Archive for April, 2008
Future History: Plastic Water Bottles – take our poll
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: "Do you plan to change your bottled water habits?" ( polls) Josh Rosen is Series [...]
Post on Apr 29, 2008 by Josh Rosen
Producer's Notes: Emotions Revealed
Is your face giving you away? QUEST met renowned psychologist Paul Ekman who has spent his life studying how our facial muscles involuntarily reveal emotions like sadness and anger.
Post on Apr 29, 2008 by Jenny Oh
Producer's Notes: Amateur Astronomers
In 1968, John Dobson started the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers with the help of two boys who loved astronomy but couldn’t join an amateur astronomy club in the city because they were too young. So the trio created their own club, carting two homemade telescopes onto Jackson and Broderick Streets and inviting curious passersby to [...]
Post on Apr 29, 2008 by Sheraz Sadiq
Fish and SNPs: What fish are teaching us about human skin color
These fish can tell us a lot about ourselves. Species often end up a different color when their environment changes. And humans are no exception. When people moved out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago, they were dark-skinned. Now when we look around Northern Europe or parts of Asia, we see much lighter [...]
Post on Apr 28, 2008 by Dr. Barry Starr
Reporter's Notes: Mercury in the Bay - Part 2
Last week on QUEST, we took a look at the history of the San Francisco Bay's most dangerous toxin: mercury. This week, now that the mercury is here in the bay, how is it affecting us? The obvious place to go was the Berkeley Marina, one of the bay's most popular fishing spots. On the [...]
Post on Apr 25, 2008 by Amy Standen
Cassini Martini: Add Water, Ammonia, Methane; Mix Well
Artist concept of a geyser erupting on Enceladus. Credit: David Seal.Back when I was young…okay, a previous generation might have ended that sentence with, "…I’d walk forty miles through the snow to get to school…" But I'm not exaggerating when I say, when I was young we knew next to nothing about faraway places in [...]
Post on Apr 25, 2008 by Ben Burress
Should Nemo Be Found?
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 [...]
Post on Apr 23, 2008 by Amy Gotliffe
Pixels are so 20th century – say hello to 'spaxels'
Making Every Photon Count Last week I went to a talk given by the leader of the Supernova Factory collaboration at LBNL. What is SN factory? This is an ambitious project to study supernovae like never before. I mentioned this project briefly in a previous post , now that they are so close to releasing [...]
Post on Apr 23, 2008 by Kyle S. Dawson
Reporter's Notes: Mercury in the Bay - Part 1
View Larger Map In honor of Earth Day, we wanted to take a big look at a chronic environmental issue in the Bay Area, tracing it from its origins to the contemporary strategies to solve it. Mercury was the obvious choice: It's been flowing into the Bay since before California joined the union, and it [...]
Post on Apr 18, 2008 by Amy Standen
One Part Perspiration, Five Parts Inspiration
These 5 folks are full of bright ideas. Image Source: PiccoloNamekACI trains home performance professionals through national and regional conferences and through the Web. Last week I participated in my eighth ACI national conference. The annual conference is where I go to network; learn about all aspects of home performance; recruit authors for Home Energy [...]
Post on Apr 18, 2008 by Jim Gunshinan
Through the Lens: California in your backyard
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 [...]
Post on Apr 17, 2008 by Cat
Producer's Notes - Super Laser at the National Ignition Facility
Inside the National Ignition Facility. Lawrence Livermore National Lab is building the world's largest laser. Actually, the National Ignition Facility won't have only one laser beam. It will use 192 world-class lasers, all firing simultaneously. In a few billionths of a second about 500 trillion watts, which is nearly 1000 times the power generated in [...]
Post on Apr 15, 2008 by Chris Bauer
Producer's Notes – Resurveying California's Wildlife 100 Years Later
It's rather mind-boggling to walk into the storage rooms at UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. The rooms hold all manner of skulls, skeletons, pelts, and entire specimens that are intact in jars and drawers.
Post on Apr 15, 2008 by Jenny Oh
Producer's Notes - MAKE it at Home: Table-Top Biosphere
Do-it-yourself tabletop biosphere..Last season, QUEST TV went on a field trip to the Maker Faire to see some of the wacky do-it-yourself things coming out of people’s garage work shops. This season, we took Quest Radio Editor Andrea Kissack out to the Make Magazine Test Lab to tinker and experiment with some of our favorite [...]
Post on Apr 15, 2008 by Chris Bauer
Hug-a-helix: celebrate DNA Day, April 25th
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 [...]
Post on Apr 14, 2008 by Dr. Barry Starr
Producer's Notes - Doggie DNA
There is a lot we don't know about our DNA and how it works. While there seems to be news every week about genetics, scientists are still in the early stages of finding out what effect our genes have on us (check out this post from another QUEST blogger, Dr. Barry Starr). That's what the [...]
Post on Apr 11, 2008 by Lauren Sommer
The Last Hoorah for Solar Cycle 23?
Magnetic activity on March 27th; white indicates N magnetic poles, black S. Credit: ESA/SOHO/NASA. A few blogs back I wrote about the 11-year cycle of ups and downs in solar activity–the Solar Cycle –and how over the last year or so the baton was supposedly passed from Cycle 23 to Cycle 24. But there has [...]
Post on Apr 11, 2008 by Ben Burress
Up A Creek: an exploration of your watershed
Raise your hand if you live in a watershed! Are all of your hands up? We all live in a watershed, an area of land that all water (from rain, snow and springs) flows across, under and through on its way into a common body of water, such as a creek, river, bay or ocean. [...]
Post on Apr 09, 2008 by Amy Gotliffe
Squid, squid and more squid from Ocean Adventures
It's just been all squid, all the time this week here at KQED. If you were a sucker for our TV story on Humboldt Squid, don't miss the new PBS web original video of the last orgiastic hours of Market Squid, also known as Inia geoffrensis. The squid, along with pink dolphins and matamata turtles [...]
Post on Apr 08, 2008 by Craig Rosa
Supernova Legacy
Last night we completed our observations for the Supernova Legacy Survey. This was a five year program to study supernovae using a 4-meter telescope in Hawaii in combination with several of the largest optical telescopes in the world. The project was headed by a group at a university in Toronto and a group at a [...]
Post on Apr 08, 2008 by Kyle S. Dawson
Twitter
Facebook
EveryTrail
YouTube
Flickr
Google +
iTunes Video
RSS Video
RSS News
iTunes Audio
RSS Audio
