A replica of "Lupe the Mammoth". The bones of this juvenile Columbian mammoth were found along the Guadalupe River.

"This has been my first experience working with the Children's Discovery Museum, or any other museum, in developing an exhibit," says Kaitlin Maguire, graduate student at the UC Museum of Paleontology.

She's been working with the Children's Discovery Museum (CDM), for the past two years as a consultant for their upcoming exhibit, Mammoth Discovery!, that opens on Saturday, June 11th. The exhibit features a replica of the full skeleton of a juvenile Columbian mammoth, Lupe, named after the Guadalupe River where she was found.

"I was brought in to provide the content about mammoths and the history of San Jose during the Ice Age. And so my role has been providing information to the staff here so that they could create the exhibits. That includes little things like what was the vegetation like during the Pleistocene to how old Lupe was, how big [she] was. And also helping with brainstorming to fabrication."

Kaitlin also led the staff on three trips to give them an idea of how a paleontologist works in the field.Two of the excursions spanned the coast from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, where they examined invertebrate fossils, such as shells, and also vertebrate fossils, such as whales and seals and sea lions. They also traveled to Del Puerto Canyon for their third field trip, where they studied terrestrial deposits, or land deposits, that contained fish and plant material. "On each of these field trips, I showed the staff the tools that I use: hammers, picks, notebooks. I also taught them the geology of the area, so they understood the rocks that they were looking at. And I taught them about the animals that they were looking at. In addition, I showed them the proper way to collect a fossil, proper way to document it. Basically everything from start to finish."

She's learned quite a lot from her experiences of working with CDM. "It’s been an incredible experience to understand how an exhibit is built from the brainstorming phase all the way through to fabrication, and the amount of thought to detail, the amount of testing that’s required. I will never go to a museum again and not think twice about the amount of work that went behind building that exhibit. I also have a really, a great appreciation for this museum in keeping everything accurate and unique and true to the story that this mammoth provides us and really staying true to the evidence that is provided by the mammoth and creating a wonderful experience for the children."

Watch "Science on the SPOT: Lupe the Mammoth Comes to Life" on QUEST.

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

Note: In the video, Kaitlin says Lupe is between 2-3 years old. To clarify, "She's older than 2 or 3 years old but probably not older than 10. Paleontologists are not sure of her exact age but do know that she was a juvenile."

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^{Mineral springs, fresh air, and a cross-section of South Bay history—not to mention its rocks—are all on display at Alum Rock Park. All photos by Andrew Alden.}

Alum Rock Park occupies the small, steep valley of Penitencia Creek carved into the hills east of San Jose. The city has owned it since 1872, when it became California's first city park. For a generation it was a major regional attraction for its warm mineral springs and the entertainment complex surrounding them, of which only traces remain today.

Today it's a great place to get away from the city's hustle while pretending you're still at the office (except on Mondays, when it's closed). But if you put away the phone and pay attention to your surroundings, Alum Rock Park can show you some of San Jose's deep history and the Bay Area's rocks.

If nothing else, the park provides good views to the west over the Santa Clara Valley from its higher trails. You can choose from a warm south-facing slope and a cool north-facing one, too.

Have a look at the geologic map of the area (from USGS Open-File Map 98-795) below.

Penitencia Creek comes downhill from the right center and exits on the lower left. The park entrance is right at the edge of bedrock (Kbc, conglomerate of the Berryessa Formation), and the uppermost parking area is at the Tcc (Claremont Formation) mark. Hiking trails run along both sides of the creek giving you a good look at all the rock units from the park entrance to the Briones Formation (Tbr) on the right. Let's see some, starting with the conglomerate.

This very coarse grained rock and its related sandstone in the Berryessa Formation are part of the Great Valley Sequence, thick beds of sedimentary rock built up while the Sierra Nevada was intruding all that granite, back around 100 million years ago in Cretaceous time.

Behind the boulder is Eagle Rock, which corresponds to the pinkish blob surrounded by landslides to the right of the "Kbc" label. You can climb up there or stroll through the other outcrop labeled Jbk. The rock itself is well-traveled volcanic material that has been permeated and altered by hot mineralizing fluids. Here's a chunk of it.

The large outcrop along the creek gives the park its name. An early visitor mistook the whitish crust on these rocks as alum, which would have been a nice find at the time. It's actually sulfate minerals, but the name stuck.

Farther upstream, just past the visitor center, is where the mineral spring zone begins. On the geologic map, it corresponds to the exposure of Claremont Formation (Tcc), a belt of ribbon chert of Miocene age (about 10 million years) familiar in the East Bay Hills. Here the chert is dark with organic matter and its beds are upturned almost to vertical. That combination of chemistry and structure has given rise to warm upwellings of chemically interesting groundwater.

There are more than 20 different springs here, each with a nice stone housing. The ones I dipped my fingers into were bathtub-warm, and the water is sulfur-scented. A hundred years ago Alum Rock Park was a big health spa, with a rail line direct from downtown. That was when the stonework was done. You can see where seepage has built up cones of minerals on the lower wall. All of the springs issue from the Claremont chert—here's a closeup of the chert and the mineral crust.

After all that excitement you may want to continue upstream, into the structurally overlying and younger Briones Formation. This set of rocks is coarser grained than the Claremont, deposited nearer to shore. The other way to look at it is that the shoreline grew closer to this spot as geologic time progressed. This is a well-scrubbed outcrop in the stream bed that shows its bedding.

Parts of the Briones are so full of fossils that the rock is best described as shell hash. You'll see this same stone at Lime Ridge in Walnut Creek and other places in the East Bay.

This whole belt of rocks lies in the zone where the Hayward fault merges with the Calaveras fault. On the map above, the Calaveras runs down the right edge of the Briones Formation, between the Calaveras and Anderson Reservoirs. The Hayward fault formally ends a few miles northwest, but the many smaller faults marked as heavy lines are of the same ilk and reflect the same tectonics. Friction along the faults may account for the warmth of the springs, just one more way that the deep Earth affects us in our region.

You can also check out QUEST's Alum Rock Science Hike for more info.

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The 2011 Chevy Volt at the 2010 Plug-In Conference. Photo by Sheraz Sadiq

Originally reported for KQEDnews.org.

After years of stops and starts, electric cars and plug-in hybrids are on the cusp of a new era of mainstream acceptance, starting this year.

That was the message this week from automakers, government officials and utility operators at the Plug-In 2010 conference, a major international gathering of alternative vehicles at the San Jose Convention Center.

“Now the rubber hits the road”, said Craig Childers, an air resources engineer with the California Air Resources Board. “This is the last conference where we don’t have the cars. When we do this again next year, there’s going to be thousands of people driving these cars and it’s going to be great to see how that happens. We’ll learn from it and continue to evolve.”

A large amount of attention at the event went to two vehicles: the battery electric Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid. Both groundbreaking cars will begin appearing in showrooms in December.

At Tuesday’s conference, GM announced the Volt’s sticker price will be $41,000. A federal tax credit will bring the cost of the vehicle down by $7,500. The Volt also be available to lease for $350 a month for 36 months, assuming a down payment of $2,500.

GM calls the Volt an “extended-range electric vehicle,” which means that the car can go 40 miles on a single battery charge, using no gasoline. An additional 300 miles can be driven as the car uses gasoline to power an on-board generator to make more electricity and power the engine.

Tony Pasowatz, the Volt’s Vehicle Line Director, said that distance is key for getting consumers to overcome their “range anxiety” and trust that the Volt will get them where they need to go without being stranded with an empty battery.

“The Volt gives you an extended range capability that no other electric vehicle can provide you,” Pasowatz said. “So we have a good, solid confident proposition of 340 miles, whereas many electric cars will not achieve the range that they claim because their range is on a city cycle which no one drives, it doesn’t account for running the heating and air conditioning, and it doesn’t account for the degradation of the battery. And if you really only get 50 miles, the question is can that be your everyday car?”

The Nissan Leaf, an all-electric vehicle, which has a range of 100 miles on a single charge, will be made available to consumers by December in five states initially, including California.
To date, there have been 20,000 pre-orders for the Nissan Leaf, with more than 3,000 of those orders coming from prospective buyers in the Bay Area.

Mark Perry from Nissan standing next to the Leaf, an all electric-vehicle. Photo by Sheraz Sadiq

For Mark Perry, Director of Product Planning at Nissan, the consumer acceptance of the new generation of electric cars in the state resonates nation-wide. “If there was a barrier to adoption called affordability, that’s been knocked over. If there was a barrier to adoption called charging infrastructure, it’s been knocked over here in CA. There are no barriers now. The entire country is looking at California as a lead.”

The Leaf will cost $32,780, but after the federal tax credit of $7,500, and a California state rebate of $5,000 – which the Volt is not eligible for – the actual price will be $20,280. The Leaf also will be eligible for drivers to take into California’s carpool lanes without having more than one passenger, while the Volt will not.

Ginny and John Pauksta of San Jose paid $99 to reserve a Leaf. “The tipping point for me was the BP oil spill, the frustration of what we’re doing to the environment,” said John Pauksta. “It made me very angry. The fact that we’re fighting wars to protect our oil reserves just got to me. Electric cars were like toys, like glorified golf cars and now major car companies are coming out with electric cars that look like real cars.”

“You can fit five people in it and haul stuff around and the driving range is within a level of tolerance”, added Pauksta, who commutes 44 miles daily to his job in Palo Alto.

Instead of the lead acid and nickel-metal hydride batteries that powered the first generation of electric cars like GM’s EV1 in the 1990s, today’s electric car batteries are made of lithium-ion cells, which are now small enough that they can be easily assembled into battery packs and charged using a simple 120-volt outlet, as Pasowatz did with his Chevy Volt, charging it overnight at the conference center.

With the purchase of a Volt, consumers will get a 120-volt portable charge cord set and the option of GM’s 240-volt cord set, which would cut the charging of the vehicle in half, from eight hours to four hours.

Apart from the advancements in battery technology, a perfect storm of factors seems to brewing to usher in a new, more hospitable climate for electric cars, experts at the event, which runs through Thursday, said.

“The technology is moving ahead. The recognition of getting off of oil is important and I think the car is part of the larger energy environment ecosystem, it’s come to that realization that it is time to solve these problems in a systemic way”, said Pasowatz.

According to the Air Resources Board, there are roughly 20,000 pure electric vehicles in California, including roughly 15,000 small neighborhood electric vehicles that aren’t designed to drive on highways.

Utilities, regulatory agencies and environmental organizations expect those numbers to rise as long as gas prices continue to be high, which makes electricity as a fuel source a particularly attractive option.

“Gasoline is about $3, plus or minus, per gallon,” said Sunil Chhaya, a senior manager at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto. ”Electricity is about 75 cents per gallon, so when you compare operating costs per mile, it’s about a fourth or a fifth the cost of gasoline.”

As the economy improves and worldwide demand for oil grows, gasoline prices may not stay at the current level.

“We’re not sure what gasoline prices are going to look like in the next five to 10 years and it’s widely expected that those will get on an upward trajectory again and start climbing up and beyond four a gallon,” said Childers. “In that case, we’re talking about a very big price difference for electricity. We actually need that because these electric cars are more expensive to build and buy and the only way consumers can afford it is by saving money on fuel."

Moreover, California’s grid, with its mix of hydroelectric power, nuclear power and renewables like solar and wind power, is also cleaner than the nation’s grid — which relies more heavily on power from coal-fired plants. So environmental benefits accrue when drivers plug-in to the grid to charge their vehicles. Chhaya said that “50 to 60 percent of the CO2 emissions can be reduced by using a battery electric vehicle plugged into the state’s grid.”

Still, a big factor for consumers is the sticker price of electric cars. Palo Alto-based Tesla motors offers currently only one electric vehicle line, its sporty Roadster that retails for more than $100,000.

Availability of public charging stations has also been a challenge.

Earlier this year, however, Campbell-based Coulomb Technologies received a $37 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to build 4,600 charging stations in nine metro areas, including San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento and Los Angeles by September 2011. The charging stations will also feature a new connecting standard adopted in January by the Society of Automotive Engineers so that any electric car can be charged at the charging stations.

For consumers like Kadife Besir-Dunlap, a schoolteacher from Woodland, neither the Chevy Volt nor the Nissan Leaf can compare to her beloved EV1 which was reclaimed by GM in 2002 when her two-year lease expired and GM refused to renew the lease for her or other EV1 owners.

“The Volt is a plug-in, it’s not full electric,” she said. “The car of the future is powered by the fuels of Jurassic time. My frustration is renewed right now. GM could have produced another electric vehicle. They had the technology and a really nice car with the EV1 and they could have reproduced something like that, a more affordable full electric car. A hybrid car is not progress, it’s stagnation.”

Since the tow truck took away her family’s EV1, Besir-Dunlap has been driving an all-electric Toyota RAV4. Earlier this month, under a partnership with Tesla Motors, Toyota announced plans to start production up again on the all-electric RAV4 in 2012 at the NUMMI auto plant in Fremont.

Still, some people at the conference couldn’t wait to plug-in and drive.

“I see nothing but increases in gas prices so I want to get out of the polluting, expensive internal combustion world and into the less expensive, less polluting world of electric vehicles,” said Jared Alaqua, a 28 year-old Novato resident pursuing his M.B.A. “And I hear that they actually perform better.”

Check out these QUEST resources for related information:

Waiting for the Electric Car

Plug-in Hybrids

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Here in the Bay Area, projects to use recycled wastewater aren't as advanced. Still, John Stufflebean, director of environmental services for the City of San José, says it’s in the cards for San José. The city has started its own educational effort. Stufflebean is one of the city officials that give regular guided tours of the San José/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant in northern San José. The process really is quite a sight. The gray and smelly raw wastewater comes in on one end, and at the end of a three-step process — once again clean and transparent — either trickles back into the Bay or is used to irrigate golf courses and farms. Stufflebean says that people on the tour often ask why this water can’t be used for drinking. With some additional steps, it could. Stay tuned. Perhaps in the future it will.

Watch the "State of Thirst: California's Water Future" TV Story online, as well as find additional links and resources.

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Clara soars over San Jose. Credit: Evet Loewen.

This year, Clara is back in the City Hall nest box, but early rumors proved true: she had found a new companion. The tiercel (male falcon) was dubbed "Carlos" and it was soon discovered that the bird was likely hacked (released) at Long Marine Lab in Santa Cruz. The pair is now incubating 4 eggs and their fans are hoping the eggs will hatch by the end of April.

Just like last year, you can watch the family drama unfold on the live San Jose webcam or take a look at some of the highlights so far. Both fans and biologists have an online discussion group that tracks their every move.

To catch up on last year's events, watch QUEST's Falcon Fascination online, and find additional links and resources.

Lauren Sommer is an Associate Media Producer for QUEST.

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Image source: Michael Patrick

Andrea Kissack is Senior Editor for QUEST at KQED Public Radio.

Quest Educational Resources

 Print Guide - Alum Rock Park

 Alum Rock Park - KML file

 Tips to get the kids in your life out into nature

 Designing an Exploration on Google Maps

Additional Links

• Alum Rock Park

I remember loving science class as a kid. The paper-maché messes, the bubbling baking soda, all of the wonderful experiments… I loved it all. Now, many grammar school kids are lucky to get 15 minutes of science education a week. Hardly enough time to get them imagining future careers as scientists, engineers and inventors.

Between the lack of time given to science education, and the structure imposed by curriculum standards, museums need to be part of the education equation. My boss has a saying: "Give random a chance." I love this quote because it speaks to the role informal educational resources like science museums need to be playing. By exposing young people to the experiences and programs in a museum, who knows what might really resonate and inspire?

For over 20 years, The Tech's Tech Challenge program has presented kids with an open-ended problem for which there is no one right answer. It forces participants to use their knowledge and ingenuity to solve the problem. For example, this year the Challenge (called Water Works) is all about moving water from a stream up to a village without electricity. There is no one right answer, and there are lots of ways to solve this problem.

Participants are 5^th to 12^th graders who will work in teams of 2-6 to explore solutions to solving this real world problem. Along the way, they will hit some roadblocks and come up with some duds. And that's OK because it is here that kids will learn that failure is an important part of problem solving. We have a great quote etched into a wall on the outside of The Tech from Intel co-founder and philanthropist Gordon Moore that says, "If everything you try works, you are not trying hard enough." Through failure, many of the Tech Challenge teams will come up with a far superior solution.

This year we're going international for the first time by partnering with the City of San Jose's Sister City program. On the final event day, where all of the teams come together to present and demonstrate their solutions, we'll be webcasting in teams from far-away locations, and look forward to seeing and hearing how kids from other countries have tackled the challenge. Hopefully the involvement of other cultures will drive home how important it is to be inclusive to come up with better ways to solve problems.

I just looked at the U.S. Census Bureau web site for the latest world population number, and today there are 6,650,846,379 people on Planet Earth. One in five people on Earth don't have access to safe, clean drinking water, which means that 1.3 billion people are suffering from lack of water. As this year's Tech Challenge participants work on solutions to a global water problem, I hope they get excited (or more excited) about science and remain engaged, even they don't get to study it much in the classroom.

Lisa Croel is the Marketing Director at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Calif.

Quest Educational Resources

 Print Guide - Mt. Diablo State Park

 Mt. Diablo State Park KML file

 Tips to get the kids in your life out into nature

 Designing an Exploration on Google Maps

Additional Links

• Mount Diablo Interpretive Association
• Ron's Galls – Wasp Galls on California Oaks
• Exploratorium: Faultline: Cookie Subduction

Quest Educational Resources

 Print Guide - Natural Bridges State Beach

 Natural Bridges State Beach

 Tips to get the kids in your life out into nature

 Designing an Exploration on Google Maps

Additional Links

• Natural Bridges State Beach official website