Daily Science Dose

Credit: Ken Inomata/Kanazawa University

It seems that some Japanese researchers have figured out that genotoxic stress can cause hair follicles to go white, as it were. But it’s not that the stress actually causes the lack of pigmentation, but rather that the stress causes the cells to use up their pigmentation faster than they should, and once the pigment runs out, it’s silver city, baby.

Some years ago, a dermotologist in Japan, Emi Nishimura, discovered that hair follicles are filled with melanocyte stem cells. If you look at the base of that word, melan-, you may associate it with melanin, which gives animals and plants pigment. The melanocyte stem cells hang out in your hair follicle and whenever a new hair starts to grow, some of those stem cells become the melanocytes, or the cells responsible for your hair’s color. Some of the stem cells stay behind, so to speak, waiting for the next strand to come along. Ideally, your body should store enough of these little dabs of color to last your lifetime, but new research shows that stress to the DNA in the cells cause more of the melanocytes to join whatever hair is growing, leaving fewer and fewer color cells behind for the next hair.

Nishimura suspected that genotoxic stressors, such as radiation or harsh chemicals, might play a role in the stem cells’ fate, because they’ve been implicated in other signs of aging. She and colleagues at Japan’s Kanazawa University tested the idea in mice, which also gray with age. After exposure to cell-stressing x-rays or chemotherapy drugs, young mice went gray in an unexpected way. More of their melanocyte stem cells matured into color-producing melanocytes, depleting the store of stem cells. Instead of dying or being inactivated, the DNA-damaged cells matured before their time.

“The mature cells lose their regeneration capabilities,” Nishimura explains. “The mice then can’t produce enough pigment-making cells” and consequently go gray. Moreover, the stressed mice’s gray hairs and the cell populations in their follicles were indistinguishable from those of elderly mice, suggesting that genotoxic stress might drive natural graying as well. –ScienceNOW Daily News

So basically, genotoxic stress — that is anything from ultraviolet light to the natural division of the cell itself — damages your cells’ DNA, but it also leads to the “maturing” as it were. If the cell is mature, it is no longer dividing like cells do. If a cell is not dividing, it’s not reproducing itself. Is this early maturation process a defensive move on the part of damaged cells that shut down their reproductive processes in order to not pass on the damage (DNA defect) to its “children”?

Although, truth be told, I’m sure that this research will be used to prevent grey hair, rather than to prevent cancer. Hey, I’m a cynic.

cells, stem cells, grey hair, gray hair, going grey, DNA, cancer, cell division, cell maturation, melanocyte stem cells, Kanazawa University, Emi Nishimura, mice

File this one under “why didn’t someone else think of this earlier?”

Scientists have figured out how to use satellite photos to find penguin colonies. Look for the poop. Much like how some future (or alien?) archeologist will search for former human population centers by looking for our massive landfills, researchers that follow the habits of flightless birds are finding new colonies by finding the waste product of said colonies.

Photo montage is from the British Antarctic Survey. The top right satellite shot is of Cape Darnley.

Up until now, most penguin colonies are found by happenstance in a way. The Antarctic winter is quite chilly, and few scientists hang out for it, so when biologists show up in the spring, it’s a matter of luck (or the past use of a spot) that they find the remains of rookeries — most adults have jetted by spring.

I mentioned that penguin researchers may find breeding grounds in the same spot of previous years, but with the changing ice conditions due to atmospheric warming, penguins are on the move. Which means that using the past to find the present isn’t working out so well. Enter satellites.

It’s like Google Earth maps for penguins. But of course, you have to know what you are looking for. Lots and lots of poop.

Penguin biologist Phil Trathan and cartographer Peter Fretwell, both of the British Antarctic Survey, wondered if it was possible to do better by tracking the penguins from space. The birds themselves don’t show up in satellite pictures; their black-and-white bodies are too similar to the white ice with black shadows. Not so with guano. “The poo just sort of stands out at you,” says Trathan. Emperors are the only penguins that breed on the sea ice, so he knows who’s doing the pooping. — Science Mag

From the initial analysis, of the 34 known breeding grounds, six have disappeared. Those six were located in warmer, more northernly areas. If the penguins are moving south to stay cold enough, the problem is that penguins also need to stay near the coast. So this pattern could spell trouble for Emperors and most penguins by extension.

The good news is that the team found 10 new colonies. The population numbers are still hazy at this point, so who knows if the six colonies are now part of the ten new ones or if the ten were always there and never found before now. But the satellite images will be a useful tool in going forward in penguin population studies.

penguins, satellite, satellite images, breeding grounds, Emperor penguin, guano, Antarctica, global warming, climate change, biologists, rookeries, marine mammals

(photo credit: Tom Kleindinst, WHOI)

A Woods Hole grad student, now working at the University of Southern Florida’s Mann Lab for Marine Sensory Biology, has released the finding from a study he conducted on marine mammal brains, and the news is not good. It seems that human’s propensity to use the oceans as a dumping ground (as well as our ineptitude in realizing that dangerous chemicals don’t just go away when we no longer see them) has resulted in bio-accumulation of some nasty substances in marine mammals.

Yes, again with the flame retardants…

Eric Montie went to work with Environment Canada to “learn the painstaking techniques required to extract and to quantify more than 170 different pollutants and their metabolites.” He brought back the methods to Woods Hole and started analyzing the brains of 11 whales and dolphins and a grey seal. The animals came from around the Cape Cod area, and darned if you didn’t guess, some not-so-nice chemicals were present in the cerebrospinal fluid as well as the grey matter.

And yes, our dear friends DDT, an overly effective pesticide that has been banned around the world, but doesn’t seem to want to go away; PBDEs, or flame retardants which are only know being scrutinzed despite their ubiquity; and PCBs, again a banned chemical family that just doesn’t go away have all been found in the marine mammalian brain studied by Montie. In fact, the levels of PCBs in the seal were in the parts per million, which may seem small, but according to Montie, “you rarely find parts per million levels of anything in the brain.”

So what’s the big deal? Well, PCBs kind of trick a body into thinking that they are thyroid hormones and instead of healthy and needed thyroid hormones, the body gets PCBs. That can lead to all sorts of neurological issues and problems when it comes to brain development and can disrupt the sensory functions of mammals like dolphins, seals and whales that really depend on their sense of hearing to live.

Just how these chemicals might impact marine mammal health is something Montie plans to pursue. This summer, Montie, [David] Mann [the man behind the aforementioned Mann Lab], and Dr. Mandy Cook (from Portland University) will partner with scientists from NOAA to test the hearing in dolphins living near a Superfund site in Georgia and compare it to dolphins from locations where ambient concentrations of pollutants are significantly lower. Montie is also working with Frances Gulland, director of the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA, to examine how California sea lions’s exposure to PCBs may increase their sensitivity to domoic acid, a naturally produced marine neurotoxin associated with “red tides.” –WHOI news release

Great…

Related: Pelicans Dropping From Sky for Reasons Unknown

marine biology, marine science, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Woods Hole, Eric Montie, Environment Canada, University of Southern Florida, David Mann, seals, whales, dolphins, brains, chemicals, DDT, PCB, PBDE, flame retardants, pesticides, cerebrospinal fluid, contaminants, ocean, pollution, banned substances, bio-accumulation, thyroid, hormones, senses, hearing, health, mammals, dumping

Some big news came out of Washington today…

Maybe you are aware that the US Congress is finally attempting to address anthropogenic climate change, and by that I mean to say that the US government is maybe poised to possibly pass legislation in support of not only lowering carbon emissions, but also promoting renewable and clean energy sources.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee (ECC for the rest of this post) has approved H.R. 2454 — the American Clean Energy and Security Act — and has reported the bill to the House, for what will undoubtedly be a fun time to start watching C-SPAN. The vote just among the members of the Energy and Commerce Committee was 33 to 25, which yes, is a decisive victory within the microcosm of a congressional body, but still, methinks that the fight against “clean energy” legislation will be, ahem, dirty.

However, maybe this country has had enough of the Bush Era thinking that if we bury our heads in the sand, it won’t get as hot. The ECC was urged by many an environmental group to send the bill to the House, but you might be surprised at how many energy and manufacturing companies have given their support to the proposed legislation. Energy companies like Shell and BP, Duke Energy and Entergy; manufacturing concerns like Alcoa and GE, DuPont and Dow Chemical . Even the Big 3 automakers are signed on to support reducing the US carbon emissions by 83% by 2050 (working off 2005 levels).

Now, whether you blame human activity for global climate change issues or not, this move toward clean, renewable energy is smart and forward-thinking. Oil, gas and coal will run out one day. Why not do some planning now to make the transition easier for everyone when that time comes? Not only that, but fossil fuels almost invariably result in some form of waste that pollutes our land, air and water. I’ve never heard of a wind turbine leaching heavy metals into the groundwater supply.

Then again, I don’t want to give too much credit to Congress just yet…but hey, it’s a start.

Committee on Energy and Commerce, Energy and Commerce Committee, House, US, United States government, climate change legislation, Congress, global warming, renewable energy, fossil fuels, clean energy, green jobs, carbon emissions

Now we have to wonder what is replaing the BPA...

Last week, Chicago one-upped the FDA by banning Bisphenol-A in products like sippy-cups, baby bottles, and all those things that parents think are safe for their babies, because you know, if they were not safe, the Government would do something about them, right?

Wrong.

The debate over BPA is long and storied, and one of those he-said-she-said affairs. The FDA has held true to one line: That there is little evidence that BPA is harmful to humans. And that the amounts of BPA exposure are so insignificant that no one needs to worry their pretty little heads about it.

But that doesn’t exactly fill the rest of us with confidence…In fact, it seems that even the Chicago ban faced pressure from the American Chemistry Lobby, I mean, American Chemistry Council. And you know money talks in governmental circles. Looking at Chicago as a microcosm for the whole debate over BPA is telling as to what kind of fight we have on our hands when it comes to protecting our kids (and ourselves).

From the Sun-Times:

Last year, [Manny] Flores [(1st)] and Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) got nowhere with a more sweeping version that would have banned nearly all products made with BPA used by children under the age of 7.

The softer version approved Wednesday narrows the ban to “any empty bottle or cup specifically designed to be filled with food or liquid to be used primarily by a child under the age of 3.”

Former Ald. Terry Gabinski (32nd), one of Burke’s closest friends, is a registered lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council. The group has publicly lobbied against the ban and behind-the-scenes for a softer version of it. — Chicago Sun-Times

Will the Chicago BPA ban end up repealed like the Chicago Fois Gras ban? Well, fois won’t kill you, and maybe neither will BPA. But — and maybe I am crazy in thinking this — if there is a chance of this chemical leaching from our sippy-cups into the high-fructose corn syrup-laden juices we feed our kids, then shouldn’t we err on the side of caution? There is no real need to produce plastics that contain BPA, so why are we clinging to them like our guns and religion?

Good job, Chicago. Even if your ban is largely symbolic, it is step in the safer direction.

Bisphenol A, BPA, Bisphenol-A, plastics, baby products, baby bottles, children, childrens health, chemicals, FDA, Chicago, ban, dangerous chemicals, government

As if pesticides were not bad enough, Bayer, you still insist on using a highly toxic and dangerous chemical to produce those pesticides. No other pesticide manufacturer is stockpiling methyl isocyanate (MIC), so why do you continue to endanger the health of your employees and to a lesser extent your neighbors by finding that it necessary to house large quantities of methyl isocyanate.

A little history…Methyl Isocyanate is an ester of isocyanic acid, a volatile and poisonous substance made up of one Hydrogen, one Nitrogen, one Carbon and one oxygen atom. You’d think that those four elements would produce nothing but good, but then you’d be wrong. Methyl Isocyanate is used in making pesticides such as Bayer’s trademarked Sevin (carbaryl), among other pesticides used in industrialized agriculture.

Methyl isocyanate is not the only chemical that Bayer can use to produce carbaryl, but it is the cheapest. So you see, it’s not that Bayer has to use MIC, it’s that it is more profitable to use MIC. And we all know that profits come before human health and safety.

A plant making Sevin in India accidentally released MIC into the surrounding area of the then-Union Carbide Ltd plant outside of Bhopal back in 1984. The death toll from that accident is estimated to be around 16,000. One of the consequences of one of the worst industrial accidents ever was that Union Carbide and other chemical companies phased out MIC as a major ingredient in those yummy pesticide.

Everyone except Bayer, that is. And then, last year, an explosion at a Bayer CropScience plant in Institute, West Virginia narrowly avoided another disaster. The fire at the plant was a mere 80 feet from the above-ground MIC storage tank. At the time, Bayer assured the public that the MIC was in an underground storage tank far away from the fire.

But it seems that Bayer was lying. And because they lied, that meddling Committee on Energy and Commerce is looking into why Bayer still feels the need to keep so much MIC around. The Institute, WV plant is the only plant in the US that still has a substantial (more than 10,000 pounds) inventory of MIC.

Bayer is being asked (nicely) to give the CEC an explanation why it has so much MIC lying around, if Bayer has even begun to think about not using MIC, and what it would cost to switch to alternative chemicals. I hope that the cost estimate is not being included, so we taxpayers can cough up the dough to help a very rich company pay for being safe.

Bayer, pesticide, Bhopal, gas, MIC, methyl isocyanate, toxic substance, chemicals, agriculture, India, industrial accident, Congress

It seems that Entergy’s CEO and chairman Wayne Leonard is the one of the few energy industry leaders that doesn’t oppose a proposed cap and trade system that is being debated in Congress. In fact, Leonard is not only not opposed, but he supports the legislation — as long as it is the right cap and trade system.

Entergy Corporation, based in Louisiana, is blessed with natural gas and a sizable “fleet” of nuclear power generation stations. And we all know that nuclear power is clean* and natural gas, according to energy experts like Sarah Palin, is clean and green. And that means that Entergy produces electricity from some of the cleaner sources around in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.

*But not in terms of radioactive waste that lasts and lasts.

So, let’s say that Congress passes cap’n trade legislation that would auction off credits for companies to be allowed to produce carbon emissions. A company like Entergy would have to buy fewer of those credits or permits in order to cover its rather low levels of emissions. That means less costs are passed down to you, the consumer. That makes Entergy’s Leonard happy.

However, Entergy has not done much to expand its renewable power portfolio. And one form of the cap and trade law could include a government mandate as to how much renewable energy a company has to produce. That would make Leonard sad. He doesn’t think the Fed should mandate this renewable component, as he feels that the free market will prevail in encouraging companies to invest in the most economical renewables (if there are any in Leonard’s eyes) in order to decrease costs for pollution permits.

And then, there is the whole idea of the Fed giving away the credits to companies based on its individual emissions based on say a year chosen at random, like 2005. And if your company can reduce its emissions and not have to use all of those permits, your company can sell them to companies that still pollute. Well, Entergy had already reduced what emissions they could have by 2005, because they were responsible and did it way back in 2000. So, now all that hard work they already did, when it was voluntary, will work against them, as Entergy will get a smaller amount of credits to sell off to the the coal plant down the street, who never did anything in the first place or even now to reduce its emissions levels.

So, this insight into how one energy company views the current debate over cap and trade legislation is interesting to me, but also rather irritating. Think about it. Entergy is but one of many, many large and rich corporations that produce energy and do in it a way that pollutes the Earth. Each company is going to do its best to pressure someone in Congress to adjust, rewrite or add an amendment to the cap and trade law, if it even passes, that will be advantageous to that company, perhaps to the detriment to another company, who will then fight the new law. I just don’t see cap and trade passing any time soon, but then again, I’m not sure if it will make a difference in the long run.

And then again again, it’s not fair to blame the energy companies. They are only giving us what we want — cheap energy and a lot of it.

Reading the article in the Times-Picayune, I noted that Entergy is spending more than 4 million dollars on lobbying Congress to pass a cap and trade law that will benefit them. It makes you wonder how much the Coal Industry as a whole is spending to fight cap and trade altogether? What if all that money were spent on research and development of new technologies, more efficient energy infrastructure, and a better way to deal with spent nuclear fuel?

energy, Entergy, electricity, renewable energy, nuclear power, natural gas, Louisiana, cap and trade, Congress, carbon emissions, pollution

As I have been busy in the garden, digging up a patch for my sunflowers as part of the Great Sunflower Project, honeybees are not far from my mind or the mind of many a gardener/farmer. I’ve noticed a few bumble bees, but nary a honeybee. Maybe it’s too early, but I’ve got blossoms-a-rama in my strawberry patch, so what up, bees?

Scientists in Spain may have made a bee-line in the fight to save the honeybees. One possible reason for the devastating Colony Collapse Disorder is a really, really small parasite called Nosema ceranae. It is not totally agreed on in the scientific community what indeed has or is causing CCD in the honeybee populations in Europe and the US, but more data and more testing is showing evidence of an Asian parasite-strain, the Nosema ceranae, jumped from the Apis cerana, or the Asian Honeybee, to Apis mellifera, otherwise known as the Western Honeybee.

However, the CCD and nosema ceranae relationship is not altogether understood, as the bees are usually not analyzed until after the colony has collapsed. It may very well be that pesticides or mites or something else is causing the deaths, and maybe the nosema ceranae are only moving in once the bees are weakened.

But Spanish scientists have found a way to treat this microscopic pest, and they did is successfully in two colonies that losing their numbers.

They found no evidence of any other cause of the disease (such as the Varroa destructor, IAPV or pesticides) other than infection with Nosema ceranae. The researchers then treated the infected surviving under-populated colonies with the antibiotic drug, flumagillin and demonstrated complete recovery of all infected colonies. –Compute Scotland

Is it wrong of me to still want to blame pesticides?

honeybees, colony collapse disorder, CCD, Spain, nosema ceranae, Western honeybees, Asiatic honeybee, parasite, pesticides, Apis cerana, Apis mellifera

Finally, some scientific evidence that waking up early is just not that good for you.

As a life-long night owl that continues to try and switch her clock around to join the rest of the world on that early morning commute to school, work, or whatever it is we humans do early in the morning, I have to say it’s difficult for me. I find that when I do change my sleep schedule, and start rising at say 8 or 9 in the morning, but the time it rolls around to 11pm, I am falling asleep in my chair. Nothing stops it — caffeine, sugar, slaps to the face.

Not that that is all that strange, right? If I fall asleep at 11 or 12 at night, I will have ample time for 7 to 8 hours of sleep. However, a research team at the University of Liège in Belgium has found that those early risers are less alert later in the day that those that rise late and stay up throughout the night.

Um, duh. I could have told you that without the grant money.

No, but seriously, the experiment is not as simple as I just made it. Actually, what the researchers did was test both early risers and night owls at similar times throughout the day according to how long they have been awake. So testing was a few hours after waking, a few hours after that, and you get the point. And according to the data, the night owls stay more alert later into their day as compared to the early-to-bed-early-to-rise crowd.

Could this be the evidence I need to insist that I really do need to sleep in until 11am?

Unfortunately, it’s a man’s world, and men must be early risers. Because despite the late-risers superior alertness, this whole society seems to value getting an early start to the work day. I know that it all stems from our agrarian roots, but come on, we are not all farmers. What if we as a society just push the start of the work day back a few hours? Could we then evolve over time into a race of super-alert accountants, doctors and nuclear technicians?

Maybe I’ll just move to Spain.

sleep, night owls, early birds, sleep study, University of Liege

I was happy with the “talk the talk, but does he walk the walk” comment.

Thank you, CBS, for covering this charade foisted on the American Public for far-too-long. I can bitch and bitch about coal, but when it comes right down to it, nothing is going to change anytime soon.

What I don’t get is this fanatical need for the US Energy Kings to push the “grow the economy” paradigm. Maybe our economy is built on the same inflated values of Wall Street. It’s like we just found this cheap energy trough, and like pigs, we are stuffing ourselves with no thought to the consequences (like why is the farmer fattening us up in the first place?).

I am seeing the same scary consumptive trend in anything eco- or green or earth-friendly. Earth friendly would mean cutting back on all that sh*t you buy every day. If we all go out and replace our entire wardrobes with organic cotton and bamboo, we are still creating a waste stream that undermines our efforts to live lightly. If you don’t need it, don’t buy it. That’s as eco- as you can get, but then that doesn’t “grow our economy,” does it?

Back to 60 Minutes…it’s about time that a major news organization calls our the Emperor’s nudity. Will it make a difference? Ah, heck no. Seriously, I hate to be pessimistic here, but we are doomed. Like I mentioned yesterday, we are not all going to die, but it’s going to be bad.

Here’s my great idea, and you heard it here first. Use carbon dioxide in fission-style reactions and capture the energy released while producing oxygen and carbon monoxide, which can then be converted into liquid fuels. Oh, crap, someone beat me to it.

First, let me begin by saying that yes, I do believe that anthropogenic activity is creating a dangerous imbalance in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. But do I think that everything can be chalked up to global warming or that we are all going to die from global warming, then the answer is no.

Global warming is not going to kill us all, but it will kill some and it will make life on this planet a heck of a lot more difficult for many, many others. But the most important thing is that any imbalance creates further imbalance in other systems, and by continuing to pump more and more GHG into our air, we are mucking up the system, which will lead to other systems going out of whack. If there were only a few of us living on this planet, then we would be able to migrate to other areas when our homes get flooded from rising seas or pull up stakes and leave an arable agricultural area turned desert from a shift in ocean currents (Australia anyone?)

Well, it seems that researchers are alarmed at the extent of the solar minimum going on. And with less sun activity, that means that less of the sun’s heat is hitting the planet. It’s true that the sun goes through cycles, but this is an unusually long minima, which scientists call a grand minima if it’s long enough.

The disappearance of sunspots happens every few years, but this time it’s gone on far longer than anyone expected – and there is no sign of the Sun waking up. “This is the lowest we’ve ever seen. We thought we’d be out of it by now, but we’re not,” says Marc Hairston of the University of Texas. And it’s not just the sunspots that are causing concern. There is also the so-called solar wind – streams of particles the Sun pours out – that is at its weakest since records began. In addition, the Sun’s magnetic axis is tilted to an unusual degree. “This is the quietest Sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” says NASA solar scientist David Hathaway. But this is not just a scientific curiosity. It could affect everyone on Earth and force what for many is the unthinkable: a reappraisal of the science behind recent global warming. –The Independent

Here’s the kicker. The last solar maximum ended right around the end of the last century. And some researchers are showing data that shows that the Earth’s temperature has tapered off since that time, so if the current solar minimum is holding global temps in check, then maybe, just maybe this whole global warming thing is false alarm.

I foresee this solar minimum issue becoming the next talking points for the climate sceptics on their next round on the talkshow circuit.

Ok, I’m going out on a limb here. Let’s say that yes, the Sun is going into a cooling period and we can buy some time before the full effects of the Carbon Crisis are felt. That might just be our only chance to ensure that we can curb our reliance on living fat of the oily and gaseous land, and start reversing some of the damage we have inflicted on our closed-ecosystem. Global warming may be held off, but for how long? For every Minimum, there is a Maximum. And if when that next Maximum hits, will we be worse off due to inaction and inertia, or could we be ready for it?

Just sayin’ is all.

global warming, research, climate change, climate sceptics, sunspots, solar, minimum, maximum, minima, solar activity, greenhouse gases, carbon, emissions, ecosystem, ocean currents

I find it ironic that just a few weeks after watching the finale of the great space soap opera known as Battlestar Galactica, a tale of technology running amok and former-slave-labor-robots evolving on their own to exact revenge on humankind, that we get news that scientists have developed robots or software programs that can think for themselves in terms of science experimentation and theorizing.

But does that robot look like this?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

But back to the news…

Aberystwyth University in Wales has a robotics department that has built ADAM. The head of the ADAM team, Ross King, says that ADAM carries out experiments and uses reason to theorize and plan for additional experiments.

It is the world’s first example of a machine that has made an independent scientific discovery — in this case, new facts about the genetic make-up of baker’s yeast.

“On its own it can think of hypotheses and then do the experiments, and we’ve checked that it’s got the results correct,” King said in an interview. –Reuters

And yes, EVE is being built next.

Around the same time, another team working on artificial intelligence has announced that they have developed a program that can independently reason its way through Newtonian physics.

…Hod Lipson and Michael Schmidt of Cornell University in New York, who have developed a computer program capable of working out the fundamental physical laws behind a swinging double pendulum.

Just by crunching the numbers — and without any prior instruction in physics — the Cornell machine was able to decipher Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and other properties. — Reuters again

My only fear with these AI “sci-lons” is what will happen when they figure out the only way to solve the climate crisis, the food crisis, the extinction crisis, the water crisis, etc would be to kill all humans?

robots, robotics, software, programs, computers, reason, artificial intelligence, AI, science, experiments

Did you know that bats hibernate during the winter and that it is called hibernacula. Like Dr-acula? Come on. I may be having fun with that, but there is nothing fun about what is happening to bats in the eastern United States. They are dying of what biologists are calling white-nose syndrome.

Photo courtesy Nancy Heaslip, New York Department of Environmental Conservation

And so far, no one knows what is causing it. Huh, kinda like the honeybees…

Anyway, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is advising to suspend all caving activity in the Eastern US in hopes of stopping the spread of the mysterious syndrome that is killing 90 to 100 percent of all bats affected by it. This is very sad news, and can affect the eastern states in terms of insect control and pollenation provided by bats in agriculture. Bats are a very important part of the ecosystem, so to see such decimation in numbers is worrying. White-Nose Syndrome has killed 75% of the bat populations in the affected areas in the US. See map below.

The FWS provides this information about the symptoms.

While they are in the hibernaculum, affected bats often have white fungus on their muzzles and other parts of their bodies. They may have low body fat. These bats often move to cold parts of the hibernacula, fly during the day and during cold winter weather when the insects they feed upon are not available, and exhibit other uncharacteristic behavior.

I’m going to play armchair scientist and offer a theory. This white-nose syndrome is a fungal attack on the skin of the bats. The areas most affected are the nose. The bat’s shove those noses into all sorts of places, like flowers that may have been treated with some sort of pesticide, herbicide, fertilizer, or whatnot. Not only that, but bats also consume things that other pesticides are meant to kill and maybe part of the meal for the unsuspecting bat. Maybe there is a link between the bats and the honeybees. Both are major players in the our agriculture, and maybe our newfangled way of growing stuff is killing them.

United States, bats, white nose syndrome, fungal, disease, die off, caves, deaths, wildlife, insects, pesticide, honeybee, agriculture, farming, colony collapse disorder, US Fish and Wildlife Service, FWS, advisory

Finally, the internet and wireless phones can be put to work on the side of good rather than just porn.

A test run of a new software suite called INSTEDD in Southeast Asia holds a world of promise when it comes to coordinating information across multiple users and agencies, locations, database configurations. Think of it as social networking among emergency and crisis workers and the people locally by anything from disease outbreaks to natural disasters.

I think everyone can agree that recent disasters like the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina has shown everyone that communication can be an effective key to mitigating the most profound effects of emergency situations. And as our methods of communication have expanded beyond telephones and telegraphs, so too must our tools for responding to disasters and epidemics.

As an example, the “test run” in Stung Treng Province, Cambodia was meant to simulate an outbreak of a disease scattered among many small villages throughout the region. Text messages, emails, and even blogs are useful tools to communicate, but with this new suite of three programs, INSTEDD can coordinate all methods of communication and can turn all that info into useful data for government agencies, relief workers, local residents, health officials, and anyone else who would be involved in relief efforts.

The INSTEDD suite consists of GeoChat, which “enables team members to communicate their position and important information using text messages, email or a web browser, with data instantly synchronized on every team members’ mobile phone or laptops.” The second component of the suite is Mesh4X, which translates all the different software among different agencies (stuff like which database software they use) among all the users. Finally, INSTEDD gives us Evolve, a tool that mines data and then provides vizualization tools like maps and charts to better understand all that information that is coming in now that all forms of communicating are linked up, with no software compatibility issues.

INSTEDD comes from a Palo Alto, California non-profit of the same acronym, which stands for Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters. INSTEDD has received money from Google, so it’s no surprise that Google Maps and Google Earth are part of the visualization tools.

natural disasters, emergency, relief, disease, outbreak, epidemic, Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters, INSTEDD, Google, Google Maps, Google Earth

In a not-so-stunning reversal of the Bush Era Suppression of Science, the EPA has supposedly sent a proposal for a “endangerment” finding for greenhouse gases to the White House, according to Reuters.

Finally.

EPA pie chart...mmm, pie.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in a case brought before it by a alliance of states and environmental groups that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are indeed a pollutant, and therefore should be regulated by the Clean Air Act and its erstwhile enforcer, the Environmental Protection Agency. You see, the EPA’s argument against regulating GHG emissions (and in particular carbon dioxide) was that there was uncertainty as to whether or not GHGs caused global warming.

The Bush Years were not a happy time at the EPA, and let’s just be glad it’s over.

What does an endangerment finding mean for us? Well, if something is a public danger it is then regulated by the EPA in terms of how much of it can safely be pumped into the air, water, what have you. That begs the question what is a safe amount of carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, even water vapor (although water vapor is directly related to temperature, so keep the temperature low and there is in turn less water vapor).

To determine a safe amount…This is what I’ve been waiting for, people. I am curious as to how much more carbon dioxide and CFCs and nitrous oxide can be allowed before we hit a tipping point. Not trying to be a Negative Nelly today, but we really need to take a sober look at the state of our planet.

On a positive note, I was heartened to see President Obama put out an op-ed in newspapers across the globe, calling for collective action and cooperation in the economic crisis. I’m hoping that his next international appeal will be for collective action on climate change.

EPA, White House, President Obama, Bush, carbon emissions, pollutant, greenhouse gases, GHG, methane, Clean Air Act, global warming