Least tern offers fish to newly hatched chick by Dan Pancamo

The wheel of the seasons is turning again.  For a few glorious weeks earlier this month, our shorelines around the bay were packed with water birds.  Shorebirds in their breeding finery shared the bounty of the intertidal and shallow water areas with California least tern newly arrived from Mexico.  The shorebirds are now gone, away in the night with a high keening cry, for their nesting grounds in the far north.

Victorian woman with egret feathers on hat, 1878 by Eastbourne

The least tern, smallest of our three tern species, will be with us for the summer.  They arrive along California’s shore with their tuxedo colors and distinctive white “V” on their forehead in late April.  Once on the brink of extinction, their population has been steadily increasing from a low of 600 birds in 1973 to current estimates of over 7,000 birds.  Long before this, in the late 1800s, they suffered depletion for the millinery trade.  What fashionable Victorian woman could be seen without hats decorated with bird feathers, wings and even whole birds?

The Migratory Bird Treaty was passed in 1918 affording protection from hunting.  Another pressure on the California least tern’s success, however, is its reliance on open, sandy beaches for nesting habitat.  Throughout much of California, this is also where people like to spend their summers.  And with the introduction of non-native predators — cats, dogs, and red foxes — the ground-nesting birds have had a hard time raising their young.

Banding young California least terns helps track their success. Photo by Linda Tanner

There remains a success story in the terns return and of the people who care enough to fight for their future.  California least tern are on the verge of being delisted and downgraded from endangered to threatened, one of 110 success stories celebrated on Endangered Species Day last week.  The main remaining hurdle to delisting them is continued commitment by agencies to protect their all-important nesting habitat along our shores.

Tern-protection volunteers also work with the East Bay Regional Park District and have successfully helped establish a new breeding colony in Hayward.  You can learn more about the terns at Alameda Point in this article and video. You can also view the Alameda nesting colony on Saturday, June 16 on one of three bus tours departing from Crab Cove Visitor Center; reserve a space by calling (888) 327-2757 or online at www.ebparksonline.org.  There will also be programs throughout the day for all ages highlighting terns and a tern watch along the beach at 2:30pm.

And are you curious about what a California least tern sounds like? Listen to an audio recording here.

Pleistocene bones abound beneath the Fairmead landfill near Chowchilla. See them at the Fossil Discovery Center of Madera County. Photos by Andrew Alden

My previous side trips from I-5 have involved rocks, but that's not all there is to geology. This suggested route, an alternative to taking I-5 straight south to Los Angeles, will expose you to the southern Great Valley's hydrology and many excellent, recently excavated fossils.

Start by exiting at Santa Nella — not to patronize the garish set of businesses there, but to take state route 152 east. You'll go all the way across the valley to Route 99, then south from there to the "Grapevine".

The first thing you'll notice, if you haven't already, is the profusion of canals in the Valley. They come in all sizes, ranging from the Edmund G. Brown Aqueduct (that's the first one you cross) down to uncountable numbers of field ditches. There are natural streams, but most of the water you'll see is in canals. This one runs parallel to the San Joaquin River about 6 miles west of Dos Palos Y.

Right next to it, the river that gave its name to the San Joaquin Valley was a sandy ditch in March during the rainy season. In good weather you'll be able to see mountains wherever you are, either the Coast Range on the west or the Sierra Nevada on the east (as seen here). I believe that there is no place in California where mountains are not visible if the air is clear.

The far end of route 152 meets Route 99. I recommend the old-timey charm of Chowchilla just north of here for a road stop, but otherwise you'll turn south on 99 and take the very first exit to the Fossil Discovery Center of Madera County.

Photo courtesy Tsing Bardin

The center is across the road from a sanitary landfill, and for a good reason: in 1996, diggers at the new Fairmead landfill uncovered a complete mammoth tusk. Soon it was realized that the site contained a world-class Irvingtonian fossil fauna dating from the mid-Pleistocene about half a million years ago. (There's a Bay Area connection here: the Irvingtonian is named for the wonderful bone beds unearthed in the East Bay's Irvington district during freeway construction in the 1940s.)

A paleontological foundation was set up and scientific ties established at nearby Cal State Fresno. Whenever the landfill operators open up a new pit, fossil scientists are on hand to harvest what they can. Bones of mammoths, wolves, sabertooth cats, horses, camels, ground sloths and many smaller creatures are stockpiled and studied at leisure between digs. The Fossil Discovery Center opened its doors in late 2010 and makes an excellent visit whatever your level of interest or expertise. Its outdoor "Pleistocene Water Source" exhibit makes it easy to imagine the lush scene in ancient times.

You can sit out back, next to the fossil washing station, and cast your eye over the surrounding land. I was told that the center has options on some of this acreage, where thousands more fossils surely lie in wait.

Eventually you'll need to return to 99 and resume your journey. Another stop you should consider is in Bakersfield, where less than 5 miles east of the road on Stockdale Highway is the city's gracious new Riverwalk Park on the Kern River, which is still a vigorous stream here.

Bakersfield has a lot going on. Another spot to consider visiting is the Buena Vista Museum of Natural History, home of superb fossils from nearby Sharktooth Hill.

Turns out there are as many as ways to photograph an eclipse as there are to watch it. With a bit of preparation and the generosity of strangers, I got to experience five of them during Sunday's annular eclipse.

My husband and I drove from the Bay Area up to Mt. Hirz near Lake Shasta which was smack in the middle of the optimal eclipse viewing path. About a mile from the top, we ran into an amateur astronomer named Ben who'd scoped the whole mountain the previous day and decided this was the best spot. He had a telescope, so we stayed with him.

A bit of cloud cover when the eclipse started had us all chewing our fingernails, but then it cleared up–and what a view!

Although I am an admirer of photography, I am not the most skilled practitioner. Flickr, however, is a treasure trove of beautiful images. All the pictures in this post are from photographers kind enough to share their work openly, for the enjoyment of the masses.

To make a hokey pinhole camera like I did, cut a square out of a piece of cardbord, tape aluminum foil over the empty square, and poke a hole in the foil with a pin. Stand with your back to the sun and hold the cardboard so the sun shines directly through the pinhole onto a piece of white paper. (This photographer made three holes, one of which was obviously best.)

photo by stevendamron

A better technique is to replace the pinhole with a pair of binoculars like my husband did. You keep your back to the sun and hold the binoculars in the same position as the pinhole camera and you get a larger, clearer view of the sun on the paper.

photo by jinxmcc

Astronomer Ben's wife had a pair of eclipse viewing glasses that were the best way to see color–the "ring of fire" when the moon is totally inside the sun. You can put these glasses–or a really thick filter, which is the same thing–in front of a camera as well as in front of your eyes. But the sun looks really small.

photo by °Florian

Best of all is an actual telescope. Then you can see sunspots!

photo by Mark Langridge

The fifth, final, and possibly my favorite way to see/photograph the eclipse requires no equipment at all–just some trees. When the sun is a crescent, it shines through the leaves to create hundreds of little crescents on the ground or wall.

photo by niiicedave

Photographing the sun is one thing. But the full mood of an eclipse, with its cool air and dusky light, is difficult to capture. Here's one picture (not from the path of full annularity) that really pulled it off:

photo by jimnista

Consider these two numbers: 100 and 100, as in 100 miles-per-hour and 100 miles of driving range. Those are the two key metrics for the all-electric Brammo Empulse motorcycle that was launched in Los Angeles earlier this month.

I was thrilled to hear that Oregon-based Brammo is ready to start selling the Empulse, after writing about the promise of electric motorcycles for Home Power Magazine’s August-September 2011 issue (PDF article here). One of the key factors holding back the electric motorcycle industry is lack of product choice—as well as undeveloped sales and service channels. The Enertia, Brammo's previous product that it's been selling for a few years, is capable of a top-speed of 60 mph, and a range of 42 miles on a single charge. So, the Empulse represents a serious bump up in power and range—giving it an appeal that the Enertia lacked.

Of course, the extra power and range comes at a cost. The Empulse R, the upscale version of the new model utilizing carbon fiber, is priced at a lofty $18,995—compared to the Enertia’s $7,995 sticker price. Production for the Empulse R will take place first with limited availability in June 2012 and in volume by Q3 2012. The more modest Empulse with plastic bodywork will be available in Q1 2013 for $16,995.

Both Empulse models come with a water-cooled AC motor, integrated six-speed transmission, seating for two, regenerative braking and on board J1772 Level 2 charging capability. (That’s the same J1772 charging standard used for electric cars.)

Regardless of range, top-speed and price, electric motorcycles are a thrill. “Every opportunity we’ve had to put motorcyclists on our bikes, they come away with smiles on their faces,” said Brian Wismann, director of product development at Brammo, when I interviewed him last year.

In fact, electric motorcycles can accelerate so fast from a standstill that manufacturers have to be careful that they don’t shoot out from between the rider’s legs. At the same time, they are very quiet—providing a sensation of flying down the road. “The only thing I hear when I ride my motorcycle is the wind inside my helmet, a little bit of chain noise, and the tires on the road,” said Harry Mallin, a Kansas City-based attorney who has been riding a Brammo bike for nearly two years. “It’s much more of a visceral experience and closer to nature, compared to the rumble of a gas bike,” he said. “On an electric bike, you can hear the crickets in the summer.”

Tules on Twitchell Island in the Delta. (Photo: Josh Cassidy/KQED)

With thousands of acres of rich farmland, the Delta has a long agricultural legacy. But farming there can be a risky business. Dozens of farms have been flooded over the past half century as aging levees have collapsed.

That became a reality for farmer Rudy Mussi on the morning of June 3, 2004. It was clear, sunny day. "You never expect a flood in the summer months," says Mussi.

Mussi was growing corn and asparagus on lower Jones Tract, an island in the Delta, 10 miles west of Stockton. That morning, he got a phone call. Water was flooding onto his farmland.

"Your heart stops for a second or two and then realism sets in. And you just start moving your equipment and get it to high ground," says Mussi.

How did a flood happen a on a sunny day? It's because of a basic rule of physics. Mussi farmed on an island below sea level, like a lot of the islands in the Delta. The Delta used to be a huge swath of wetlands, where two major rivers met San Francisco Bay. Today, earthen levees hold that water back – most of the time.

"Once a break occurs, you know, there's no way you're gonna stop that, not with 10 feet of water on the other side," Mussi says. Draining the island and repairing the levees around Jones Tract cost about $90 million.

The levee break on Jones Tract in 2004. (Photo: CA Department of Water Resources)

It wasn't an isolated incident. Over the last century, more than 150 levees have failed in the Delta.

Delta Infrastructure at Risk

"This is how we get ourselves in kind of an arms race between the water and the land," says Jeff Mount, professor with the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis.

Levee-building began in the 1850s, when settlers came to the Delta for the rich soil. More than a thousand miles of levees were built. "This network of levees through time had to get bigger and bigger for a very basic reason: the land has been steadily lowering," says Mount.

As farmers exposed the rich peat soil, it started decomposing. The land level dropped; "In some places they talked about four inches per year," says Mount. Today, it's less than an inch per year thanks to better farming practices.

Add up all those inches over the past century and some islands are now 30 feet below sea level. That puts a lot of stress on the levees. There are also other concerns: rising sea levels and extreme floods. "And then the big 800-pound gorilla in the room – we're due for a very large earthquake on the San Andreas system."

Add up all these risks and Mount says there's a two-thirds chance of a catastrophic levee failure in the next 50 years. That, of course, affects farmers and communities in the Delta, but it could also impact California's water supply.

"The raindrops that fall in Mount Shasta are consumed by people in San Diego. Water moves a great distance and this is one of the critical hubs in that system," says Mount.

Fixing the Delta's levees is estimated to cost billions. But on some islands, scientists are experimenting with a new fix.

Farming Carbon

Peat soil samples on Twitchell Island. (Photo: Josh Cassidy/KQED)

On a windy day on Twitchell Island in the Delta, ecologist Lisa Windham-Myers of the US Geological Survey pushes her way through a wetland filled with a tall, reed-like plant known as tule.

"The plant grows… some of these are 16 feet tall. They're just huge," she says. That growth is changing the ground we're standing on. Windham-Myers pulls out a sample of the dark peat soil.

The wetland produces soil at a rapid rate – four inches a year on average. That's huge, says USGS scientist Brian Bergamaschi, in a place where the land is sinking. "These islands are like bowls and the way we see projects like this is you want to fill up the middle of that bowl and help level out the whole island."

Planting wetlands like this one could raise the land level and water table on the inside of levees, relieving some of the pressure. But why would farmers want to replace cash crops with tule? Windham-Myers points to the soil.

"This is basically almost 100 percent carbon. These take up far more than a typical forest environment," she says. California is setting up a market for carbon, as part of the state's effort to cut global warming emissions. Early next year, companies that need to reduce their emissions could pay farmers to store carbon in wetlands like this.

USGS scientist Brian Bergamaschi talks with Delta farmer Al Medvitch. (Photo: Josh Cassidy/KQED)

Today, two farmers are here checking out the project: Steve Mello, a Delta farmer on Tyler Island and Al Medvitch, a farmer in the Montezuma Hills.

"The potential has been demonstrated well. You guys are standing in the middle of it. But in order to move from here to market, we need to develop a lot more techniques so people can come and verify that the carbon is stored," says Brian Bergamaschi, describing how wetland farming might work.

Both farmers seem open to the idea. But Mello says ultimately, it depends on the bottom line. "It would absolutely need to cash flow. While it could dovetail with levee stability, it would still need to generate enough to amortize your property value."

Still, Mello says assuming carbon prices are high enough, growing patches of wetlands could be a feasible way to improve the levees and to stay farming.

Hypothetical exoplanet of a brown dwarf star--similar to a future Earth? Credit: Jeff Bryant

Every now and then, when seeing fresh examples of the world's problems, local or global, I take a deep breath, sigh, and think, "In a million years, what difference will it all make?" It may sound fatalistic, and of course current events do matter to our short-timer existences on Earth, but the thought gives me an odd sense of peace and gets me to thinking about the future—the far distant future—of the Earth. It's hard to imagine what the future will bring in ten, a hundred, or even a thousand million years. Where will evolution take life on Earth—including us? How far will human civilization stretch, and what turns will it take? What exciting twists and cliffhangers are in store for the climate? What will be on television?

Some things are a bit easier to predict: what the Sun will do and how the Earth and the Earth-Moon relationship will change.

I ran across a web version of the H.G. Wells novel "The Time Machine" a couple of weeks ago, and re-reading Chapter 11 I was reminded how insightful the story is with regard to visualizing future possibilities. In this chapter, the Time Traveler probes forward in time, going millions of years into the future and arriving in a tidally-locked Earth under a bloated, reddened Sun, with no Moon in the sky. The ocean was calm and cold, sporting only gentle, lazy swells, and the air was considerably less stocked with oxygen than today. Snow peppered the land and ice fringed the sea, and the only ubiquitous sign that life still existed was a green slime that coated the rocks of the shore.

"All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives – all that was over."

An alien, cold, and pessimistic view of the future? Well—it can hardly be classified as pessimistic; pessimism is an emotion based on the seeming unchangeability of things we can in fact change. But the Earth's future is commanded by forces scarcely within our power to affect.

For one, the Earth's rotation is slowing down. It used to spin much faster—maybe three times as much—but tidal effects of the Moon and Sun have been slowing it down for four and a half billion years. Imagine an eight-hour day, with the Sun crossing from horizon to horizon in about four. Wake up, it's only a couple of hours until lunchtime, and another two ‘til dinner. I got a whole three hours of sleep last night! Ahh!

Where is Earth's spin going? Shakespeare had the answer: "The Moon's an arrant thief…." The momentum of Earth's spin is being slowly siphoned off by the Moon through tidal interaction, which is simultaneously causing the Moon to move farther from the Earth. Once much closer to Earth, even today the Moon continues to inch away into space–quite literally, at less than two inches per year.

So in the very distant future, we can project that the Moon will have moved much farther from the Earth, and the Earth's rotation will have slowed down even more. At some point the Earth's rotation would match the Moon's orbital period and the Earth will become tidally locked with the Moon, always keeping the same face to it, just as the Moon is currently tidal-locked to the Earth.

In H.G. Wells' vision, the far distant future Earth is tidally locked to the Sun, and the Moon is apparently gone. Would this happen? Will there ever be an Earth with an unending day and unending moonless night (depending on your address)? That could happen, but the Moon would have to leave the picture first, perhaps wandering far enough out that a chance gravitational disturbance by another planet would knock it off the edge of its orbit.

The Sun is changing too—has changed, and will continue to change—as the dynamics of its nuclear fuel supply mix shifts. As atomic fusion converts hydrogen into helium, helium to carbon, and so forth, the availability of easily released energy will diminish, causing the core to shrink and heat up, in turn causing the outer layers to inflate, becoming more expansive but also cooler and redder. In the very long run, the outer layers will expand beyond Earth's present orbit.

So there is a future out there that we can be more certain of than the future shaped by human affairs. It's further out in time than the decades or centuries ahead—and frankly further out than H. G. Wells penned in at 30 million years (little will have changed with the length of a day and the mile markers to the Moon in that time, and I believe the Sun won't make much of a fuss for at least a billion, or more).

In the meantime, it's captivating to think what the scenery may be like around the place I stand today, a million or a billion years hence.

The Greathouse Portal Visitor Center, inside the former Hazel-Atlas sand mine, is open again after five years. Photos by Andrew Alden

With California's state parks under threat of imminent closure, the East Bay Regional Park District is a bright spot for naturegoers. Careful management has maintained steady funding in hard times, and this summer EBRPD's Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve promises to be a well-attended place—especially with the long-awaited reopening of its underground Greathouse Visitor Center.

Black Diamond is named for its history as California's largest coal district, starting in the 1850s. Coal was a prerequisite of 19th-century technology, and its discovery in the hills south of Antioch helped propel the new state of California to prosperity. It wasn't great coal, being classified as lignite or the lowest grade of coal, but it was good enough to do the job. Several mining towns sprang up here, and for a while this was the biggest settlement in Contra Costa County.

Fragments of Black Diamond's low-grade lignite coal can still be found in the tailings piles.

The coal didn't run out, but by the 1890s better coal was available from elsewhere so the mines shut down soon after. Next came the exploitation of the premium quartz sand beds beneath the coal. The sand mines supplied glassmakers in Oakland and steelmakers in Pittsburg from the 1920s to the late 1940s. That was when the Greathouse underground chamber was created, in the Hazel-Atlas sand mine. The Regional Parks District repurposed it as a visitor center in the 1970s, but storm damage shut it down in 2007. After five years of painstaking rehab, the room is receiving visitors again every weekend at no charge.

The old mining district is hidden from the riverside sprawl of Antioch behind a narrow canyon and oak-dotted hills. Driving through the canyon is like leaving the 21st century behind.

Inside, the vegetation is more lush on the higher hills, and miles of trails snake through the country. The area is notable for wildlife and plant species, but geologists find it notable too.

The bones of the hills are relatively young sedimentary rocks that are well exposed here. They extend all the way across the Central Valley in the subsurface. I look forward to showing you more as I explore this beautiful place.

Photo of Ribbon Cutting by Christopher Lane

5/22/12 Update: I was just sent images from Christopher Lane, Assistant Director of Marketing at the Stanford Shopping Center, who helped produce this press event so I'm updating this blog with one of his images. (A link to all the images is given at the end of this blog.)

On the afternoon of Tuesday, May 15, 2012, I hitched a ride with my closest friend from San Francisco out to Palo Alto to attend the ribbon cutting for the first public fast charger in California for electric vehicles in Stanford Mall. This was definitely a green carpet event as it took place in the shopping mall’s garage within walking distance of the fast charger. Many people drove in zero emission cars to attend and the podium was lined on both sides with electric vehicles. Out of the many electric vehicles that were parked, most of them were Nissan Leafs, the same model we drove in from San Francisco. I counted 17 electric vehicles in all which I was told was a modest turnout at a EV event!

Now I’m not new to electric vehicles and the infrastructure. I tagged along with Obrie Hostetter, the Northern California EV Infrastructure Director at 350 Green, a developer of electric vehicle (EV) charging station networks. Her company, along with a partnership with the city of Palo Alto and John Ryan Company, Inc., was responsible for the permitting and construction necessary to place the Level 3 Fast Charger.

A level 2 charger will take about 7 hours to fully charge an EV battery; the Level 3 fast charger can charge the battery up to 80% in 30 minutes. Most EV owners do the majority of their charging at night at home and stay within a close proximity mitigating “range anxiety”. To give you an example: the ideal range of a Nissan Leaf for freeway driving is about 100 miles. With an infrastructure of fast chargers, that range can be increased without spending a lot of time to recharge the battery. This is just the first step in a fast charger infrastructure, as plans are in place to install 25 public fast chargers near retail locations by the fall of 2012.

EV drivers sign up for a payment card from 350Green to use the fast charger station. Use of the card and how to properly use the station was demonstrated after remarks from Palo Alto's Mayor Yiaway Yeh as well as the partners involved in making the public charging station possible. There were quite a few statistics that came out that were enlightening about this new technological movement: 1) There are over 3000 EVs in the Silicon Valley making Palo Alto a great corner stone for the EV infrastructure; the fast charger has already gotten quite a bit of use — since being turned on, it’s been used 3 to 4 times a day; 136 EV drivers have already signed up for the payment card to use at the station and the infrastructure to follow.

So what is the best ribbon to cut at such a green event? Applause went up when a gas hose was cut in front of the fast charger station and the Nissan Leaf it was charging with 100% renewable energy!

More photos of this event can be found here.

Cancer cells under a microscope. Colored stains
mark different compartments in the cell. The nucleus is
red and lysosomes (which break down waste) are purple.
(Image: Carolin Zehetmeier, Morphosys AG, Germany)

Dr. Susan Love thinks breast cancer researchers need to get over their addiction to rodents.

America’s most famous breast cancer surgeon started treating women some 30 years ago. “And we’re still doing the same thing we did when I started,” she told a crowd in San Francisco last month at the Sage Bionetworks conference, aimed at transforming biomedical research.

“Surgery radiation, chemotherapy, hormones, and now we’ve added a little bit of targeted therapies,” said Love, a clinical professor of surgery at UCLA. “We never subtract anything, mind you, we only add things on top. And our results are about the same.”

Although breast cancer incidence and mortality have decreased since 1998, by 1.3% and 2% respectively, more than 200,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year and more than 40,000 will die from it. Nearly 110 women die from breast cancer every day.

Experts think earlier detection and better treatments account for the decline in deaths, but screening carries risks. With mass screening comes overdiagnosis—that is, diagnosing a condition that would not prove symptomatic or fatal—and with overdiagnosis comes overtreatment and other potential harms (see video below). Screening technology can’t distinguish between aggressive and harmless tumors, which can shrink or even disappear on their own. Overdiagnosis will likely just increase as imaging technology finds smaller and smaller tumors.

Medical experts acknowledged in an editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine last month that it’s time to recognize overdiagnosis as a serious problem. Most patient-education materials don’t even mention overdiagnosis and most women aren’t aware of the possibility, the authors said. As they pointed out, and any woman knows, “the impact of a cancer diagnosis lasts a lifetime.”

It’s hard to think of a physician who’s done more to acknowledge the trauma of breast cancer than the author of the best-selling “Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book,” now in its fifth edition.

That book, along with Love's early refusal to accept the oxymoronic (emphasis on moronic) “early detection is your best prevention” mantra of mainstream cancer and advocacy organizations, won her a place of honor among frustrated breast cancer activists, who know all too well that if you can diagnose cancer, you haven't prevented it. Detecting it, by definition, means it's there.

The surgical tools used on breast cancer
patients in the 18th century look gruesome, but
aren't really so far removed from the "slash, burn
and poison" approach to breast cancer today.
(Illustration: Louis-Jacques Goussier)

Activists have long pushed researchers to shift their focus from treatments and cures to true prevention.

Despite $4 billion spent on breast cancer research, researchers still don’t know what causes it or how to prevent it. Yet Love believes that the tools exist to “eradicate breast cancer within our lifetime” if we ask the right questions.

And for decades, Love has helped shine the spotlight on causes, not cures, to spare women from that dreaded diagnosis. But that goal will remain elusive, she believes, as long as researchers keep studying the disease in rodents. That’s because mice and rats don’t get breast cancer. Researchers have to give it to them.

So she’s been trying to wean researchers off rodents. “I can say this is a good study, you could do that in women, and they say, ‘Let me tell you about my rats.’ ”

Yet researchers can learn valuable insights into the origins of disease by comparing people with an illness to matched cohorts of healthy people, as the legendary Nurses’ Health Study has demonstrated for heart disease, diabetes and other conditions.

Finding the causes and, ultimately, how to prevent breast cancer requires a radical shift in thinking, Love said. And that means that at least some researchers have to give up their rats and mice and start working with the people who get the disease.

Researchers used to tell Love that even if they did want to study women, they didn’t know how to find them. But she knew that was the easy part. So for more than three years, the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation has been recruiting an online "army of women" with a target of enrolling “one million women and a few good men.”

Dr. Susan Love spoke at the Sage Bionetworks conference in San Francisco last month. The Seattle-based nonprofit is dedicated to “moving beyond the current medical information system and its rewards.”

“Scientists come to us with studies that need people, and we e-blast them out to everybody in the army,” Love said.

So far, they’ve recruited 365,000 women for about 60 studies. Seven in 10 of the women don’t have breast cancer, but are "altruistic,” Love said. They’re willing to undergo unpleasant procedures to help researchers figure out root causes. In one study, women in the control group had to endure a sigmoidoscopy and a biopsy. And Love got more enrollees than researchers could use.

By the end of this summer, the foundation will be launching its own Health of Women Study. The large online breast cancer cohort study will follow women with and without a diagnosis to identify new risk factors. It will also follow breast cancer survivors to identify factors that predict long-term survival and consequences of different therapies.

Any woman over 18 can register online or with a mobile phone. (Men are welcome, too.)

Love’s study will let participants suggest questions they’d
like to see tested, because she thinks you don’t
need a PhD to come up with a good idea.

She told her San Francisco audience that early theories about the cause of human papillomavirus (HPV) came from observations of people who knew a man whose wife died of cervical cancer, and who then married a second woman who died of the same cancer. “They said, well maybe it’s the guy.”

“And then we figured out it was sexually transmitted, then we figured out it was a virus and now we have a vaccine.”

Potentially, Love reminds us, “Everybody is a patient.” She thinks eliminating disease is something we should all do together.

“”

Credit: jypsygen/Flickr

Opening the refrigerator to find a gallon of spoiled milk is a rotten way to start the day. But for fresh cheese makers, every day begins with sour milk. Here’s why: 80% of the proteins in milk belong to a family called caseins. Adding acid to milk, like lemon juice or vinegar, makes these invisible proteins visible as a white, chunky solid we call the curds.

In a glass of milk, caseins aggregate into small spheres called micelles. The outside of each protein cluster is negatively charged, causing neighboring spheres to repel each other. Thus, these micelles remain evenly distributed throughout the milk.

Acidic vinegar neutralizes the negative charge on the spheres. With the repulsive force gone, the protein clusters clump together and form an observable solid, the curds. When chefs collect the curds and discard the liquid whey, they have queso fresco. Try it yourself with this recipe.

Stretching the hot curds instead of pressing them into a cake gives you homemade mozzarella cheese. I've tried to make mozzarella using this kit, but it only worked once. That's because the quality of the curds depends on the type of milk that you use.

Credit: poopoorama/Flickr

Most milk from the grocery store has been ultra-pasteurized, meaning it's been heated to temperatures above 172° Fahrenheit. That extra heat disturbs the casein proteins. Curds from ultra-pasteurized milk don't stick together and stretch as nicely as they do when made from milk that has been pasteurized. I've had a hard time finding milk not labeled UP or UHP, so I haven't tried to make mozzarella at home again.

But now I'm hankering for a mozzarella, tomato and basil salad. Guess I'd better find some pasteurized milk before summer comes!