facial expressions were cultural. Then, in 1967, Ekman embarked on an expedition to Papua New Guinea, where he asked people belonging to an indigenous tribe that had virtually no contact with the developed world to imitate the expressions they would have in certain situations, such as meeting an old friend or discovering a decaying animal. Ekman found that the ways these people’s faces expressed sadness, fear, surprise, anger, and disgust involved the same eye and mouth muscle movements that people from Western cultures displayed. The collection of photos he took there will be on display at the Exploratorium from January 22 –April 27, 2008.

Today, Ekman is lauded by psychologists. He’s considered the leading expert on detecting deceit, and his ideas are used to train CIA, Homeland Security, and other law enforcement officers to detect when they are being lied to by someone they’re questioning and to spot unusual behavior. He devised a tool known as the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), which catalogues the musculature behind thousands of facial expressions. Some of the most subtle of these Ekman calls “microexpressions,” fleeting muscle movements that reveal emotions the subject is trying to suppress. With the knowledge that these revealing expressions are universal, FACS allows a trained person to “read” someone’s emotions by observing their facial muscles.

When Ekman’s book Emotions Revealed came out in 2003, I thought it would be great to master the subject matter. Who wouldn’t benefit from learning to understand the fleeting messages people send oh-so-subtly? But the more I thought about it, the more uneasy I began to feel. Something didn’t sit right with me about the practice of decoding people without their knowledge. Then again, isn’t that what any of us do when we “sense” that someone was nervous or untruthful or secretly overjoyed? It’s not like our microexpressions are hidden. We express them in plain sight. They may be the source of an intuitive person’s “sixth sense.” But to formally study these expressions with the intent of detecting emotions that the subjects themselves are unaware of–is that a violation of privacy? Ekman would say no. He insists that he can’t read minds, only emotions, and that leaves out most of the personal details. Still, there’s something unsettling about the idea that feelings I’ve long considered private are written all over my face.

* BTW, the real smile is image 1. Did you guess correctly? Leave a comment to tell us how you knew.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

latitude: 37.8041, longitude: -122.448

I love my cell phone. We have a serious relationship. One that may be biologically predetermined.

Let me explain. On New Year’s Eve I brought my phone with me to San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, where I traditionally go, rain or shine, to watch the year’s last sunset. I was by myself, but I wasn’t alone.

Oh no. I took snapshots of shimmering colors on the waves and sent them to faraway, landlocked friends who miss the sea. Another friend called to say she was also watching the sunset from her rooftop. Text messages flowed in.

I was connected.

Well, duh,” you could say.

And this “duh” is exactly what seemed kind of profound: we take communication for granted. Of course we can talk to each other and share things with each other. And of course we create new devices to make talking and sharing easier. Of course.

But why do we do this, seemingly to no end? And why is it that communication is such a vital and defining aspect of our experience as humans? Why, really, do I love my cell phone so much?

I think it’s genetic.

It’s probably not news to most of you that we humans appear to be wired to talk to each other. We’ve got that FOXP2 gene that keeps making the news, contributing to our linguistic capacity. In fact, many researchers believe that language was central to our success as a species and allowed a small group of humans to expand across the globe about 50,000 years ago.

Our genetic design for interaction seems to go beyond talking amongst ourselves. A University of Michigan study slated to be published next month found that social interaction has a positive affect on memory and on cognitive functioning. The people who had the most conversations with others seemed to be the sharpest, and this was particularly true among young people. This may mean that more socially-oriented humans had a bit of an advantage over those who tended to keep more to themselves.

We may be such social animals that we’re even hard-wired to simply need company. After all, isolation is one of the most universal methods of punishment. Another set of researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that mice isolated from their comrades have lower levels of hormones that control anxiety, depression, and aggression. They believe that these responses are similar in humans. In other words, it’s possible that our brains keep us happier and functioning better when they’re interacting with other brains.

It makes sense that our predecessors who figured out how to play well with others and share their thoughts were the ones who got the best shot at passing on their genes. And it’s no wonder our species devotes such enormous reserves to inventions that make communication easier. The most basic systems of rock painting and alphabets have allowed groups to share stories or warn others of impending trouble. And creations that help disseminate these symbols–papyrus, the printing press, even the simple pen and paper–have had a major impact on how we exist with one another, as individuals and as societies.

These days, many of our communication technologies have gone beyond “watch for hungry bear” or “here’s my idea” into doing a kind of doubly-human duty. We not only use technology to convey thoughts, but also to extend our opportunities to create bonds with other people and to form social groups. Thus the popularity of the likes of Facebook, personals ads, and Flickr. In fact, if you leave a comment about this little ditty I’ve written, you’ve hopped on this double-duty train by becoming a part of Quest’s blogging community.

And so now, as my thumbs feverishly tap out text messages, I see my cell phone as more than a gadget. It’s the latest cousin of cave drawings and hieroglyphics. What it says about my own evolution I’m not quite certain. But no doubt my wireless admiration results from something buried in my chromosomes.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

latitude: 37.7595, longitude: -122.51

At 5pm on Sunday January 6, 2008, California Academy of Sciences closed its temporary location in order to start the move back to Golden Gate Park. On September 27, 2008 the Academy will open to the public once again in its new home in the Park. Many curious museum-goers have asked, why the long gap between closing and opening? 265 days is long time to move across town.

What is on the public floors of the museum is just the tip of the iceberg of the Academy’s collections. Over a span of more than 150 years, the Academy has built an invaluable collection that acts as a strong backbone for the museum. Twenty million research specimens and 38,000 live animals have to be carefully packed and transported. The Academy is undertaking the most massive move ever undertaken by a museum.

The Botany collection was the first to move out of Howard Street. It took only eleven and a half days to move two million specimens. For perspective, it took 61,300 cardboard inserts bundled with over 40 miles of twine to bundle the flora. Botany is only one of eight Academy research departments preparing to move.

The Academy’s packing list is as varied as its research. Ornithology and Mammalogy have to transport Monarch, the last Grizzly bear of California. Because of its size and girth, it will not be boxed. However, it will take several movers to transport it carefully. Monarch will be joined by 30,000 other mammal specimens, including study pelts, skulls, skeletons, and the world’s largest collection of marine mammal specimens.

It will be even more challenging to move the Academy’s live animals. 38,000 live animals will be moved, water included, back to the Park in tanks of varying sizes. One of the aquarium’s Australian Lungfish will be the oldest living animal to move. Over seventy years old, this fish has seen the Academy through many changes– a move to Howard Street, and now the move back to Golden Gate Park.

The Academy’s Galápagos collection will also be packed up. It features thousands of Geospizine Finches (the group studied by Darwin) and the world’s largest collection of reptiles from the Galápagos.

Cultural keepsakes will be preserved. Pre-Columbian Inca clothing, 12th Century Persian ceramics, fragile feather leis, full-sized Native Alaskan kayaks, 500 Japanese folk toys, and a renowned collection of eating utensils will also find their home in Golden Gate Park.

To give you a sense of the immensity of the project, 20 million specimens include the following:

• Over 200,000 fish specimens preserved in alcohol, including a rare coelacanth (thought to be extinct until discovered in the 1930s);
• 14.5 million insects and arachnids, including more than 874,789 flies, some 524,666 true bugs, nearly 3 million beetles, and more than 700,000 butterflies and moths;
• Nearly 100,000 bird specimens, including the now-extinct Guadalupe Storm Petrel and 10,600 sets of bird nests and eggs;
• More than a quarter of a million reptiles and amphibians from 166 countries.

The sheer volume of this move makes it a migration. Over 20 million specimens can not be moved in a day. It will take every one of those 265 days to move and prepare to share the wealth of the Academy once again with the public. To find out more about this “Great Migration” and the museum that will ultimately house the collections – visit http://www.calacademy.org/newacademy.

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.

latitude: 37.769, longitude: -122.467