Will gray wolves return to California? Photo: MacNeil Lyons, National Park Service/ U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Midwest Region.

When a gray wolf wearing a GPS collar crossed from Oregon into California in December, it was the first wild gray wolf to tread on California soil since the 1920s. Wolves once roamed throughout California, and some people think packs may prowl the state again. It is debatable whether this lone wolf is a sign of things to come, but if wolves return to California, their role in the ecosystem will be different than it was in times past.

Until the early 1900s, gray wolves (Canis lupus) lived throughout much of North America. They were present in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Coast Range, and the Central Valley, among other locations. Their range was not well documented. Gray wolves are predators; they hunt in packs and eat all kinds of prey, from small rodents on up to Bison. Their main prey items were Tule Elk and Pronghorn, an animal similar to an antelope.

As California’s Central Valley was converted to agricultural fields and pastures, the number of Tule Elk and Pronghorn dwindled. A shrinking supply of wild ungulates (hoofed mammals, such as elk, Pronghorn, and deer) meant that wolves started going after livestock—with major repercussions. Predator control programs led to extinction of the gray wolf in the lower 48 states. In 1924, the last known wolf in California was trapped and killed in Lassen County.

Gray wolves were added to the Endangered Species List in 1974, shortly after the Endangered Species Act was passed. Then, in the mid 1990s, gray wolves from Canada were re-introduced to Idaho and to Yellowstone National Park.

The gray wolves introduced to Idaho expanded their range, and there are now about 1600 wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest. In Idaho, there are concerns that the local population is growing too large, and the wolves are getting too close to human habitation. Last year, gray wolves were de-listed in certain areas, where it became legal to hunt them. Five wolves were killed via aerial gunning in Idaho.

Studies on the wolves in Yellowstone, conducted by Chris Wilmers, Assistant Professor in the Environmental Studies Department at the University of California Santa Cruz, have found that gray wolves buffer the effects of climate change for other carnivores. Many scavengers, such as bald eagles, coyotes, and black bears, feed on elk carcasses during the winter. After heavy snowfall, elk become exhausted from walking through deep snow and eventually expire. However, winters are becoming shorter as a result of climate change, and there are fewer elk carcasses to be scavenged. After wolves were released in Yellowstone, their hunting activity increased the availability of food for scavengers.

The Gray Wolf that recently crossed into California—named OR7 and re-named “Journey” in a naming contest—split off from his pack in Oregon. Wolves can outgrow their packs and will disperse to find a mate. As the only known wild gray wolf in the state, is highly unlikely that Journey will find a mate. And without a pack to hunt with, this lone wolf will probably need to scavenge for food. Journey probably won’t father California’s future wolf population, but it is possible that other Oregon wolves may follow in his nearly 1000 miles of footsteps.

California has suitable habitat for gray wolves, and has plenty of potential prey. But the state has changed a lot since gray wolves had the run of the place in the 1800s. There is little open space, and the climate is drastically altered; if wolves return, their ecological role will be very different.

These are just some of the beautiful murals adorn the outside of the labs at Schmahl Science headquarters.

Let’s say you’re a student who wants to do a biology experiment for a science fair. Maybe you want to figure out how a certain cancer works or engineer a drought-resistant plant or any other sort of higher level experiment. How in the world do you get started and then do the necessary experiments?

If you know a biologist, then you can get them to help you. Unfortunately most folks don’t know any scientists let alone biologists. What interested people usually have to do is start cold-calling institutions and universities, hoping to find someone willing to help. This is rarely successful.

But if you’re in the South Bay, there is another possibility – Schmahl Science. For around $40/hour, you can do your experiment with the help of a mentor in the lab facilities at Schmahl Science headquarters.

The price is a bargain by science standards but still ain’t cheap. For example, a cancer project can end up costing upwards of $3000! There are scholarships available and there is a sliding scale based on family income, but it will still definitely cost you. However, if you’re interested in doing a top notch science fair project and learning more about science as a career, you can’t beat it.

I recently had the chance to take a tour of the facilities and chat with the executive director, Belinda Schmahl. My first impression of the place was that it was a bit ramshackle. It seemed to have been cobbled together from various spare parts into a Frankenstein sort of creation. This is because it was.

They are able to keep prices so low (and really, they are low) by using other people’s castoffs in a location that is a bit off the beaten track. What it lacks in finish, though, it more than makes up for in personnel.

I was incredibly impressed with the mentors I spoke with. They were knowledgeable and very excited about their students’ projects. And I can see why.

One student I saw there was working on a biochemical experiment to test how well various sunscreens actually protect people from harmful ultraviolet light. One mentor told me about a successful experiment a student had done to generate electricity from bay mudflats. Another mentor told me about a student’s project that was exploring how houseflies were able to fly. Still another told me about a student’s project on the effects of the herbicide RoundUp on certain bacteria rice needs to grow. And so on.

Of the 100 students mentored for the Synopsys science fair last year, 78 received some sort of award. This gives you some idea as to the quality of the work and the guidance each student receives.

These are incredibly interesting and important experiments that the students would not be able to do on their own. What a great service this organization provides for the community. I hope one day it can be cloned over and over again so more students can experience the thrill and excitement of science.

More information on the program

Recent winners of the Synopsys Science Fair. Wow.

Nissan Leaf dashboard. Photo: Josh Cassidy

I was way too literal in my thinking about the Leaf. I thought, “100 miles of range, great. I can go to work and back almost three times before I have to recharge." It’s about 33 miles from the Oakland Hills into where I work in San Francisco and back. I didn’t understand that I simply would never get 100 miles of range despite driving much more efficiently. I also didn’t realize, at the time, that it’s best to charge to 80% to extend battery life. So, now I pretty much have to charge between every trip.

I realized a lead foot and maybe climate control would reduce my range but I didn’t consider all of the other possible factors that would cut into my range including: terrain, weather, speed, elevation, technique and even how long ago I last charged. After four months of driving I am getting some ideas of what to do to eke out more miles. Also, I have been getting tips from several sites including: Mynissanleaf.com. While some of this might be specific to the Leaf, some tips are general ones that can apply to any of the upcoming electric car releases such as Mitsubishi’s i electric and the 2012 Ford Electric Focus. Oh, and if you have ideas on how to extend range, by all means, share!

1. Count bars, not miles
Don’t look at the DTZ (Distance to Zero) which counts backwards from your mileage starting point. Leaf drivers call it the "guess o’meter". Look at the bars. This will help you not freak out. Battery-powered cars have huge mileage swings with climate control, acceleration, speed and elevation gains being the biggest. For those not driving a Leaf, the car has twelve bars stacked on top of each other. You can see this to the right of the dashboard on the photo above. Daily, I work with ten bars since I charge to 80%. If I average my road and highway driving during a moderate winter in the San Francisco Bay Area, I am getting almost 7 miles per bar.

2. Bundle up
If you really need to eke out every mile, don’t use the climate control. In extreme weather, the heat can cut the energy by 30%. It is a drag. It is best to use your seat warmers if you have them (I don't). Also, try heating up your car while it is still teathered to your charger (you can program it to go on before you go to work or use a phone app to turn it on from the warmth of your home.)

3. Follow the bubbles
While it is not the best efficiency gauge, I follow the power meter on the dashboard of the Leaf. You can see it in the picture above. The meter displays the motor power and the regenerative brake power. The white dot, or bubble, in the display moves to the right when you are accelerating and to the left when power is generated by breaking. I generally try to keep the bubbles from increasing too much to the right.

4. Drive in Eco
This probably goes without saying but most hybrd plug-ins and electric cars have different drive options. The Leaf has two drive choices, drive and eco. Drive gives you that fast zoom and eco helps the car capture more energy.

5. Use Common Sense
Combine errands into one trip, drive less agressively, keep your tire pressure up, unpack your car to reduce excess weight, try and drive in the moderate time of the day as electric cars are less efficient in extreme hot or cold conditions.

Sure, I wish my battery pack could hold more charge but that's not my only gripe. It just takes too long to charge and there is a total lack of public chargers out on the roads. From what I understand, the 2012 Electric Ford Focus and the 2013 Nissan Leaf will charge in half the time the 2011 Nissan Leaf charges. Better yet, Stanford’s wireless charging idea could catch on.

Next up, choosing a rate plan and working through the morass that is PG&E.

Se other posts from this series.

Rancho Corral de Tierra's nearly 4,000 acres overlook the Pacific, just south of Devil's Slide.

Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes Alcatraz Island, the Marin Headlands, Muir Woods and many other Bay Area landmarks, has added one more piece to its portfolio: a large chunk of the Peninsula south of Devil's Slide.

Negotiations to incorporate Rancho Corral de Tierra into the park took ten years and ended plans by a developer to build pricey homes in the Half Moon Bay area.

On the day I visited Rancho Corral de Tierra, a thick fog hung under the peak of Montara Mountain, blocking what might otherwise have been views straight out to the Farallon Islands and Mount Tamalpais.

But with 3,800 acres of Cypress trees and rolling hills, you could almost imagine what the California coast looked like when Spanish explorers wandered by just north of here in 1769.

Close Calls with Development

It was almost a golf course.

Audrey Rust, president emeritus of the Peninsula Open Space Trust, known as POST, says she’d been eyeing this piece of land since she began working at the trust 25 years ago. Flat in the lowlands with a scenic backdrop of ridges, it attracted development plans of every stripe, says Rust.

Courtesy of Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

“A golf course, housing, gated communities… everything,” says Rust.

Rust, and others, believed the ranch provided such valuable habitat and open space that it might qualify to become part of the national park system.

“It’s only seven miles south from the border of San Francisco,” says Rust, “and it's teeming with wildlife. Mountain lions are abundant. Deer. Every critter you can think of that's native to this area.”

Acquiring the ranch was a huge project, requiring fund-raising on a scale closer to what you might expect from a major hospital or university. POST launched a campaign called Saving the Endangered Coast with the goal of raising 200 million dollars and saving 20 thousand acres of land, including the ranch.

Audrey Rust helped raise $200 million dollars to save Rancho Corral de Tierra

They couldn’t have asked for a better fundraising moment. Rust raised $100 million from Silicon Valley: $50 million each from the Packard and Moore Foundations.

The funding let POST buy the sprawling ranch for $29 million and then hold onto it for nine years until the state government and Congress provided the money to acquire it for the same price. After much political wrangling, Congressional approval to add it to the national park system finally came through last summer. Rust was ecstatic.

“[We were] jumping around and sometimes crying. But now, it just feels right to know this beautiful place will be here forever.”

The land includes a working horse farm and Brussels sprouts fields.

A Southern Entryway to Golden Gate National Recreation Area

From the National Park’s perspective, the addition of the ranch is historic. Alex Picavet, with the GGNRA, calls the ranch “the largest land acquisition for Golden Gate National Recreation Area pretty much since it began.”

As national parks go, Golden Gate is a little unusual. Its 82,000 acres of parkland are scattered around the Bay Area, from Muir Woods to Alcatraz Island and Ocean Beach in San Francisco. But the new land on the Peninsula means that about half of the park — which was founded in 1972 — is now in San Mateo County, with this new chunk forming the southernmost border.

“We’re calling this the southern entryway to Golden Gate National Recreation Area,” says Picavet.

Now that Rust and others have taken the long view, people like Susie Bennett can focus on the small things.

As we hiked up the ridge, Bennett, a natural resource specialist for the GGNRA, stopped and pointed to a little yellow flower with heart-shaped petals, “this area’s local plant celebrity.”

The endangered hickman's potentilla has been found in only two places in the world.

Hickman's potentilla is found in only two places in the world: here, and in Monterey. It’s the ranch’s only federally recognized endangered species. “It’s a plant we’d like to focus some management on,” says Bennett.

In taking over this land, the National Park Service is doing a lot more than just putting up new signs.

There will be scientists studying the land, and workers clearing out invasive species. The system of informal trails that locals have used for years will get an overhaul.

Balancing the Needs of Habitat and Local Dog-walkers

And like any new neighbor, the park is going to have to win over local residents, especially on the topic of dogs.

Bill and Peggy Bechtell live in a comfortable ranch home in Montara, just across the street from the park. They’ve been walking their dog, Kalie, here for years. They say they're apprehensive about their new neighbors.

Montara residents Bill and Peggy Bechtell have been walking their dogs off-leash on the ranch for decades.

“We've had nothing but great community here for 32 years, and the minute they come, they ruin it,” says Peggy Bechtell.

Bechtell is referring to an incident, about a week ago, that made national headlines.

According to the GGNRA, Gary Hesterberg of Montara was walking his two dogs off leash, in violation of park rules. A ranger tried to give him a ticket, but he gave her a false name and refused to stop. Critics call it excessive force, and a local congresswoman wants an independent investigation.

National parks, as a rule, don’t allow off-leash dogs. It’s been a sticking point for some in the Bay Area for more than a decade and, as a result, the park has made exceptions in places like Fort Funston and the Marin Headlands. A final, formal dog policy has long been in development.

Officials had originally hoped that the new park addition at Rancho Corral de Tierra would follow the more restrictive National Park standards, with limited, leash-only dog areas. Park officials say dogs can interfere with efforts to nurture and restore the area's native ecosystem.

Bill Bechtell, who has been taking his dogs here since the 1980s, says that policy is unfair to Montara locals.

“There’s plenty of room for open space, animals, wildlife, everything. And recreation!” he says.

Last week, park officials announced their intention to include the ranch in the broader environmental review of off-leash dog areas in parts of GGNRA, which opens up the possibility that off-leash areas could eventually be established at Rancho Corral de Tierra.

“It’s not going to be overnight that we all come together and speak the same language,” says GGNRA’s Picavet. “But we are looking forward to building that relationship together. We’re here for the long haul.”

Over the next year, GGNRA will be working out parking, signage, and other issues, including dog policy. The property is currently open to visitors.

A nodule of Napa Glass Mountain obsidian, etched by hydration during its long burial, reveals signs of its origin as a thick, sticky lava. Photos by Andrew Alden

The Napa Valley is an intriguing place even if wine doesn't interest you. Its very geography has an intangible personality. Running north-south, the valley is lit differently throughout the course of the day. It has the flat valley floor along the Napa River that you'd expect in a major agricultural region, but odd rocky hills are scattered about the valley with the irregularity of tossed pebbles. On behalf of Napa Valley winegrowers, geologists have studied the underlying soils and rocks, tracing from them a history of tectonic upheaval, recent volcanism and gigantic landslides.

The western side of the valley is the Mayacamas Mountains, here made up largely of marine sedimentary rocks of the Franciscan and Great Valley complexes (100 to 150 million years old). The eastern side is the Vaca Mountains, which consists mostly of much younger lavas of the Sonoma Volcanics (less than 5 m.y.). Here it is in a simplified geologic map.

The valley floor consists of recent sediments (Q) while young volcanics (T) and older sedimentary rocks line its sides. From USGS Scientific Investigations Map 2956.

Each set of rocks responds its own way to California climate and yields its own set of soils, and the floodplain between them mixes the two in different blends. Its wide range of soils and settings is part of what makes the Napa Valley such an endless playground for winegrowers. The same was true in prehistoric times, when the valley was a rich habitat for the Wappo and Patwin tribes and other peoples before them.

And this brings us to Napa Glass Mountain.

The natives made their cutting and scraping tools as needed, chipping them from stone of a few select kinds. The best toolstone is obsidian—a glasslike lava without crystals or bubbles that would mar the sharp edges and flat faces of an effective tool.

Obsidian is uncommon. To make it, a lava must have both a very high silica content and a low water content; it also helps to cool quickly. High-silica lava is classified as rhyolite and the Sonoma Volcanics field has plenty, but few rhyolites yield obsidian. Notable sources for the natives in this part of California were Annadel near Santa Rosa, Borax Lake near Clear Lake, and Napa Glass Mountain, which is just north of the town of St. Helena. Toolstone was an important trade item, and archaeologists map its distribution in ancient sites as clues to prehistoric commerce.

The Napa obsidian is a stone of a luscious pure black, and you can see it in a large roadcut on the Silverado Trail north of St. Helena at the narrowest point of the Napa River's floodplain. Here's a closeup geologic map.

Pinkish units are part of the Sonoma Volcanics (Tsa, Tsr, etc.), gray units are Franciscan rocks, units with "Q" are recent sediments. From USGS Scientific Investigations Map 2956.

The roadcut is just north of the intersection with Lodi Lane; you can park on either side of the road but be careful of traffic. The exposure is tall and shows the crude bedding of the mixed ash and lava beds, now highly weathered.

Obsidian occurs scattered in a whitish matrix in fractured lumps up to a meter long. The matrix may be altered material that was once obsidian, and/or it may consist of fine rhyolite ash—I have not studied it closely enough to hazard a guess. Parts of it may actually be perlite, a lightweight stone that forms where rhyolite reacts with internal water. Obsidian does not last long in the geologic record because its crystal-free substance is prone to attack by chemical weathering.

You don't need to dig into the cliffs; let other people who actually use obsidian do that risky operation. Instead, poke around your feet and look for bits like these.

The outsides are rough and coated with white hydration rinds, but inside they display their creamy texture and lustrous conchoidal fracture, the properties that make obsidian the ideal toolstone. Don't be greedy. And be ready to tell passers-by, like the curious police officer I spoke to during my last visit, what this cool place is all about.

More:
Obsidian photo gallery
Perlite
Rhyolite
Stone Tools

Photo by Sarah Deragon, PortraitsToThePeople

I am lucky enough to live in Hayes Valley, I’ve been living here for about four years now and have been privy to great community engagement; especially around the park at Hayes and Octavia. There is such a diversity of people that congregate in the park and one of the new neighbors has definitely added to the charm of the environs – Smitten Ice Cream.

The first flavor I tried was salted caramel, and it was hands down the best ice cream I had ever tasted. Since then, when I have guests visiting, I make sure that one of the local stops is Smitten. The ice cream is made to order only using the freshest local ingredients and it is frozen within 60 seconds using liquid nitrogen with a freezing point of -321 degrees F or 76 degrees Kelvin giving it a unique texture.

I heard Robyn Sue Goldman, owner of Smitten and Cory Bloome, the engineer responsible for fine tuning Robyn’s first prototype to mix the ice cream, speak about Smitten on Wednesday, January 18th at Nerd Nite. Smitten’s story from wagon to the Hayes Valley location is a great blend of quality and innovation. Robyn’s initial vision with Smitten was to get closer to the cow. With traditional ice cream that is frozen with conventional techniques, the texture is often stabilized with additives, emulsifiers or preservatives which mask natural ingredients. Old-fashioned ice cream in contrast has a few simple ingredients but takes quite some time to freeze. Introducing liquid nitrogen enabled Robyn to create ice cream the old fashioned way without the wait time.

The first ice cream machine was created and tested by Robyn through trial and error over many years. One of the major hurdles was to create a mixing apparatus that could properly and consistently mix the ice cream, without over-freezing or under-freezing any portion of it, which is easy to do with liquid nitrogen. She developed and later patented her creation of two swirling mixing arms with a helix design. She named the unique, patented mixer "Kelvin," giving tribute to the measurement of intense cold. Kelvin’s design, with the help of liquid nitrogen, creates a lower ice cream-freezing temperature while perfecting the mixing technique, resulting in the formation of smaller ice crystals in the finished product. These exceptionally small ice crystals are the reason why Smitten Ice Cream is so intensely creamy. To test her invention, Robyn initially hit the streets of San Francisco with Kelvin strapped on top of a Radio Flyer wagon and made incredible ice cream to-order. Popularity for Smitten Ice Cream grew, and the need for a store became tangible.

Before a store could be created, Kelvin needed to be refurbished and approved by UL, the regulatory agent. That is where Cory Bloome came in, affectionately dubbed “The Kelvin Doctor. Cory was the engineer who took Robyn’s prototype and list of improvements and fabricated the next generation of Kelvin’s for the store.

The four Kelvins are now busy mixing at the Smitten storefront at 432 Octavia St. (@ Linden St.). Try it for yourself if you find yourself in the neighborhood. Ice cream is served each day starting at noon. Monday through Thursday and Sunday, the ice cream is put away at 9pm; yet, Friday and Saturday you can come as late as 10pm for your fix.

It's a problem in hospitals, too. Just take the neonatal intensive care unit at the University of California San Francisco.

On a recent morning, Mardi Thompson was swaddling a baby the size of a burrito with firm assurance. She's been a nurse here for 13 years.

Some of the babies who come through here were born prematurely. Others were born with congenital defects; some part of their internal anatomy didn’t develop the way it’s supposed to.

"Maybe their diaphragm is missing, or part of their intestine is outside of their chest," says Thompson. Some suffer from a condition called esophageal atresia, in which the child's feeding tube isn't properly connected to her stomach. That condition affects roughly one in every 4,000 children.

Working with Tools Too Big for the Job

They are what Sanjeev Dutta refers to as "plumbing problems."

Dutta is a pediatric surgeon at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, in Palo Alto, where he operates on children with these and other problems. He says often, the instruments he uses when he does these surgeries weren’t built for tiny babies. They were made for adults.

"We struggle with instruments that were never designed for the type of patient we are working on, and we adapt."

Dutta says the issue here isn’t safety. Most of these surgeries are, by now, pretty routine. But pediatric surgeons have to improvise in ways other surgeons don’t.

Working with tools that are several times too large for his tiny patients, Dutta is sometimes forced to stand a foot and a half away from his patient.

Size isn't the only problem pediatric surgeons face. Many pediatric procedures are specific to infants and children, fixes to problems that, unaddressed, would be fatal. In such cases, often the right tools simply don't exist.

Partly because of problems like these, pediatric surgeons have a reputation as being mavericks, people who are particularly good at improvising the tools they might need to operate successfully. No one fits that mold as well as Michael Harrison, at UCSF.

A History of Improvisation and Innovation

Harrison is known as the father of fetal surgery. He says twenty years ago, when the field was just getting started, his team had to make almost everything from scratch.

"We had to make all the tools and devices that allowed the fetal surgery, [the tools for] the the mom, and opening and closing the uterus. All that stuff we had to make up, because the tools were ten times too big."

Harrison describes this era — the 1970s and early 80s — as a golden age of pediatric surgery, a time when you could rig up a new tool or procedure, run tests on animals, if necessary, and then bring it into the operating room. He says he never felt like they had a choice.

"It’s almost a moral imperative. It’s usually in a circumstance where this kid is going to die. The only way we think we might be able to save him is this new way. We’d have to have this thing. Let’s do it. And that’s what we can’t do now."

In the mid 1970s, the FDA began regulating surgical devices, much the same way it regulates drugs. It can take a decade to get a device through the regulatory process, sometimes longer for pediatrics.

Harrison says this — along with the fact that many pediatric surgical procedures are rare — has had a chilling effect on medical device manufacturers.

"The market is too small to justify the research and development for new devices," he says. "That’s the fundamental problem."

In 2007, Congress passed the Pediatric Medical Device Act, which set aside a small pot of money, administered through the FDA’s Office of Orphan Products, to spur innovation in the field of pediatric surgery.

The program was initially intended to receive $6 million for each two-year cycle, but appropriations have come out much lower: $2 million dollars for 2009-2010 and $3 million for 2011-2012.

The idea is to bring together doctors and engineers to solve problems in pediatric surgery. These are the kinds of partnerships that Mike Harrison has been trying to forge for a decade. He says it can be a culture clash.

"We’re, you know, sort of blood and guts. We're saying, 'hey we've got to have this device, we’re going into the operating room tomorrow.' And they were thinking nanotechnology and PhDs."

Developing Tomorrow's Kid-Sized Tools

But the FDA money is making these partnerships routine at a handful of institutions across the country, including Georgia, Michigan, and here in the Bay Area.

The Magnetic Mini Mover uses two rare earth magnets to slowly reconfigure a sunken chest, similar in concept to orthodontics. Courtesy UCSF.

UCSF has received about a million dollars since 2009. That money has supported the development of tools to treat scoliosis, kidney failure and sunken chest, among other conditions. The pectus, or sunken chest device, is in clinical trials.

In Palo Alto, Sanjeev Dutta has paired up with an engineer named Pablo Garcia, from SRI International, in Menlo Park. In 2009, he and Sanjeev Dutta received 500 thousand dollars to fund their collaboration.

Garcia says there was an adjustment period on both sides, as he and Dutta learned how to collaborate. "When you actually put yourself in shoes of surgeon, things you thought were important actually are not. And things that you overlooked turn out to be the driving factors."

At one of their first meetings, says Garcia, Dutta asked whether a certain robotic instrument could be made smaller. "Sure," said Garcia. "But it'll take five to ten years."

One of the projects Garcia has developed in collaboration with Dutta is a catheter used to deliver nerve blocks to kids who have broken, for example, an arm or a leg.

Current catheters, says Garcia, "are placed blindly, based on anatomical landmarks, and they often get dislodged. So the catheter we designed has some features in the tip that allow it to grab onto the tissue, lock onto it, and navigate it in a more effective way than the current catheters."

One of Dutta's favorite tools is a device used to treat esophageal atresia. The surgery is complex and often invasive. Dutta says many surgeons rely on the same techniques they've been using for decades. A newer, less invasive method is becoming more common, but it's technically very difficult. Dutta and Garcia have developed a tool designed to make the less invasive procedure much easier, so that more kids can recover faster, and with less scarring.

A prototype tool used to perform cutting and spreading functions in the treatment of esophageal atresia. Courtesy SRI International.

The tool is just a prototype now, with many stages of trials standing between it and the operating room. With Dutta and Garcia's FDA funding running out, they'll need to find other ways to fund their work on this and other devices. Dutta hopes that private philanthropy can bridge the gap between R&D and commercialization.

Dutta says he knows, from the perspective of a commercial manufacturer, that the market for a tool like this is just too small to be profitable. "Eyes glaze over," he says, "if they hear ten thousand cases a year."

But what people need to realize, he says, is that the market could be a lot bigger. What’s helpful to kids could be useful in adult surgeries, too.

"What we need to do is figure out how we can connect the two markets," he says, "and make them sort of symbiotic."

In other words, Dutta and others are learning how to be not just surgeons, but entrepreneurs. Their business will be nurturing these products to the point where someone else will see the profit in making them.

Mercedes Fuel-Cell car for 2014

Big news this week for electric car drivers. We may soon have more company on the roads if the state of California has any say. The California Air Resources Board has passed the toughest vehicle emission regulations in the U.S. CARB is mandating that automakers cut exhaust by two-thirds by dramatically increasing their production of electric and plug-in hybrids. Automakers and oil companies have sued in the past to stop similar measures but this time is different. There are already more than fifteen thousand electric and plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads.

The mandates would require about one in seven new cars and trucks sold in California each year to run on batteries, hydrogen fuel cells or other zero emission technology within the next thirteen years. That is the same amount of time that the Prius and other hybrids have been out. During that time automakers say hybrids have only captured 3 percent of the market and there is concern that it's going to be very difficult to achieve 15 percent in the same period of time with electric cars. No doubt a lot needs to happen to entice would be customers including: Rolling out a charging infrastructure, bringing down the cost of cleaner cars and helping prepare folks who want to make a transition to driving non gas or diesel cars.

Chevy Volt

The very cars that California is pushing were on display in San Jose this week at an auto symposium for journalists. I decided to take a road trip down to check them out.

Before I bought my Leaf I would never have thought of driving to San Jose as a road trip but it was the first time i headed to a place where i would not have enough charge to get home. Ironically, the venue holding the "Fourth Annual Future of Cars" conference for journalists did not have an electric car charger. I was a little nervous to make the journey when it looked like, according to one of my phone apps, the nearest chargers were either all in use or down. However, the folks at Club Auto Sport in San Jose kindly let me trickle charge (use a 110 v outlet with my Nissan charger) in their parking lot. This meant I had to stay longer than intended but it gave me a chance to test drive several cutting edge clean cars.

Mitsubishi’s new “i” electric car

The Toyota Hydrogen Fuel Cell Highlander, due out in 2015, drives much like a battery powered electric car. It's smooth and quiet but the SUV is obviously much bigger with a range of 431 miles. It's good it has so much range because hydrogen fueling stations are few and far between. Hydrogen fuel cell technology has not received great endorsements from the Department of Energy but Toyota has more confidence in the technology.

I tried Mitsubishi's 2012 "i" electric car. The SE Model is similarly priced to the Leaf. It was okay, not as zipped up as the Leaf and smaller but has that electric, smooth, get up and go drive feeling. I have driven the Volt before. It drives well and has mostly a gas engine to fall back on so the range anxiety is not there but the price is high and you don't get to hang out at conferences for hours waiting for your car to trickle charge. Wouldn't want to miss that.

Coming up — wild mileage swings and choosing a rate plan.

See other posts from this series.

M9 Solar Flare of January 23 2012; credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory

Let's see, what's the weather like right now (sticks finger into the air). Speed, 1.2 million miles per hour, density 1.1 protons per cubic centimeter, temperature 200,000 degrees Celsius. Sound a bit extreme? Surely climate change hasn't made things THAT batty. As a matter of fact, conditions have calmed down in the last several hours.

Okay, I'm not talking Earth weather—if I were, we'd all be dead, fast. I'm talking space weather, and a subsidence in its condition following a powerful solar flare whose ejecta struck Earth on Tuesday, causing a strong geomagnetic storm, and some pretty Northern and Southern Lights.

The flare in question, associated with the big sunspot numbered 1402, erupted on January 23rd, launching a coronal mass ejection–a "cantaloupe" of plasma that makes Earth look like a grape. Rated as an M9-class flare, it packed umph just shy of what's necessary for adult "X-class" flaredom, the most power kind.

When it reached us the megablob of plasma struck Earth's magnetic field, causing the geomagnetic storm and a minor list of annoyances (communications interference, for the most part, and some reported concern to an electrical grid operator). On the showier side of solar activity, the storm generated spectacular auroras in high latitudes.

The Sun's magnetic activity—the source of disturbances like flares and oft-associated coronal mass ejections—has been on the rise for the last couple of years, heading for a forecasted peak in activity ("Solar Maximum") in 2013. We're in "storm season," with respect to the Sun's 11-year magnetic activity cycle, so we can expect more, and stronger, flares and geomagnetic storms in the next year or two to come.

Back when I was growing up (1960's) I learned that space is a vacuum, void of the gases we find in Earth's atmosphere. It was a stark picture of emptiness, at least as this child comprehended the data. Sure, sunlight and starlight streams through that vacuum, but other than that, Dr. Science explained, if I took one space-step outside of my personal Mercury space capsule without protection, I'd suffocate and my blood would boil and freeze at the same time—not to mention that I'd get cooked by the dangerous ultraviolet and X-ray radiation shining from the Sun.

Okay, close the Time-Life science series book entitled "Space" and open an astrophysics textbook of my 1960's youth era, and I would have learned that there's more to the vacuum of space than nothing.

Our Sun, a gargantuan fusion bomb that consumes a mass of hydrogen comparable to that of the entire human race each second, continually spews more than just sunlight into the space around it. Hot, electrically charged gas (plasma), mostly hydrogen nuclei and electrons, blended with an accompaniment of magnetic fields, blow outward from the Sun's surface and atmosphere all the time.

That's the solar wind, and its conditions, whether normal or stormy, is what makes space weather. So when you're curious about the weather conditions in the space surrounding Earth and its protective magnetic field, poke your finger skyward and extend your arm—oh—about 50,000 miles…or just go to a space weather website like Spaceweather.com.

The Monticello Dam occupies Devils Gate, a deep cleft in the massive sandstones of the Great Valley Sequence. Photos by Andrew Alden

This outing visits two great landmarks of the northeastern Bay Area—one highly visible, the other well hidden. Both feature the same body of rock: the mighty Great Valley Sequence.

Most of Northern California's bedrock is part of just three large bodies: the granite of the Sierra, the metamorphic rocks of the Coast Range, and the sedimentary rocks of the Central Valley. All three are parts of one entity: a former subduction zone. Picture the Pacific seafloor plate being carried eastward against the North American continental plate and plunging underneath it—subduction. (That's the exact situation today in the Pacific Northwest, and along the whole west coast of South America.) The descending oceanic plate releases fluids into the continental plate above it, which generate magma and big chains of volcanoes. At the same time, the continent scrapes off pieces of the plunging oceanic plate like the bottom of an escalator gathers trash. The volcanoes quickly erode into sediment, which washes offshore in thick beds of sand, boulders and silt. The Sierra is the exposed roots of the volcano belt, the Franciscan Complex is the scraped-off stuff, and the Great Valley Sequence is the offshore sediment.

That all happened long ago, and since then the San Andreas fault has slowly ripped apart the neatly organized subduction zone. At the same time, pressure across the fault has pushed up the Coast Range and curled up the edge of the thick blanket of sedimentary rock in the Central Valley. The arrangement is still close to its original simplicity north of the Bay Area, as this map shows.

Modified from USGS Open-File Report 90-226

Below is a closer view of the setting for today's outing. The south end of that long ribbon of Great Valley Sequence rocks is the Vaca Mountains, and the highest part of the range is a sharp hogback called Blue Ridge.

From USGS map MF-2403, "Geologic Map of the Northeastern San Francisco Bay Region"

Mount Vaca is its highest point, at the west edge of the leftmost green ribbon to the left of the "i" in "Ridge." If you follow that geologic boundary north, it meets the dam that created Lake Berryessa, Monticello Dam.

Blue Ridge is a massive landmark wherever you are in the Napa County hills or the southern Sacramento Valley. It's high, long and straight. West of Winters its profile is interrupted by a big notch. This is the Berryessa water gap, carved by the waters of Putah Creek as the ridge rose across it.

You reach Mount Vaca by taking Pleasants Valley Road north from Fairfield. Two very steep roads go up the mountain, Gates Canyon and Mix Canyon roads. Take Mix Canyon Road (trust me, don't take Gates) and watch carefully for cyclists and descending vehicles. Soon you'll start seeing Great Valley rocks like this thick-bedded sandstone, tilted almost vertical. The sequence is estimated to be about 13 kilometers thick, representing some 80 million years of steady erosion of the Sierra highland into a nearby shallow sea (a foreland basin). The basin steadily sank from the load, like the Louisiana coast does under the sediment load from the Mississippi River.

The rocks grow younger from west (right) to east (left).

At the top of Gates, a spur marked "Private" goes left. Go ahead and take it to reach Mount Vaca. The right-hand way, Blue Ridge Road, is also highly scenic. Two-wheel drive is OK, but drive cautiously. The views from along the top of Blue Ridge are fantastic.

Mount Diablo from Blue Ridge.

Grapevines and Mount Tamalpais from Blue Ridge. At about 2600 feet, this may be the highest vineyard in California.

The ridgeline rocks are massively bedded sandstone of the Venado Formation, roughly 91 million years old. We'll get a better look at them next, at Devil's Gate.

Return down to Pleasants Valley Road and resume heading north. Notice the recent downcutting of the stream here. Turn west on state route 128 and head up the canyon of Putah Creek. Instead of climbing Blue Ridge, we're cutting through it. Devil's Gate is the deepest part of the canyon, where the stream crosses the Venado Formation, and the best spot to build the Monticello Dam.

On both sides of the dam, the Venado is beautifully exposed. This is the natural exposure on the far side of the dam. Roadcuts on the near side expose the Venado in real detail.

If Lake Berryessa is high, you may be treated to the sight of the dam's "Glory Hole" overflow structure, an endless circular waterfall that I photographed in action in May 2006.