Archive for June, 2008
Reporter's Notes: Wildlife CSI
I knew I was in trouble when I saw the jars. Big jars, filled with tinted liquid, with weird things suspended in them. Things that definitely used to be alive, and that I would not have wanted to see when they WERE alive. "One of my favorites is this one here," says my host, Senior [...]
Post on Jun 27, 2008 by David Gorn
HERS It Is
Blower door equipment is used to measure a home's air leaks. A blower door test is part of the evaluation for determining a home's HERS Index. Photo by: D&R International Remember the day when most men knew the horsepower of their muscle cars? Now most of us are concerned about miles per gallon. But what [...]
Post on Jun 27, 2008 by Jim Gunshinan
Progress at the Park
Penguin-cams are now at the California Academy of Sciences. Upon writing this blog, the California Academy of Sciences is scheduled to open in 94 days. After years of planning, staff is contemplating two digits – literally three months until opening. It seems surreal. But progress at the park is moving along at a steady clip. [...]
Post on Jun 25, 2008 by Cat
Genetic Testing or Recreational Genomics?
Do you have a note from your doctor? So much information, so little understandingOn June 9, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) sent letters to 13 different direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies telling them that they were not in compliance with California laws and needed to stop providing testing. The two main issues appear to [...]
Post on Jun 23, 2008 by Dr. Barry Starr
Plastic not Fantastic
Humans produce 500 billion plastic bags annually. In China, they recently banned it. Australia, Bangladesh, Ireland, Italy, South Africa,Taiwan, Mumbai and India have either banned it or discouraged its use by raising taxes. And on March 27, 2007, San Francisco became the first city in the USA to ban it from large grocery stores. More [...]
Post on Jun 23, 2008 by Shuka Kalantari
Cameras that float through the air
Cris Benton inspects his kite aerial photography rig before sending it up in the sky. Credit: Jane Liaw. UC Berkeley architecture professor Charles 'Cris' Benton is a kite aerial photography (KAP) enthusiast. Benton is well-known in the KAP world for sharing his knowledge and love of the art. In this art form, a camera is [...]
Post on Jun 23, 2008 by Jane Liaw
Reporter's Notes: How to ID a Bullet
I was excited to be working on this story. After all, it's not that often that a primarily environmental reporter gets to spend a couple weeks focusing on forensics technology and the debate over gun control (let alone receive firearms training on a 38-special from a senior criminalist at the DOJ's California Criminalistics Institute). In [...]
Post on Jun 20, 2008 by Amy Standen
Come Together, Bright Planets, Over Me….
Depiction of a major alignment of the five visible planets in 1059 BCE. Photo By Ben Burress There are some pretty good "lineups" coming soon to skies above you. First of all, "lineups," or alignments, go on in the heavens all the time, though most often they are alignments of objects too faint to easily [...]
Post on Jun 20, 2008 by Ben Burress
Turning Plastic Bags into Beautiful Bolsas
And how this metamorphosis saves Monkeys! Colombia: a beautiful country, with incredible forests and diverse wildlife, but like many other countries, a trash problem. With no formal trash collection system, the forests and villages suffer from scattered plastic bags, endangering wildlife and creating a mess on village streets. One such village was Los Limites, until [...]
Post on Jun 19, 2008 by Amy Gotliffe
A Village Takes on Global Warming
Each big storm with a high tide and an onshore wind takes a big bite out of Sarichef.Photo By Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Coalition In an email this week from John Woodward, an Alaska builder and Home Energy author, he wrote, "I put together a working/management group to manage the relocation of the community of [...]
Post on Jun 16, 2008 by Jim Gunshinan
Reporter's Notes: Eating a Low-Carbon Diet
Not everyone would be excited about a box of 16 pounds of meat. But for the members of the Bay Area Meat CSA, the enthusiasm was off the charts. I took part in their spring share this year, where member of the CSA receive a monthly box of pork, poultry, lamb and beef from local [...]
Post on Jun 13, 2008 by Lauren Sommer
Housing the Human Computer
A look into the science of skin. In an article this week in the New York Times, brainpower was correlated with the complexity of nerve synapses. Leading researcher Dr. Grant, who has studied the interconnectedness of neurons, likened this connection to technology; "From the evolutionary perspective, the big brains of vertebrates not only have more [...]
Post on Jun 11, 2008 by Cat
Phoenix on Ice?
A patch of what might be ice, exposed by Phoenix's landing rockets.So, did it land on ice? Huh? Did it? Two blogs ago I wrote about the then upcoming landing of the Phoenix spacecraft on Mars, near the Northern polar ice cap (Probing the Martian Pole). The entire point of landing on Mars' extreme northern [...]
Post on Jun 09, 2008 by Ben Burress
Reporter's Notes: Who Will Revive the Electric Car?
One of the best parts of working on this story was stumbling upon a subculture of electric car fanatics, like Darell Dickey, many of whom drive incredibly rare, full-size all-electric cars that were available for a blink of an eye in the late '90s and early 2000s. There are just hundreds of these cars left [...]
Post on Jun 09, 2008 by Amy Standen
Vaccines: One Small Risk for a Child, One Giant Benefit for Mankind
You're as likely to be struck by lightningas to have a severe reaction to a vaccine. I was reading an article in Time last week about parents not vaccinating their children. The story was about how this phenomenon is becoming more widespread. These kinds of stories are weird to me because vaccines are pretty safe. [...]
Post on Jun 06, 2008 by Dr. Barry Starr
Where Water Runs Uphill
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 [...]
Post on Jun 05, 2008 by Ann Dickinson
Big Sur, Big Cliffs…Big Birds!
The Oakland Zoo Staff visit the California Condor There we were, 12 Oakland Zoo staff, winding our way down the Big Sur coast. We were spending a clear, bright Sunday morning with Sari, a biologist from the Ventana Wildlife Society, in hopes of learning about condors and perhaps catching a glimpse of this highly endangered [...]
Post on Jun 04, 2008 by Amy Gotliffe
Saving Energy in a Hurry
Yeah Alaska! Yeah Brazil! Yeah California? The people of Juneau saved electricity in a hurry– when electricity went to 55 cents per kilowatt-hourIn Juneau, Alaska, an avalanche on April 16th downed transmission lines and cut off the city from it's cheap source of hydroelectric power; electricity prices jumped by 500%. Alan Meier-a scientist at Lawrence [...]
Post on Jun 02, 2008 by Jim Gunshinan
Musings on Communication and Technology
Recently during "girl's day" with my mom – my mom made a comment that made me take a second take about technology. I was texting on my iphone and she tsked under her breath and said; "People don't talk anymore, it's all text this and email that, soon language will be obsolete!" My first instinct [...]
Post on Jun 02, 2008 by Cat
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