The Science View is The View re-imagined, if it covered the science milieu. It returns below, to celebrate women’s history month. The first segment was a hypothetical discussion about women who received Nobel Prizes last Fall. Below is a mix of the unreal and real; hypothetical hosts interview a real author about her book.

ESTELLE: There’s a new book out about women and science called The Madame Curie Complex. The Feminist Press has just published it, and we’re so pleased to have the author with us today. Welcome, Julie Des Jardins.

JULIE: Thanks for talking with me, ladies.

ESTELLE: Julie is a professor of history at Baruch College, here in New York. Many of us know that Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. And that she and her husband won for the theory of radiation. She later won a second Nobel for the discovery of the elements radium and polonium. But what’s the Curie Complex?

JULIE: Sadly, it’s a sort of inferiority complex American women have had ever since Curie came to the United States and seemed to be all things to all people—a world-class scientist, and a perfectly maternal, altruistic, domestic woman. She wasn’t necessarily all that, by the way, but that’s how Americans perceived her.

CHELSEA: Oh wow, I don’t get that. Do you think women today would have seen her as a role model?

JULIE: Women scientists have always seen her as a role model, in large part because her myth gets made over and over again to resonate with the times.  The Nobel scientist Rosalyn Yalow truly envisioned herself in the Curie mold, as have so many women who watched depictions of Curie on the movie screen during World War II. Or they read her daughter’s biography of her, which created an iconic Curie that lasted for 70 years.

FAITH: Why write about women and science now? I mean, the book is really interesting, but there are quite a few books on the subject already.

CHELSEA: Faith, what a question.

FAITH: No really, with all due respect…

JULIE:  There are plenty of biographies of women scientists out there and academic works that problematize the gender of science. But the scholarly books are highly theoretical and don’t reveal the workings of gender through compelling human-interest stories. The bios don’t question masculinist assumptions about science. I try to do both—to see gender in science, offer alternative ways of envisioning gender in science, and yet make this resonate through the stories of fascinating, identifiable women.

TANIKA: You write about how these women were acceptable to male scientists and the public so long as they could also see them as married women and mothers. Are we over that yet?

FAITH: I don’t see anything so wrong with that.

JULIE: Things have changed, but historically, single women have had better fortunes in science because employers have presumed that these women don’t carry the same domestic baggage. The only times when marriage was a professional asset were in rare elite contexts in which prominent husbands shared their connections to other men in high places. This was so with the brilliant physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer. She was so competent, but she needed her husband to put her in places where she could do her science.

ESTELLE: It seems that the women in your book adopted several strategies to succeed. Some partnered with their husbands, others worked within the system…would you outline them for us?

JULIE:  Well, a lot of these strategies are historically and contextually specific, so it’s hard to classify them across the board. The important thing is that women have always felt pressure to negotiate social expectations in ways that men have not. Few people accuse men of being neglectful of their children as they burn the midnight oil in the lab, or of not being committed enough to their science when they play a more active role at home. Women, however, have been stigmatized at either extreme.

FAITH: You know, there are men who say really smart women everywhere figure out the ropes and find ways to succeed. Is there something different about what women in science face compared to other professions?

JULIE: There is institutional chauvinism in lots of professional environments, but in science women especially fall prey to a false veneration of youth. The great scientists are supposed to do their most ground-breaking work when they are in their twenties and thirties, so the myth goes. These of course are years when women often want to have children, when they may need more flextime or acceptance of competing responsibilities. Tenure clocks often compete with biological clocks more fiercely in science.

ESTELLE: That’s so interesting. And now we have to pause for a word from our sponsor.

- STATION BREAK -

ESTELLE: We’re back with Julie Des Jardins, author of The Madame Curie Complex, a fascinating look at the hidden history of women in science—how they succeeded, what worked and what didn’t. I thought the sections about the Harvard Observatory and the way you connected how those women were treated with the women on The Manhattan Project was really an eye-opener. Just used as just calculators, mere observers. And then the head of the lab didn’t give them any credit.

CHELSEA: Yeah, that was just outrageous. I’d never heard anything about those women. Other than that, I can think of few popular references to these important women scientists. Part of the problem is that few people have remembered these women as “scientists” at all. Often they are passed down to posterity by some other name.

FAITH: Do you think there’s a feminine way of doing science?

TANIKA: What do you mean? Like there’s a black or Latino way of doing science?

ESTELLE: Actually, it’s a legitimate question, given that enduring metaphor of conquering Mother Nature…

CHELSEA:  Well, Faith could have asked if there’s a feminist way of doing science.

ESTELLE: OK, OK. Do women do science differently?

JULIE: I do think women can do science differently—not all women all the time, but some, some of the time. They do science differently not because of their biology but because often their roles as mothers, domestics, and marginalized scientists have given them different perspectives on scientific subjects. Sometimes they ask different questions and come to science with different methodologies.

TANIKA: I really got into the section about Rachel Carson and Silent Spring. I mean, how she saw nature as a major force effecting man’s survival versus the idea that men control nature. That debate seems totally relevant today.

JULIE: You can’t see what’s happening with climate change and not think the debate is relevant today.

ESTELLE: You also write that she refused to “see science as rarified, boxed off from nature, art, women, and the rest society.”

JULIE: Yes, she broke down many of the boundaries defining traditional science. Science has been seen as empirical, nature as random; science as objective, art as subjective; women as emotional, science as disinterested. Scientists have been perceived as people in a privileged realm of knowing that the rest of us can’t participate in. Carson broke down all these assumptions.

ESTELLE: What’s the best way to overcome The Madame Curie Complex? What do you want young women who read your book to come away with?

JULIE: I want women and men to consider a differently gendered scientific enterprise Women would get more traction in science if we thought of culturally feminine traits as assets, but it would also be good for science as a whole.

ESTELLE: Julie, thank you so much for being with us today.

More Information: The Madame Curie Complex

Though the Diversity Scholars Award has ended, AIBS continues to administer the AIBS Diversity Leadership Awards Program which recognizes institutional programs that recruit and retain underrepresented minorities in the biological sciences. This is a bigger bang for the buck recognition. Both of these programs are examples of STEM Diversity initiatives done right. Long before the NSF mandates of Broader Impact – another important STEM Diversity Initiative – AIBS always carried the banner of broader impact. Through professional development opportunities, it’s journals and public programs, AIBS serves those interested in sharing science – K-12 educators, general public and informal science institutions, and college professors and researchers.

AIBS Education resources - lesson plans, activities, activities and career info.
ActionBioscience.org - a free-access bilingual Web site that focuses on topical issues in biodiversity, the environment, evolution, biotechnology, genomics, new frontiers, and education.
BioScience - peer-review journalproviding overviews of current biological research and education.

The Year of Science is a 12 monthe celebration of how science works, why science matters, and who scientists are. Led by participants in the COPUS network, learn more about the process of science at Understanding Science.org.

Though a short-lived program, the AIBS Diversity Scholars Award is an awesome achievement for a junior scientist. Our scientific achievements, as well as our work to broaden participation in science to others, are recognized very early in our careers. I was, and still am, quite honored to have been nominated by my professional science society – the Animal Behavior Society – for my service to the organization and to the discipline and then later selected among a pool of equally qualified candidates across the biological science spectrum.

Receiving my award from Susan Musante, AIBS Education Office Staff, at the 2009 AIBS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

Press release announcing me winning the award: FirstScience News AIBS recognizes diversity in the biological sciences

I participate in a few Carnivals (see my bottom side bar). It helps me share my work with larger audiences. It’s also a great way for non-bloggers to get into blogs and see how informative and entertaining they could be. So if you new to reading blogs or not sure what it’s all about, that’s fine. Carnivals may be just the right for you. Check out great posts on interesting topics – all in one place for you to read at your leisure.

Here are some great carnivals in which I have submitted my Urban Science Adventures! © posts.

Book Review Blog Carnival #26: A collection of book review blog posts. Check out the books bloggers are reading, including the children’s books about nature and animals I recommend.

Scientia Pro Publica 13: Nobel Prize Edition: A collection of blog posts about science, nature, and medicine for the masses. It’s a perfect way to get your dose of science without all of the headaches of heavy language.

Festival of the Trees #40, the benefits of trees:A collection of blog posts all about trees – in words and pictures.

Diversity in Science Carnival #3: Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month: This carnival is my personal project. Here is my related blog post on George Melendez Wright. It is a collection of blog posts that introduce and discuss issues (the celebrations and the obstacles) of diversifying Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines. It was born out of a similar discussion at the ScienceOnline09 (Science Blogging) Conference.

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The upcoming editions of the carnival will discuss Broader Impact programs in STEM in preparation of a follow-up panel on Diversity in Science at ScienceOnline 2010 in Research Triangle, North Carolina. The discussion session is titled “Casting a wider net: Promoting gender and ethnic diversity in STEM” moderated by me and Anne Jefferson.

This is an official call for submissions for the upcoming carnivals and an initiation to the discussion to be held in January.

November DiS Carnival: STEM Diversity and Broad Impacts I: Highlights of successful, ambitious STEM diversity programs such as REUs, mentoring programs and scholarships for college under-graduates, graduate students, post-doctoral associates and early career scientists and engineers.
Submission Deadline: November 15th
Carnival Post date: November 20th
Hosted by: Yours truly at Urban Science Adventures! ©

December DiS Carnival: STEM Broader Impacts II: Highlights of successful, ambitious and inspiring diversity programs for youth and general audiences such as after-school programs, summer institutes, and citizen science programs sponsored by museums and universities.
Submission Deadline: December 15th
Carnival Post date: December 20th
Hosted by: (insert your blog here)

Stay tuned for more carnival announcements, but we’re already looking forward to February – Black History Month, and March – Women’s History Month and accepting carnival hosts for those editions, too.

See what you can do at Super Saturday!

Indoor Composting

Cow Eye Dissection

- See a cow eye dissection

- Learn how 3-D works

- Make your own mini-helicopter and learn about flight

- Hold a worm and learn about indoor composting

- Learn how to extract DNA from your spit

- See and touch real human organs

- Make a lamp from a pickle

- AND SO MUCH MORE!

Time: 11:00am – 3:00pm
Location: PS 165/The Robert E. Simon School, 234 W 109th St (between Amsterdam Ave and Broadway)

Free for families and children (ages 4-12). For more information call Morningside Area Alliance at (212) 749-1570 or e-mail us at info@morningsidealliance.org.

Participating organizations include: the New York Hall of Science, American Museum of Natural History, Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, TalkingScience, The Science Barge, Lower East Side Ecology Center, Cornell Cooperative Extension Program, Touro College, Jumpstart, NYU Law School, HealthCorps, Teachers College, Hip Hop Stroke Program, Cornell Medical College and more.

The event is made possible by Morningside Area Alliance in partnership with PS 165 (The Robert E. Simon School). The mission of the Morningside Area Alliance is to foster, develop and promote the advancement of the Morningside Heights district of New York City as a unique educational, residential and cultural neighborhood; to sustain linkages among its members institutions to enhance communication, public well-being and cooperative initiatives; and to identify and access the collective resources of its member institutions for the purpose of improving the areas of education and youth services, public health and community development in Morningside Heights and the surrounding community.

Ask any non-New Yorker what comes to mind when they think of New York City, and you'll likely get one of three responses: Wall Street, Broadway, or the Statue of Liberty. These cover important aspects of the city: money, theater/art, and the promise of freedom. But what about science?

In 2004 Mayor Bloomberg and Andrew Alper, President of the Economic Development Corporation, unveiled a plan for a commercial science center in a city-owned chunk area of Kips Bay that would attract the world's top scientists. If successful, the East River Science Park will be as well known as Central Park.

The Science Park location will not only be beautiful, but it will be a convenient hop, skip, and/or jump from New York's major institutions, including  Rockefeller, Beth Israel, Weill Cornell, Mount Sinai, Memorial Sloan Kettering and NYU. The park itself will be a campus setting that spans 4.5 acres,  870,000 square feet of which will be used for office and retail space. A minimum of 46,600 square feet will be reserved as open space near the East River waterfront. For more information  on design, planning, and amenities offered at the park, see the Alexandria website (link: http://www.alexandrianyc.com/features.html). The first tenants are scheduled to move in this year, so stroll by to meet the new neighbors and check out the space. It promises to be a marriage of geeks and glamour!

When you think of your environment, what do you see? I imagine myself walking out the front door and facing the morning traffic on the Staten Island Expressway. I hear the farting noises the trucks and buses make as they climb the ramp off the service road. A plane whizzes by and the ground bumbles. Exactly fifteen steps from my front door take me beyond the front lawn onto the sidewalk. If I walk west along the service road, I hit a patch of trees, a mini-forest the size of two blocks by two blocks. If I continue walking northwest I hit a bigger patch of trees with a small farm the size of one of those new developments that cram twelve homes on what had been a plot for two moderate-sized detached houses. If I walk east from my front door, I would dodge some dog poop, step on sputum, or broken glass, on my way to Willowbrook Park where there is a pond, gaggles of giggling geese and a carousel. Between my house and the park is one campus of the many within City University of New York and a public library. There is a Starbucks, a bank, a strip mall with horrible neon lights, cars honking and breaks screeching as they approach the one stoplight with a camera. There are no bike lanes or permission for riding bikes inside the park. There are no green markets nearby, only fast food chains and mom-and-pop shops that use I Can't Believe It’s not Butter.

Edward S. Casey wrote, "Just as place is animated by the lived bodies that are in it, a lived place animates these same bodies as they become implaced there." There is a relationship between the place beyond my front door and myself that is reciprocal in its nature. When I’m not walking around, I am sitting in one of the farting express buses with other people heading to school, work or to a change of busied scenery--- from crowded mall parking lot to the flooding river of Times Square; from South Shore mansion to Little Italy or smoke shops on Christopher Street.

Do we consider ourselves travelers or commuters on really long escalators that sometimes work? The point of escalators is to get you to the top faster. The point of cars is to get you there faster without getting wet. The point of an even bigger vehicle is to assuage that displacing break from private property as soon as you move beyond your front lawn and move onto  the realm of public space, or the vehicle is used to fit more groceries.

Where do groceries come from? A warehouse. A slaughterhouse. A farm. Not like the mini-farm in the mini-forest by my house where a man in his 60s rakes and plucks at the earth every few days. If you shop at the bigger chains, the products come from bigger farms animated by the lived bodies of migrant workers or eco-conscious college students when they are “taking a break from school.” A French-tipped mani-pedi wouldn’t last a day at a farm even if gloves were worn. If we each took turns growing produce in our mani-pedied backyards or front lawns, would the number of obese Americans still outnumber the amount of fat Americans ? We have to take turns because we have not yet given ourselves enough time to balance debt and eat healthy.

It's not butter and it’s not O.K. It’s not O.K. to lie to ourselves about eating better by eating diet or substituting the real deal for something "just like it." The body is starved for nutrition but abundant in calories. The practice of pushing agriculture away from my dinner table to China, or canning fish fillet from Lake Victoria in Africa reminds me of the childhood bully who steals his classmate’s lunch, who now has nothing to eat . My relationship to the space of my dinner table relates to the Tanzanian fisherman who can’t afford his own catch.

Toaster not working? Toss it out and buy a new one; our political and economic , environment demands us. Once tossed, the toaster will end up in a landfill in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio or Virginia . The traveling toaster! Once upon a time beyond my front door, my nostrils collapsed shut into the septum to block the stench of the landfill. Today the landfill is being transformed into a “green space” complete with bike trails, open water for canoeing, a memorial site for 9/11 (and mafia victims). Land is often recycled in surprising ways. What was once a riverbed through which fish migrated was turned into a landfill, was turned into a park and memorial site, which might be sold to a developer who will build a parking lot for the grocery, gourmet toaster shop or housing community.

My friend Bora Zivkovic was on a Columbia University panel to discuss this issue, along with Barry Canton (founder of OpenWetWare wiki and  Gingko BioWorks ), and Jean-Claude Bradley (Associate Prof. at Drexel and founder of UsefulChem). Ultimately, each panelist agreed that, in most situations, open access to information is a good way to move forward in the sciences.

Bora  pointed out, both during the panel and on twitter, that “There are enemies of open access because there are people making a lot of money on keeping things closed... I think in science, years from now, people will be asking, ‘why weren’t you open, why were you hiding?’” Of course, Bora and the other panelists recognized that when it comes to concerns like research related to security, patents, future Nobel Prizes etc., those doors do need to be closed. It’s common sense, not rocket science (except when it is rocket science, of course).

One audience member’s concern was how the shift towards open research may affect professional credentials. After all, many science careers are based on peer reviewed publication, not blogs. Bora replied by asking us to think about the long-term. The shift will take some time, and some aspects of the move (like this one) will be clunky. But imagine if people could have left comments and questions about the work of great scientists who lived long before the internet? This would be a wonderful resource for us today, and future scientists will certainly find this kind of resource incredibly valuable.

I’m delighted that most everyone acknowledged that open is awesome, and that it’s OK for scientists can come out of the closet– though no one is expecting a marriage between private companies and open research anytime soon (well, maybe in Canada…).

* On a side note, if you’re interested in science blogging, you will probably enjoy The Open Laboratory: The Best in Science Writing on Blogs

Standing at 6'7" tall, Will Allen's height is obviously one of the first things people notice about the CEO and founder of Growing Power, Inc. I had the privilege of hearing Allen speak at a Yale University sponsored Sustainable Food seminar. The aspects of Allen that stuck out most to me were not his physical height, but the height of his character. Symbols of that character were his wide grin, faded blue hoodie, and cracked, rough hands. Shaking those hands, I caught a glimpse of the type and magnitude of life that Allen has lead and the service he has rendered to his community in Milwaukee, WI and throughout the world. For his work, Allen was recently awarded a MacArthur Genius Fellowship and invited by former President Clinton to speak on a large discussion panel at the University of Texas- Austin on “The Future of Food”. With all the acclaim and fanfare, Allen simply and humbly carries on his work, working daily in the fields and greenhouses at Growing Power. Allen showed numerous images of himself working hard in the fields and greenhouses, training people, getting his hands dirty, and loving every minute of it: “I have to touch the soil everyday to feel like a human being.”

Allen started Growing Power in a rundown section of Milwaukee as a place where he could grow his dreams of healthy food for the urban poor. Allen described Growing Power’s mission as producing healthy soil and food for urban areas, developing efficient and cost-effective urban farming technologies, and most importantly, educating the world’s future urban farmers. Regarding their mission, Allen said, “We know that our food system is broken…We have to change that…We have to redo this whole system…We need 50 million new food producers to even begin to put a dent into the industrial farm system…A lot of the work that I do is around that question, ‘How do we grow farmers?’” During Allen’s presentation, he made it clear that education and community involvement were key pieces to Growing Power’s activities, “You can actually learn how to do something, so you can take it back to your community and roll it out in your community…Youth are the very key…they are a very powerful piece of what we do, in terms of how we proceed in the future, because these are the future farmers. They won’t come from rural America. They’ll come from universities like here, and other universities around the country and from our young people that live in central cities, not from rural America.” Growing Power takes in children, teenagers, and their families as interns until they graduate and go off to college. Part of Allen’s education is training the young people to work hard, study hard, and excel at their chosen profession, “When the youth come to our facility, the expectations is so very high. They can’t have radios. They can’t have stuff in their ears. They come here, it’s not a playground. It’s an adventure, an experience for them to learn. So if we set those expectations, I try to make it as hard on them as I possibly can, because many of those kids are going to have tremendous struggles in their lives. So we are really preparing them for that. Not all of them are going to make it. That’s why when I take on kids, I take on their whole family and then I am honest with them. I tell them…this will be the hardest job that you’ll ever have…It really starts with the kids.” It was apparent that Growing Power not only trains these young people to be farmers, but it trains them how to be self-sufficient, hard-working, and successful.

Another aspect that struck me about Allen was the ingenuity, wisdom, and calculating cunning with which he approaches challenges in his company. Growing Power pulls in food waste from many different sources and churns out nutritious, productive soil from the decomposing food and the help of millions of worms. They then use that soil to efficiently grow food in their fields and greenhouses or sell the soil to garner funds for the support of their programs. Allen’s years as a marketing executive with Procter and Gamble became clear as he described the competitors his company faced (Waste Management and food wholesalers), the profit that each square foot of soil needed to make, and the numerous contracts that he had setup for collecting waste, organizing the community, and distributing Growing Power products. Surrounding themselves with simple, yet brilliant, individuals, Growing Power has developed low cost and effective methods for building and maintaining greenhouses, aquaponic assemblies, and even “green” energy generators in urban areas. Aquaponic systems use recycled water to grow fish and vegetation. Growing Power uses a motor to pump the water from a fish breeding area up to the roots of plants, which clean and filter the water for reuse by the fish. It is a self-contained apparatus that allows for the production of fish, water cress, and other leafy plants. Allen also explained that by heating the water slightly, the entire greenhouse is kept warm during the cold Wisconsin winters through the ability of the water to trap and slowly release heat. The energy generators use pureed food waste and anaerobic bacteria (bacteria that live without oxygen) to generate acetic acid (diluted acetic acid is vinegar). The acetic acid can be used for fertilizer or the production of methane/natural gas. These are just some of the simple, yet efficient, devices that Growing Power has created and distributed throughout the world.

Despite increasing threats from global warming, industrial pollution, contaminated soil, and dwindling food health and supply, Will Allen’s Growing Power is thriving to grow farmers and farming supplies to meet the farming needs of large cities across the world. Through his techniques in teaching young people, hopefully we will also have many more generations of Will Allens to stave off the destructive direction humanity is heading towards.

Images: 1. Flickr/NatalieMaynor 2. Flickr/grifray 3. Flickr/mjmonty 4. Flickr/mjmonty 5. Flickr/grifray 6. Flickr/{just jennifer}

I had the pleasure of hearing Al Gore speak at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference last week. Here are the Cliff's Notes of his talk. I would have loved to post video of it for you, but recording of sessions was not permitted and I'm no rule breaker, so here is the next best thing. Trust me, it was excellent.

The economy and climate are intertwined, and the war in Iraq was largely driven by our dependence on foreign oil. Twice in ten years we've engaged in wars in the middle east, and this is strongly linked to our dependence on foreign oil. There are ideas whose time has come, and there are ideas whose time has passed... and their collapse has come. Our dependence on foreign oil is one such idea. How quickly can we shift to alternative fuels and renewable resources? We now have carbon waste sitting around. We are in the midst of a global recession. The burden falls on fiscal policy, and we currently need a global, synchronized stimulus. The economy, national security, and climate crisis have a common thread-our dependence on carbon sources.

We need to use this crisis as an opportunity to shift to free, clean, renewable sources of energy. When you look up at the sky, it looks limitless, we tend to think that there is no way we could impact that limitless sky. What we know, however, is that the sky is shockingly thin, and we can (and do) impact it.

Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared energy, which is essentially heat. Earth and Venus are the same size, and at one point they had similar levels of carbon dioxide. Over many years, carbon dioxide was removed from Earth's atmosphere, and Venus is now 855 degrees and rains sulphuric acid, while Earth is 59 degrees, on average, so you can see the importance of controlling the levels of carbon dioxide in our environment. As carbon dioxide levels increase in our environment, infrared radiation (IR) is trapped.

In 2005, the polar ice caps melted such that an area equal to 1/3 of the Eastern United Stated was lost. The ice caps are like a beating heart, expanding in the winter and contracting in the summer. More and more is lost each summer, and less and less is restored in the winter. It's predicted that the caps will disappear completely within our lifetime. Additionally, there is frozen carbon in polar ice that is released and processed by microbes, converting it into methane, and it could double our atmospheric carbon dioxide.

[I should mention that at this point, Mr. Gore showed terrifying footage of the ocean basically boiling as methane gas was released from the deep as a result of this process. More terrifying was the footage of the researcher who dug a hole in ice, put a flame source near the hole, and was blown back by a large, blow torch-like jet of flame, resulting from the ignition of methane escaping from the ice.]

To put things in perspective, as the polar ice caps melt sea level rise. For every meter of rise in sea level, there are and will be 1,000,000 climate refugees on the move.

When the ice is gone, water is gone, and drought results. 40% of the world's people get their drinking water from rivers fed by glaciers. The loss of the ice caps has numerous impacts in this respect.

There are numerous ad campaigns that are deceptively promoting dirty energy. The Alliance for Climate Protection is doing a good job of promoting genuinely good environmental policies.

When a man went to the moon, the entire control room cheered. The mean age in that room was 26 years old. That means that they were eighteen when Kennedy announced the possibility of putting a man on the moon in the first place. Our young people do hold the key to the future.

Upton Sinclair said that, "It's difficult to get someone to understand something when his salary is dependent on him not understanding it." We need to make polluting our environment unprofitable.

We as a species must make a decision. We can continue out present course, which will threaten human civilization, or we have about ten years to make major changes. I wish I could convey to you with language the urgency with which we must act to reverse what is happening. There is no line between the work you do and the civilization in which you live. The world needs you, as scientists. The time to get involved is now.

On Jan. 28, TalkingScience presented a panel on "Science 2.0: Science Outreach Options in an Online World." The discussion focused on methods of reaching new audiences for science via both new and old tools, as well as how to develop a career in science outreach.

Panel Moderator: Ann Marie Cunningham

Ann Marie Cunningham is executive director of TalkingScience, the nonprofit partner of Science Friday, the weekly live news/talk program on science and science policy broadcast on NPR. TalkingScience’s mission is to attract new audiences, especially young people, to science via their medium of choice, the Internet. Ms. Cunningham is a veteran science journalist with experience in print, broadcasting, and the Web. She is co-author of the bestselling Ryan White: My Own Story, and has won a George Foster Peabody Award for Distinguished Public Service Broadcasting.

Panelists

Alexis Gambis




Alexis Gambis expects to complete his Ph.D. in cancer genetics at Rockefeller University in July 2009. He hopes to continue his studies in filmmaking at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He is founder/artistic director of the Imagine Science Film Festival, an annual festival of feature films about science and scientists that made its debut in October 2008, attracting 1,500 people to screenings in three of New York City’s five boroughs. Mr. Gambis is the youngest member of their five-member Sloan Film Advisory Committee. Mr. Gambis’ short films have been a feature of TalkingScience’s bi-monthly science variety shows, TalkingScience Cabarets.




Cindy Maria Quezada, Ph.D.

Cindy Quezada will complete her post-doctoral fellowship in infectious diseases at Rockefeller University in April 2009. In 2005, she won a L’Oreal/UNESCO For Women in Science Fellowship, and used her prize money to study drug-resistant tuberculosis in Rwanda. She has emceed the TalkingScience Cabaret, and produced a Web photo blog and videos in both Spanish and English for TalkingScience’s Web site.

Talia Page

Talia Page is TalkingScience’s Projects Manager, in charge of the TalkingScience Cabaret and other public events. To extend students’ involvement in science after school Cabarets, she has developed PodCast Pals, a Web 2.0 version of pen pals. A future astronaut with Virgin Galactic, she writes a blog, “Space Cadet,” about space for TalkingScience.org.

Video Credits: Katrina Boston, Kenyatta Thompson, Jesse Medalia-Strauss

Thank you to Alice Ly and Yale University for hosting the panel

I am beginning this blog as my preliminary foray into the world of science writing. I hope that readers will find the blog amusing and fascinating as I delve into the amazing world of science, my life as a scientist, and the inextricable link that binds society to scientific discovery.

As prologue to this epic undertaking, I begin by describing my entrance into science. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when I knew that I wanted to be a scientist, because I know that many events contributed to my early childhood desire to learn about and understand the world around me. However, I vividly remember my first light microscope (see an example to the right). I was so excited when I finally figured out how to angle the light just right, so that I could see the specimen through the eyepiece. I quickly tried to find bugs, plants, feathers, and other items that I could observe with my scope. I can't quite explain the rush that comes from seeing something that is blurry and obscure finally come into crystal clear focus, so that details, patterns, textures, colors, and the composite beauty of nature is revealed in all its glory. Ironically, as I am writing this post, I just finished an experiment on another microscope, a high powered scope that can magnify individual groups of proteins within cells, take movies of cells moving along a surface, and illuminate features of the cell in beautiful arrays of color (see examples of my cell images below). However, even with the power of this microscope, it does not compare to the spirit that was ignited with that small light microscope purchased from a local thrift store.

These humble yet exciting beginnings continued through my high school and college career to my current position as a PhD student at Yale University in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. I still feel the rush of observing nature under the microscope and discovering something that no one has seen or thought of before. I think it is this rush, this overwhelming desire to discover something new that drives most scientists. I think it is very similar to the rush that Da Vinci must have felt when he finished the last stroke on a painting, that Barack Obama felt when the last state secured his majority for the presidency, that Dr. Shumway felt when the heart he just transplanted beat for the first time, or that Michael Phelps felt when he won his record eighth gold medal in the Beijing Olympics. These feelings are common to the human experience, and I hope to portray scientists and their lives in a way that will feel familiar to you, the reader. I will also highlight important and enlightening discoveries that will directly impact the way we think and live. Lastly, I hope to illuminate and bring the beauties of life and nature into crystal clear focus through the lens of my life.

Noted for its diverse immigrant population and panoramic vistas of the Manhattan skyline, Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood has served as set for historic moments since the birth of the United States. In August 1776, Sunset Park's topography challenged the Redcoats' advance against the Rebels in the Battle of Brooklyn. Almost two hundred years later, in 1958, the neighborhood shuttled Elvis Presley from the Brooklyn Army Terminal to his military post in Germany. And just a few months ago, that same Brooklyn Army Terminal became host for the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) AIDS Vaccine Design and Development Laboratory. As the first tenant within the neighborhood’s planned 500,000 square foot bioscience center, the Design Lab has innovation at its core: it is the only facility in the world dedicated solely to the development of an AIDS vaccine.

But why here? And why not before now?

“We looked at lots of spaces within a 50 mile radius,” says Dr. Timothy Zamb, head of the design lab. “There were actually pigeons flying over the columns when we first looked at this site two years ago”. Synergies stemming from sharing a building with other bioscientists, and heavy support from Brooklyn’s SUNY Downstate Medical Center moved the Brooklyn Army Terminal site to the lead. And pigeons aside, Dr. Zamb and colleagues liked the look of the place. “It seemed to fit the image of IAVI as a non-governmental organization”, says Dr. Zamb. Also, the neighborhood’s infamous restaurant rows can’t have hurt.

But with HIV and AIDS having ravaged the world for decades, and total global investment in preventive HIV-vaccine R&D reaching almost $1 B in 2007, what makes now the right time for a lab devoted to AIDS vaccine discovery and development in NYC?

The answer, in part, stems from a perfect storm of factors that make now a great time to propel biotech to the forefront of NYC’s economy, but also, from IAVI’s unique operating model that frees scientific discovery from some of the pressures inherent to academia and industry – pressures that, while designed to ensure accountability in the form of publications or quarterly numbers, can too often thwart true progress by a short-term focus or create needless busy work.

For example, the rigorous and exhaustive experiments necessary for discovering the appropriate vector to deliver the vaccine are not funded by traditional academic grant agencies. However, at the design lab, the scientists are free to take the most thorough and iterative approach to the problem.

However, the research is not confined to the space on the top floor of the Brooklyn Army Terminal; rather, the collaboration with other labs and individuals wraps around the globe. Research consortiums and clinical trial centers exist on five of the seven continents, altering the traditional balance of collaboration and competition toward the former in achieving progress in science. In addition, the organization has taken a unique approach to finding the best ideas – for example, in December, a “$150,000 protein search challenge” was issued through the global innovation marketplace InnoCentive, Inc. The hope is that the challenge of designing a protein that mimics part of HIV, and thus can trigger an immune response, will be met by InnoCentive’s network of 165,000 “Solvers”, very smart people who love solving problems.

If history serves as harbinger, we can be sure of more historic moments to come from this nexus on cutting edge science and organization bubbling in Sunset Park.

The International AIDS Vaccine Initative’s AIDS Vaccine Design and Development Laboratory opened at the Brooklyn Army Terminal on November 12, 2008. The author had the chance to visit the design lab two months after opening, in January 2009. You can learn more about IAVI, and the design lab, here:
www.iavi.org/LabOpening
and more about Innocentive, Inc., here:
www.innocentive.com

Photo captions:
At left, view of the Brooklyn Army Terminal from the waterfront.
At right, scientists Dr. Timothy Zamb and Dr. Stephen Kaminsky by a state-of-the-art 24-color flow cytometer, provided by Becton Dickinson at a reduced rate.

This is my second post in honor of Squirrel Appreciation Day. When I first asked myself,"What wild animals live in big cities?" Squirrels (and birds) were the first animals that came to mind.

Eastern Gray Squirrels are arboreal (the live in trees) and are tied to forest or wooded ecosystems. They depend on trees for food  (various types of seeds, nuts, berries, and fruits) and for shelter. For a long time I believed squirrels only lived in hollow trees. They do live in tree hollows, but they also build nests. I learned this in college when I completed a biology class research project on squirrel animal behavior. The nests are called dreys. Squirrels gather dead leaves and twigs. The dead leaves make great insulation and they wedge the materials in the forks of trees, at the higher parts of the tree.

Very large hollow in a Sycamore tree, that looks like it might be a great squirrel home.

Squirrel nests in a sweet gum tree.

Two squirrel nests in one tree. Very likely, these nests belong to the same squirrel.

Close-up of one of the nests. Notice how the drey is wedged in the fork of the tree.

At 1:00 PM on New Year's Day, hundreds of people gathered on the beach at Coney Island, NY, and splashed in the Atlantic Ocean despite the below-freezing temperature. It was time for the Coney Island Polar Bear Club annual New Year's plunge. The crowd was diverse: tattooed grandmothers, rosy-cheeked children, nearly-naked frat boys, a scientist from Rockefeller University, a six-fingered Coney Island USA employee on his break from the Freak Show; the director of the New York Aquarium where many animals frolic happily in cold weather and water; a polar-bear advocate carrying a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Sarah Palin (in a campaign-trail suit, not a bathing suit); and a dozen Russian beach babes in bikinis. All, including cardboard Sarah, made a rush for the water like one big, happy, crazy family. Many puffed on cigarettes to keep warm or guzzled beer to help numb their brains as their limbs turned blue, and I'm not sure how many tried the most effective trick to warming up (urinating in the water, of course). No one ever said this would be was good clean fun. But it did look like a good time.

The TalkingScience team talked about the swim for a week beforehand, but only one of us had the guts to go for it. The morning of Jan. 1, 2009, was frigid -- colder than it was on January 15, when the U.S. Airways flight landed in the Hudson River. Some of us chickened out:

"I'll interview the swimmers for a blog entry!" I shouted through three layers of scarves.
"Someone's gotta film and I know how to work the camera," volunteered Cindy, our photographer.
No one else from our team even showed up. That left our executive director, warm-hearted Ann Marie, to grit and bear the cold and swim for science.

Videographer: Cindy Maria Quezada, Ph.D.
Editor: Jesse Medalia-Strauss
Special thanks: New York Aquarium, Coney Island Polar Bear Club, Coney Island USA

Interview with Ann Marie Cunningham, Polar Bear Extraordinaire:

Space Cadet: Congratulations on becoming a Coney Island Polar Bear! It is a great way to bring in 2009, an International Polar Year. Now, I have a few questions about your mental and physical health: I've read that ice swimming is a popular sport in northern countries and there are a number of swimmers who blog about their experiences. Some of the survivors of this extreme sport claim that swimming in the freezing cold is a very effective anti-depressant. I found absolutely no scientific facts to back this claim. I know it was too cold to feel your fingers and toes, but did you feel a wonderful surge of joy as you felt the icy touch of the Atlantic Ocean on your bare skin? Would you recommend it to depressed people who tend to snuggle in their warm beds, avoiding the cold, cruel world?

Ann Marie: I felt a wonderful surge of joy when I left the Atlantic Ocean! It was exhilarating afterwards, once I was out of the water. Maybe it was the feeling of accomplishing something I'd never done before, and never, ever expected to do. In Germany, naturopathists and lots of people, even the elderly, take for granted the benefits of plunging into icy water every day. If you take a cold swim daily, or at least a cold shower twice a day, supposedly it will boost your immune system, prevent colds, lower your cholesterol and blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, make your skin radiant, improve your circulation--and your mood! I have taken saunas and then cold showers afterwards. Now that's an upper; you have lots of energy afterwards and feel terrific. After the Polar Bear Plunge, mostly I just felt cold. I understand people with more body fat do better.

Space Cadet: Did your skin go numb?

Ann Marie: My toes and feet, which were in the water the longest, went white and numb immediately. Everything else burned! I've seen photos of a Greek Orthodox custom where on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, men dive into ice-bound rivers to retrieve a crucifix. I can't imagine diving headlong into water that cold!

Space Cadet: Any ideas about the science behind your physical reactions?

Ann Marie: I'm reading a wonderful book called Life at the Extremes: The Science of Survival, a British physiologist, Frances Ashcroft (Flamingo/HarperCollins, 2001). She says that below about 28 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus three degrees Celsius), cold begins to feel painful to your bare skin. Your body conserves heat by moving warm blood away from the surface of your skin, alternately constricting and expanding blood vessels. Your skin goes white, then red and burning. You know how you get a red nose and cheeks when you're out in the cold? At Coney Island on New Year’s Day, with the wind chill, it was 17 degrees Fahrenheit! So cold that Cindy's still camera wouldn't work. Certainly what you hear is true: wool keeps you warm even when it's wet. My ski socks were made of some miracle knit, and were useless once they got damp on the sand.

Space Cadet: Were you worried about hypothermia? I recall that 20 people went to the hospital with hypothermia on inauguration day. It was 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ann Marie: I did think about it. You can succumb rapidly, within a few minutes, if you're completely submersed in cold water. Remember Titanic? After the boat sinks, Leonardo di Caprio's character has only his head and shoulders out of the water; he quickly sinks and drowns. I didn't plan to stay in the water long enough to be really worried. It turns out that Cindy and I inadvertently did the exact right thing: if you want to dodge hypothermia, you must eat. Our bodies need fuel to keep us warm, and in extreme cold, your need for calories rises dramatically. Before I plunged in, we went to Nathan's and scarfed down hot dogs and lots of fries. (Chemical fact: a study by some New Jersey high school students found that the fries at Nathan's at Coney Island taste better than they do elsewhere, because the saltwater mist in the air reacts with cooking oil to leave the fries brown and crusty on the outside, and white and fluffy inside. Yum!)

Space Cadet: One drunken swimmer slurred to me, “Hhhheeey, TalkingScience, did you know that swimming in the cold is grrrrreat for your circulation?” But you felt stiff the day after your swim, and that isn't a sign of great circulation.

Ann Marie: I guess your swimmer has been reading the German natural-medicine studies. The best way to warm someone up who has been in danger of hypothermia is to immerse him or her in a hot bath. Probably if I'd taken a bath right away, instead of drinking hot toddies in the Freak Show bar with Cindy, I wouldn't have been stiff!

Space Cadet: Would you do it again?

Ann Marie: Maybe I should. I have felt really fine since the stiffness wore off! I'd like to find out what the Polar Bear Club plunge is like when it's not quite so exceptionally cold. But I won't make a daily habit of it. Ask me the week before New Year's Day 2010!

Image by Daniel Lang

The New Year has started with a not insignificant victory for environmental groups and anyone concerned about public health. On January 7^th, an appeals court in Cincinnati, Ohio, ruled that the Bush administration could no longer exempt pesticides from the federal permit requirements for pollutants. This should mean that pesticides can no longer be indiscriminately dumped in the nation’s water supplies to the detriment of the ecosystem, and also fish, wildlife and human health.

The fact that pesticides have, until now, been exempt from the usual rules applying to water pollutants has been a subject of controversy. Some environmental groups would also argue that it is yet another example of how the EPA’s loyalty under the current government has been to the chemical or energy industry rather than the environment. However, with the entrance of the new government the mood has become more positive and hopes run high.

"We look forward to working with the new EPA to protect the environment rather than the chemical industry,” said Charlie Tebbutt, Western Environmental Law Center attorney and lead counsel for the environmental organizations and organic farms that challenged the rule.

Pesticides are carried into water supply in rainwater runoff from farm fields, suburban lawns, or roadside embankments. On occasion they are even sprayed into streams and rivers as part of the pest-control effort. However, they can have a highly damaging effect on the ecosystem and plant and animal life. Even “safe levels” of pesticides have resulted in a declining amphibian population. Atrazine, the second most commonly used pesticide in the U.S, has been linked to incidents of hermaphroditism observed in freshwater fish. Two years ago, EPA-funded scientists at the University of Colorado studied the fish in Boulder Creek and found of the 123 trout and other fish they netted, 101 were female, 12 were male and 10 were intersex. Atrazine was banned in the European Union (EU) in 2004 because of its persistent groundwater contamination, but in the U.S. 76 million pounds of it are applied each year.

Pesticides, via water, can also work themselves into the food chain, ultimately being consumed by both animals and humans. Ingested in sufficient quantities, they have been found to cause damage to reproductive systems, the nervous system, the liver, and DNA. They have also been thought to have a play a part in a variety of cancers.

The Clean Water Act is the act that protects the water supply and regulates the discharge of pollutants into the water supply. But, in Nov. 27, 2007 a rule by the Bush administration excluded pesticides from the Clean Water Act’s permitting requirements. This meant that farmers could indiscriminately spray pesticides without concern as to pesticide run-off into the water supply.

The 2007 ruling brought strong opposition from environmentalists who have challenged since it since came into effect. Groups, which have opposed the rule, include the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy, Oregon Wild, Californians for Alternatives to Toxics, Waterkeeper Alliance, Environment Maine, and Toxics Action Center. These groups upheld that the exemption was harmful for fish, aquatic life and humans and applauded the judges’ decision.

"This decision will help ensure, in communities across the country, that aquatic pests are addressed in ways that protect both water quality and the public health," said Chuck Caldart of the National Environmental Law Center, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs.

Pesticides and the Rocky Mountain States

While the environmental groups challenging the law such were mainly from California and Oregon the Rocky Mountain States have their own pesticide issues.

A research study in Beyond Pesticides, 2008, by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) found pesticides in the surface waters in the Cache La Poudre River in Colorado. This river is used as a source for public water systems and the study found that low levels of the chemicals remained in the public water supplies even after being treated. Among the most commonly found pollutant was Atrazine. Although the measured concentration of the chemicals was low, less than 0.1 part per billion some scientists point to health effects associated to low level exposures well below the regulatory standards set by the government. For more details: http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2008/5208

Another USGS study in 2006 sampled pesticides in the surface water in the Bighorn and North Platte River Basins in Wyoming. This study also found detectable concentrations of pesticides (18 in total) in both river basins. The most commonly detected pesticide in the Bighorn River Basin was also Atrazine. For more details: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2007/3017/pdf/fs2007-3017.pdf

An earlier study by the USGS performed in both Wyoming and Montana found detectable levels of pesticides in all the sampling areas. For more details: http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2008/5012/pdf/sir2008-5012web.pdf

References

http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/01/08/Court_Cancels_EPA_Pesticide_Exemption.htm

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2009/2009-01-07-093.asp

This last week the Supreme Court has been hearing the case of Entergy v. Riverkeeper, which in layman's terms boils down to Power Plants v. Fish, or, as always, The Bush Administration v. Environmentalists.

But, while not being directly relevant to the Rocky Mountain states at this stage, the case itself proves to be of relevance to just about anyone who is concerned about environmental conservation, clean water, and the role of the government agency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in protecting the environment.

The dispute in question is over what steps older power plants should take to limit water use and minimize damage to the environment. Currently older power plants pull water into intake pipes in order to cool machinery: in the U.S. an estimated 200 billion gallons per day. However, along with the water comes fish and other aquatic organisms which are killed in the process.

In order to prevent this carnage, a provision in the Clean Water Act requires power plants to install water intake structures that “reflect the best technology available for minimizing adverse environmental impact.” Whereas newer power plants have been constructed with closed-cycle cooling systems that to some extent alleviate the problem, the problem lies with the older power plants. Retrofitting older power plants with the new machinery is costly and industry representatives argue that the costs could drive up the price of electricity and even cause some plants to close. All, they say, for the sake of a few fish.

In 2004, in response to industry pleas, the Bush administration passed a rule that allowed the power plants to chose among several alternatives to reduce environmental harm from cooling water intake structures. This rule allowed them to avoid installing the best available technology if the costs outweighed the benefits.

Without stating the obvious, the costs and benefits under consideration where not those of your average trout. And, in response to the rule, six states and a coalition of environmental groups, led by Riverkeeper, sued, arguing the Clean Water Act does not permit accounts of economic costs and benefits to be taken into account when deciding on cooling water intake rules.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit agreed with this argument and struck down the regulation. However, this act only prompted the Bush administration and several utilities to appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is now, therefore, considering legislation that will affect the economics of 550 power plants in the U.S. and the fate of many more fish.

The case, as presented, centers around Congress’s original intention in Section 316(b) of the Clean Water Act and the phrasing of the provision. Did congress explicitly remove the consideration of costs and benefits from the calculation of the “best” technology? If so, the rule would be in favor of the fish. Or, is the provision ambiguous enough to allow the EPA to exercise control in considering the costs and benefits to all concerned?

U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Daryl Joseffer argued in the court on Tuesday December 9^th that the statute's language is ambiguous and gives the EPA deference to balance costs and benefits. Arguing for the environmentalists, however, Georgetown University law professor Richard Lazarus said the statute clearly does not give the EPA this authority.

His argument was that best available technology “should not stop short of whatever is required to stop killing large quantities of river organisms.”

The judges, for the most part, were skeptical of the argument by Joseffer, and questioned how the economic costs and benefits of technology versus fish could be weighed in any meaningful way.

"Are 1,000 plankton worth $1 million?" said Justice Souter. "I don't know."

Given that it is almost impossible to put a price on the environment, a cost-benefit analysis would be biased in favor of industry and would, Souter said, it would "basically eliminate the whole technology-driven point of the statute."

Justice Anthony Kennedy said that his interpretation of the Clean Water Act was that best available technology meant "the most rigorous of standards," and questioned where in the provision there were any suggestions with respect to cost considerations.

Lazarus, in discussing the role of the EPA, argued that the agency could consider whether the costs can be "reasonably borne by industry." However, he argued that it is not in the position to determine whether the benefits are not worth the costs when considering the installation of the best technology.

While not all the justices were not in favor of the environmental stance, Justice Breyer attempted to strike a middle ground. He sketched out a vision of 316(b) in which costs were taken into account, and evenly balanced against benefits, but only in a limited fashion to prevent absurd results. He pointed out that for 30 years prior to the 2004 rule, the EPA has successfully “had a way” to consider whether the costs were "grossly disproportionate" and unreasonable to industry.

"Why not let sleeping dogs lie?" Breyer asked.

While the case is expected to be ruled on in the spring it raises broader questions than the well being of the fish and other aquatic creatures. A key issue is how we perceive and value the environment that we live in, and what sacrifices we are prepared to make in order to protect and preserve our national resources.

Can we afford the luxury of seeing ourselves as separate from our environment and trying to use the simple metric of economics to justify tampering with the ecosystem that balances the dynamics between the humans and the planet?

If the current state of the environment, natural resources, and world economics are anything to go on it would seem that the answer is not. While the well being of a few fish may seem insignificant in relation to our economics, that is simply a short-sighted and somewhat myopic perception. Unbalancing, wasting and destroying the natural environment is a course of action that could lead to no end of future problems, the least of them being economic.

Finally, we need to support and protect laws that have been put in place to protect vital resources and deliberately put them outside the realm of economic accountability. To interpret this particular provision in terms of a cost-benefits analysis would not only be disastrous but would be the start of a slippery slope towards an undermining of the intent of the Clean Water Act as established in Congress in 1974.

And who do we need to support this act? A government agency whose sole goal is to protect the environment. Now, there is a novel thought – an Environmental Protection Agency. Because right now you could be forgiven for thinking that the acronym EPA stood for the Energy Promotion Agency.

Resources

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/oral-argument-recap-entergy-v-riverkeeper/

Monday, December 8th, 2008 12:37 pm | Max Schwartz

Highest U.S. Court Ponders Power Plants and Fish Protection

By J.R. Pegg

The term "clean coal" is an oxymoron; even if the clean coal technologies do manage to "wash the coal" or bury carbon emissions deep in the ground, coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of mercury pollution in the U.S. And the mercury released pollutes the nation's water resources, posing a serious public health threat to the population.

However, given that coal is a fundamental form of energy in the U.S., and will be around for the foreseeable future, a hopeful first step has been taken to reduce mercury pollution. Starting next year, 11 coal fired power plants in Colorado will have to measure how much mercury they are emitting, with a view to eventually using the information to reduce mercury pollution. The goal of state regulators is to reduce mercury emissions in Colorado by 90% in the next 10 years.

According to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) coal burning power plants account for the majority of man made mercury emissions worldwide. And in the U.S, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that these plants are the single largest source of mercury air pollution, accounting for roughly 40 percent of all mercury emissions nationwide. The non-profit, the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), estimates that the top 50 most-polluting power plants in the U.S. emitted 20 tons of the dangerous neurotoxin mercury into the nation’s air in 2007.

And mercury is certainly a ubiquitous toxin. Once in the atmosphere, up to 50 percent of the mercury from coal-fired power plants can travel up to 600 miles before it makes its way into the lakes and rivers, far from the original point of source. According to UNEP trace amounts of Mercury can be found in every individual living on earth today.

The consequences of mercury exposure can be deadly. Exposure over minimal levels has been associated with nervous system damage, brain damage, blindness, and damage to the kidneys, thyroid gland, and the immune system. Even very low levels of exposure can have severe impacts on human health.

However, the most seriously affected sectors of the population are newborn infants and unborn babies to which even very small levels of mercury can be toxic. Mercury in the mother can be transmitted through breast mile and then pass across the infant’s blood-brain barrier and can result in cognitive disorders and learning problems later in life. The Centers of Disease Control has found that roughly six percent of American women carry mercury concentrations at levels considered to put a fetus at risk of neurological damage.

Although it is widely accepted that coal-fired power plants emit toxic levels of mercury, little has been done to regulate mercury emissions. And it is not that regulating mercury is impossible. The EIP states that working remedies for mercury pollution are readily available. A recent EIP report outlines the ways in which mercury pollution can be reduced with existing technologies; it states that one specific technology, activated carbon injection, can achieve mercury reductions of 90 percent.

However, the EIP reports also states that the EPA has backed away from strict power plant regulation. And, in February 2008, a federal appeals court ruled that the EPA’s approach to power plant mercury violates the Clean Air Act. Even so, a federal rule to regulate mercury pollution was overturned earlier this year.

While progress in reducing mercury pollution has proved disappointing so far, the latest move in Colorado to monitor mercury emissions may be a step in the right direction. Paul Tourangeau, the state’s director of the air pollution control division, says that utilities will install mercury monitors inside power plants smoke stacks next year that will tell regulators how much mercury the plants release into the atmosphere.

Talking on Colorado Public Radio on Tuesday November 25^th, Tourangeau stated that, "The monitors will give us that baseline from which we can then really understand consistently what are the mercury emissions and then understand to what levels do they need to bring those emissions down to, by using control technologies that they are prepared to install."

This statement, however, strikes at the nub of the problem. Monitoring mercury levels is one thing but the real mark of progress will be what the power companies are willing to do to reduce mercury emissions. And, until policy changes are made to enforce these reductions we might be waiting a long time.

While the situation in the West is not yet at the scale of that in the arid countries of Israel and Palestine, where there have been 21 armed disputes over the Jordan River, there are increasing disputes in the region over water resources. And some of these are requiring federal intervention to resolve.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court appointed a special master to investigate allegations by Montana that Wyoming is withholding more water than it is entitled to. This latest intervention follows a line of bickering and disagreement between the neighbor states over water rights that have centered on the Tongue and Powder rivers. Montana argues that these are being drained by Wyoming’s excessive water use.

The Tongue and Powder rivers flow through northern Wyoming and southern Montana before draining into the Yellowstone River. And Montana argues that the 1950 Yellowstone River Compact, which allocates each state a share of the water and its tributaries, is being violated by the water usage practices of Wyoming. The state says that the leaching of river water is harming the Montana consumers and farmers who rely it.

In 2004 and 2006 Montana attempted to negotiate with Wyoming to increase the water flows downstream. In 2007, however, when these negotiations proved unsuccessful, Montana sued Wyoming, alleging that the state’s agriculture and energy industries were using too much water and violating the interstate agreement.

But in April 2008 Wyoming’s attorney general, Bruce Salzberg, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss the lawsuit. Salzberg argued that the suit was “fundamentally flawed” as it discussed the use of water from the river basins as well as the rivers themselves. His argument was that the compact solely covers the use of the rivers’ water.

Montana’s argument is that Wyoming is storing water that should be delivered downstream, and is also pumping underground water reserves to irrigate farmland that should feed into the two rivers. Underground water supplies are also pumped extensively as part of the process of coal bed methane production.

However, Wyoming argues that the Yellowstone compact encourages the construction of reservoirs and that depletion of the groundwater is outside the scope of the 1950 agreement. Montana attorney general Mike McGrath argued that Wyoming was giving precedence to its own residents at the expense of downstream farmers in Montana.

This is not the only dispute that is running over water issues between the two states. Each of the states has been trying to gain a greater share of the Bighorn River, another tributary of the Yellowstone to the West. In addition, Montana has drawn up new water quality standards that affect the Tongue and Powder rivers. Wyoming argues the new standards could dampen its energy industry development and this dispute has reached the federal courts as well.

As demand for water increases and water in the arid Western states becomes even scarcer, more of these disputes are likely to crop up. The precise details of laws and regulations are going to be tested, as are the negotiation skills of all the stakeholders. However, just as the early pioneers were known for their rugged individualism, they were also known for their ability to co-operate to "Win the West." And it will be precisely this skill that is needed to prevent the region entering a new "era of water wars."

By Laura Pelcher

Two hundred pumping hearts form a web across the oval field in Madison Square Park. Pulse Park, an installation by Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, measures heartbeats in visitors' hands with two sensor sculptures and projects the two hundred most recent measurements with narrow-beam light. Each light dramatically projects a beam onto the field while illuminating the energy of humanity within each of us.

Blood rushing in and out of the chambers of a heart is well represented by the flooding and retraction of a single light onto a grassy field. Multiply by two hundred hearts pumping and one contemplates how powerful we are as a collective. In one hour, with an average of seventy heart beats per minute per light, there are 1.4 million beams of light. If you only stand in the oval field for five minutes, seventy thousand beams of light will wash over you. The insight and poetry in Lozano-Hemmer's interactive visual representation of humans displays simply what a phenomenon is it that we exist. He reminds us that if the heart pauses too long, one is either left in the dark or walking towards a bright light.

By Cindy Quezada

Rochester, Minnesota is home to the esteemed Mayo Clinic and IBM, two of the largest employers in the area. However, by the year 2020, they won't have anyone to employ! There just aren't enough young people who are becoming scientists, physicians, and engineers. In order to address this upcoming shortage of skilled workers, the Rochester Chamber of Commerce has had the foresight to establish a program called Workforce 2020. Exciting kids about science and inspiring them to enter technical fields is a top priority. On November 5th, 2008 (yes, Election Day!) approximately 700 middle and high school students attended a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Summit. The gym at the Rochester Community and Technical College was full of booths where kids could enjoy interactive science exhibits and demonstrations. They seemed to have a lot of fun. TalkingScience was graciously invited to participate in the fair. We made ice cream in minutes using liquid nitrogen, showed kids how to see DNA from their own spit (I know, it's pretty gross), and raffled off Danika McKellar math books because she's right, math doesn't suck. In fact, it's very cool! I only wish I was better at it...

Geothermal Power, termed the prolific renewable source that most people have never heard of by LA Times reporter Marla Dickerson, is energy that is generated by heat stored in the earth. The most common technique of harnessing this energy is to drill into underground reservoirs tapping steam and very hot water that are used primarily to drive power turbines. And most importantly Geothermal Power is an energy source is that it is both fully renewable and clean – greenhouse gas emissions are minimal.

However, geothermal energy has until now been an under-exploited resource. The reservoirs can be both hard to locate and expensive to reach, and these factors have played an important role in the fact that the U.S. currently derives less than 0.5% of its electricity from geothermal energy sources.

But now that’s all about to change. In late October, Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced that more than 190 million acres of federal land in 12 western states would be opened for development of geothermal energy resources.

"Geothermal energy will play a key role in powering America's energy future, which requires a wide variety of energy sources," Kempthorne said in a conference call with reporters.

Kempthorne also predicted that the plans could increase the nation's supply of geothermal energy to power more than 5.5 million homes within seven years and 12 million homes by 2025. The Geothermal Energy Association said new projects are underway in Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

"This is the new gold rush," said Mark Taylor, a geothermal analyst with the consulting firm New Energy Finance in Washington. A powerful mix of factors have led to the current support to geothermal energy production; the financial meltdown on Wall Street, soaring oil prices, the volatility of the natural gas market, and concern about global warming to name but a few. Backed up with federal tax credits and state laws mandating the wider use of renewable energy the prospects have never looked better.

Relative to non-renewable energy sources there are, however, some environmental concerns associated with geothermal energy. Hot water from the deep below the earth’s surface contains trace amounts of toxins such as mercury and arsenic and care has to be taken with respect to where the water is discharged. This has raised the concerns of groups such as the Wilderness Society who, although supporting the development of geothermal programs, are questioning the speed at which changes are taking place. Lack of adequate planning with respect to waste disposal has been the downfall of many operations that seek to use underground resources.

A rapid transition away from fossil fuels is important but not at the expense of our clean air and water and our public lands," said Alex Daue, outreach coordinator of the Wilderness Society's Bureau of Land Management Action Center. "A more measured approach would be better for the public and our public lands in the long run."

The more I talked with friends, the more I could see that they were into learning about the candidates' stances on science and science policy, but had no idea that the answers were out there. I'm a scientist who's been pretty much chained to the bench since I was 19 (it's been 13 years since), so it's easy for me to encounter things like that issue of Nature. It's all over for me. My friends? Not so much. A few musicians, a few realtors, a journalist with no scientific specialties, a PR exec for some high-end restaurants, they aren't running into Nature. We've all been feeling like it's pretty tough to get straight answers on much of anything out of the candidates, even if those "straight answers" are crafted by a team, and I've had no expectations about hearing a whole lot that gave me great clarity on the candidates' views beyond what they've already presented, let alone hearing a peep about science. Given the good company, I had an event here that I called Night Lab in Chicago for the public on Sunday to highlight the Science Debate 2008 call and response, and was astounded by the fact (and grateful) that the majority of the people there were complete strangers--they really want to hear about this!

Dr. Geoff Morris, an ecology and evolutionary biologist here at the University of Chicago, and Dr. Matthew Shapiro, a political scientist at the Illinois Institute of Technology, provided analysis and insight into the candidates' responses to the first three questions. That alone took two hours, and the discussion was fantastic. The guys were so perfectly apolitical while really helping all of us understand what the answers meant in practical terms for science. Even if there had been no discussion, 50 people in Chicago who did not know about Science Debate 2008 or the questions and answers (and seven questions about women and minorities in STEM posed by the Association of Women in Science that followed) knew about them when the night was over. They could go online and read about what the candidates think before they headed to the polls. They had something new to think about. We're going to continue what we started at the companion site to the events series, Science-is-sexy.com, where you can also watch the event online.

The thing that stood out to me on Sunday night the most was a comment from a friend of mine who works at a local museum (Chicago has really good museums). At some point we were talking about education, and having this super serious discussion, and she was encouraging the group not to discount the role of informal education in all this, and was asking where that factored in. I had no answer, other than understanding how important informal education is, but it occurred to me that fun is so important when you're trying to reach people who aren't into science or are intimidated by it. I'm not trying to make light of anything here, but it occurred to me as she was speaking that trips to museums take the intimidation factor out of science and pretty much rule if you're trying to reach an audience-you're not being graded, you're there to have fun, it's probably a weekend. She described museum visitors' quick walk through an exhibit, and how she designs exhibits so that they get the point when they only read half of the information, and it really clicked for me-how do we make the discussion even more egalitarian? I'm all for using any means to reach people, and it's dawning on me more and more that we have to keep looking for ways to reach folks who aren't necessarily self-described science fans.

Even if you don't do it before the election, send your friends to the Science Debate site to read the questions. No matter who wins, the political outlook on science is reflected in those responses, and you can make up your mind about how comfortable you are with the next president's ideas, and I'm betting good money that you'll be inspired, if you aren't already, to help the movement to put science back on the map with our political leaders.

Politics is based on everything that science is not. Years of study are largely unnecessary. Politicians need only the ability to read and write 4 things: Yeah, Nay, their own signature, and the digits on the check they are receiving by lobbyists to alter their votes.

But what about facts?

Most people have never heard of the IPCC report, let alone the opening statement, the entirety of section 2 and much of section 6.1. Apparently, neither has Sarah Palin, possibly our future Vice President.

Sarah Palin isn’t sure of what caused global warming, “I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.... But there are real changes going on in our climate.”

Of course, she knows how to fix it. “What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts? We have got to clean up this planet...We have got to reduce emissions.” She manages to contradict her own statement only a sentence later. I’m still not sure what “positively affecting[ing] the impacts” of climate change is supposed to mean. Is that investing in flood insurance? Maybe buying land in Alaska?

Palin loves to tout the phrase “’drill, baby, drill.’” Not only would that take 10 years to get any benefit, but ironically, would occur after Palin would be out of office, leaving some other poor sap to deal with the issue of increased green house gasses levels.

The real question is not her beliefs. They are fairly obvious. The question is whether she knows about these issues, or if she is simply completely unaware of the realities. Many people have said many things about her qualifications. I'm not going to argue those. My question is about knowledge. Is it ignorance?

In 2005, a spill of organic solvents from a uranium mill south of Canon city killed 40 ducks and geese. Now, however, the question is whether incidences of water pollution from the mine, owned by Cotter Corp. is behind a slew of health problems experienced by the local population.

In response to the expressed concerned of residents and the medical community, this week has seen the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency launch a full scale public health review of the area. This is the first study of its kind since the mine started operating in 1958. The purpose of the review is to investigate the link between possible pollution of the groundwater supply, and the observed increase of a variety of health disorders, such as cancer and neurological problems, in the Cañon City area.

In 1988, the Cotter Corp. uranium mill was declared a Superfund site; a Superfund site being any land that has been contaminated by hazardous waste and identified by Environmental Protection Agency as a candidate for cleanup because it poses a risk to human health. However, although the site is currently not in use, the cleanup has only partially been carried out. And incidences of proven water pollution have been frequent.

Earlier in the summer, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) issued a Notice of Violation to Cotter Corp. for exceeding groundwater standard for uranium. And on Sunday, the Denver Post reported that both state documents and Cotter mill operators have confirmed that a new plume of contaminated groundwater is spreading from the mill toward Cañon City and the Arkansas River.

As it seems that groundwater pollution from the site certainly exists, the Environmental Protection Agency is looking into how many of the residents are relying on the groundwater for drinking or cooking and the current review is investigating the potential impact to public health.

Concerns about water and air pollution from Uranium mining and the consequences of such pollution on the local environment and humans is by no means unique to Cañon City. With the current uranium mining rush, citizens and legislators are uniting in trying to tighten regulations and in some cases prevent mines from opening.

In Wyoming, the Department of Environmental Quality has issued a notice of violation to Power Resources Inc., which operates an in-situ leach uranium mine north of Douglas. Previously touted as a "model" Uranium mine, its website proclaims that it "uses an environment-friendly in-situ recovery (ISR) mining technique to extract uranium." However, the investigative report filed details several environmental concerns including delayed restoration of groundwater and "routine" spills as a result of mining operations.

In Northern Colorado proposals to build a Uranium mine near Fort Collins and Greeley by Powertech Uranium Corporation has been strongly opposed by the group Coloradoans Against Resource Destruction (CARD), which is concerned about the health, environmental and economic impacts that proposals to mine uranium would have on northern Colorado.

The proposed open-pit area would take place 7 miles from Fort Collins, within 20 miles of 275,000 residents and members of CARD believe that there is a high risk that deadly radioactive compounds will leach outside of the uranium deposit and contaminate Front Range water supplies.

Given the track record of the Cañon City and Wyoming mines it would seem that their concerns are well justified. The objective stated on their website is to pull together as a community and prevent mining from destroying their local economy, water, health, and environment and in their words, "protect our valuable resources, especially water, for future generations."

Rain. Just because it falls on your roof doesn't mean it's yours. At least not in Colorado or Utah.

In these states, citizens or businesses that attempt to collect or store rainwater are in fact breaking the law. The overriding rule here is that of prior appropriation i.e. in order to have any rights to water you have to gain a state water right.

However, in the drought plagued, over appropriated Western states, most of the water is already spoken for, which can make securing a water right complicated, if not impossible.

Although, in the context of history, the reasoning behind such legislature makes sense, it creates an irritating hurdle to conservation minded citizens who merely wish to optimize the use of water resources.

The laws are in place to ensure that those who have a legal right to water will receive their full share of the water appropriated to them. However, this legislation can result in a waste of valuable water resources in states where water is often a scarcity. In certain areas, much of the water that falls on rural residents’ property rarely makes it to the local rivers. A recent hydrological study found that in the undeveloped areas of Douglas County, Colorado, only a small proportion of the precipitation that falls on the undeveloped areas ever makes it to the streams.

In addition, advocates of water harvesting argue that allowing residents to collect rainwater that falls on their properties would reduce reliance on standard water supplies, alleviating the economic burden on public utilities budgets. In other states, such as Texas, the practice of water harvesting is fully supported, and residential rainwater collection systems have been subsidized.

In recognition of the potential advantages of water harvesting, state legislators in Utah and Colorado are working on new laws that would allow water collection of rain water runoff, on a small scale, without having to secure a water right. Although the logistics are extremely complex, in Colorado so many groups have a vested interest in the over appropriated water resources, legislators believe that rural residents will be legally able to harvest water next year.

The next step will then be to allow the same opportunities for residents in the cities. In Washington, another state that normally requires use of a state water right to capture water, the city of Seattle now has a master water permit allowing residents to collect some rainwater. In Colorado and Utah, some city officials believe that a similar system would be of benefit to them too.

Says Jeff Niermeyer, Salt Lake City's public utilities director, in an interview with the High Country News; "The advantage to the city is that we can then take some demand off our system. That means we won't have to develop other (water) sources as soon."

Resource:

High Country News: "A good idea - if you can get away with it" by Peter Friederici

http://www.hcn.org/issues/40.18/a-good-idea-2013-if-you-can-get-away-with-it

Selenium, right by arsenic in the periodic table, is a poison in anything other than the smallest quantities. Over-exposure in humans has been found to result in hair and nail loss, loss of mental alertness, irritability, and liver disease. Higher levels of ingested selenium has also been linked to increased cancer rates.

And selenium accumulation is also devastating to ecosystems. In the 1980s, scientists of the USGS found that the high selenium content of the Kesterton river was responsible for the deaths and deformities of thousands of fish and waterfowl. Eventually the fish and flowers died, the survivors were mosquitoes and algae, and the site was declared a toxic waste dump.

This September two separate incidents relating to selenium water pollution have hit the news. Earlier in the month Johnson Matthey Inc., a mining corporation in Utah, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to cover up illegally high levels of toxic selenium in its wastewater run-off, and later in the month four conservation groups filed a lawsuit challenging the expansion of the Smoky Canyon phosphate mine into areas of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest in southeast Idaho.

These two separate incidents highlight the problem of trying to restrict water pollution by the mining industry.

Although, Johnson Matthey Inc., due to be charged in December, faces a $3 million fine in violation of the Clean Water Act, it posts revenues of more than $4.7 billion annually.

"I doubt if it will have a far-reaching or lasting impact on the mining industry. It will likely be business as usual," said Dr. Dennis Lemly, a research biologist for the USDA-Forest Service who has done extensive work on selenium pollution.

The Smokey Canyon phosphate mine, operated by JR Simplot Co., has already been listed Superfund site, a site containing uncontrolled hazardous waste, due to its severe pollution of surrounding waterways and lands with selenium.

Now expansion is being planned into an area of more than 1,100 acres of pristine roadless forest. The expansion was approved by the Forest Service and the BLM on the assurances of the mine’s operator, J.R. Simplot Company, that additional selenium contamination will be effectively contained.

However, independent experts and even the agencies own scientists have questioned the proposed practices for preventing further selenium contamination. The general consensus is that the new mine will certainly cause additional selenium contamination to the state’s streams and ground water, as the mining industry has not yet found an effective solution to stop the spread of polluting selenium. J.R. Simplot Co. is currently seeking to intervene in a federal lawsuit filed by environmentalists. It argues that it should be allowed to join the legal fight because the future of its mine and therefore the economic livelihood of hundreds of workers depend on the expansion.

In response to the intervention John Hart, a spokesperson for the conservation groups, said, "The mine expansion will increase pollution and harm hunting, fishing, ranching, and recreation. Many people in the area of the mine rely on clean water for their livelihood and way of life. We know these are good people who work at the mine. But mining jobs should not trump the work of others or the economic value of clean water."

The money will be used to "buy water outright," the only way of securing water with certainty in Colorado. The state relies upon a system of water rights and allocation that is known as the Appropriation System. An appropriation is the act of diverting water from its source, such as a river, and using it for a “beneficial purpose.” Once an appropriation has been established, a water right can be granted: a guarantee to use a certain amount of the river’s water.

The Headwaters of the Big Thompson River in Rocky Mountain Park

This appropriation system has caused problems for the states 8,500 miles of streams. While the Colorado Constitution mandates that the right to divert “shall not be denied” to anyone who owns a water right, the streams themselves obviously do not qualify. And right now many are suffering from over-appropriation of their water that is endangering the plants, bugs, and fish that rely on the stream for their habitat.

Also, under this system, "older is better," and earlier water users have priority over those who have brought their water rights later. Water conservation and environmental protection agencies have arrived late on the scene of water appropriation, and have previously only been able to buy up young water rights. In times of drought, the rivers are unable to secure the right to maintain their water levels.

The cash influx this year, however, could change all of that. The state will now be able to buy senior water rights in river systems that are in dire need of a greater supply of flowing water. "It opens up a bigger window of opportunity," said Mark Uppendahl, the instream flow coordinator at the Division of Wildlife. Water may now be made available purely for instream flow, in critical river systems where fish and wildlife are suffering.

However, many are concerned about the recent legislation. The streams of Colorado provide water for the state’s cities and some question water being staked out for the environment.

As a result, the new cash program is being carefully watched and lawmakers will have the right to overview individual acquisitions.

"This is a new program," said Linda Bassi, director of the instream flow program, "We're hopeful that once we get a couple of transactions under our belts, people will get more comfortable with what we're trying to do."

Source: www.rockymountainnews.com

In a report recently issued by the American Fisheries Society 700 fish are now listed as either threatened, endangered, or vulnerable. This is a 92% increase over the number of fishes classified as "imperiled" in the equivalent 1989 study. Of the 364 fishes classified in the previous study, 61 are now extinct.

Of the groups most at risk are the salmon and trout of western mountain regions. More than 60% of these species had at least one populations or subspecies in trouble.

Trout have typically inhabited streams, lakes, ponds and reservoirs in the Rocky Mountains but have declined due to introductions of non-native species, habitat degradation, and fragmentation of colonies. Global warming has also contributed to the issue: increasing air and water temperatures have increased the risk of fires, and changed the timing and quantity of snow run offs in some areas, leading to increased flooding. Both wildfires and flooding have rendered some of the small fragmented populations extinct in certain regions.

In response state and federal agencies and non-governmental organizations have introduced measures to attempt to recover and restore the native trout and salmon, throughout the western United States. One successful example has been that of the reopening and enlargement of Elkhead Reservoir, in northwestern Colorado.  As well as providing 5,000 acre-feet of water year round, another 2,000 acre-feet of leased water augments the flow of the Yampa River annually. This augmentation serves to protect endangered fish during the summer, when low flows can reduce their habitat and make them vulnerable to non-native predators.

The Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program, a voluntary cooperative program, which includes state and federal agencies, water and power users, and conservation groups, spearheaded this project. The Program is engaged in many projects with the purpose of protecting native species of freshwater fish and actions taken have included control of non-native species, habitat restoration, rearing and stocking, and flow augmentation throughout the Upper Colorado River Basin.  By restoring high flows in peak water years, the fish spawning habitat is scoured which creates clean rocky spaces optimal for fish egg-laying. Restoring such key resources optimizes their chances of survival over the long-term.

With only 1% of Earth's water available as freshwater, management of this key resource is paramount if both human water needs are to be met and native species are to be preserved. Examples such as Elkhead reservoir demonstrate that both human requirements for water can be satisfied while benefiting the health of the natural ecosystem. The necessity is however for preventative action, forward planning, and open negotiation, before any more fish species become extinct.

In Monday's meeting of the United Nations in Geneva, scientists predicted that mountain ranges worldwide risk losing their glaciers by the end of the century. Attributed to global warming, glaciers are currently losing water at twice the rate of only a decade ago, and four times the rate observed a century ago.

This trend of glacial thawing has already been observed in Glacier National Park in Montana. About a century ago, the park hosted 150 glaciers; now there are just 26.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, by 2030 all of the park’s namesake glaciers could be gone. Some of the glaciers have shrunk so much that they have already stopped flowing, drying up valuable water resources to dependent communities.

While no one can predict the exact consequences of melting glaciers, risk factors of flooding, and eventually drought and fires, are all increased.

Initially the melting ice results in overflowing rivers, posing the risk of burst banks and flooding of nearby villages, farmlands, roads and railway lines. However, once there is no more glacial melt the rivers will dry up, affecting local communities and farmlands. Hydropower stations would be forced to close down, and animals, birds and fish that depend on melting water from glaciers will suffer.

Another risk factor exacerbated by glacial melt,is the increase of environmental pollutants in river water. DDT was a widely used pesticide around 50 years ago, but was banned worldwide due to its high toxicity. However, most of this harmful chemical got airborne, fell as snow in cooler climates and was embedded and trapped in layers of glaciers. With the glaciers melting at the high rate they are today, this chemical along with other pollutants, is leaching into the streams and rivers. DDT levels at Glacier National Park have already been found to exceed health thresholds for fish-eating wildlife. Some of these contaminants are causing male fish to develop female organs, and obviously have a negative impact on the health of all those who depend on the water.

Perhaps one of the gravest consequences of glacial melt worldwide, is that it only helps to accelerate global warming. Ice reflects most of the heat from the sun back into space but exposed land absorbs most of the sun’s heat, driving the earth’s temperature higher still.

Earlier this year, the United Nations Environmental Program executive director, Achim Steiner, said the rate of glacier disappearance made it essential that "everyone sits up and takes notice."

"Otherwise, and like the glaciers, our room for maneuver and the opportunity to act may simply melt away," Steiner warned.

Population growth in the Rocky Mountain West is projected to be among the highest in the next twenty years and there are competing demands for water from urban areas, industry, agriculture and recreation. As water development in most areas has reached a plateau the key task now being faced is how to allocate the current water resources. Sherman’s immediate approach is to initiate the development of a vision for the next 50 years in Colorado water; a long term plan which would hopefully preempt a crisis situation whereby water users find themselves without the necessary water to survive; personally or economically.

This obviously is no easy task and is as much an exercise in social science and psychology as it is one of practical supply and demand. In the case of Colorado, the Interbasin Compact committee, a statewide panel fed by nine basin roundtables that was designed in 2005 to sort out state water issues, is still characterized by a degree of mistrust left by 150 years of water wars. Resolving the allocation of water calls for a diplomatic approach to negotiating compromises: a mediation process involving all the concerned parties.

An Innovative proposal for dealing with conflicts of interest is put forward in the document Living in the Rocky Mountain West, 2025, a publication issued by the Colorado Institute for Public Policy. The proposal was based on surveys that were carried out assessing the beliefs and values of Rocky Mountain water users. It suggests that the foundation of any negotiation process is an articulation of the beliefs and values of all parties and a commitment to reaching a workable compromise. From this standpoint it outlines a methodology for finding common ground in proposing solutions. Successful implementation of the technique relies upon a basis of trust created by an understanding and respect for the shared commonalities and for the differing beliefs and needs of each set of stakeholders.

While recognizing that water conflicts have always existed in the West it is important to recognize that a considerable degree of success has come about from collaboration, negotiation and compromise in this region. The earlier pioneers survived the harsh conditions by being flexible and adapting to the environment, and these skills and the ability to collaborate now hold the most promise in addressing future challenges.

The TalkingScience office is fairly eco-friendly; we drink tap water and are planning to get a worm bin. New York is a competitive place though, and it's tough to "keep up with the Jones'" when your neighbors are the hailed as the most environmentally responsible sky scraper in the world. Yes, our neighbors have completely outdone us, and we're very proud of them. Pretty soon, they're going to have Al Gore peeing on a bee.

Since Ann Marie (the Executive Director here at TalkingScience) and I have been planning a water conference and are utterly obsessed with all issues water-related, Alex Durst and Chief Engineer Ron Jerman gave us a bee-hind the scenes tour of One Bryant Park to explain how they will cut down on water waste. The best part of the tour was the mens' bathroom, where waterless urinals feature a friendly bee to guide men in their aim (the slogan, of course, is pee on the bee). "The Honey bees may be disappearing in some places, but they're reappearing on all the urinals here!" Ron exclaimed. Giggles aside, though, the waterless urinals will save about 40,000 gallons of water per urinal per month. "The bee seems to be very popular with men who have used it," says Jerman, "though aiming abilities still vary." I couldn’t help but wonder about Al Gore's aim. He will soon be moving his investment firm, Generation Investment Management, to One Bryant Park. Who knows, maybe this will start a movement-- maybe Bush will be the next to pee on the bee. It will be the best thing he's done for the environment for a while.

But I digress, there are lots of other systems in place to save water at One Bryant Park. For example, they have multiple 35,000 gallon tanks capture rainwater, which will be treated and re-used in the restrooms (regular, treated domestic water will be used for drinking). These efforts are projected to save 8-10 million gallons of water every year. Though the bee might get the most buzz on blogs, you can check out the long list of additional projects, plans, and systems to conserve energy and water at One Bryant Park by visiting their Web site.

It's no surprise that Akituusaq was 115 pounds when he was born, after all, his mother weighs in at a whopping 1,450 pounds and his fat father is about 3,000 pounds (give or take 50 here and there). Akituusaq is a healthy little fellow with an amazing appetite (he has gained 1-3 pounds every day since he was born)—in fact, he didn’t just eat a piece of his birthday cake, he devoured the ENTIRE cake within minutes. There was an audience of wide-eyed kindergartners from PS 90 who sang happy birthday and cheered him on, of course.

Akituusaq, as you may have guessed, comes from “Atkins”—you know, the guy who invented the Atkins diet. Obviously, the Atkins diet doesn’t work, and his son is just another obese, narrow-minded American whose only knowledge of world history is the story about Marie Antoinette shouting “Let them eat cake!”
OK, OK, here’s the truth: Akituusaq, whose name means “a gift given in return” in Yupic (the language spoken by Alaskan Inuits), is actually a walrus who lives at the New York Aquarium. As you may know, walruses are not exactly born every day in NYC —this guy was the first walrus ever to have been born at the aquarium, which has been around for 112 years. His parents were orphans living in Gamel, Alaska when they were rescued by the NY Aquarium in 1994.

Don’t worry that you missed the birthday party— there are about 8,000 other animals at the New York Aquarium so if you visit, the likelihood that you’ll be there for a birthday is pretty high. In fact, I suggest skipping the Freddie Kruger movie night this coming Friday the 13th and heading to the Aquarium instead…it’s the first night of freebie Fridays. For details, check out www.nyaquarium.com

Last week, I ALMOST caught a ball at the Yankees game. Two things happened that prevented my would-have-been magnificent catch:

1. I ducked (I really don't like fast balls coming near my head, but I still put my hand out and half expected to catch it anyway).

2. The ball curved at the last second and landed ions away from me.

Slightly relieved and VERY embarrassed that I assumed the duck-and-cover position, my friend consoled me, "Hey, it's not your fault you didn't catch the ball. It was impossible with that curve." Well, he was right. It certainly wasn't my fault that the ball didn't arrive right in the palm of my hand like I thought it should have-- it was the fault of science. More specifically, it was the fault of the ball's stitches and speed.

When I got home, of course I googled "curve balls" just so I could find an "official" reason why I didn't even come close to catching the ball. As it turns out, there have actually been a lot of studies on the curve ball situation. For example, back in 1959, Lyman Briggs, (former director at the National Institute of Standards and Technology) did a study to settle a ferocious dispute over how much a ball could curve over the course of 18 meters (the distance from the pitcher's mound to the home plate). I'm not sure what was "ferocious" about the dispute, but that's what the article said. In any case, Lyman found out that the amount of curve is determined NOT by the spin but rather by the speed of the ball.

One thing that affects the speed are the stitches. So in addition to fashion, these little notches also have a a function: they are a force of resistance as the ball goes whizzing through the air, ultimately causing the ball to slow down. The force of resistance is proportional to velocity because faster objects experience more drag. The curve depends on how the ball rotates through the air and at what speed it is going, as well as how the stitches form a "boundary layer" that reacts with the air around a moving ball.

Still confused? Here's how the "Why Files" explain it:
"Consider a pitched ball rotating about a vertical axis and approaching the plate. Due to the rotation, one side is moving considerably faster through the air than the other side. The air will exert a greater force on that side, pushing the ball away from it -- toward the side with the slower relative motion. The result is a curve ball."

I find this stuff interesting, but not at all reassuring, so I plan on assuming my duck-and-cover position at the next game too. Maybe one of the players will (slowly) throw me a helmet. Honestly, with all those fast balls flying into the bleachers, it's not a bad idea. Unless you're a total math geek, you'll never be able to calculate the curve of a ball as it comes at your head. Science gives you an excuse for not catching the ball, but it's really no help otherwise. Baseball fans, the moral of the story is to protect your noggin. Wear a helmet.

Contrary to popular belief, India is not just a land of re-routed phone calls, curry, and an opportunity to see your name written on rice. It is a subcontinent science super-power with less restrictions and extra zeal to get ahead. India is a hot spot for science and technology.
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