Daily Science Dose

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.

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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

A new Gallup poll has been released that shows that more Americans believe that the threats of global warming are exaggerated. When asked the question, “Thinking about what is said in the news, in your view is the seriousness of global warming …generally exaggerated, generally correct, or generally underestimated”, 41 percent of respondents answered that they felt the seriousness is generally exaggerated.

Ok, what news programs are they watching? Other than a few “specials” on CNN, I never see reporting that makes a big deal about climate change; in fact, most stories I see add more doubt that necessary. More than a few environmental and media watchdog groups feel that the media, in their pointless pursuit of fair and balanced reporting, often add global warming sceptics, not matter how much of a minority they are in the scientific community, just to appear to be objective.

Now, as a quasi-reporter, I can give the media props for trying to appear objective, but when the media is owned by men like Rupert Murdoch and ran by men like Michael Eisner and Sumner Redstone, then it is only natural to question the objectivity of a news organization that is part of a multinational corporation whose main purpose is to keep the profits rolling in. Furthermore, the “news” is no longer the pace where one goes for hard reporting and in-depth analyses of current issues — no, sadly, the news is nothing more than entertainment. (Sorry, Keith Olberman, I usually end up agreeing with you, and even though I am also a liberal thinker, I cannot call you an objective newsman.)

If you want to look at a handy chart to see who owns what in the media, click here.

I went to school for screenwriting, and in those classes, the number one lesson is “create conflict.” And for some reason, the News Media have taken that same lesson for fiction and drama and have added that ingredient to the objective news. Sometimes reporting the news should report the story itself, and not try to make a huge dramatic production of it, but adding players that have nothing to do with the story itself, much like those global warming deniers.

The worst part is that you often see the same “naysayers” on all the shows. They just make money by going around the news curcuit, bringing their own mics, mindlessly disagreeing with the science being presented by scientists that are actually working in the field and not going around the news circuit commenting on other scientists’ work.

Back to the poll…

The largest group responding “generally exaggerated” are, ta dah, Republicans.

Gallup attributes the rise to Republicans and independents believing media coverage of global warming is exaggerated. In the past 12 months alone, the ranks of Republican doubters grew from 59 percent to 66 percent, and independents from 33 percent to 44 percent. Among Democrates[sic], the rate remains about 20 percent. –Environmental Leader

Go figure…And do you notice how the spikes in the poll are in election years?

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That’s kind of a strange thought, huh, a lifeboat in space. I wonder how long that lifeboat would sustain a person or persons, considering how long it could take to ready shuttles for rescue missions.

The three astronauts(kosmonauts) aboard the International Space Station got a nasty phone call today. It was NASA calling, and a chunk of space junk was headed right for the ISS. No time to fire an engine to nudge the vessel out of the way of impact and besides another piece of debris was in the way, the crew instead climbed into the Soyuz lifeboat. Luckily, the five-inch wide piece of space litter whizzed by the Space Station, and eleven minutes after entering the lifeboat, the astronauts returned to the station.

A spokeman for NASA told the New York Times that the threat of collision posed by the piece of space debris was not huge, but having the crew go into the lifeboat was an “abundance of caution.”

This is the fifth time since becoming operational in 1998 that space debris has threatened the International Space Station so much that the lifeboat maneuver was an option.

By the way, I was being rather glib about the Soyuz lifeboat earlier. The Soyuz is not technically a lifeboat per se, but it is the ship that takes the crews to the ISS as well as returning them to Earth. Here is a picture of the Soyuz docked at the International Space Station.

As the name would imply, the Soyuz is the Russian equivalent to the US space shuttle, in that it is used in the transport of people and equipment to the Space Station. The Soyuz program started back in the 60’s for the then Soviet’s moon mission.

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Just when you did not think that the healthcare crisis in the United States could get any worse, some disturbing new information has been released by the National Institutes of Health could mean just that. Increased and better testing for Diabetes is showing that more and more Americans are at risk for this disease.

For a system that is already stressed and underfunded, diabetes is already a huge burden on the nation’s health. Putting more diabetes patients into a system that can hardly handle what patients it already has may prove to be disastrous for our current system.

Type 2 Diabetes is one of those diseases that preventative care could prevent. The idea behind preventative care is simple — educate people and teach them to care for their bodies in ways that will help to prevent certain lifestyle diseases. Of course, some people will get Diabetes no matter what, but in most cases of Type 2, healthy changes in lifestyle can be a game changer.

Let’s look at some numbers. The new survey looked at two studies which tested people in two ways. The Fasting Blood Glucose (FBG) test is the standard way to test for diabetes. It’s cheap and it’s quick, but it is not the most accurate test. The Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) is the newer diabetes test and it is more accurate and better at diagnosing diabetes in older patients as well as diagnosing a pre-diabetic condition that may or may not become diabetes (but usually does because most people don’t realize they are pre-diabetic and therefore do nothing to change their ways and prevent the onset of actual diabetes).

The survey says that 13% of adult Americans have Diabetes, but 40% of those people do not know it yet. The highest number is in the elderly and minority populations. Additionally, 30% of adults have pre-diabetes.

“We’re facing a diabetes epidemic that shows no signs of abating, judging from the number of individuals with pre-diabetes,” said lead author Catherine Cowie, Ph.D., of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), a part of the NIH. “For years, diabetes prevalence estimates have been based mainly on data that included a fasting glucose test but not an OGTT. The 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, is the first national survey in 15 years to include the OGTT. The addition of the OGTT gives us greater confidence that we’re seeing the true burden of diabetes and pre-diabetes in a representative sample of the U.S. population.” — NIH News

So, if these numbers are even kind of accurate, the percentage of American adults who could have Diabetes in the next decade or two could be 43%. That is crazy epidemic numbers. There is obviously something very, very wrong with our American lifestyle (which we are more than happy to export to everywhere).

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This is rather unsettling. I ran across this article today about brown pelicans literally falling from the sky along the Pacific Coast. And no one knows why…yet.

Some scientists are initially pointing their fingers at demoic acid. Demoic acid is produced by nasty phytoplankton and has made news lately for its effects on sea lions and other marine creatures.

Brown pelicans are being found many miles inland, along freeways, in yards, and parking lots. The birds are disoriented and feeble. Some birds are so weak that people can walk up to them and pick them up, which is not at all usual. Many of the symptoms are those of demoic acid poisoning, but other symptoms are leaving researchers and rescuers stumped.

While some of the symptoms resemble those associated with domoic-acid poisoning — an ocean toxin that sometimes affects sea birds and mammals — other symptoms do not. Domoic acid also apparently has not been found in significant amounts offshore, although more tests are needed.

Rescuers are wondering whether the illness is caused by a virus, or even by contaminants washed into the ocean after recent fires across Southern California. Many of the birds also have swollen feet. — Seattle Times

The Brown Pelican is the only pelican species that lives only along sea shores. Other species may be found inland, but not the Brown pelican, which makes these inland suicide runs all the more troubling. The Pacific population of Brown Pelicans has been on the Endangered Species list since June 1970. Recently, the species has been considered for delisting, but this troubling news may prevent that. The species was initially listed, like many large birds, due to DDT poisoning. The East Coast population has been de-listed, but the Pacific population has been growing more slowly.

Bodies of dead birds and blood samples have been sent off to the US Fish and Wildlife Service in addition to the California Department of Fish and Game for testing. Bird rescue organizations along the coast are alarmed at the numbers of dead or sick adult birds they have seen in the last week and a half.

In the last few years, numerous reports have been published about increasing numbers of Brown Pelicans starving along the Pacific Coast. So this new development may be related, or could have facilitated whatever is plaguing the brown pelicans.

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In the past month, reports from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Phillipines are detailing the troubling accounts of a resurgence of the Ebola Virus.

First, the Congo…

Nine people have died so far out of 21 people infected with the deadly Ebola virus, according to the Health Ministry in the DR Congo. Doctors without Borders has a higher estimate of 33 people infected That may not seem like such a big deal, except that Ebola tends to kill 90% of those infected. This is hardly the first time that Ebola has struck the West African nation.

Ebola was first documented in 1976 in Zaire, which was what the DR Congo at that time. The disease also afflicted people in the Sudan. Ebola is named after the Ebola River, which is very near the site where the disease was found. Below is a chart 2003 showing the number of people in red infected versus the number of deaths in black, appropriately enough.

If you have been paying attention to the news, you may have heard that some pigs in the Phillipines have also tested positively for Ebola. This needs some clarifying, as the pigs, or hogs, are infected with the Ebola-Reston Virus.

Ebola-Reston may be a subtype of Ebola, but so far, that is still to be definitely determined by researchers. Ebola-Reston gets its name from its similarity to Ebola, obviously, as it is a filovirus as is Ebola. Filoviruses are particularly nasty diseases in which long, slender RNA viruses attack the host’s blood vessels, causing them to rupture and at the same time prevent coagulation, which means that the victim will not stop bleeding.

Ebola-Reston gets the “Reston” from a Reston, Virginia lab where researchers first isolated the filovirus. So far, Ebola-Reston Virus has not caused serious illness in humans, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t. Previous to the recent outbreak, Ebola-Reston was thought only to infect monkeys. The virus’ move into the porcine world could be a normal move of the disease of which little is still known, or it could point to the much-sought “reservoir” of the disease, which has yet to be discovered.

The UN is beginning to investigate the Ebola-Reston virus in pigs…stay tuned.

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Did you know that the present time is already considered one of the great mass extinctions? Humans seem to be the major culprit in this, the Holocene extinction event, but scientists have recently began surmising that a similar extinction 251 million years ago was caused by the same thing. But with no humans around 251 million years ago, what is it that I am talking about — yep, carbon dioxide.

The Christian Science Monitor published an article this last week detailing the current hypotheses of a team of researchers and scientists from multiple disciplines.

Now scientists are rethinking another of earth’s great die-offs. The end-Permian extinction 251 million years ago was the worst of earth’s five mass extinctions. Ninety percent of all marine life and 70 percent of terrestrial life disappeared. It took five million years, perhaps more, for the biosphere to recover.

But while the die-off was uniquely devastating, evidence of a single cataclysmic event, like an asteroid strike, hasn’t been found in the geological record. Scientists now suspect that “the mother of all mass extinctions” was of Earth’s own making. And the more they learn about it, the more parallels they see to today’s world: A bout of greenhouse-gas-induced global warming, much like today’s, set off a chain of events that culminated in oxygen-depleted oceans exhaling poison gas.

It seems that increased volcanic activity started burning through coal beds, releasing enormous amounts of carbon dioxide — something we humans are doing, we are like little volcanoes, I guess. The Earth’s population at the time was already stressing the system, and when the extra CO2 entered the atmosphere, it lead to warmer seas (sounds familiar). The warmer seas lead to increased weathering and erosion, which washed nutrients into the oceans, thus leading to algae blooms (again, familiar). When the algae dies, the decomposition process requires oxygen, effectively starving the water of oxygen. When water does not have enough oxygen, many organisms cannot live in that water, except for anaerobic organisms that breathe in sulfates and give off hydrogen sulfide as exhalation. Hydrogen sulfide is poisonous to us oxygen-loving organisms.

And the lessons for today? At the Permian boundary, “you’re in a state of gradual warming, then as you approach that boundary, the warming in­­creases dramatically,” says Jeff Kiehl, a senior scientist at the Na­­­tion­­­al Center for Atmospheric Re­­search in Boulder, Colo. “It wasn’t a linear warming.” Says Professor Kump: “This shows us what could happen if we push the system too hard…. We don’t know where the intermediate thresholds are.”

We’re still some way from the atmospheric CO2 levels hypothesized at the end-Permian extinction – which were perhaps 10 times preindustrial levels, or 2,800 ppm. Yet, according the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if trends continue we’re still approaching 1,000 ppm of CO2 by 2100. That’s not Permian-extinction levels, but it would be the highest CO2 concentration in 80 million years, and a level at which both ocean anoxia and lesser extinctions have occurred.

This theory on what lead to the “great dying” at the transition between the Permian and Triassic periods (the extinction event is called the Permian-Triassic extinction event, appropriately enough) has been bouncing around for a while now, once scientists started questioning the evidence of the Killer Asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. It seems that despite the asteroid’s impact and subsequent devastation, many big dinosaurs stuck around for quite some time afterward. When the asteroid impact theory gained popularity, some scientists felt that all of our many mass extinctions throughout Earth’s history were caused by otherworldly impacts, but not all the evidence added up.

Until fossil records started showing evidence of little sulfide-emitting organisms, and then scientists started looking at the Permian-Triassic more carefully.

From a Scientific American article from 2006:

But the biomarkers in the oceanic sediments from the latest part of the Permian, and from the latest Triassic rocks as well, yielded chemical evidence of an ocean-wide bloom of the H2S-consuming bacteria. Because these microbes can live only in an oxygen-free environment but need sunlight for their photosynthesis, their presence in strata representing shallow marine settings is itself a marker indicating that even the surface of the oceans at the end of the Permian was without oxygen but was enriched in H2S.

Also, the P-Tr event is marked by volcanic activity in Siberia, of all places, and only a couple of months ago, scientists discovered that large amounts of methane are leaking from the Siberia Seabed. Hmm, methane is a greenhouse gas that has 20 times the power to trap heat that carbon dioxide does, and if that “leak” continues, well, estimates that 50 percent of all species will go extinct in the next century may not be too far off the mark.

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This is the first visible light image of a planet outside of our solar system.

It’s the tiny little red dot in the little square right above the inset box in which you can see hazy, non-distinct Fomalhaut b in a composite image that shows its (actually, before now, it was just a disk, as far as astronomists could tell before the latest image) position change in 2004 and 2006. The Hubble Space Telescope (back on line at last) caught this image, proving that what astronomers felt could be a planet was indeed a planet. They have estimated that the planet, Fomalhaut b, named so for the star it orbits, Fomalhaut, is three times the size of Jupiter.

Sorry to be geeky when it comes to Space and astronomy, but this is a big moment. Planets outside of our small little, teeny solar system have only just been discovered, the first being in 1995. And to get a picture, a normal, visible light picture of a extrasolar planet is like xmas and your birthday rolled into one.

Back in the 1980’s, astronomers felt that the star, Fomalhaut, was a likely candidate for supporting a planetary system. It was because Fomalhaut had signs of excess dust around it. Where there is dust, there is planets, if the dust is given long enough to collect into large enough masses to be called planets. Dust is usually a tip off to astronomers that something more interesting might be lurking around. And something interesting indeed…

Due to getting two positions of this body, astronomers at NASA have determined that Fomalhaut b revolves around Fomalhaut every 872 years.

Fomalhaut, Fomalhaut b, NASA, Hubble, Space, Telescope, astronomers, science, astronomy

News from NASA this week brings up an interesting issue in solar science and a possible problem for those of us feeling the heat on Earth. It seems that the current solar minimum may be coming to an end, and the next Solar Cycle is just beginning, on its way to a solar maximum. Minimal sun spot activity has been correlated to cooler temperatures on Earth, which presently would be a nice relief from the increased temperatures we have been seeing as of late, but unfortunately, even during the last minimum, we saw very little relief in terms of degrees, which doesn’t bode that well for the now just-beginning solar maximum.

Nov. 7, 2008: After two-plus years of few sunspots, even fewer solar flares, and a generally eerie calm, the sun is finally showing signs of life.

“I think solar minimum is behind us,” says sunspot forecaster David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

His statement is prompted by an October flurry of sunspots. “Last month we counted five sunspot groups,” he says. That may not sound like much, but in a year with record-low numbers of sunspots and long stretches of utter spotlessness, five is significant. “This represents a real increase in solar activity.”

A close-up of one of the October 2008 sun spots, taken by Alan Friedman.

Ok, so minimums and maximums aside, what do sun spots have to do with the Earth and its neighbors?

Sun spots appear when the Sun’s magnetic field becomes tangled on itself, during the Sun’s rather turbulent rotation of the gaseous surface, and when the magnetic field becomes tangled, it can poke through the surface gases, exposing the darker core of the Sun. The Sun’s equatorial region “rotates” faster than the poles, so sun spots usually appear around the Sun’s equator, as this is the region which exhibits the most turbulent activity of the magnetic fields. Oh, and if that weren’t chaotic enough, the poles then reverse themselves, corresponding it seems to the solar maximums.

The Sun spots produce extra ultraviolet light as well as x-ray radiation, which finds its way to Earth. The extra UV and X-ray radiation causes the Earth to heat up, and the heat causes the atmosphere to expand. Hmm, I wonder if the atmosphere expands, if that won’t allow more room for all that extra carbon we keep pumping into it? Doesn’t matter, as the UV and X-rays also creates more ozone in the upper atmosphere, which we all know traps more heat in the atmosphere.

An image of the Sun’s x-ray radiation.

Sooo, if there are more sun spots, does that mean that the Sun will be hotter? Sun spots cool the Sun’s surface, but really have no net effect on the gazillion degrees that the Sun is. But increased numbers of sun spots may heat up the Earth. Not so good news, eh? The last maximum was around 2000, and that year is among the hottest on record, and guess what, even with the minimum lately, the years are still getting hotter, so who knows how hot things will get when the Sun starts spotting up?

The Japanese have a probe orbiting the Earth right now that is focused on the Sun (the image at left was taken by the Hinode probe). The probe is studying sun flares, related to sun spots. NASA also has the Stereo mission that is studying coronal mass ejections and creating 3D images of the Sun. Not that these missions will shed light on how hot the Earth can get from sun spots, but it is a good start in studying the most important body in our Solar System.

On the opposite side of that coin, the period between 1645 and 1715, known as the Little Ice Age, was an extended period of low sun spot activity. Maybe if we can figure out how to discourage sun spots, we can in effect cool our planet? Just an idea.

NASA, sun spots, sun, solar minimum, solar maximum, global warming, increased temperatures, UV, X-ray, radiation, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, Japan, Hinode, Stereo mission, magnetic fields, Little Ice Age

The other day, I brought up the topic of politics and science and their somewhat tenuous relationship with each other.

Seems like I am not the only one thinking about the political structure and in particular, how a president can influence good policy by using, nay relying on good science.

The New York Times blog, Dot Earth, reported today that 178 scientific, academic, and business-related organizations have sent letters to both Senators John McCain and Barack Obama urging them to not only appoint a science adviser as soon as they are inaugurated, but also to elevate that position to a Cabinet-level position.

I couldn’t agree more. George Bush has been a cautionary example of when a President uses his faith rather than science to write and implement policy. Without getting into a discussion regarding Bush’s “faith-based initiatives” to solve all of society’s ills, with the next President (cough, Obama, cough), we need more “science-based inititatives.”

Courtesy of The Onion

I am going to go one step further, and suggest that our next POTUS will also focus on science education. This nation is losing ground not only because our politicians deem science as suspicious, but also because we are not educating the next generation of scientists to help our future presidents and by extensions our nation, and by another extension, the world.

I took a national science policy course in 2003, and it was frightening how many ph.D’s in science are awarded to foreign students that do not stay in the US, but rather take that education back to their home country. Not that there is anything wrong with educating any and all students that seek the training and knowledge, but it really underscored the fact that science is just not a priority in this nation.

We need not only a president that values science, but also a nation that values science. It is more of a cultural shift that is needed, and perhaps by elevating that next science adviser to a Cabinet-level position will be a step in the right direction.

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Earlier this month, Science Magazine reported that an international collaboration of scientists have published a comprehensive database of everything mammalian. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) pulled together information from all parts of the world as well as going back into records from the 1500’s in order to get a total picture of what is going on in the world of warm-blooded vertabrates.

The database, part of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, updates and expands a survey from 1996 and includes both land and marine species. Taking 5 years to compile, the effort involved more than 1700 researchers from 130 countries. They combed their literature and pooled their unpublished knowledge of ecology, taxonomy, distribution, population trends, threats, and conservation efforts. The species were then classified according to their extinction risk. “We wanted to make this one-stop shopping for scientists and policymakers,” says IUCN and Conservation International mammalogist Jan Schipper, who coordinated the project.

The bad news is that one quarter of those 5487 species are on the fast track to extinction. Half are experiencing declining numbers. Out of the total number, more than 860 species are too poorly known to be properly assessed in terms of population health.

The good news is that since the last published database, 700 new species of mammals have been discovered. Also encouraging is that well-established and funded conservation programs are working for the most part in many areas.

More numbers…

29 of the species in the database may already be extinct, including China’s freshwater dolphin the baiji.

188 species are critically endangered.

1 in 5 species that are not already showing danger of extinction are showing decreases in population.

1139 species are presently threatened with extinction.

Habitat loss is the major reason for declining numbers in addition to hunting for land mammals. Marine mammals face the same threats, but also suffer more acutely from pollution issues and fishing including by-catch of species that are not regulated by fishing agencies. The larger the animal, the higher the risk of extinction, such as in such animals as gorillas and rhinos. Marine mammals are facing the biggest threat in the North Atlantic and Pacific as well as in the waters around Southeast Asia.

The new database “is the most valuable effort to date to summarize the state of conservation and threats to the world’s mammal populations,” says mammalogist Don Wilson of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. “By detailing threats at the species level, it will now be possible for management agencies in every country in the world to prioritize their efforts to try to mitigate these threats.”

With more and more people needing more and more room, I cannot say with any conviction that we can save some of these mammals. That brings up an interesting question: What do we save? What can we save? And who decides?

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To be fair, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) is also used to manufacture solar panel photovoltaic cells. That’s irony for you.

New research coming out from Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego is showing an alarming rise in nitrogen trifluoride, a gas that is “thousands of times more effective at warming the atmosphere.”

Here’s some more irony for you. NF3 became the microelectronics industry’s gas of choice because back then it was thought of as the environmentally-friendly choice over perfluorocarbons, which are more stable compounds that remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years and also more likely to escape during the manufacturing process.

So, with NF3, less of it escapes. But the troubling news is that much more has escaped that previously thought.

The amount of the gas in the atmosphere, which could not be detected using previous techniques, had been estimated at less than 1,200 metric tons in 2006. The new research shows the actual amount was 4,200 metric tons. In 2008, about 5,400 metric tons of the gas was in the atmosphere, a quantity that is increasing at about 11 percent per year. — Science Daily

According to the scientists behind the research, recent innovations in measuring NF3 has made monitoring the gas more accurate. The levels of NF3 are all the more troubling, but still less than one-half percent of the total greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere by humans and their insatiable needs for computers with flat screen monitors and LCD tvs. And yes, I am writing this on such a device, so my hypocrisy is not lost on me.

The research is part of a NASA-funded network of scientists in different parts of the world contributing data. This is from the NASA press release:

The Scripps team analyzed air samples gathered during the past 30 years, including samples from the NASA-funded Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment network of ground-based stations. The network was created in the 1970s in response to international concerns about chemicals depleting the ozone layer. It is supported by NASA as part of its congressional mandate to monitor ozone-depleting trace gases, many of which also are greenhouse gases. Air samples are collected at several stations around the world. The Scripps team analyzed samples from coastal clean-air stations in California and Tasmania for this research.

The researchers found concentrations of the gas rose from about 0.02 parts per trillion in 1978 to 0.454 parts per trillion in 2008. The samples also showed significantly higher concentrations of nitrogen trifluoride in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere, which the researchers said is consistent with its use predominantly in that hemisphere. The current observed rate of increase of nitrogen trifluoride in the atmosphere corresponds to emissions of about 16 percent of the amount of the gas produced globally.

In response to the growing use of the gas and concerns that its emissions are not well known, scientists recently have recommended adding it to the list of greenhouse gases regulated by Kyoto.

A little background on nitrogen trifluoride (also called nitrogen fluoride, trifluoramine, trifluorammonia):

Nitrogen trifluoride does not exist in nature. It is synthetic and man-made.

The gas remains in the atmosphere for 740 years.

Like all perfluorinated compounds, the “global warming potential for given time horizon” increases over time, rather than decrease like most other gases. According to the IPCC, NF3 has 17,200 times the global warming potential as carbon dioxide (CO2) at the one hundred year mark, but the potential increases to 20,700 after 500 years.

nitrogen trifluoride can damage kidneys and livers and cause blood toxicity for those who inhale the gas during manufacture.

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Anyone can tell you, mathematics and science go hand in hand. Even when you don’t think that math is going to come into play, it is math that often times allows even social or “soft” scientists to quantify data and in turn interpret results. I remember my chemistry and physics classes, and math was crucial to those classes. So a new study coming out that details how mathematics is slipping among students in the United States is all that much disturbing for its implications in terms of science.

From the New York Times today:

The study suggests that while many girls have exceptional talent in math — the talent to become top math researchers, scientists and engineers — they are rarely identified in the United States. A major reason, according to the study, is that American culture does not highly value talent in math, and so discourages girls — and boys, for that matter — from excelling in the field. The study will be published Friday in Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

“We’re living in a culture that is telling girls you can’t do math — that’s telling everybody that only Asians and nerds do math,” said the study’s lead author, Janet E. Mertz, an oncology professor at the University of Wisconsin, whose son is a winner of what is viewed as the world’s most-demanding math competitions. “Kids in high school, where social interactions are really important, think, ‘If I’m not an Asian or a nerd, I’d better not be on the math team.’ Kids are self selecting. For social reasons they’re not even trying.”

I saw plenty of this during my school days. I was great at math, on a math team, and also on the science olympiad team. I was also in the top-tier of the math “sections” within my grade, but I bring this up not to brag, but simply to give you some background on where I am coming from, the inside, as it were. I never felt nerdy for being good at math, but then I was never one to really care much for what anyone would think about me, in so much as to call me a nerd. I loved doing math problems. I thought they were fun.

However, I also remember sixth grade being the grade that suddenly all the girls in my grade became really bad at math. Hmm, what else happens in sixth grade? Right around age 11 or 12? Hmm, could it be puberty? Those same girls that had always been in my math sections were more interested in boys than math. And a girl cannot be smarter than a boy in math!!!! So many girls kind of self-lobotomized in order to get a boyfriend. They never came back to my math classes…

This is also from the NY Times article.

Dr. Mertz asserts that the new study is the first to examine data from the most difficult math competitions for young people, including the USA and International Mathematical Olympiads for high school students, and the Putnam Mathematical Competition for college undergraduates. For winners of these competitions, the Michael Phelpses and Kobe Bryants of math, getting an 800 on the math SAT is routine. The study found that many students from the United States in these competitions are immigrants or children of immigrants from countries where education in mathematics is prized and mathematical talent is thought to be widely distributed and able to be cultivated through hard work and persistence.

Ironically, another article in the NYT talked of the class war vis a vis Sarah Palin and her “sixpack” of mental skills. I found this to be appropriate, as it is all kit and kaboodle of what is going on in the US lately.

We think it is cool to be stupid.

How frightening for the US. There is nothing wrong with being smart and being good at math. Trust me, girls, I have never had a hard time getting a date by showing some intelligence. The cool guys are actually attracted to the smart girls, not the dumb ones. But then that argument only serves to underscore the fact that most girls are more worried about getting a date than an A on that algebra test.

This issue goes deeper than class-bias or even gender. Despite the fact that the United States has a bad case of the “exceptional”, our students in general do not want to stand out or strive for achievement in school other than school sports. This is a fundamental problem in the American culture, as the aforementioned study suggests.

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Something that has caught my attention recently is talk of meat irradiation. I guess the USDA and the FDA are close to approving disturbing new rules regarding irradiation in the beef industry and may be moving to approving the use of irradiation of produce such as spinach, as a way to combat e. coli break outs.

So let’s talk about food irradiation.

Irradiating food does not make it radioactive, as you might think would happen from the name. Irradiation is the use of nuclear materials in order to shoot some gamma rays and x-rays at your food in order to kill things in that food. That is a rather simplistic description, but that is essentially what it is.

The approved methods of irradiating food uses either a super fast stream of electrons or uses the gamma rays from Cobalt-60. You can also use Cesium-137, but it is much rarer stuff, so the Cobalt-60 is pretty much the way to do it. The electron stream method can only penetrate a few inches into whatever is being shot full of electrons, but gamma rays can penetrate a substance a lot deeper. That makes gamma rays the preferred method as you can irradiate a large crate or pallet of items at the same time.

Now, here is where the controversy begins. The radiation from Cobalt-60 is a known cancer agent, so how does shooting gamma rays of Cobalt-60 into your food affect it? The US started irradiating food about fifty years ago, and then it was just a tax-payer funded experiment for the space program and the Army. And then in 1963, irradiation was used on wheat to kill pests in the crop. The next year it was used to increase shelf-life of white potatoes (irradiation stops the aging or ripening process, effectively kind of killing the potato’s instinct to sprout eyes). Then it was used on ham, and well, around the world there are now 40 food items that are irradiated.

If you see this symbol, your food was irradiated.

Ah, I didn’t answer the question about safety. That is because the jury is still out. That is what I love about the USDA and FDA. Both have a long history of approving things before conclusive and long-term evidence of safety is supplied. Let’s test it for a year, and then see what happens when we release it out into the world…

Some studies show that irradiated meat has an off-odor, smelling of burnt sulfur. Some studies show that mice get cancer when fed irradiated produce. And speaking of produce, irradiating it breaks down the vitamin content and also can really damage the vegetables at high doses. And guess what, you kind of need high doses to really kill everything. That’s another problem with food irradiation. It’s somewhat of a false security blanket. It has not been shown to kill all bacteria, so that begs the question of why use it at all?

But then, there is another side to the killing off of bacteria issues. Your stomach and digestive system are full of beneficial bacteria that you get from eating food. Irradiation can kill just as much beneficial bacteria as it does harmful.

Just to expand on what the USDA is thinking about doing. The heads of the Department are thinking about making the move to start irradiating whole cow carcasses before processing to stymie e. coli and thus costly meat recalls. The problem some watchdogs groups have is that once the beef is further processed, the meat will not have to be labeled as irradiated.

And it begins.

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