Do you have a unique voice that sets you apart from the crowd? Contribute your stories to QUEST!

KQED QUEST is looking to add new voices to our blog, which already offers commentary from our producers, reporters, and local writers from our partner institutions at Chabot Space & Science Center and The Tech Museum.

We're looking to include folks who are actively involved in the science, environment and nature blogging community – e.g. have a blog, guest post on others' site, and comment / participate in relevant discussions. And we're looking locally. Our blog has a strong SF Bay Area focus, though we do occasionally cover and/or perform analysis on how this stuff elsewhere that affects the Bay Area.

What we cover

QUEST’s geographic coverage is from Mendocino to Monterey and from Sacramento to Santa Clara, and generally covers 9 content areas: astronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering, environment, geology, health, physics and weather.

Requirements

• Original posts, 3-500 words with at least 1 image. Schedule determined on availability, but weekly or bi-monthly is preferred.
• Posts should relate back to at least one of our 9 themes for the program: Astronomy, Chemistry, Engineering, Physics, Weather, Geology, Biology, Environment, Health.
• Topic should be something about which you have some expertise and/or passion.
• A unique voice and ability to follow our QUEST writing guidelines (see below).
• Experience with WordPress or similar blogging platform.
• Willingness to occasionally be assigned a post topic by the editor as current events dictate.
• Respect for copyright and fair use.

Would I get paid?

Yes – we offer a small stipend on a per post basis.

Alrighty, then. How do I apply?

Email us a note and bio to questeditor@kqed.org explaining what you'd like to write for us. Please also include some links to relevant blogs you admire, and/or participate in, and why. Send us a writing sample or two (links are fine), and we'll review it in the next couple weeks. Last day to submit is February 1st. Our hope is to bring aboard a few new bloggers by mid-February.

Some beats we're interested in

Although we want to hear from a wide range of writers, here are a few coverage areas we're keen on in particular:

• Bay ecology background and issues
• Science education
• Silicon Valley / engineering innovations
• Hacks, DIY, and hands-on science activities
• Hiking and outdoors (with a science focus)
• Food science
• Convergence of art & science
• Nature & science photography

Writing Guidelines

(As laid out by our managing editor, Paul Rogers)

Why does my grandmother care? A key requirement of QUEST bloggers will be to explain scientific and environmental issues in a way that the general public can understand. Our audience is mostly made up of people who aren’t scientists or environmental activists. Posts should explain why the topics they are writing about are relevant to Bay Area residents.

Get to the point. Studies have shown that readers spend only a minute or two on most web sites before moving on. The average reader reads about 200 words a minute. Write tight, and lively. Keep it interesting and informative.

Avoid jargon. The purpose of good writing is to communicate clearly. Don’t use complex, esoteric scientific terms. Instead of saying "non-point source pollution," say "polluted runoff." Instead of "extravehicular activity," say “space walk.”

Be personal. Relate personal experiences. Speak in the first person. Tell them where you saw the blue herons or which movie best depicts what a real moon base might look like. Find your own voice and write in a compelling, approachable way.

Be passionate. Write about subjects and topics that you care about. Please don’t feel you have to stick to a script or formula. Express yourself.

Drive traffic to the blog. Place a link in your correspondence and comments to the blog. Mention it on other web forums.

Write for the bigger picture. Don’t view the blog as a place just to promote your institution or pet cause. Keep in mind your audience is made up of a wide diversity of people, with wide interests.

Speak your mind, but check your facts. Or your audience will do it for you with painful results.

Know your fellow bloggers. You'll be part of a vibrant community with fresh ideas and discussions nearly every day. Don't be afraid to comment on their posts, or link to their entries. Have fun with it! Dreary bloggers or insufferable policy wonks need not apply.

From hackerspaces to banana slugs, flying telescopes to cheese — it's been a quite a diverse year of storytelling here at QUEST. Here's a round-up of the top 10 video and audio stories and blog posts (based on page views) that you've enjoyed from the past year. Please let us know what other stories you've enjoyed in the comments section below, and if there's anything you'd like to see in the coming season!



VIDEO:

Nanotechnology Takes Off

Stem Cell Gold Rush
Science on the SPOT: Banana Slugs Unpeeled
Berkeley Lab Physicist Shares Nobel
Science on the SPOT: Open Source Creativity – Hackerspaces
Super Laser at the National Ignition Facility
The World's Most Powerful Microscope
The Science & Art of Cheese
Mt. Umunhum: Return to the Summit
The Fierce Humboldt Squid

AUDIO:

Up All Night on NASA's Flying Telescope</a>

The Lost Lagoon
Energy-Saving Windows Get Smarter
The Amazing Transformation of San Francisco's "Sludge Puddle"
Supercomputers Hit an Energy Wall
From Tunnel to Tap: Quake-Proofing Our Water Supply
"A Big, Captivating Idea": The Bay Area Ridge Trail
Architecture for the Birds
Gulls Threaten South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Work
In a Sea of Energy Data, Utilities Try to Inspire Conservation

BLOG:

Explosive hypothesis about humans' lack of genetic diversity
Diet Sodas May Not Be As Harmless As You Think
Health Officials to Consider Tightening Vaccine Exemptions
Scientists Understand Heart Disease Better, Still Give Bad Advice
The Megalodon's Descendants
Famous African American Scientists & Innovators: Part II
Swine Flu – A Virus or a Bacteria?
Cyber Wolves in (Fire)Sheep Clothing
Why Do Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears?
15 Months Later, Rediscovered San Francisco Plant Thrives

Photo by Dimaano Photography

On Monday night, I caught myself, while waiting at a crosswalk, squinting at the oncoming traffic and studying the difference intensities of light coming off of car headlights. I was trying to figure out which headlights were LEDs and which ones were incandescents. I missed my signal to cross and had to wait for the next light change because of my musings.

My musings were inspired by a 90-minute walk through a hilly region of the city led by Robin Marks. Robin, a biochemist, science journalist and former science tinkerer at the Exploratorium, started Discovery Street Tours this past July. The website describes the tours as “more than just a walking tour. It’s an urban investigation of the science under your feet, in your food, and in your life. You’ll demo the science for yourself with hands-on activities, eat some tasty treats, and meet other folks like yourself—curious, active, and a little beyond the ordinary.”

Science got festive on the night of Sunday, December 11th as 18 of us, bundled against the cold and misting fog headed up 20th Street for the The Science of (Holiday) Light preview tour. Through the up-and-down mile and half route, we took frequent stops to admire holiday handiwork, discuss the history of holiday lights, view the different types and understand how our brains were taking in light signals.

My favorite part of the tour was when we stopped at a corner house strung with both LED and incandescent holiday lights. We were encouraged to look closely and notice the difference in both the quality and brightness of light. While incandescent bulbs use a filament to produce light and heat, LEDs (light emitting diodes) are lower energy semi-conducters. LEDs shoot out light in a straight line. After learning this, I was able to identify the LED string of lights not only by the light but the crystal cut bulbs around the light that enabled the straight line of light to be refracted — making the iconic twinkling glow associated with holiday lights.

As a nerd herder and being generally inquisitive about science, this was a very satisfying tour. I was able to ramble through the city taking in wonderful panoramic scenes in one instance and then turn around and look closer at the mundane with awe at how I was seeing it with new insight and understanding. My fellow tour-goers raised other questions about light and color, as our curiosity was further sparked by what we were seeing and learning. One conversation that got started involved pollinators; which insects and birds are attracted to the red over white flowers, and the effects the visible spectrum they see have on how they pollinate species of flowers.

As this was a preview, the inquisitive can still put science in their step. Robin will be leading The Science of (Holiday) Light tour several more times in December, including Christmas Eve and the evening of Christmas Day. Tours start at 6:30pm and all the dates, more details and booking information can be found online.

The window testing facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (Photo: LBNL)

Windows may not be as sexy as solar panels or electric cars, but they play a major role in energy efficiency. Buildings are responsible for 40% of the country’s energy use, which is why researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are trying to improve windows by making them smarter.

As Berkeley Lab engineer Howdy Goudey demonstrates in his lab, studying windows involves some pretty complex physics.

“So we use an infrared camera to study heat transfer in windows,” he says, pointing to a normal-looking video camera that senses heat instead of visible light. Goudey uses the camera to study how windows lose energy.

For the most part, windows simply aren’t good insulators. They leak heat in the winter when we want a warm house and they let heat in during the summer. Many homes still have single-pane windows, which were the name of the game in the 1940s and 50s when California was booming.

That changed when energy prices sky-rocketed in the 1970s. Double-pane windows became common. And then came double-pane windows with invisible coatings, which are twice as efficient. Today, they make up more than half of windows sold.

Measuring Low-e Windows

Goudey demonstrates how they work by turning on two heat lamps. “You’ve seen them in a diner keeping food warm," he says, putting them behind two identical-looking double-pane windows.

We stand in front of one window, which feels like standing in the sun. “But if you hold your hand to other one, compared to this one, it’s very dramatic,” Goudey says.

An infrared image of two windows during winter conditions, as seen from the inside of a room. The window on the right has a low-e coating while the window on the left doesn't. Warmer temperatures mean a better insulating window. (Image: LBNL)

The second window is cooler because it has a low-emissivity coating, or low-e, as its known. It’s an invisible layer of metal on the glass that acts as an insulator. And it does one more thing.

When sunlight shines directly through a window, it provides both light and heat. Most of us want light coming in, but heat is the last thing we want on a hot summer day. So, the coating on the window blocks the heat from the sun (in the form of infrared light), while letting in the visible light. This is known as solar gain. (Check out this guide for more on what to look for when buying windows.)

“If you have a few windows in a room with direct sun on them, its equivalent to running a little space heater. So it’s significant energy,” says Goudey.

However, on a cold winter day, the extra heat from sun would be helpful. “You’d actually like that solar energy to come in and help heat the space,” he says.

That’s why researchers are working to develop a “smart” or dynamic window that can change based on the weather or temperature.

Using Nanotechnology to Make Windows Smarter

At Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry, Delia Milliron grows tiny nanocrystals that will eventually become a window coating.

“Nanocrystals are very small,” says Milliron. “Way smaller than you can see with your eyes. And so that’s why when we spread them out in a coating on the window, you don’t see anything.”

Milliron’s coating is dynamic. In one setting, it lets in both the light and heat from the sun. But, apply an electric charge of a couple volts and the window blocks the heat from the sun, while still letting light in.

Ideally, these windows would be controlled by your heating and cooling system, which could adjust them based on the weather. Milliron and her team are currently working on the coating itself. Their next step is to build a full-scale prototype. Other companies also have similar kinds of dynamic windows in the works.

Windows as Energy Suppliers

This changes the conversation about windows, says Stephen Selkowitz, head of building technologies at Berkeley Lab. Before, windows were energy losers. Now, windows could actually make buildings more efficient. And that means big cost savings.

“If we add up all the energy and economic impact of windows in the US, it costs building owners about $40 billion a year. And I’d rather have the $40 billion in my pocket than sort of sending it out the window,” says Selkowitz.

Smart windows could start appearing in larger projects like office buildings next year and should be more widely available to homeowners in three to five years. But they could be twice as expensive as today's windows. Selkowitz expects the cost coming down as manufacturing ramps up.

“The biggest expense in replacing windows is often the labor of replacing the window. And if you already decided to put a new window in, the marginal cost of going to a much better window is almost always worth it,” he says.

So, while it may be only a few tech-geeks that spring for smart windows at first, Selkowitz says that leads the way for the rest of us – and for new buildings codes, where technology can have a much broader impact.

As a hunting bat closes in on a flying insect, its echolocation calls get closer and closer together, and shorter and shorter in duration. The calls, more than 160 per second, give the bat rapid-fire information on the location of its ever-moving prey.

To the human ear, the calls register as one continuous sound. Researchers call it the “terminal buzz,” and until recently, scientists did not fully understand how bats produced it.

Bats use muscles in the larynx to produce sound, just like humans, but scientists had never found a mammal muscle that could turn on and off that quickly.

"You can tap your finger on a table, and you can try to tap your finger as fast as you possibly can," said Andy Mead, a biology graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. Eventually, your muscles seize up and you can’t tap any faster, Mead said. “You can probably tap five, six, seven times a second if you really try.”

As part of a research team led by Coen Elemans from the University of Southern Denmark , Mead found muscles in a bat larynx that could turn on and off in less than one one-hundredth of a second, firing up to 180 times a second.

"It was instantaneously really shocking and exciting to see yes, this is a very, very fast muscle," Mead said.

The discovery marked the first evidence of a “superfast” muscle in a mammal. Superfast muscles are responsible for the rattle of a rattlesnake and the mating call of the bottom-dwelling toadfish and some songbirds, but the discovery of the muscles in mammals leads researchers to believe they may be more common than they thought. They are also key to the evolutionary success of bats, which are the only flying mammals to use echolocation to hunt.

See the original story from our partners at WHYY.

Additional Links

• Scientific community unites to save bats: Bats are dying at rapid rates of the mysterious white nose syndrome. Learn about efforts in Pennsylvania to study the disease.

Dr. Michael Catelaz at work on the GAMMA II imaging machine, at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) in North Carolina.

Dr. Michael Castelaz, the Science Director at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, knows GAMMA II is a sleeping giant.  He just needs a little help waking up the beast.

GAMMA II and its sister, GAMMA I, are legendary imaging machines that were used to create the 19-million strong Guide Star Catalogue for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).   Think of the Guide Star Catalogue as a souped-up GPS, enabling the Hubble to set its scope on stars thousands of miles away.

Four years ago, the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University announced it was retiring the image-makers after nearly 20 years of service.

The news swept across the astronomy community and Castelaz and his colleagues at PARI jumped at the opportunity to bring the GAMMA machines to their Western North Carolina campus and reconfigure them for a new cataloging gig.

“It’s old, but it’s still state of the art.  It’s incredible what was done in terms of designing these instruments and getting them going,” Michael Castelaz.

But why bring this beast to PARI? PARI houses a collection of old photographic plates known as the Astronomical Photographic Data Archive, or APDA. Those analog plates contain invaluable data of the night sky, but are not easy to share and use. Catelaz and ADPA director Thurburn Barker believe the re-commissioned GAMMA II can help convert those plates– some of which date back to the 1890s – into new digital maps for future astronomers.  The maps will unlock data on thousands of unclassified stars known to exist in the APDA collection that can then be cataloged by their size, temperature and distance.

When PARI finally obtained the machines they were in pieces: three-tons of granite and lasers awaiting their next mission.  The sheer mass of the machines was intended to absorb vibrations from the floor as well the Earth.  In order to effectively serve the Hubble, GAMMA precisely mapped stars down to the exact micron.  That’s a thousandth of a millimeter to you and me. Castelaz and his cohort eventually reassembled GAMMA II and got all the electronics up and running.  However, do to the jerry-rigging and hand-written code used to reconfigure the original machine, they have not been able to recreate the imaging capacity … yet.

As soon as PARI can get GAMMA humming, the APDA collection will no longer be a black hole.  The meticulous work by generations of astronomers will be ushered into the 21^st century, bringing analog data back to the future.

On November 2, The World Science Festival, Columbia University and NOVA hosted a screening of What is Space? to coincide with the NOVA: Fabric of the Cosmos series premiere. The screening took place at Columbia's Miller theatre and was immediately followed by a live-streamed webcast, hosted by acclaimed physicist Dr. Brian Greene. The webcast allowed the in-theatre and digital audiences to further explore the program’s rich material in direct conversation with Dr. Greene — the series' host and best-selling author — as well as other featured program participants, including Saul Perlmutter, our local Lawrence Berkeley Lab astrophysicist and winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

What do they use? Mud. Yes, mud.

But not just any mud. For more than 60 years, all the mud used in major league baseball has been harvested from the same secret spot in southern New Jersey.

Jim Bintliff, the third-generation owner of Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud, gets it from the banks of a tributary of the Delaware River.
Legend has it rubbing down new baseballs started after a wild pitch killed a batter in the 1920s. Bintliff said players and umpires tried tobacco juice and infield dirt to remove the factory sheen. What ended up working best was mud drawn from near the favorite fishing spot of a friend of Bintliff’s grandfather.
What makes his mud so special?

"It's the texture," said Bintliff, who described it as a mixture of cold cream and chocolate pudding. "If it's too gritty, it can damage the leather on the ball. It can scratch it."

Bintliff runs the mud through a series of screens before packaging it, aging it (like fine wine, he says), and shipping it.

Baseball is a sport of tradition and superstition, and many chalk up the sport’s fidelity to this particular mud to just that.

“To do it is a good idea,” said Robert Adair, a former Yale professor who wrote The Physics of Baseball. “To use this particular mud and everything is (one of the) charming traditions that connect us to our grandparents.”

But Adair acknowledges that there is some science behind Bintliff’s main selling point – his product’s smooth texture.

"Let's say you scuff or scar the ball on one side, that can produce asymmetric forces on the ball," Adair said.

If the ball is really scratched up, the air going over the marred side would have a different pattern than air going over the smooth side and the ball would curve toward the roughed-up side, Adair said. "If you threw the ball just any old way, you wouldn't get much of an effect, because the scarred spot would rotate,” he said.

If a sneaky pitcher is good, though, he throws the ball so the scarring is always on the same side. Adair estimated serious scratches could make the ball veer six inches one way or the other.

The mud’s origin in a tidal tributary rather than the larger Delaware River, then, is key.

"(In) the main-stem Delaware, a lot of the bottom sediment is coarser grain material," said David Velinksy, a marine biogeochemist with the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

Fine-grain sediments stay suspended in the rushing water of major rivers. In slower-moving tributaries, they have a chance to settle out, Velinksy said.

Of course, Jim Bintliff adds a secret ingredient to the mud after harvesting, so it’s not just Mother Nature who is responsible for the magic mud.

To see additional video from QUEST Philadelphia for this story, see: Baseball's dirty little secret.

Charles Burckhalter's 1900 solar eclipse image with stars marked for Relativity analysis. Credit: Chabot Space & Science Center

Elevendy-one years ago (that's a hundred and eleven to the non-Shireborne), Chabot Observatory Director Charles Burckhalter set forth on an expedition across the plains of India, risking bandits, tigers, famine, and plague, on a hunt for big game: a rare meeting of the Sun and the migrating Moon in a total solar eclipse. Little could he know, years later his then-world-class astrophotographs of the event would be used in an effort to prove or disprove the General Theory of Relativity published by Albert Einstein in 1916.

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity is the one that describes gravity, that attractive force between objects, not as some kind of invisible bungee cord but as a distortion, or warping, of space (and time) by matter. Other objects within the warped, "curved" space accelerate "downhill" along the curve, toward the mass producing the distortion. Likewise, objects moving through the gravity field are deflected, their trajectories curved toward the mass.

The trick was how to prove this theory with observational evidence. That gravity is a fact is easily demonstrated by holding up an object and then letting go of it. Gravity, whatever gravity is, accelerates it "downward"—in our case, toward the center of Earth's mass.

But how to demonstrate that gravity, as Einstein theorized, is the effect of space-time warped by matter causing objects to slide down the "uneven ground," (yeah, using a lot of quotation marks, I know) was a bit like trying to prove that gnomes are responsible for missing keys (as we all know they are, but just can't prove!)

So, an experiment was proposed to try to sort out the culprit of gravity as curved space-time, or "merely" an invisible bungee cord. If space-time is in fact warped around a massive object, then not only other material objects, but non-material forms of energy should follow along the contours of the warp and also be deflected. Light was the handiest observable, non-material form of energy available.

As the theory went, the greater the mass of an object, the greater the deflection, and the Sun was by far the most massive nearby object available. If the stars behind the Sun's vicinity could be observed to shift their apparent position—as a consequence of their light rays being deflected as they flew past the Sun on their way to Earth—then General Relativity could be observationally confirmed. And there were astronomers in both camps—pro-Relativity and pro-Invisible-Bungee-Cords—trying to observe the effect, or the lack thereof.

A total solar eclipse in 1919 made itself available only three years after Einstein published, and so became a very important eclipse to science. (And, coincidentally, occurred on almost the same day of the year, May 29, as the May 28, 1900 eclipse captured by Burckhalter–which meant that the stars whose positions were being measured, the Hyades cluster in Taurus, were the same in both cases.) In the early 20th century, before space-based satellite observatories existed, stars could not be observed close to the Sun's disk, the Sun being so bright as to drown them out completely.

But during a total solar eclipse, the Moon temporarily blocks the Sun's bright disk, briefly giving astronomers a glimpse of the starry background surrounding the Sun. Photographs of the stars' positions taken during the eclipse could be compared to those of the same stars taken at a different time of the year, when the Sun wasn't present in that location, and so the space-time distortions of gravity (if there were any) might be observed in the deflection of the stars' apparent positions.

Charles Burckhalter's expedition photos from the 1900 eclipse were accessed as part of the observational experiment—including by those on the bungee-advocacy side of the aisle. His innovations in a technique for photographing solar eclipses made his image plates quite valuable among the 1900 sets.

In the end, General Relativity was, in fact, demonstrated observationally, by Arthur Eddington and others, which opened up a whole new universe of astounding possibilities, including the origin of the universe in the Big Bang, and the existence of the mind-bending, light-devouring objects called Black Holes.

But, back in the day, Burckhalter was probably more concerned by the sounds of tigers creeping through the bush and reports of the surrounding plague epidemic as he snapped his shots of the darkened Sun above….