An Unreliable Fingerpost

Pharaoh's Ant

2011-02-14T15:12:00.000-08:00

This past week I received a small sample of ants in need of identification. They were tiny enough that when I attempted to mount them on paper points, the tip of a needle I was holding flicked one into oblivion, and half an hour on my hands and knees were to no avail. Despite this loss, I identified them as a tramp ant species, possibly originating in Egypt (but no one is certain) known as Pharaoh's ant (Monomorium pharaonis).

They were collected from an apartment building in the Vancouver area, where apparently a great number of apartments (hundreds) have been hosting them. Despite their minute size (total length barely 2 mm), they can either weakly sting or bite (technically the 'sting' is non-functional). That they can do one of these I can personally attest too as the mattress I was sleeping on in Borneo was infested with the little darlings. They were just big enough that you could feel them walking over you at night (many of them), and when you rolled over on them, they let you know they found that disagreeable.

Despite the fact that this species is tropical to sub-tropical, it has spread to higher latitudes, living in buildings with central heat. This species has colonies with multiple queens (something we myrmecologists call polygynous) and if the colony is stressed (e.g., someone tries to poison or otherwise harass and attempt to remove them), the colony fragments into many smaller colonies, each with one or more queens. Thus, if just one apartment tenant tries to deal with them, they quickly fragment and spread throughout the building. Having said that, they are likely to do that anyway.

Pharaoh's ant is now found throughout the world. When I checked on "The Authority," that is, the person who first described them, I found it was Linnaeus (a Swede) in 1758. They have been travelling for quite awhile.

Photo Credits: Me

Carnivorous Robots....Really

2011-02-09T08:14:00.000-08:00

Technology is advancing in so many directions all at once that I am beginning to suspect we will see some truly startling advances once someone begins to put differing lines together.

The You Tube video above arises from the work of James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau in the UK. Their work is a fusion of art and science that challenges how we use and view the common desiderata of life. In the video above, we have a clock that powers itself from captured flies. A microbial (i.e., bacterial) fuel cell converts the digested bodies of flies into electrical power that runs the clock and fly catching apparatus. Apparently 8 flies will run this for about 12 days.

The Microbial Fuel Cell is a very simple but fascinating device. One could IMAGINE that it might work, but actually getting one to work is quite remarkable. It uses electrons released/transfered by bacteria as they metabolize food. Along with acids (protons) that diffuse over to the cathode, a functional fuel cell is created.

A Microbial Fuel Cell (Logan et al. 2006).

Now if they could only put this together with an ant robot (Click Here), we might have something truly terrifying.

Sources:

You Tube Video Header From: http://www.auger-loizeau.com/index.php?id=13

Microbial Fuel Cell diagram. Logan, B. E., B. Hamelers, R. Rozendal, U. Schröder, J. Keller, S. Freguia, P. Aelterman, W. Verstraete, and K. Rabaey. 2006. Microbial fuel cells: Methodology and technology. Environ. Sci. Technol. 40:5181-5192.

Uncle Milton Passes Away but not Before the Ant-Farm goes into Space

2011-01-28T11:33:00.001-08:00

"That's something I'd never do. I'd never step on an ant. Put three of my kids through college."

That quote from Milton Levine, co-creator with his brother-in-law, of the class ant-farm, was taken from an interview with NPR radio. Milton died last week, at the age of 97, in California.

Milton came up with the idea for the ant-farm after watching some pavement ants one day. he brought the classic ant-farm to the market in 1956 and, over the years, has sold over 20 million.

You can still buy the classic Uncle Milton Ant-Farm, as shown above, at a number of on-line retailers. In recent years, however, another design has become more popular. These are an illuminated farm in which the soil/sand has been replaced with a florescent gel. The gel apparently, isn't just a digging medium, but contains some food and water for the ants. I'll have to buy one and try it out.

An ant-farm has even gone into space. A project designed by high school students from Syracuse, New York, sent 17 harvester ants into space on the shuttle Columbia in 2003. The purpose was to study how they tunnel in a micro-gravity environment. While their data was downloaded each day during the project, the ants would never return alive. They were lost when the Columbia disintegrated during re-entry on Feb 1, 2003.

I've always wondered why the choice of ants for these farms was almost always harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex spp.). Apparently their large size reduced the number of escapees, a characteristic some parents probably valued greatly. The problem with this species, however, is their painful sting. It is much worse than the southern fire ant (Solenopsis invicta).

Last night, I happened to catch the replay of an interview on CBC Radio from 1997, with the Canadian distributor for Uncle Milton ant-farms. He didn't seem as particular about the ant species and was offering 0.5 - 0.75 cents per ant to prospective ant-ranglers (I think his ad for ant-ranglers prompted the interview). Seems when people buy these farms they like them to come with ants. I don't know if the job still stands but it could be a fairly lucrative way to spend the summer.

Photo Credit: NPR Radio

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/26/133249612/Uncle-Milton-Ant-Farm-Co-Inventor-Dies-At-97

Croatian Basketball Ants...Oh...and Brad Pitt

2011-01-24T16:00:00.000-08:00

Today I received a very interesting ticket to a basketball game held recently in Zagreb, Croatia. It came from a good friend of mine, Glen Chilton (now living in Townsville, Australia), with whom I chased termites in New Orleans a few years back. Glen was in Croatia to chase a particular and peculiar small freshwater fish known as a Dace, previously described as extinct. The purpose of the chase was for a book he is working on. The basketball game was another matter entirely, and Glen thought that it mattered in a particular way to me.

At first glance, as Glen noticed in his letter, the team mascot looks like a bee. Yes, but look at what it is standing upon. In fact, it isn't a bee, but rather an ant. Why would a basketball team choose ants as their team mascot?

I'm thinking they know Greek mythology.

According to Ovid's Metamorphosis, the Island of Aegina was devastated by a plague (caused by Zeus's wife Hera in some accounts) that resulted in the death of all but the family of King Aeacus. The King pleaded to Zeus to help his kingdom. Zeus, in fickle Greek god fashion, answers the call by transforming the ants nesting in an oak tree, just outside the palace window, into an army of young soldiers. We don't learn where the women of the island might have come from but apparently whoever first created this story was unaware that the ants in question would have almost certainly all have been female. In any event, these became know as the Myrmidons, a self-sacrificing, aggressive and ruthless army that would come to be led by Achilles of Illiad fame.

And who played Achilles in the 2004 movie Troy? Brad Pitt! Brad was the leader of the ant army, and descendant of the ants himself.

So why would a basketball team have ants as their mascot? Well, who wouldn`t want to associate a team with the most competitive, aggressive team players on the planet, ants! It was common in England in the 1800s to call gangs of thugs Myrmidons, so it is nice to see ants rehabilitated into a more normative team activity.

Photo credits:

Scanned copy of ticket-Me

Movie Poster from Wikipedia (Troy (film))

Nature vs Nurture

2011-01-16T21:41:00.001-08:00

Trust is the central theme in the comedy movie series that started with Meet the Parents. In the sequel, Meet the Fockers, Jack the father-in-law steals a DNA sample from Greg to secretly test for a suspected hidden paternity.

But what if you could test for much more?

Garcia and others (2010) have recently published a study in which they found that the incidence in which one partner in a relationship cheats on the other, more than doubles when the cheating partner has a particular copy of a gene encoding for the dopamine receptor DRD4 (specifically having a form of the gene in which there are more than 7 repeats of a particular sequence in one section of the gene). And were are not talking about guppies here, were are talking about people.

Table 1. Percentage who report an extra-relationship sexual experience by DRD4 genotype (7R+ vs 7R-) (from Garcia and others. 2010).

This dopamine receptor has been turning up in all sorts of interesting behavioral studies. One other form has been associated with political liberalism as an adult, and yet another with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Intriguing is the well established relationship between dopamine and two hormones (oxytocin and vasopressin). Oxytocin has long been called the "cuddle hormone" because seems to be involved in romantic love, while vasopressin has been labelled as the 'divorce gene,' because a particular receptor type has been linked to problems with pair-bonding (i.e., monogamy).

Perhaps the take home message here is that the old 'O GOD' (i.e., one gene, one disorder) idea is dead, as most biologists have known for a long time. Yes, human behavior is strongly influenced by genes, but it is an interaction of many genes that matter. Research is just beginning to untangle this and any interest in predicting behavior based on what is known now would be less reliable than the already completely unreliable lie detector.

Still, I wonder how the report of the DRD4 infidelity paper will be received. Will there be yet another sequel to Meet the Parents in which Jack has Greg tested for his DRD4 receptor sub-type. I did a quick search to see if any genetics companies were offering a test for DRD4. It seems not yet, but I'll bet it won't be long.

Reference

Garcia JR, et al. 2010. Associations between dopamine D4 receptor gene variation and both infidelity and sexual promiscuity. PLoS ONE 5(11): e14162.

What`s in a Word?

2010-12-17T10:34:00.000-08:00

This figure shows how frequently the word "Science" turns up in publications between the year 1500 and 2008. It is expressed as a frequency so it isn't an increase in the total number of books published that causes a change in the trendline.

Google has come up with either the best time waster ever, or a fantastic tool to follow trends historically. Google calls it the Ngram, it is an online tool that allows you to search for the use of single or multiple words or phrases, published in everything scanned by Google Books. The site can be found at:

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/

It is very interesting to see how certain words or phrases compete for dominance over time. Consider the use of the terms Greenhouse Effect (red), Global Warming (blue) and Climate Change (green) between the years 1960 and 2008. Clearly the term Climate Change has won the battle, a reflection of the political effort to neuter the impact of this huge issue.

I think this tool offers an incredible number of opportunities for research regardless of your field of interest. Consider for example the changes in the frequency with which the word "Poverty" turns up in publications (1500-2008). What might be behind these changes?

Borneo 14: Hong Kong

2010-08-29T19:18:00.000-07:00

Hong Kong makes Vancouver seem rural. Central Hong Kong, on Hong Kong Island is an incredibly busy place. The video above was taken early in the morning before things really started to get busy.

Still, Hong Kong is a mix of the new and the old.

What surprised me, in a city renowned for selling the latest in electronics, was the widespread use of bamboo, even as scaffolding material. Alfred Wallace noted the myriad of applications for bamboo when travelling through the Malay Archipelago back in the 1850s. He wrote of it frequently. I doubt he would be surprised to find it still in use over 150 years later in a much more technologically advanced world.

The scaffolding running twenty or so stories up, shown above, is entirely bamboo.

Bamboo stacked for additional scaffolding.

Photo Credits: Me

Borneo 13: The islands of KK

2010-08-28T17:47:00.001-07:00

Just offshore from Kota Kinabalu (KK), Borneo, are a number of small islands you can reach by about a 10-20 minute boat ride. I headed out to Palau Mamutik after returning to KK from Danum this week.

Depending on the conditions on the South China Sea when you leave KK the ride itself can be an adventure. The only speed is full throttle (twin 100 HP engines), regardless of the wave conditions. When I left KK, the sea was running with a pretty heavy cross-sea. I thought the boat was going to shatter into pieces from the incredible and endless pounding. It was the wildest ride I`ve ever taken.

Once you are on the islands the pace changes. The islands are great for snorkeling for just lounging around. I wouldn`t call the snorkeling fantastic, but it is worth the day. Moorish Idols, Pufferfish, Sargent Majors, Parrotfish are common. The coral, however, isn`t in great shape. On some islands just to the northeast, dynamite fishing has completely destroyed the reefs and ended any hope of drawing tourists to the area.

When taking the boat back to KK we came across a mid-sized ship that I thought was sinking. The stern was completely underwater and the bow was at sea level with every wave washing over the deck. Seaman stood on crates to stay out of the sea, and the only thing out of the water was the pilot house. I was thinking we would be rescuing the crew, but I came to understand, from the limited English of our boat captain that all was okay. This ship was taking fresh water out to the islands. It does this once a week and they fill it completely with fresh water, hence the the complete lack of freeboard. Insane.

Borneo 12: Danum

2010-08-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

A few random shots from the Danum Conservation Area.

Afternoon rain. As the heat builds up in the morning, the dense humidity is pumped up into the air and often falls as a torrential downpour in the afternoon. This is the dry season.

A giant cicada. This arrived at our night light trap on the first evening. A perfectly healthy and incredibly loud cicada. It sounds like a honking Canada Goose, and is just as loud.

A King Cobra. Interestingly this particular cobra was found in the women's showers awhile ago. Both King and Black Cobras are found at Danum, although both are uncommon. One local field worker noted that he was chased by a Black Cobra last year while working in the same location that we were collecting. These cobras are spitters. They spit into your eyes and as you stagger from being blinded they bite. It is generally considered fatal, although I see in the local papers today that someone is recovering after a King Cobra bite. He was only in a coma for two months.

A Red Leaf Monkey leaps from branch to branch. Watching these monkeys make huge leaps, often falling a fair distance before catching a branch on the next tree, was endlessly fascinating. These monkeys and gibbons were regulars at the field station.

Photo Credits: Me

Borneo 11: Oil Palm

2010-08-28T03:43:00.000-07:00

Look at the list of ingredients on pretty much any processed food product in your home. Usually, close to the beginning is palm oil. There is an enormous global demand for palm oil, leading to the replacement of tropical forests by a single crop, Oil Palm. Flying into any city in Southeast Asia you will see vast areas of Oil Palm. The view above was taken flying into Lahad Datu, but the view is identical coming into Kuala Lumpur.

Huge areas in Borneo have already been cleared for Oil Palm plantations and the greatest threat to maintaining unlogged tropical forest is their continuing expansion. New areas around the Danum Conservation Area are already slated for conversion to Oil Palm. The economics of Oil Palm are so lucrative that it is fast becoming the only product in Southeast Asia. In Borneo, even cocoa (chocolate) is disappearing to Oil Palm.

If the global demand for palm oil crashes, although this is hard to imagine, or a pest runs rampant through these monocultures, the economy of Southeast Asia would be devastated. Still, for those of us from the west, we have little moral high ground. The replacement of huge areas in Canadian forests by Lodgepole Pine is little different, except that in British Columbia we have already seen what happens when a pest (mountain pine beetle) hits a monoculture. While this has devastated the economy of interior logging communities in British Columbia, we at least are part of a much more diversified economy at the national level. This isn't true for Southeast Asia.

Photo Credits: Me

Borneo 10: Fruit in the Forest

2010-08-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

When Alfred Russell Wallace wrote about the jungles of Borneo in The Malay Archipelago, a journal of his travels in the area in the 1850s, he specifically mused on the absence of flowers. He noted that one of the most common misconceptions, by those who have not visited the jungle, was the belief that jungles are a tangle of flowers. This belief probably arises from seeing cultivated tropical plants in greenhouses.

Flowering usually occurs in mass events once every several years (and it is possible Wallace never witnessed this), probably as an adaptation to overwhelm seed predators. The last in Borneo (lowland dipterocarp rainforest) was in 1996, that is, until this year. It is still a mystery as to what triggers the event. One hypothesis is that it is related to the formation of huge bees nests on the trunks of the dipterocarp trees.

As a consequence of this years mass flowering, the jungle is filled with an abundance of fruit. One negative consequence is that many animals do not need to travel much to find food. Negative, I suppose, in the context of someone hoping to see Orang-utans. I didn't.

The fruit stands of Borneo are filled. One of the best is Rambutan (as seen above (tree) and below, the actual fruit).

You can split open the outer case of Rambutan with your thumbs. Inside is a white soft pulp that is incredibly sweet. The seed in the center (brighter white mass in the center above) you spit out. Rambutan is a fantastic treat and is selling right now for 2 Ringets (0.65 $CAN) a kilo.

Another and more enigmatic fruit is Durian. This fruit was noted by the earliest Europeans exploring the area hundreds of years ago.

Durian is most noted for the awful stench given off by the fruit (hotels and taxis will absolutely bar you from bringing this fruit inside). It is truly nauseating, especially in the heat. Inside the case, you also find a white pulp that many consider delicious, despite the odour. Having said that, not everyone is a fan. We tried fresh Durian at the field station and about half of the myrmecologists (ant biologists) loved it, and the other half hated it. I fell into the latter category. To me, it tastes like it smells.

It was clearly a favorite in the forest with the various primates. Below you can see opened Durian in the forest floor. Probably opened by Red Leaf Monkeys or Orang-utans.

Photo Credits: Me

Borneo 9: A work day at Danum

2010-08-27T01:29:00.001-07:00

The work day always begins at 8 am, whether it is a lab day or a field day. When working in the field we usually headed out to the same area and then all scatter off the trails and into the jungle proper. Typically we could collect until noon then head back to the Field Centre for lunch. Within 30 minutes of work most of us are completely soaked through with sweat.

It took awhile to get the right search image for ants in a tropical rainforest. While some are huge (e.g., Camponotus gigas (see below)), most are tiny, and are especially common in the leaf litter. Using litter extractors (mini-Winklers) yields an endless variety of ants. Interestingly, many of these ants are trap-jaw ants. For a picture of one common trapjaw ant (genus Strumigenys) in the leaf litter, click here. Still, ants could be found on the vines, leaves, tree trunks, and in woody debris. In the latter case you had to watch for scorpions when pulling apart the wood. No one was an expert on scorpions, but one of the first we encountered was recognized by a student from India as definitely something you did not want to touch.

The largest ant, possibly the largest in the world if you settle on one definition of 'large' was Camponotus gigas.

Shown above is a minor of Camponotus gigas which differs from the majors in two ways. First, the ant above is much smaller than a major, second, the minors are docile and not inclined to bite. The majors are aggressive and live to charge and bite. If your first encounter with this species is a minor, you have a surprise coming when you meet your first major. One student had a major clamped onto the skin between his thumb and forefinger which easily sliced through the skin.

After a morning of collecting it was back to the lab for the afternoon. We would begin to sort, pin and identify what we had collected. A morning in the field was easily 1-2 days of work in the lab.

Five 0'clock marked Happy Hour, which was mandatory for everyone. If you have been told you can't buy booze in Malaysia, you have been misinformed. This was followed by a lecture at 6 pm (always a fantastic presentation by some of the best biologists in the world). Supper was at 7 and then it was back to the lab for the rest of the night. I usually packed it in around 9:30- 10 pm but some students worked till the power was cut off at midnight.

Photo Credits: Me, except for the photo of me, taken by Phil Barden (American Museum of Natural History)

Borneo 8: Danum Field Centre

2010-08-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

Every morning at the Danum Field Centre looks like this. A heavy humid mist hangs over the forest. The morning temperature may only be in the low twenties but a 10 minute walk to the lab or kitchen will quickly leave you with a soaking sweat if you even slightly exceed a slow walk. Watching people walk here is a little like watching someone summit Mt. Everest, there is that slow plodding pace that no one exceeds.

One fact that many people may find interesting is the near complete absence of mosquitoes. In the 10 days that I spent at the field centre, I saw 3, really! Even when you are off trail in the jungle, sweating buckets in the mid-day heat and humidity, you will not be bothered by mosquitoes. This is great because there is the risk of malaria in the area (or dengue, or Japanese encephalitis, or....). Unfortunately, the lack of mosquitoes is balanced by the abundance of leeches.

There are two types of leeches here. The large ones, as seen above that quickly get under you clothes (5 minutes into the forest and you are pulling one of these out of someones armpit), and some tiny ones that can push through the eyelets for your boot laces, and latch onto your feet. For these, you wear leech socks, something generally not available at Mountain Equipment Coop. Fortunately, leeches do not vector any diseases so they are really just an annoyance. Having said that, they get absolutely everywhere. One day at lunch I watched a leech fall out of one woman's sleeve while she was scooping rice onto her plate.

Borneo 7: Danum

2010-08-26T07:05:00.000-07:00

When our van blew out a tire on the way into Danum, one of the first things I noticed, after the amazing rainforest scenery was the abundance of Mimosa plants along the roadside. I've seen Mimosa plants before, but to see them growing in the wild is quite different. When touched, the plant quickly droops the leaflets and the stem to pull the plant away from whatever is bothering it.

The Mimosa plant is just the beginning though. Here are a couple of photos taken this past week.

A Scarabid Beetle
Lantern Bugs (Probably genus Pyrops)

A Curved Spiny Backed Spider (probably Gasteracatha arcuata). Yes, it could be sharper but taking pictures in the jungle is a real challenge. There is very little light. When hunting ants in the leaf litter or in a rotten log, you need a headlamp, even at noon.

Photo Credits: Me

Borneo 6: Travel to Danum

2010-08-26T06:19:00.001-07:00

I've been offline for awhile in the Danum Conservation Area. Reports of broadband access at Danum are somewhat overstated. Most days you can get slow access to e-mail (for awhile) but actually blogging is somewhat more difficult and, if even possible, would tie up computer access for others. Here I'll try to provide a bit of a catch-up on the last two weeks.

We left Kota Kinabalu on August 16th, flying across Borneo into Lahad Datu, a flight mercifully short, at a bit less than an hour (I say this in the context of a 13 hr flight to Hong Kong). Lahad Datu is the launching point for anyone going into the Danum Conservation Area. The Lonely Planet Guide has pretty much only one thing to say about Lahad Datu, and that is, don't linger.

I'm not sure if this is fair, but we spent very little time here. There has been some trouble with the Abu Sayyaf Islamic separatist group on some of the islands just offshore from Lahad (foreigners kidnapped with a much less than satisfactory outcome), and last year they robbed the bank in Lahad itself (I'm told the walls are still pock marked with bullet holes but we did not pass by the bank ourselves). I did speak with a young French tourist later who had spent a couple of days in Lahad. His thoughts certainly wouldn't help the Lonely Planet to change there thoughts here. Still, if you knew someone who really knew their way around the town, you'd probably find a lot to appreciate.

Lahad Datu, however, really is the jumping off point for one of the last great areas on our planet. A 2.5 hr bone jarring van ride will take you from Lahad Datu to the Danum Conservation Area. About an hour out of Danum we blew a tire on our van (no surprise), and when we got out of the van, I was able to get my first photo of genuine lowland tropical rainforest (jungle). A spectacular experience.

Photo Credits: Me

Borneo 5: Kota Kinabalu

2010-08-15T18:34:00.001-07:00

I arrived in Borneo about noon yesterday. The hub for access to Malaysian Borneo is Kota Kinabalu (KK), situated on the north coast. Last night I finally got a chance to meet many of the other specialists in ant biology and ecology around town and in the hotel. I'm not sure how many countries are represented in total but they are from everywhere (US, China, Kirghistan, Finland, Australia, France, Iran etc.). In a couple of hours we will all fly out for Lahad Datu and then drive in trucks into the Danum Conservation Area.

If I had written this post earlier yesterday I would have been pretty negative about KK. It is much more rural and economically disadvantaged as compared to Kuala Lumpur. Granted, the city was bombed out of existence twice during the second world war, but still, most buildings are in poor condition. It is extremely humid and hot here(I pulled out my camera a few minutes ago and the lens immediately fogged over, I wiped it off and it fogged over again before I could take a picture) and a walk past the markets, which are everywhere, brings the smell of fish and meat that are sitting out in the sun. Occasionally you also get the extremely nauseating smell of Durian, a fruit found in Borneo that is reported to have an incredibly great taste (I tried some in Kuala Lumpur but it wasn't fresh and the taste pretty much went with the smell). You are not allowed to take it into taxis or into hotels.

Last night I had a better look at KK (despite a driving tropical rain), travelling through the city with some biologists that were familiar with what the city had to offer. At a restaurant we ate in last night, we were able to watch the cooks making noodles. From a square block of dough, they can make perhaps 50 or so meter long noodles with about 6 flicks of their hands. Quite a skill. Granted, I have no idea what half of the things I've been eating actually are, but so far it has been great. You simply don't eat anything not cooked or that you cannot peel.

The photo above is looking north into the South China Sea. There are some islands just offshore that are obvious in the picture, but what you probably cannot see is that along the shore is a massive floating city of boats. In the photo below you see a typical market.

Borneo 4: Ramadan

2010-08-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

Ramadan began this week. Ramadan begins when the first crescent moon of the 9th month of the Islamic calendar is seen. Being seen is critical and the general location to determine if the crescent moon is seen is Egypt. However, last week smog was so heavy in Egypt (and I doubt it was much better in Kuala Lumpur) that the moon actually could not be seen, at least by Islamic astronomers. Well, they declared Ramadan anyway.

I happened to come across the Malaysian National Islamic Mosque this afternoon, while walking through the city after a visit to the city Bird Park. Non-Muslims were allowed in after 5:30 and since it was 5:35 that sounded like an invitation.

The Mosque official that I spoke to was certainly friendly and happy to talk about Ramadan and the Mosque. During Ramadan, Muslims do not eat between sunrise and sunset (this has already caused a change in the restaurant hours in my hotel), and food is laid out for sunset (7:20 pm here) as seen above. By tradition here this starts with dates and a dessert and is then followed by a full meal. All can join, non-Muslims included, so during Ramadan, I suppose one could eat quite well for nothing. I was invited to join the feast but wasn't planning on being in the area that late.

Photo Credit: Me. Photos taken in the Malaysian National Mosque

Borneo 3: Kuala Lumpur and the Batu Caves

2010-08-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

The Batu Caves are a Hindu shrine (to Lord Muragan, worshiped by the Tamil Hindus) just north of Kuala Lumpur (or given that you don't leave any sense of the city at all, they are basically in Kuala Lumpur). It is probably the most popular tourist attraction in the city and is certainly worth the effort. A very long series of stairs leads up to the main cavern where a series of smaller shrines are scattered everywhere.

Sharing the climb with you are many many crab-eating Macaques (Macaca fascicularis) (see below) that have learned to live off of tourists. They are pretty harmless but do 'get in your face' and I did see one hiss and bare its teeth for some unknown indiscretion on the part of one visitor. I also saw one quickly raid a souvenir bag that another tourist had placed BEHIND his feet. They aren't stupid.

One thing that surprised me was the lack of any literature on the significance of the shrine. There were plenty of touristy shops selling all sorts of kitsch (Hindus may have invented bling) but no information.

Photo Credit: me.

Borneo 2: Travel

2010-08-13T16:34:00.000-07:00

I passed through the airport in Hong Kong, a common hub for travel through SouthEast Asia, yesterday. I only had a two hour layover but will spend a day here at the end of the month on my trip back.

Basically 100% humidity with temps of 30 C. The clouds look like completely soaked cotton, and passing through them on the plane gives the plane a pretty good kick. Pretty though, as they form huge towers in the rising heat.

Another 3.5 hours of flying past Hong Kong gets you to Kuala Lumpur (assuming you survive the choking insecticide spray they completely douse the airplane cabin with prior to landing), where I will be spending the day. Kuala Lumpur is a modern city in almost all respects, although the reason I haven't posted anything until now was because the hotel internet was down.

The first thing one notices about Kuala Lumpur are the endless oil palm plantations. The airport is about 60-70 km out of Kuala Lumpur so a taxi ride from the airport takes about an hour. That will set you back about $20 CAN and you get the great experience of driving at 140 km/hr in a taxi weaving in and out of traffic. Driving is a pretty aggressive game here (making Vancouver look pretty tame), and while cars mostly use the lanes (my taxi driver decided to straddle a couple for about 10 minutes), countless small motorcycles run along the dotted lane markers somehow avoiding collisions with cars that change lanes without using signals.

Picture Credit: Me. Hong Kong airport. Victoria Peak is in the background.

Borneo 1: The Ant Course

2010-08-11T20:57:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm catching the very red eye flight out of Vancouver to Hong Kong at 2:45 am to begin my connections for The Ant Course in Borneo.

The Ant Course is run by Brian Fisher with the California Academy of Sciences. Each year Brian brings together those involved in ant research across the globe. The main goal is to make sure everyone is completely up-to-date in ant identification skills and also to make connections within the research community. For anyone working on ants, The Ant Course is the World Cup of all things ant.

This year the course is in Borneo at the Danum Conservation Area (west of Lahad Datu) combining this fantastic meeting with the most biodiverse area on the planet. Over 60 people applied this year, from 25 countries. I was one of the lucky 30 to be accepted.

The Danum Conservation Area holds the largest continuous lowland rainforest (jungle) left in Southeast Asia. While it is technically possible to an individual traveler to obtain permits to enter the area, this is generally considered impossible, and is open only to researchers. It is one of the last areas on Earth to still have wild orang utans (Mias), as well as 9 other primates and an incredible number of other plants (World's largest flower, 270+ species of tree in a single hectare (100 metres by 100 metres)) and animals (Pygmy Elephant, Sumatran Rhino, Clouded Leopard, Sun Bear etc.). A great many species have not been described, and just recently, a new species of bird was discovered. I expect a large number of the ant species we encounter will be new to science.

Tonight I'll be bouncing through Hong Kong and on to a one and a half day layover in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). As I travel into Borneo (the northern Malaysian portion) I will try to blog as much as possible, although once in the Danum Conservation Area, internet access is limited.

Cumulonimbus over Williams Lake

2010-06-19T23:28:00.001-07:00

This cumulonnimbus cloud formed over Williams Lake, BC, on the afternoon of June 19th, 2010. It was an interesting formation because of the wedge shape to the lower portion of the cloud, a shape that may be called tuba (a formation sometimes associated with tornadoes). Fortunately it did not appear to be rotating. Further, the cloud quickly lost stability, as just five minutes later (see below), you can see the cloud beginning to fall apart. Five minutes after, this the cloud had completely disappeared.

Cumulonimbus clouds are usually associated with thunderstorms. I'm guessing that flying into a cloud with such a precise shape would not be a good idea, as the edges probably represent serious wind flow.

Photo Credit: Me

BP and Basic Research

2010-06-10T22:32:00.000-07:00

Of the countless number of lessons one might learn from the BP blowout in the Gulf, the lack of basic research is one lesson I have not heard anyone mention.

Industry, whether it is oil, food, forestry, or finance has been completely focused in the past few decades upon increasing production and revenue flow. I'm not sure if there is either an assumption that science has already done the basic research to support extending current technologies, or that there is just a belief that engineering and product design can circumvent any complication encountered. Well, it hasn't and it can't.

The BP blowout is a classic example of extending technology beyond what is known about the environment in which that technology is being applied. The fact that no one understood that gas hydrates would form within their first effort at containment was a certain indicator that this crisis was not going to be resolved quickly.

I'm guessing, that if the oil industry is like any other, they have been approached by scientists interested in establishing that basic understanding. I'm also guessing that industry wasn't interested in supporting that research because it did not directly translate into production and revenue flow. Government, heavily influenced by industry in directing their research funding, probably didn't see a need, or more specifically, an 'application,' either.

BP is just one example and I am left to wonder how many other examples we will see over the next few years. Funding for basic research is down everywhere.

In British Columbia, the provincial government has drastically reduced forestry research in the Ministry of Forests and Range. I'm thinking that they do not understand how basic research was aiding 'growth and yield.' As just one example, an entirely new bioenergy industry is emerging in British Columbia, but we know almost nothing about the ecology of the woody debris that they wish to remove for burning. The failures in these areas won't be as acutely dramatic as what is currently unfolding in the Gulf, but they could be just as damaging and even longer lasting.

YouTube Video Credit: UCBcomedy.com

Robotics

2010-04-08T18:54:00.000-07:00

Robots can already do amazing things but dealing with visually complex structures of varying texture is extremely challenging. For example, it is very easy for a human to reach into a pile of nuts and bolts and specifically select just the bolts. This seems simple, but teaching a computer how to distinguish a bolt that may be positioned at any angle, while surrounded by a visually cluttered environment of other nuts and bolts, is quite complex.

Here a robot is demonstrating its mastery of a truly complex visual and tactile task. Consider combining this ability with other robots, such as the one that can be seen at this link.

What is even more interesting is that the programming is actually not that complex. The research paper can be found by clicking here. It is based on a fairly simple flowchart, as seen below:

Your Health and Rail-tie Processing in Williams Lake. Part 4: The Law

2010-03-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

First, let me state immediately that I am not an expert on Environmental Law (and precious few other things).

In gathering basic information about the issue of rail-tie chipping and storage, however, I've also gathered just a bit of information about provincial pollution laws that are legislated within the BC Environmental Management Act.

First, only an "industry, trade or business" that is defined as "Prescribed" requires a permit to discharge waste before they begin operation. Rail-tie chipping and storage is not defined as "Prescribed," a legal loophole that should be closed as soon as possible.

Despite this, at first glance, the BC Environmental Management Act (EMA) seems to offer hope. According to the EMA, Part 2, Sub-section 6:

"A person must not introduce waste into the environment in such a manner or quantity as to cause pollution."

The EMA defines pollution as:

"the presence in the environment of substances or contaminants that substantially alters or impairs the usefulness of the environment."

That the processing of rail-ties behind the Station House gallery is causing pollution, would seem to be, to use an Americanism, a "self evident truth." Further, the basic laws of chemistry and physics would have to be violated for this not to be true. Unfortunately this appears to be legally inadequate. The legislation is designed to require a complainant to establish that the usefulness of the environment has been altered or impaired. That would require someone, or some organization to collect and pay for expensive soil and water sampling.

But.....before anyone runs off to collect money to accomplish this (and I don't think that aspect would be hard), the results, regardless of what they revealed, would be mostly meaningless. This is because the prior use of the site would not allow one to distinguish between current and prior contamination.

As far as I can tell, this allows for the discharge of almost any form or quantity of oil, oil product, or toxin, into the soil with near complete impunity.

From a pollution perspective, the Station House Gallery site appears to be a legal toxic-waste black-hole.

One wonders how many others exist in the province.

Still, there is one angle to make the legislation work that people may consider. If pollution causes an odour, you can use the chemical receptors built into your nose, to document how the "usefulness" of the environment has been altered. If residents or business owners in an area affected by odours keep records (standardized and consistent) of odour events AND local weather records (i.e., wind speed, direction, temperature) over a long period of time, it may be possible to prove that the environment has been altered or made unusable. This was done successfully in the instance of odours from Moneys Mushrooms in the Fraser Valley.

But, back to the issue of rail-ties behind the Station House Gallery. Now it may be evident why the City of Williams Lake approached the issue from the angle of the BC Fire Code. Attempting to resolve the issue using pollution laws would have been almost impossible.

Let your MLA know that any processing of wood treated with creosote or other pesticide/preservative, should be considered a "Prescribed Industry, Trade or Business."

Photo: Screen capture of the header on the Ministry of the Environment webpage introducing the Environmental Management Act. Available from: http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/main/ema.htm

Your Health and Rail-tie Processing in Williams Lake. Update 1

2010-03-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

Although many people may have already seen the press release from the City of Williams Lake yesterday (March 22nd), I thought I would note it here to keep the information on this blog up-to-date.

In short, the City has determined that the rail-ties are in "non-compliance" with the BC Fire Code. Hopefully this matter will not be in dispute between CN Rail and the City, allowing for rapid removal of this material from downtown Williams Lake.

Given that CN Rail is a company that specializes in moving large quantities of material, I'm sure they can demonstrate this expertise by getting the chipped and unchipped ties out of this site quickly. I hope that this material will be transported to a location specializing in the storage of toxic waste.

Tomorrow (March 24) I will post some information about provincial pollution legislation (what was intended to be Part 4 of the blog series), as it relates directly to issues at the Station House Gallery. It may explain why the removal of this material required referencing the Fire Code as opposed to provincial pollution legislation that one might suppose is intended to protect our health. I'll also try to note one way that residents can use that legislation when industrial activities affect air quality.

Capital Power (EPCOR) Decides to Stop Burning Rail-ties!

2010-03-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

I've just learned that Capital Power (formerly EPCOR) has decided to stop burning rail-ties at its bioenergy facility in Williams Lake.

I want to thank Capital Power for making that decision. It was the right decision for Williams Lake and Capital Power.

Given this, my blogs on this issue will end for awhile as the facts on the ground begin to rearrange. I will repost once direction is set for dealing with the chips stored at the Station House Gallery.

The work of many people over the past several months has raised awareness of the rail-tie issue behind the scenes. These concerns have been heard. This is a victory for those who raised this issue in community sustainability committees, and those who wrote and spoke to city councilors, the Mayor, our MLA, and Ministry of Environment officials.

Thumbs Up to the Community!

Photo: The left extended lateral most digit of a lesser Higgins

Photo credit: R. Higgins

Your Health and Rail-tie Processing in Williams Lake. Part 3: Rail ties and Fire

2010-03-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

AN EXTREME FIRE HAZARD

Creosote burns hot and fast but that is only part of the problem. Uncontrolled fire in creosote results in a great quantity of incompletely combusted compounds. Consider the dioxins, PAHs, and chlorophenols noted in my previous blog. The black smoke coming from such a fire would be full of those. No one would recommend that anyone be exposed to any of this.

A fire in this material could be a major problem depending upon which way the wind is blowing. People in the way of the smoke should either stay indoors and seal off all doors and windows, or leave town as quickly and safely as possible. Of those I have spoken to about this, the minimum noted was 'partial evacuation of the downtown.' I know that sounds dramatic, but this would not be a typical fire. If the city had the further misfortune of a fire occurring during an air inversion (see here for information about inversions in Williams Lake), the smoke would be trapped in the city.

I've asked the City of Williams Lake if the Fire Chief believes that a fire in these chips could be put out. Apparently the Chief believes it could be. I hope he is correct, but consider the short video available below, or at this link if you have a problem with the video below playing.

In the case documented by the video:

1) the wind was blowing the smoke away and because the fire was surrounded by grassland, fire fighters had access. The chip storage area in Williams Lake has very limited access as three sides are valley cliffs;

2) Although the fire was 'contained' the option of actually putting it out did not seem to be on the table. They had to let it burn out by itself;

3) This was a fire in a portion of 1,000 unchipped rail-ties. Chipped wood will burn faster and the quantity on site in Williams Lake is certainly greater than 1,000 ties;

4) The fire documented in the video was clearly not immediately adjacent to the downtown district of a city.

What are the odds of a fire in these chips? Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already but the fact that the site has access only from one side probably keeps most people out. The site, however, is directly across the street from a pub. There is no fence. It only takes one person, waiting for a ride late at night, who heads across the street to empty their bladder, who flicks a cigarette....

I'm all for trying to find win-win solutions to problems, but in this case, the chipping and storage of rail-ties in Williams Lake needs to stop.

Header Photo: Chipped and unchipped rail-ties behind the Station House Gallery

Photo Credit: R. Higgins

Your Health and Rail-tie Processing in Williams Lake. Part 2: Rail tie chipping

2010-03-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

NAME THIS PARK

Did you know that the area immediately behind the rail cars shown here, piled high with chipped rail-ties, is zoned by the City of Williams Lake as Park? Does anyone want to suggest a name the city might adopt for this park?

Exactly how long this area has been used for the storage and chipping of creosote treated rail-ties is unclear. Even city managers do not seem certain. It is believed that the storage of chipped rail-ties began in 1995 (the same year it was zoned as Park) and that the on-site chipping began in the early 2000s. This is concerning.

These rail-ties are being chipped for the purpose of supplying fuel to Capital Power (formerly EPCOR) in Williams Lake. In a study performed in 2001, Lanfranco and Associates reported the following pollutant concentrations in the rail-ties used in Williams Lake (warning- tedious numbers immediately ahead):

1) Dioxins/furans 4,040 pg TEQ /gr (compare to 1 pg TEQ /gr for normal wood waste);

2 )Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) 7,361,000 ng/gr (compare to 12,353 ng/gr for normal wood waste)

3) Chlorophenols 72,093 ng/gr (compare to 30.0 ng/gr for normal wood waste).

The area being used for chipping and storage is at the end of what most people in Williams Lake consider the city's main street, Oliver. It is immediately above the river valley, literally piled to the edge, where rain runoff can rapidly transport pollutants downhill. No one I asked seemed to know just what volume of chipped rail-ties are being stored here but all of the available land appears to be filled with chips stacked higher than the top of the semi-trailer truck seen in this photo.

Unchipped creosote treated wood has been shown to leach dioxins into nearby water (Wan 1995). Chipped ties are more concerning because:

1) The surface area of the chipped ties is vastly greater than that of the unchipped ties and rain water or melting snow running across this area would be expected to carry away much more of the pollutants of concern;

2) The chipping produces dust which:

a) has an even greater surface area to leach pollutants into the soil;

b) can be transported by wind, spreading pollutants into a larger area and increasing risk of human exposure by inhalation and contact;

3) The large surface area increases the amount that will evaporate into the air on hot days, creating odour problems in the commercial core of the city.

This activity is being carried out downtown. It is true that this area has been used as a railroad service yard since around 1919, and it is likely the soil is already contaminated. The current use, however, would reasonably be expected to leach quantities of toxic materials into the surrounding landscape at a scale that has not occurred previously. These toxins are considered some of the most serious with respect to human health.

This is because....

Dioxins. Dioxins were the contaminant in Agent Orange that led to serious health impacts during the Vietnam War. They are both cancer causing and acutely toxic to almost every human organ system (e.g., immune, skin, liver, muscular etc.). Exposure to 70 micrograms per kilogram body weight is enough to cause a Rhesus monkey to rapidly lose weight and its hair and fingernails (IARC 1997). The amount of time it takes the body to naturally rid itself of dioxins, assuming no additional exposures, is measured in many years and they last even longer in the environment. People should not be exposed to dioxin sources. The Canadian Environmental Protection Act desires that they be 'virtually' eliminated (CCME 2001) but large quantities are currently being processed in downtown Williams Lake.

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs). My Masters degree was focused on the toxicity and metabolism of a particular PAH known as benzo(a)pyrene. It, as with dioxins, is listed as a Group 1 Carcinogen, is known to bioaccumulate (i.e., exposures accumulate in the body and in the food web over time) and is very persistent in the environment. For a sense of how long, consider my story relating to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The creosote in rail-ties, as it is a coal tar, is mostly PAH in content.

Chlorophenols. These are suspected carcinogens (Group 2A) but more significant as acute toxins. Exposure has been shown to cause skin and liver damage, as well as low birth weight. For general information on chlorophenols, follow this link to the US Department of Health and Human Services.

This material should not be produced or stored within an urban area. If some of the information above sounds concerning, consider what would happen if the stored chips caught fire. That will be the focus of my posting tomorrow.

References

[CCME] Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. 2001. Canada Wide Standards for Dioxins and Furans. 12p. Available from: http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/envision/gp/A7appendix.pdf

[IARC] 1997. See Part 1 for full reference.

Lanfranco and Associates Inc. 2001. TransCanada Power Emissions Survey Report: Regular Woodwaste and Railtie Woodwaste. Prepared for TransCanada Power. Available from the BC Ministry of Environment.

Wan MT. 1995. Treated wood as a source of dioxin/furan releases. Organohalogen Compounds. 24: 109-114.

Hat Tip: Marten Lettinga, Chemistry, Thompson Rivers University, for locating some of the references

Photo: view of the rail-tie chipping area immediately behind the Station House gallery.

Photo Credit: R. Higgins

Your Health and Rail-tie Processing in Williams Lake. Part 1: The Issues

2010-03-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

Creosote treated rail-ties contain large quantities of dioxins, PAHs (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) and chlorophenols that cause serious human illness. Dioxins and PAHs are known to include compounds that are listed as Group 1 Carcinogens (cancer causing compounds) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) while chlorophenols are listed as Group 2B Carcinogens (i.e., they are suspected carcinogens). In addition dioxins and chlorophenols are also known to cause serious adverse affects to many human organ systems at low concentrations, and in the case of dioxins, are very persistent in the environment (IARC 1997).

This is the first of a seven-part blog series looking at what is known regarding the chipping, burning, and disposal of creosote treated rail-ties within the city of Williams Lake. The intent is to provide an overview of how these rail-ties are being processed and burned within the city as well as how the residual ash is being discarded. In addition, I will attempt to provide a small amount of information about the legislation governing pollution and note some options for citizens concerned about the situation. I will attempt to post new parts of this series each day beginning Monday March 15th.

The series will include:

Part 1: The Issues

Part 2: Rail-tie chipping and the health risks of dioxins, chlorophenols, and PAHs.

Part 3: Rail-tie chipping and the risk of a fire within the city.

Part 4: Provincial pollution legislation.

Part 5: Rail-tie burning at Epcor (now Capital Power).

Part 6: Uncontrolled burning of stored wood at Epcor (now Capital Power).

Part 7: The disposal of rail-tie ash in Williams Lake

References

[IARC] International Agency for Reseach on Cancer. 1997. Polychlorinated Dibenzo-para-dioxins and Polychlorinated dibenzofurans. IARC Monograph Volume 69. 666p. Available from: http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/allmonos90.php

Photo: A view of the rail-tie chipping work area behind the Station House Gallery.

Photo Credit: R. Higgins

Going it Alone

2010-02-16T22:43:00.000-08:00

Myrmica crassirugis is an interesting medium sized ant that is not too uncommon in the grasslands (Becher's Prairie) just west of Williams Lake. It was a fairly common capture in some work I did a few years ago and, following some additional collecting, seems to reside in Canada only in a few locations in British Columbia. The specimens I collected became one of just a few samples used to officially describe this species by Andre Francoeur at the University of Quebec a couple of years ago.

About the time that I was collecting this ant, I met a PhD student, Gunther Jansen, at a conference in Washington DC, who was working at the University of Helsinki. Gunther was working on the evolutionary history of the genus to which this ant belongs. Just this week, he has published his work, examining over 60 species, including some of my samples from Becher's Prairie. Of interest is the finding that Myrmica crassirugis is a bit of an oddball.

Whereas most other species within the genus cluster into what are known as species groups (aggregations of closely related species), Myrmica crassirugis is one of the few that seems to stand out on its own. In fact, from its DNA it can be estimated that this species evolved around 18 million years ago. For some reason this species has been an evolutionary loner and one is left to wonder why. It almost certainly evolved first in Asia although it isn't known there now so a tendency not to travel into new habitat isn't the answer.

The answer probably lies in the ecology of this species. The problem is, like most ants in temperate climates, we know almost nothing about this.

Photo credit: Me

Biology and the Wheel

2010-02-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

Many biologists have pondered the lack of wheels in biological systems. There would be some energetic advantages to using wheels, so why have they not evolved? Sure, you need a fairly flat environment, but plenty of those exist. The problem that no multicellular organism has ever cracked, is finding a way to deliver nutrients and gases across an axle at a rate capable of supporting the downstream tissue.

The bacterial flagellum operates as a true wheel but it doesn't need to worry about nutrient delivery to the flagellum. The tumbleweed is another and solves the problem by rotating the entire organism. In this case, the purpose is seed dispersal. There is some irony in the fact that this form of motion has been best exploited by a plant.

Here is a dramatic example of the biological wheel in action. Running commentary by some very young biologists.

Science and Christmas

2010-01-08T11:10:00.000-08:00

If only they could develop a guidance system that would get my tree to the compost bin at the dump.

Hat-tip: Daily Dish

Science and Art

2009-12-29T20:48:00.000-08:00

Technically this is an ad for BMW. In reality it is one of the best short videos of Theo Jansen's kinetic sculptures.

Hat Tip:Myrmecos.net

Cold Air Inversion

2009-12-16T11:31:00.001-08:00

This is a view of the far western end of Williams Lake on 16 Dec 2009, taken from the road leading up to Fox Mountain.

The low clouds evident in the picture are not natural clouds, but rather industrial emissions from the Epcor bioenergy plant and Soda Creek lumber mills, trapped in the valley by a cold air inversion.

Inversions occur when a warm front pushes over a layer of underlying cold air. Emissions from industrial activity rise until they hit the boundary between the two layers where the density difference between the warm and cold air block circulation between the two, and thus the emissions flatten out. This occurs frequently in the small valleys of British Columbia where many towns are located.

Today in Williams Lake the temperature above this inversion is approximately 13 °C warmer than the air below. Thus, while the recorded temperature early this morning was -4 °C at the airport (above the inversion), it was -17 °C in town. Quite a difference.

Characteristic of an inversion is a near complete absence of air movement in the cooler pooled air. When inversions last for days, significant deteriorations in air quality can occur, especially in communities where industrial activity is juxtaposed with residential areas, and when you have many people burning wood for heat, as in Williams Lake.

The changing density of warm air over cold can also lead to interesting visual affects. If the inversion lasts through the day, you may notice, from town, a distortion in the shape of the sun as it sets. With longer views of the horizon than we normally get in British Columbia, the refractive differences between the cold and warm air can cause a green flash the moment the sun sets. You might recall this phenomena noted in the Pirates of the Caribbean III.

"Ever gazed upon the green flash, Master Gibbs?"
"I reckon I've seen my fair share. Happens on rare occasion; the last glimpse of sunset, a green flash shoots up into the sky. Some go their whole lives without ever seeing it. Some claim to have seen it who ain't. And some say—"
"It signals when a soul comes back to this world, from the dead!"

Or it could mean that a layer of warm air overlays a layer of cold.

Photo Credit:Me

The Wood Tick

2009-04-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

The male wood tick shown above was collected at Churn Creek (about 60km south of Williams Lake) in April of 2009. I managed to spot this tick at the top of a blade of grass immediately beside the trail upon which I was walking.

The wood tick, also called a sage tick, sheep tick, cattle tick or paralysis tick, unlike the winter tick, needs more than one host to complete its' life cycle. The stage that humans tend to pick up in the spring is the adult. It has already lived on two hosts (small mammals) at earlier stages in its' life cycle.

These ticks are common in the grasslands of British Columbia during April and May. Upon detecting carbon dioxide, vibrations or shadows, they climb to the top of blades of grass hoping to catch a ride on their next host. When they do find a host they slowly work their way to the groin, armpits or scalp, making sure not to bend any hairs suddenly which would make the host aware of their presence. Males, such as the one above, are on the host only to mate, and often in their scramble to find a female, they bend a hair making their presence known.

Females, once in a suitable location will settle down to feed. They bite, usually painlessly, and then secrete a glue-like substance around their mouthparts to hold them firmly to the host. This glue, along with some inflammation that may arise around the mouthparts, might make it seem that they are burrowing into the skin. Rest assured, ticks cannot do this. After a few days of feeding the ticks will drop off of the host to lay eggs on the ground.

The main concern with these ticks, in the Cariboo-Chilcotin is a slight risk of tick paralysis. Just what causes this is still uncertain, but people and animals suffering this condition will begin to stagger and lose muscular control. If the tick causing the problem is not removed, this will lead to death. Once removed, however, symptoms resolve in a little as 20 minutes.

These ticks do not carry Lyme disease. Lyme disease is carried by another tick entirely (genus Ixodes) of which, the particular species associated with transmitting Lyme disease to humans, is only found in the southern regions of the province--usually in cool dark forests. No documented case of Lyme disease has been recorded in the Cariboo-Chilcotin.

To remove a wood tick, grasp it firmly around the head region with tweezers and gently but firmly pull back. The tick will pull loose in about 15-30 seconds. Do not use gasoline, matches or any chemical on the tick as this may cause the tick to regurgitate into the wound and increase the risk of spreading infection.

For more information about ticks in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, click here.

Kellogg's and Bad Science

2009-04-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

Advertisements for Kellogg's Mini-Wheats in the U.S. claimed that children eating their cereal for breakfast were shown in a study to be 20% more attentive at school.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has now ruled this advertisement was false.

The 20% cited in the advertisement was recorded only by a handful of students. In fact, only half of the students in the study showed any improvement at all. Further, the cereal was compared to students that had not eaten any breakfast at all. Wouldn't it have been better to compare Mini-Wheats to students eating a different breakfast?

So, Kellogg's chose to misleading report a poorly designed study. Why would a major corporation play so loosely with its' credibility.

Hat Tip: Quackwatch

Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons (seanutbutter)

The Hunt

2009-04-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

In just a few seconds this video shows just how strong the forces of natural selection are upon both predators and prey. The fox with its' keen sense of hearing and stealth--watch as it positions its' head to get directional information from its prey. The prey...well...let's just say that future populations won't be descended from the noisy ones.

Hat tip: Daily Dish

And The Winner of the Shiny Nickel Award Is....

2009-04-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

The Shiny Nickel Award goes to Elizabeth Rennie.

Elizabeth, zeroing in on the clowns, identified the advertiser associated with the video posted yesterday.

She immediately recognized the advertiser as Philips TV, promoting the,"........ groundbreaking Cinema 21:9 LCD TV, the world’s first cinema proportioned television screen. I mean, come on, what else could clown-imagery represent?"

Yes, the clown imagery was a giveaway.

So, the coveted Shiny Nickel will soon be flying through the interdepartmental mail to Kamloops to our lucky winner, who has assured me that no computer resources were used in the winning of this award.

Photo Credit: Me.

For Something Completely Different

2009-04-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

This is an ad. Really. Can you guess what it is for?

I'll post the answer tomorrow.

Hat Tip: Daily dish

Friends of Churn Creek

2009-04-19T22:38:00.000-07:00

The Churn Creek Protected Area is the only grassland region in British Columbia in which the grassland ecosystem remains intact from low to high elevations. After spending last summer working on a project in the south Okanagan (Williamson sapsucker ant diet), I can tell you how rare this is. There the vineyards run from the valley floor right up to the high elevation forest edge, leaving little of the natural ecosystem. It makes it hard to contemplate partaking in a BC wine.

This past weekend a new society formed, the Friends of Churn Creek, to provide assistance to BC Parks in managing the Churn Creek Protect Area. The goal is to help maintain this unique ecosystem.

Churn Creek is not your typical park. The area is fairly remote and extremely arid with few services for parks visitors. The park is suited to those who are looking for a quiet reflective experience as they look out over a great landscape of rolling hills and deeply carved valleys. It is also a wonder for biologists fascinated with the ecology of plants and animals living in such an environment.

Photo Credit: Me (April 19, 2009). Left to Right: Ordell Steen, Fred McMechan, Anna Roberts

Energy Drinks

2009-04-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

Energy drinks have become extremely popular with students. The question has always been, are they safe?

Well, millions of cans have been sold and there is little documentation of health related issues.

A new study by Leah Steinke and colleagues in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy, however, has raised some concerns about the effect of energy drinks on the cardiovascular system.

In this study fifteen people were given two energy drinks each day (100mg taurine and 100mg caffeine) for seven days. Their blood pressure, heart rate and electrocardiographic (ECG) characteristics were measured prior to the study and then on Day1 and Day 7 over a few hours following consumption of the energy drinks.

Steinke and colleagues found that while there were no statistically significant affects associated with the ECG characteristics, the same could not be said for heart rate or blood pressure. Heart rate was up 11% on Day 7 and blood pressure also increased. Systolic pressure(i.e., the 'high' number in a blood pressure reading) was up 9.6% and the diastolic pressure (i.e., the 'low' number in a blood pressure reading) was up 7.8%.

Is this concerning? Probably not for young healthy adults, however, for those with underlying but undiagnosed heart problems or high blood pressure, this could be very concerning. Especially with long term consumption. These products clearly push the cardiovascular system in a direction that is unhealthy.

Caveat: this study was small (15 people) and the baseline health data was taken only immediately prior to the study. Longer monitoring of the baseline data would help to determine just how much variability was natural for this small group.

Photo Credit: Grendelkhan, Wikipedia commons.

Research citation: Steinke L, et al. 2009. Effect of "Energy Drink" consumption on hemodynamic and electrocardiographic parameters in healthy young adults. Annals of Pharmacotherapy 43(4): 596-602.

A Better Way to Identify Healthy Food

2009-04-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

How can you communicate nutrition information to a public that usually does not know the difference between the major macronutrients (carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins)?

The answer might be to use a system that everyone already understands, traffic lights. Bridget Kelly and colleagues have just published some research (Health Promotion International 2009) looking at how well the public understands nutrition related labelling of food products.

The traffic light system uses the colours green, amber and red to identify food components that are good, fair, and poor respectively. An additional traffic light provides the overall health rating of the food. It seems easy to understand even at a glance.

Kelly and colleagues found that consumers were 3 times more likely to identify healthy foods using the traffic light system as compared to a colour coded Daily Intake label and 5 times more likely when using a monochrome Daily Intake system.

Short story: a simple, broadly understandable system that works.

Nerd alert: Kelly and colleagues used logistic regression to come to the conclusions given above. Reading through their methods section I can't say I'm totally happy with the technique used to identify model variables for the regression. They should have used either a more a priori technique or gone with a stepwise logistic regression.

Photo credit: www.choice.com.au

Blurring Unemployment Statistics

2009-04-13T15:21:00.000-07:00

Above are the unemployment statistics for the Cariboo over the past 15 months. Currently, the Cariboo has the second highest unemployment rate in the province, second only to the North Coast-Nechako which has unemployment at 11.1%.

Is unemployment in the Cariboo currently 10% as suggested by these data above from BC Stats? No, not really. These numbers, while indicated for specific months, are actually averages of the previous three months. Statistians use three month averages to smooth out their data--everyone wants a smooth graph right? Graphs that show gradual transitions make politicians less likely to hyperventilate and the public to panic.

Unfortunately, occasionally this does not reflect the situation in the real world. This is one such occasion.

Data Source: Labour Force Statistics: BC Stats. Plotted by me.

Ant Robots

2009-04-08T18:04:00.000-07:00

Robot technology seems to be leaping forward right now.

Not sure when we will need to program in Asimov's three laws of robotics, but it won't be long.

Hat tip: Myrmecos blog

YouTube and Robot credit: Kåre Halvorsen (aka Xenta) from Norway

Dead Wood is Needed for Living Forests

2009-04-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

What do we mean by a word like 'Waste?'

Generally we mean that it is useless and is a burden just to discard. The less the better.

Why then do we use this word to refer to the dead standing or fallen wood in our forests? It is anything but waste. Rather, it is a vital resource for countless animals, plants and micro-organisms in our forests. Its decayed fibre contributes organic material to our forest soils and helps to buffer soil pH. It also acts as a water reservoir in forests where drought is common.

It can be called it waste only if we do not understand its function in forest ecosystems or it can be called waste by those who want to use it for other purposes. This is the term used today by the BC government and the bioenergy industry to describe this resource.

Despite the desire by the modern forest industry to emulate (i.e., imitate) natural disturbances in log harvesting operations, the massive removal of tree biomass in no way emulates what normally occurs in nature. How much biomass can be removed before we see a serious disruption to the ability of forest soils to regenerate new growth is uncertain. Traditionally though, forestry operations in British Columbia have left more wood behind on cutblocks than occurs most areas of the world. Still, this may not be enough.

Now, the bioenergy industry wants to greatly reduce the volume of remaining wood. On a visit to a local bioenergy facility I once heard a manager talk about obtaining a Swedish machine to scrape and bundle the smallest pieces of wood from the forest floor. Worse, the claim is made that this is a 'Green' technology.

This month the Williams Lake Field Naturalists will present a resolution to the Annual General Meeting of the Federation of BC Naturalists. It reads:

"Whereas, coarse woody debris (CWD) is a fundamental component of forest ecosystems, critical to:

1) providing habitat to many dead wood dependent organisms (e.g., fungi, insects, vertebrates) which in turn support a broader food web (e.g., insectivorous birds, bears);

2) providing energy to support forest resilience (e.g., ability to resist extensive damage from forest pests, climate change or invasive species);

3) providing water storage in ecosystems frequently experiencing drought;

4) providing pH buffering capacity to forest soils which become acidic as a result of biomass removal;

5) providing nutrient and structural components to forest soils in a province noted for low-productivity soils.

Whereas, management guidelines for CWD retention under the Forest and Range Practices Act are inadequate for protecting this resource under existing harvesting pressures, there is concern that additional plans for biomass removal by the bioenergy industry will exacerbate this problem.

Be It Resolved: That Nature BC communicate to the Government of BC the need to develop a science-based woody debris (organic matter) management system with the view that maintaining CWD is fundamental to the sound ecological management of our forests."

I hope this helps to raise this issue in the minds of BC naturalists.

Photo Credit: Me

Energy and the International Space Station

2009-04-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

Last week the International Space Station unfurled the last of its 8 paired solar panel arrays (each array is composed to two long panels, 5m by 34m long). The photo above, taken last week by the departing space shuttle, Discovery, shows all of the panels now in place.

How much energy does it take to run the space station? Well, basic life support and essential operations on the station requires about 20 kilowatts (kW). A single array generates around 15kW but they are exposed to sunlight only half the time. Thus, approximately three of the 8 arrays are necessary for life support.

A typical home in Canada uses a bit more than 1kW on average (about 11,000 kWhr/yr). This means that the 5 arrays not required for life support would provide enough energy for approximately 35 homes.

How much did those arrays cost? Each of the eight run about $300 million. The station shown above is now estimated to be worth $100 billion.

Worth it? I don't think so. For that cost we could be seriously exploring the solar system using robots. Is there life under the ice of Europa (one of Jupiter's moons) or on Titan (a moon of Saturn)? These are questions 100 billion could have answered.

Photo credit: NASA, Discovery (STS-119, Shuttle Crew, March 25, 2009)

Pseudoscorpions

2009-04-04T14:14:00.001-07:00

Pseudoscorpions usually go unnoticed because of their tiny size. When someone does notice one, however, they are often startled by the sight of this tiny animal with the long front legs and huge pincers.

This particular specimen was found just north of Williams Lake and passed along to me for identification. These are arachnids (related to spiders and true scorpions) but unlike their namesake, the true scorpions, are not at all dangerous.

Pseudoscorpions feed mostly on other tiny animals such as mites. They have been found in some old libraries where they are feeding on book lice or silverfish, which in turn are eating the books themselves. Normally, however, they are found outdoors and are only occasionally reported as an indoor pest. Having said that, I recall frequently finding them in my house in Winnipeg when I was a kid. I can't say I've seen many of them in British Columbia although I know someone who was studying them here several years ago.

Photo Credit: Me

New Heart Cells

2009-04-02T14:16:00.001-07:00

Seems the medical textbooks will need a bit of a rewrite. It has always been believed that heart cells cannot regenerate. Thus, while the cells may enlarge as you grow, it was believed that you died with the same heart cells with which you were born.

Not so. A new study has shown that heart cells can replicate, although not that quickly. Jonas Frisen and others have just reported in the journal Science that the heart replaces about 1% of all cells per year at age 25, falling to about 0.5% per year at age 75.

Two interesting aspects about this research.

First, it establishes that a mechanism controlling heart cell replacement must exist. Once that mechanism is understood there may be new hope for heart attack patients who have lost functional heart muscle.

Second, the methodology used was fascinating. The standard technique used to determine cellular replacement in other animals is to radiolabel them (i.e., expose them to a radioactive chemical that the cells will incorporate into their strucure) and then look for new unlabelled cells. This can't be done in humans for ethical/health reasons. Indirectly though, the world superpowers did this anyway. Above ground nuclear testing created an abnormally high level of radioactive carbon (C-14) that anyone born before 1963 would have been exposed to. It was following this radioisotope that allowed the measurements in this study to be made.

Photo Credit: New York Times

TRU News Release

2009-04-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

TRU Launches New Corporate Partnerships

Thompson Rivers University, President Kathleen Sherf, announced today that the university will be partnering with several new corporate sponsors to compensate for projected shortfalls in government funding.

"The goal isn't just to raise money, it is to connect students to the real world that exists beyond the halls of academia," said Dr. Sherf, "while helping to improve student life."

The first sponsor will be "Stress3Essays.com," a company dedicated to improving student life by providing high quality essays for subjects ranging from emerging diseases in Biology to ethics in Philosophy.

Faculty will be strongly encouraged to wear T-shirts to class bearing the logo of the current corporate sponsor (a new sponsor each month). A contractual requirement for faculty to provide service to TRU will help to enhance compliance.

Asked about the new initiative, faculty member Barbara Bearman in the English department responded,"After years of marking what students have been directly passing for thought, I'm encouraging them to subscribe to the Platinum Level Service. It will be nice to finally read something coherent."

Stress3Essays.com will be the official TRU corporate sponsor starting April 1st. They will be followed by an on-line casino, "Guaranteed Winners," whose motto, "Who needs a degree to be rich?" has put them at the top of the very competitive on-line casino industry.

If I Have Seen So Far...

2009-03-30T16:04:00.001-07:00

One of the most famous scientific quotations of all time was penned by Sir Issac Newton. You know the one, "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants." Okay, the usual quote edits out the "ye."

I love this quote because it is used so often and so completely out-of-context. Sort of like the phrase, "With all due respect...."

The quotation was included in a letter Newton wrote to a scientist known as Robert Hooke. Hooke was an interesting character. He was a brilliant scientist, versed in virtually every field. However, he was poor for most of his life and worked as a lab assistant to other, better monied scientists. Both Newton and Hooke had a reputation for be irritable and quarrelsome.

The quote arose after Hooke had accused Newton of stealing his ideas in a recent publication that Newton had written on optics. Newton included the quote in his letter responding to this accusation.

One other detail is of some significance. Hooke was known to be very short. Very short.

The quotation isn't magnanimous at all. It is an insult intended to deride a competitor physically.

The battle between Newton and Hooke continued throughout their lives. After Hooke died and Newton became president of the Royal Society, the only known portrait of Hooke, hanging on the walls of the Royal Society, disappeared. To date, we really don't know exactly what he looked like.

Portrait Credit: Issac Newton painted by Godfrey Kneller, 1689

The Winter Tick

2009-03-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

The Winter Tick (Dermacentor albipictus)

This tick, one of many, just turned up on a young horse that was recently brought into the Williams Lake Stampede Grounds. It is a pretty common tick in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, but not so much in the immediate Williams Lake area.

The winter tick is what we call a one-host tick because it completes its life cycle on a single animal, usually large mammals like horses, cattle or moose. These animals pick up the tick in the fall, often in very large numbers. Initially even a good horse groomer will not notice them as they are tiny, but as fall progresses into winter they will grow and then one day, a horse owner will feel hundreds or thousands of distinct bumps under the hair. It may be suspected that the horse recently became a host for the ticks but, in fact, the ticks had been there for a few months.

Heavy loads cause severe itching for the host. The host will try to rub off the tick by pushing up against trees or other solid objects. Unfortunately, they rub so hard and frequently that they lose a great deal of hair which can impact their health during the winter. The heavy hair loss gives rise to what are called 'Ghost Moose.' Combine this condition with a late winter cold snap and significant mortality can occur. Fortunately, this tick is not considered a serious risk for transmitting diseases.

In the spring the ticks will naturally fall to the ground to lay eggs. The eggs will hatch in about 6 weeks and then spend the summer dormant (sleeping) in the low vegetation. In the fall they climb grasses or shrubs, in great numbers, and are picked up by the next host.

So, back to the young horse at the Stampede Grounds. What to do? Simple. Don't transport him around because this might spread the ticks at a time in the life cycle when eggs will be laid. Just treat for the ticks as soon as possible and try to collect any that fall.

For more information about ticks in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, click here.

Photo credit: Me

Fire at the University of Manitoba

2009-03-28T17:54:00.000-07:00

A Shock !

Today the fourth floor of the Duff Roblin building (Zoology) at the University of Manitoba caught fire. I spent my undergraduate and graduate years prowling these halls and taught here for one year after finishing my Masters degree. The firefighters are standing immediately beside my old office window in the Buller building.

I hope the damage is not too extensive. There are a lot of memories in there (including driving my motorcycle through the building one night).

The building was named after a former premier of Manitoba. Ironically, while Duff is losing a building, Duff's Ditch (the Winnipeg Floodway) is about to save the city from heavy spring flooding.

Photo Credit: David Lipnowski, Winnipeg Free Press

Chemistry Kits

2009-03-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

I had one of these as a kid. They were great. Sure the first thing I did was blow some stuff up but that stopped when I realized I didn't have an endless supply of test tubes and beakers.

It is sad that kids today can't get access to simple chemistry kits.

Source: Wired Science

I Told You So

2009-03-26T15:06:00.001-07:00

Twenty years ago, in 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground off the coast of Alaska dumping 40 million litres of oil into Prince William Sound.

Today, Prince William Sound looks clean, but it isn't. A study has shown that a great deal of oil still remains.

Back in 1982, I pulled together some data that had been lying around in the lab in which I did my Master's thesis research. It was dealing with how oil and water mix and the toxicity of this mixture. I presented that data to a conference in Edmonton, attended by a great many representative of the oil and gas industry. I was unprepared for the hostility the data and my presentation would receive, unfamiliar with the politics of oil.

One person wearing a suit of some expense--mine would have made Michael Moore proud--, took exception to the data showing the degree of toxicity. He said something to the effect of, "It's all gone in a few years so who gives a damn!"

I replied that the 'visible' fraction of the oil on beaches would be gone, but the heavy fraction, composed of toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons would remain beneath the surface for a very long time. This would move through the food chain and while it might not result in oil soaked sea otters washing up on the shore, it would still be causing damage. This was not greeted well and suggestions of wild speculation rose from the floor. There were around two hundred people attending, and from my perspective on the podium, no one seemed happy.

Now we find ourselves twenty years down the road from the Exxon Valdez. What is the research showing? According to a recent interview with Jeff Short in Science News, who studied the spill for NOAA (US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), about half of the original toxicity of the oil remains,..... mostly in the form of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Photo Credit: Oiled bird: Courtesy of the Exxon Valdex Oil Spill Trustee Council

A Long Way To Go

2009-03-24T16:35:00.001-07:00

These data are following the sales of new (red) and existing (blue) homes in the United States over the past several years.

The building of new homes in the US is critical for the Williams Lake lumber industry and these data do not look good.

First, it isn't at all clear that the sales of new homes has bottomed out, although there isn't much left to lose. Second, the gap between the sales of new and existing homes--slightly artificial because of the differing scales, but this is how the two are normally compared--is arising because of the resale of bargain foreclosed homes. The low value of these homes is likely to out compete new homes for some time yet. Third, the inventory of homes for sale is still very high as builders went crazy during the past few boom years.

Short story: Sales of all homes are way down. Inventory of existing homes is very high. Of those homes that do sell, foreclosed existing homes will out compete new homes for some time. Need for dimensional lumber? Not so much.

This situation will get better but it may take a long while. People should be thinking about long-term options.

(Warning: this advice is coming from a biologist).

For a short video, explaining just how we got into this mess, click here.

Figure credit:www.calculatedriskblog.com

For The Record

2009-03-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

The Alberta government needs to fact check their facts.

I was listening to CBC radio a few days ago when I heard that the Government of Alberta has added an on-line fact check feature relating to news articles about the province. They call it "For the Record."

The CBC noted that the Alberta government was crying foul at a statement made recently in The Economist magazine regarding the tar sand operations. The Economist (January 15, 2009) stated, "At some projects, leaks of toxic materials have polluted waterways."

In response, the Alberta government website stated, for the record,"Alberta has monitored and tested Athabasca watercourses for decades; all of our data indicates no evidence of contamination from the oil sands project."

Is the Alberta government telling the truth? Not according to my memory.

Sometime in the early 1980s (probably 1982) my Master's degree supervisor, Dr. Lyle Lockhart, at the Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg, was involved in providing expert testimony against Suncor (one of the big tar sand operators) relating to a spill into the Athabasca River. The lab I was working in did some toxicity testing of the oil using duckweed as a bioindicator. It was necessary to provide evidence of the toxicity of the material.

I recall the spill was caused by a fire that burned through the protective liner of a waste pond. The spill occurred in the winter as it was detected days after the event by a helicopter pilot who saw a huge plug of oil under the ice.

Many charges were laid against Suncor but the province of Alberta handed the case over to a single lawyer who was overwhelmed with the legal paperwork created by a small army of lawyers for Suncor. He had a nervous breakdown, at least that is what I was told, during the trial. In the end, most charges were dismissed and Suncor was convicted only on a handful. If my memory is correct, total fines were in the few thousands of dollars. Probably less than one week of lawyers fees.

I say that The Economist got it right.

Photo Credit: The Economist (tar sand operations near Fort McMurray).

US State of the Birds Report

2009-03-23T08:11:00.000-07:00

The United States has just released its first State of the Birds report (click here), reviewing bird population trends in the US over the last forty years. Over 800 species of birds were included in the report, and frankly, while there is some encouraging news, there isn't a lot.

The encouraging news comes mostly from bird populations associated with wetlands. Strong conservation efforts over the past forty years, driven by agencies seeking to maintain waterfowl populations for hunting, have led to improvements in wetland bird populations (see Figure below). The story, however, is not so encouraging for most other habitat associated species. In particular, grassland and arid bird species are becoming increasingly unhealthy.

I suspect my experience in the south Okanagan this past summer was indicative of the problem. I was working on a project examining the ant diet of the Williamsons Sapsucker, a forest nesting bird found in the highlands of the Okanagan and Kootenays areas. While my project was taking a close look at how forest management was affecting this particular bird, it was obvious as you travelled through the valleys of the south Okanagan, naturally characterized by arid grasslands and pocket desert, that little natural habitat remained.

While fruit orchards have long been established in this area, vineyards are currently expanding throughout the arid landscape. As one travels down any of the area roads you encounter endless vineyards and very little natural landscape. The vineyards now push high onto the hillsides of the valleys, running directly into the higher forest, replacing all of the native vegetation. A plan to try and preserve some of the remaining native landscape in a new federal park is hotly derided by area farmers. Signs saying "NO new national park" are found everywhere along the roads.

Unfortunately, grassland and arid landscapes are not producing a product (e.g., waterfowl) that attracts the interests of private agencies. Birds are often viewed by farmers as pests and, as usual, commercial interests trump conservation when the two seem to conflict.

If we fail to establish a national park in the south Okanagan, I think the decision will be an indicator for the broader prospects of these birds throughout N. America.

Figure Credit: US State of the Birds report.

Birding by Microphone

2009-03-22T11:36:00.001-07:00

I don't quite 'get' birding, but pretty much every naturalist I know 'does.' Personally, give me a ten-lined June bug over a Canadian Warbler anyday.

Still, those who are interested in birding are probably the most active conservationists on the planet. The time they spend outdoors makes them keenly aware of the changes occuring to both the rural and urban environment that most people don't notice as they speed by at 50 km/hr.

Here is an idea to expand birding into the night. A simple microphone system (cost perhaps $50.00) that can be hooked up to an old computer to record calls of birds migrating at night. Developed by William Evans, formerly with Cornell University, the microphone is built from a flower pot, a dinner plate, some Saran Wrap, and a couple of cheap electronic components that apparently can be assembled in just a couple of hours. Dr. Evans website, click here, provides step by step details.

The website also provides some simple software and the recordings of bird calls (spectrograms) that make the system work. The one shortfall is that the records are specific to birds of eastern and central N. America. However, it should not be too hard to input the spectrograms of western species. Anyone interested?

The tireless work of birders in recording bird sightings has created one of the best databases for following bird species abundances over time. The US has just released a federally sponsored report on bird populations. Much of the data is not good. I'll post this tomorrow.

Hat Tip: Wired Science

Photo Credit: Williams Evans. Photo of assembled bird microphone.

Letting Down Science

2009-03-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

I recall one day, while working on my Masters degree back in the 1980s at the Freshwater Institute (a research centre for the federal department of Fisheries and Oceans), noticing a piece of paper taped to a hall wall. When I took a closer look I saw it was a research application created by some bureaucrat down in the basement of the institute. One line had been circled in black marker and read "Expected Results." Scrawled over the rest of the form, in thick black marker, was "If I knew what the results were going to be, I wouldn't need to do the experiment!" There may have been an expletive tossed in there somewhere. The author of that scrawl was Dr. David Schindler, now Professor Emiterus at the University of Alberta, and a world leader in freshwater biology.

That piece of paper was a lesson I never forgot. It emphasized the difference between those who engage in science for the process of discovery, and those who use science as a loose means to an end.

The New York Times today reports on the case of Dr. Joseph Beiderman, a child psychologist at Harvard. Dr. Beiderman received 1.6 million dollars in consulting fees from pharmaceutical companies between 2000 and 2007. His research relating to the use of anti-psychotic drugs in young children is currently being investigated by both Harvard and the US National Institute of Health. One fact that came up during his deposition reminded me of that piece of paper taped to the wall more than 20 years ago.

It seems that Dr. Biederman had given presentations to drug companies telling them what his results were going to be before he started clinical trials. Apparently this made sense to both the drug companies and Dr. Biederman.

All I can say is that Dr. Biederman is no Dave Schindler.

Hat tip: Page Donaldson

Photo Credit: Me.

The Feathers are Flying

2009-03-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

The link between dinosaurs and birds was established back in the 1860s when fossils of the distinctly dinosaur and bird-like Archopteryx turned up in some German shale quarries. Many biologists today argue that all modern birds should be considered dinosaurs. It is an argument that makes sense.

However, it was only much more recently (15-20 years) that fossils collected in China were discovered that suggested that feathers were quite common within a larger group of dinosaurs, the theropods. I was able to see some of these fossils when visiting Brisbane, Australia, where they were on loan from China, back in 2004. This group of dinosaurs includes the velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus rex of Jurassic Park movie fame. It seems the movie was just a few years behind the discovery.

Now however, feathers, or at least what seem likely to be feathers have turned up in an entirely different lineage of dinosaurs, the ornithosaurs (includes the Triceratops). This was just reported by Hai-Lu You and colleagues in the journal Science. Shown above is an artists reconstruction of what these newly discovered dinosaurs, Tianyulong confuciusi, may have looked like. This suggests that either feathers evolved more than once in different lineages of dinosaurs or that the earliest ancestors of the dinosaurs had feathers. It certainly creates a challenge for artists and museums with respect to how dinosaurs should be shown.

The feathers will undoubtedly be flying at the next international paleontology meeting.

Artist credit: L-D Xing.

Minister Clarifies Stand on Evolution. Not!

2009-03-18T06:45:00.000-07:00

In an interview for the Globe and Mail, published Tuesday, the federal Minister for Science and Technology, Gary Goodyear, refused to answer a question about evolution. When asked if he believed in evolution he responded, "I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate."

But the question wasn't about religion, it was about evolution. Clearly, the minister doesn't see the difference.

By the end of Tuesday, someone had obviously spoken to the minister about the matter. In an interview with CTV News he now states that he does believe in evolution. Does he?

Here is how he framed it,"We are evolving every year, every decade. That's a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment."

Minister Goodyear is talking about what is called phenotypic plasticity, the physiological accommodation to stressors from environment within an individual (Note: phenotypes are measurable characterisitics of an organism, e.g., eye colour, blood type or bone density). This is not evolution. Unfortunately, it seems that Jane Taber, who interviewed Minister Goodyear for CTV did not know this either because she failed to follow-up, or at least no follow-up is reported.

Evolution is the process by which gene frequencies within populations change through time. It gives rise to new phenotypes, new species, and whole new assemblages of organisms. It isn't a knee problem that arises from wearing the wrong shoes that lasts until a new pair of shoes are purchased.

Like so many politicians, Gary Goodyear has decided that words mean what he wants them to mean. I am doubting that this matter will remain "clarified" for very long.

Photo Credit: Sean Kilpatrick, The Canandian Press, Globe and Mail (on-line), March 17, 2009.

Dolphin Bubble Rings

2009-03-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

It seems that a couple of years ago a few dolphins, mostly female, began to blow bubble rings at Sea World in Orlando. Once started this behaviour has spread to others.

At first I wondered if this was a carefully crafted hoax as the rings seem so improbable. Not so, this is genuine and has been the subject of one scientific publication.

I have not been able to find a good explanation of the physics of the rings. It would seem reasonable that they depend upon the air spinning to maintain their structural integrity. I am not sure if a vortex is also required in the surrounding water. They are rising when left to themselves although the camera angles make this difficult to see.

Enjoy the video.

Video Credit: Chiajungchi, YouTube. Dec.16, 2007. Musics "No one is alone in the woods" (John Williams). Boston Pops.

Obesity and What Doesn't Matter

2009-03-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

Since the recognition of the existence of macronutrients, (carbohydrates, proteins, and fats) by William Prout (1785-1850) in 1827, their role in human nutrition and obesity has been hotly debated. James Salisbury (1823-1905) took this information and started one of the first fad diets with his belief that human health was improved by a diet of chopped steak (Salisbury steak) and coffee. John Kellogg (1852-1943) , in turn, ran health farms advocating a vegetarian diet with enemas. He started the Kelloggs cereal empire.

Since the days of Salisbury and Kellogg little has changed. Arguments still go back and forth over the health benefits of relative amounts of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in the diet and their role in obesity. Most of these debates have little to do with science so perhaps a new study that helps to clarify the science of this issue will have little impact. Still, we might hope.

Frank Sachs and colleagues have just completed a two year study following 811 subjects needing to lose weight. They were randomly placed on one of four diets in which the relative amount of macronutrients varied. Their findings were that none of the diets led to a significant difference in weight loss.

The conclusion. In dieting it isn't what you eat but how much that matters.

Reference: Sachs FM, and others. 2009. Comparison of weight-loss diets with different compositions of fat, protein and carbohydrates. New England Journal of Medicine 360(9): 859-873.

Photo Credit: JMH649: Wikipedia Commons. Computed Tomography (CT) transverse scan of obese (right) and non-obese abdomen.

A Sky Less Blue

2009-03-15T16:17:00.001-07:00

Astronomers have been complaining for a long time about the dimming of the night sky. Light pollution from increasingly bright urban centres has been diminishing the ability of ground based telescopes to view the sky. During the great blackout on August 14th, 2003, when most of the eastern seaboard in Canada and the United States went dark, the first thing most people noticed were the stars.

I'm not sure it occurred to anyone that something similar might be happening to the daytime sky, but apparently so. Wang and colleagues have just published a new study in the journal Science showing that air pollution is scattering light particles making the clear daytime blue sky, less blue.

I recall a whimsical reference in Douglas Adam's "Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy," to a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue. Our blue skies no longer seem so intelligent.

Shown above is a simulation of the affect achieved by combining the sky of San Francisco with pollution levels evident in southeast Asia.

Reference: Wang K, and others. 2009. Clear sky visibility has decreased over lanPublish Postd globally from 1973-2007. Science 323 (5921)

Photo Credit: Brandon Keim (Wired Science) with direction from K Wang.

MSM Jumps the Shark

2009-03-14T14:09:00.001-07:00

Mainstream media (MSM) is on the decline and perhaps there was no better explanation than what happened on the Daily Show this week.

With the global economy still in a nosedive, none of the traditional journalistic media (television, radio or newspapers) have gone after those whose short term get-rich schemes blew-up and brought down the economy. In fact, many MSM outlets were complicit by convincing the public that the economic 'bus' was in great shape, when they should have seen that it was heading over a cliff.

Why did it take a comedy news show to express the outrage that the public feels toward both those who created this crisis and those who helped them?

What was really surprising about the beating that Jim Cramer (poster boy for the complicit MSM financial news outlet, CNBC) took this past Thursday from Jon Stewart, host of the Daily Show, was his total inability to defend his actions. This strongly suggests that many people, like Cramer, knew all along that the cliff was ahead, but decided to party on regardless.

When the New York Times is in a position where they are giving front page coverage to an example of exceptional journalism on a comedy news show, I'm thinking that the MSM has just jumped the shark.

Click here to link to the episode available in Canada.

Photo Credit: Associated Press. Daily Show (Comedy Central Channel), March 12, 2009. Left to right: Jim Cramer, Jon Stewart.

Vampires in Another Age

2009-03-13T15:14:00.001-07:00

Forensic archaeologist Matteo Borrini from the University of Florence has discovered evidence of the late-medieval belief in vampires. A skeleton unearthed from a plague burial site near Venice, believed to date from the mid-1500s has been found with a brick placed in the mouth. It is thought this was an attempt to stop what was believed to be a vampire from feeding.

Plague victims were often wrapped in a burial cloth and placed into mass graves. These graves often needed to be opened up to add new bodies. It was noticed that some recently interred plague victims were bloated with what seemed like blood in the mouths. The thinking was the bodies were bloated from the consumption of blood.

Today we understand the bloating arises from gas production in the intestines following death. Further, the blood in the mouth was likely simply fluid from decomposition. Holes in the burial cloths near the mouth, interpreted as the vampire chewing through the cloth, probably arose from the decomposition fluids dissolving the cloth.

It isn't hard to understand how such beliefs arose. The plague had been killing millions of people throughout Europe since the mid-1300s and germ theory would not be developed for centuries. There was real cause for fear. Spontaneous generation (that is, the formation of life from decaying material) was widely accepted and supernatural beliefs such as witchcraft were strongly supported by the Church.

Photo Credit: Matteo Borrini. New Scientist. March 06, 2009.

Who's Connected?

2009-03-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

Maps of academic discipline relatedness are not new. Traditionally, those who study how academic disciplines interact have looked at the citations in publications. In a new study, Bollen and colleagues have used the way academics click between publications listed by research search engines. The full map, seen above, may be found by clicking here.

At Thompson Rivers University (TRU) there is one particular linkage that is interesting. TRU is currently considering re-organizing faculties and one idea is to place social work and nursing together(positioned at 9 o'clock on the main map). It is an idea that has raised concerns in both schools. However, if you look at the map section expanded below, this just might make sense.

Data source: Bollen and others. 2009. Clickstream data yields high resolution maps of science. PLos One 4(3): e4803.

Welcome to Town

2009-03-11T21:39:00.000-07:00

This past fall, a male Tegeneria agrestis (the Hobo spider), shown above, dashed across my living room floor late one night. It's size and rapid movement caught my eye right away so it was quickly scooped up and off to my lab for identification (the pattern of the eyes and structure of the male palps is diagnostic). A month later a female of the same species also turned up in my living room. The fall is the usual time to see these spiders moving about as it is their mating season.

This is a first record for this species in Williams Lake so I needed to get the identification confirmed. Robb Bennett, a spider specialist in British Columbia has now confirmed these as Hobos.

The Hobo has spread across southern BC over the past several years. It has an ill deserved reputation for being venomous, giving rise to lesions around the bite site. How this belief started is unclear, but physicians often spread this idea to patients with lesions of unknown cause. The Hobo is a European species and there are no European records suggesting this spider is venomous. Further, there are no confirmed problems with this spider here either, still the rumors persist.

How widespread this spider might be in Williams Lake is unknown. It is unlikely, however, that the only male and female happened to end up in the home of someone who could identify them.

Photo Credit: Me. Smallest units on the photograph are millimetres.

Photography in the 21st Century

2009-03-10T21:23:00.001-07:00

A year or two ago the Gigapan project began to create ultrahigh resolution photographs of notable places and events. Recently the inauguration of Barack Obama was photographed using this technique. As the name suggests the file sizes are huge, so to make this manageable, it isn't necessary to download these photos to view them.

Above is Hanauma Bay on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. At their website (click here) you will find a link to this particular photograph. Yes, you can zoom in to see who on the beach has a navel piercing.

Is that all? No, Microsoft (you remember Microsoft?), has developed new free software called PhotoSynth (Photosynth.net) in which uploaded photos are compared and spatially linked. This allows you to move from one photograph to another across a landscape or around an object which has been photographed from different angles. If you have an expensive product you want to show potential buyers, take a series of photographs from different angles, upload and viola!

This was also done at Obama's Inauguration allowing you to move through the crowd in a variety of directions, jumping from one photograph to another. However, it does require that you download some free software and create an account to view these synched photos. Worth it? Sure. You can even browse through a penguin colony.

Worth Five Minutes

2009-03-09T15:05:00.000-07:00

Remind me one day to discuss Ant Colony Optimization Algorithms

Hat Tip: Myrmecos blog

Source: Bentekr (Posted on YouTube May 18, 2008). Check out Bentekr's other Miniscule postings such as the Fight for the Lollipop.

Are We Alone?

2009-03-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

Barely visible inside the circle is our planet, Earth. This is the most distant image ever taken of our home world. It was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 at a distance of approximately 6 billion kilometres (5.6 light HOURS).

Credit for the photo must go to Carl Sagan for insisting that Voyager 1, as it left our solar system, turn around and take one last picture. It is called the Pale Blue Dot.

Consider the task astronomers have taken upon themselves now. This morning a new space telescope called Kepler was launched. Its task is to detect similar sized planets, from a distance of thousands of light YEARS.

Over three hundred new planets have been discovered in the past fifteen years orbiting stars in our galaxy. The instruments used have limited the discovery to very large planets by either measuring the gravitational wobble they produce in their home suns as they orbit, or by measuring the tiny decline in light that occurs as they pass across the face of their suns.

It is the latter technique that Kepler will employ to find Earth-like planets, a task of incredible precision. Many media articles are suggesting that Kepler will discover life on other planets. Not so. It will simply determine if other planets similar in size to Earth exist and if they are in orbits where temperatures are conducive to what we think Life requires.

If we find such planets then we may begin to really appreciate the probability that we are not alone. We should know in a few years.

Photo Credit: Voyager 1. NASA.

Is Your Job Making You Sick?

2009-03-07T12:01:00.000-08:00

Back in 2007 I was surprised to see that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (a United Nations agency) had listed shift work as a suspected cancer causing factor. The reason for this was the belief that shift work disrupted normal hormonal circadian rhythms. It has also been noted that people with jobs requiring shift work have higher rates of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

A new publication by Frank Scheer and colleagues has examined the specific hormonal changes that occur when sleep-wake patterns are displaced and their affects on blood glucose, blood pressure, and appetite.

They found that displacing the normal sleep-wake cycle altered the normal secretion of cortisol and leptin and that the displacement was proportional to the degree of displaced sleep. The displaced pattern of cortisol secretion led to significant hyperglycemia increasing the risk of diabetes. In some cases the hyperglycemia following sleep displacement was high enough to be classified as prediabetic and in one case as diabetic. These values were found in individuals who had normal blood glucose levels without sleep disruption.

Decreases in leptin secretion were also noted and this is associated with an increase in appetite, increasing the risk of obesity. Blood pressure also rose although the hormonal cause of this rise was not clear.

For details see: Scheer FAJL, and others. 2009. Adverse metabolic and cardiovascular consequences of circadian misalignment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the USA. Vol 10. 1073 (PNAS early edition: March 10)

Science Nerds

2009-03-06T13:58:00.000-08:00

When I first started research as a graduate student in the 1980s, I was struck by the way that manufacturers of high-tech science lab gear marketed their products. An attractive woman in a lab coat leaning against a high speed centrifuge seductively telling you how fast her machine can pull down your microsomes. Seemed like they were selling beer.

Here is an ad pushing a machine that replicates DNA--a thermocycler that carries out a technique call Polyermase Chain Reaction (PCR), a key procedure in DNA fingerprinting.

I have one in the lab....... but it has never done this.

Source: blog.wired.com/wiredscience/

Evolution in Reaction

2009-03-05T07:33:00.000-08:00

No surprise. Fish populations are not just smaller because we have removed the larger members, they are smaller because those larger members are no longer contributing their genes to fish populations. Only small fish are reproducing and now fish populations are naturally smaller and slower growing than they used to be. We have known this for awhile. Fish are evolving under the intense selective pressure of human fisheries.

David Conover and colleagues from Stony Brook University in New York, however, has discovered that by changing the way we harvest fish, we can reverse this trend and return large bodied fish to our oceans and lakes.

But:

-It may take at least 80 years (probably longer) and

-All countries harvesting fish would have to agree to new harvesting methods.

Therefore: fish are going to continue to get smaller.

Photo Credit: me (Bluefin Travally, Cook Islands, 2004)

Science Life as Art

2009-03-04T06:30:00.000-08:00

Anyone working on ants knows the name of Robert Trivers. His work in the 1970s on how evolution handles conflict within species led to some remarkable predictions. In the case of ants, he examined the evolutionary conflict between queens and workers with respect to the ideal ratio of male and female offspring. This led to some specific predictions regarding sex ratios in ants that have been largely supported by field observations.

His life and his work has now become a Broadway play. Leave a Light On, written by Ann Marie Healy will be performed as part of the First Light Festival series this April at the Ensemble Studio Theatre. For those a bit closer to New York than myself, Tickets can be purchased here.

The life of Robert Trivers has in some ways been as dramatic as the topic of conflict which has driven his academic career. Most notably his friendship with Huey Newton, former chairman of the Black Panthers. He and Newton actually published a paper together on the role of self-deception in the crash of an American airplane(Science Digest 1982 Vol 111:66-67.)

Photo credit: Robert Trivers taken by Nick Romanenko, Rutgers University

An Alternative to Work

2009-03-03T08:06:00.000-08:00

The live web-cam run by National Geographic on Glover's Reef, just off the coast of Belize has to be one of the best sites on the web.

As an alternative to work it has no equal.

Water conditions are a bit murky right now because of a series of winter storms that actually broke the cable controlling the camera. As a consequence the camera has been moved into a more secluded portion of the reef.

To see the live web-cam, click here. If you want to try and identify some of the fish you see, try clicking here (scroll down the right side).

Photo credit: Screen capture of live web-cam taken on March 02, 2009.

While You Were Sleeping

2009-03-02T19:28:00.000-08:00

Early this morning the asteroid '2009 DD45' passed very close to Earth. Well, within 72,000 km anyway, about twice the height of our geosynchronous satellites.

Discovered only 3 days ago, this asteroid is estimated to have a diameter of approximately 35 metres and was closing on the Earth at approximately 8 kilometres per second-- actually a bit slow for most asteroids.

Asteroids pass close to the Earth all the time, and frequently collide. Thirty five metres, however, is fairly big, and this can do a lot of damage. No, it isn't the kind of asteroid that could end life on Earth by any means but depending on the density of the asteroid and the angle of approach it could cause a fair bit of local damage. In 1908 an asteroid of similar size leveled over 200 square kilometres of forest in Tunguska, Russia.

Slow moving asteroids tend not to explode in the atmosphere which is what caused so much damage in the Tunguska event. However, the final crater from an impact with an asteroid of this size (assuming it was iron) would be almost a kilometre across.

Tunguska size impacts are expected to occur about once every hundred years or so. Not to worry though, Tunguska happened 101 years ago. Hmmmmm.

If the physics of asteroid impacts interest you (and by physics I mean damage), take a look at the webpage created by Marcus, Melosh, and Collings.

Photo Credit: Asteroid Ida, Galileo Spacecraft, Astronomy Picture of the Day (June 29, 1997)

Pssst...Wanna See a Comet?

2009-03-01T10:54:00.000-08:00

For the past month backyard astronomers have been hoping that Comet Lulin would, as comets often unexpectedly do, brighten, and become an object visible to the naked eye. Alas, binoculars are still needed.

Comet Lulin swung around the Sun on January 10th and is now heading out of the solar system. Fortunately it will still be visible, with binoculars, through March.

I've plotted the rough position of the Comet on the sky chart above. It is near the constellation Leo right now (March 1) which is in the eastern sky. If you view the moon around 8 or 9pm, simply turn and face in the opposite direction. Leo is about the same elevation as the moon but will rise in the sky as the evening progresses. Best viewing is around 11pm when Leo climbs higher in the sky, although at this time the elevation of the moon will not be a useful guide.

The comet will appear as a bit of a smudge. It has two tails, one trailing out behind it and another directly ahead of it which is formed by the solar wind blowing gas off of the comet.

Photo Credit: Modified from Google Sky

Fuel efficiency

2009-02-28T11:31:00.001-08:00

In this analysis of fuel efficiency from Robert A. Dileso Jr. at Good magazine we learn a few things we already knew (e.g., rail and transit are the most efficient ways to move people if you can't walk or cycle) but we also learn a few things we might not have known. Flying is more fuel efficient than driving a hybrid (and likely better than shown here as hybrids are not so fuel efficient for highway driving).

Regarding the fuel efficiency of motorcycles. Does that include the ambulance trip?

Venus

2009-02-27T13:45:00.000-08:00

You can't miss it!

If Venus still eludes your observational skills, tonight is the night for the moon to point the way. Venus will be sitting just off the tip of the crescent moon about 1 hour after sunset (about 6:45 local time).

Photo Credit: Sky and Telescope Magazine

Evolution

2009-02-26T11:38:00.001-08:00

The deep water barrel-fish, Macropinna microstoma, is one of those amazing examples of evolution taking a very peculiar path to adapt to a challenging environment.

You might think that the eyes of this fish are the two dark objects just above the mouth, but you'd be wrong. Those are nostrils. The lenses of the eyes are the two green globes inside the transparent head.

This fish lives in water almost completely black. The eyes are extremely sensitive and are used, it is believed, to see the dim silhouette of prey above the head. Originally it was thought that these fish could only see directly upward.

Robinson and Reisenbichler at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have just published a paper in which they have established that, in fact, the eyes can rotate forward when needed so the the fish can see what it is eating.

Amazing, perhaps, but not so amazing that this fish exists at all. To see a short video of this fish, click here (see Feb 23, 2009 New Release if not available immediately on the home page).

Photo credit: Monteray Bay Aquarium.

E-Books

2009-02-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

Today Amazon begins to sell the new Kindle 2, and electronic book reader. The launch is receiving a fair bit of attention.

The president of the company producing the Kindle 2 appeared on the Daily Show on Monday--an indication this gizmo is considered hot, and the New York Times hosted an op-ed piece on Tuesday from the president of the US Authors Guild denouncing it.

I've seen the Sony equivalent and must say that I was impressed by the quality of the print, visible in darkness or bright sunlight. I'm just not sure this is how I want to read a book. Among the pros must be the ease of handling and reading. No awkward positioning of a tightly bound book while trying to find a comfortable position in bed. But what about the smug satisfaction of gazing at an overloaded bookshelf. How will others know I read?

It sounds like this might be the beginning of the end for the paper-bound book. Fortunately, the price of $430.00 (Canadian), makes it possible to put-off any decision to switch for some time.

Oh..., why was the president of the Authors Guild denouncing the Kindle? It includes a text-to-speech function that the Authors Guild fears will cut into the billion dollar audio book market. I listened to this audio feature in a promotional video (that can be found here...scroll down to "Watch a Video Demonstration of Kindle 2"), it isn't that good.

Photo Credit: Amazon.com

Art on Tuesday

2009-02-24T15:09:00.001-08:00

Human creativity and expression is boundless. JR is a street artist who brings humanity back into human spaces, even highly degraded spaces.

In his latest project he has photographed the faces of women living in the slums of Kiberia, Kenya and added them to the slum roofs (with a waterproof material), as well as the hillside and onto the side of a train. As the train passes by the hillside, for a brief moment, the eyes and lower face align.

For more photos from this project, click here.

Photo credit: JR

I Disagree

2009-02-23T16:10:00.000-08:00

At the risk of annoying many of my friends, let me opine on Naturopathy.

Apparently the government of British Columbia is about to allow Naturopaths to prescribe drugs.

This is premised on the argument that Naturopathy is a scientific discipline. Is it? At the website for the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine (CCNM) we learn that Naturopaths believe in homeopathy.

Homeopathy treatments rely upon extreme dilutions of drugs following the scientifically unsupported idea that you can be cured by being exposed to drugs that, in larger quantities, would produce the same symptoms as the disease being treated. Apparently the key is the way you shake the bottle (called succussion). There is no evidence to support this, nor would any be expected from a basic understanding of the thermodynamics of water.

So..., why do Naturopaths want to prescribe pharmaceuticals? It would seem that a single standard pill would contain enough of the active ingredient to treat everyone on the planet, forever.

Should Naturopaths prescribe drugs? No. It isn't at all clear that they understand the basics of pharmacology.

Photo credit: Wikipedia commons (a homeopathic preparation of Labrador Tea)

Internet Throttling

2009-02-22T11:24:00.001-08:00

Canadians have until tomorrow, Feb 23, to submit submissions to the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Committee (CRTC) regarding the issue of internet access management. Of course, that depends on their website actually allowing you to access their on-line comments form....which it doesn't.

Internet Serice Providers (ISPs, e.g., Bell, Rogers) claim that they need to reduce internet traffic to particular sites because they do not have the bandwidth to support data intensive activities (e.g., Bit Torrent, Skype). They want the CRTC to provide them with the legal right to throttle traffic.

There are several problems with this.

1) ISPs have only just recently released limited information relating to their traffic. The rate of growth in traffic has been declining for many ISPs in recent years suggesting the problem of bandwidth overload is not a serious as initially claimed.

2) This information does not tell us what their overall capacity really is (Note: much of that capacity was built with the help of government money). How much Dark Fibre exists? Dark Fibre is unused communications fibre that was abandoned when new information packaging technology allowed more information to be carried by less fibre?

3) Several ISPs plan to launch new commercial media downloading services (e.g., movies). This is a conflict of interest. Throttling reduces access to competition.

4) ISPs have also expressed interest in creating new two-tiered internet access fees. The claim that overloaded bandwidth exists is used to support their desire to launch new lucrative business products. But is the foundational claim true?

Until the ISPs provide the CRTC will complete information about their traffic rates and total capacity, the CTRC should not permit throttling. Unfortunately an earlier ruling by the CRTC will allow ISPs to continue to do this for the time being.

Are you being throttled? Google has recently teamed with M-Lab to allow you to see if your ISP is throttling your connection. Click here.

None of this is good for the future of the internet.

Another Option Dimming

2009-02-21T11:08:00.000-08:00

Carbon sequestration (that is, the storage of atmospheric carbon where it will not quickly re-enter the atmosphere) has been the long sought magic bullet to slay the problem of global warming, allowing us to maintain our carbon intensive lifestyles.

One possibility was to fertilize the Southern Ocean with iron to create algal blooms, that then die and settle into deep oceanic sediments, carrying their carbon with them.

While early research was promising, to some degree, new research is not nearly so optimistic. Pollard and colleagues report in the Jan 29th edition of Nature (2009), that rates of carbon sequestration are much lower than previously reported. At the rates reported by Pollard even the fertilization of every ocean on the planet would not help significantly.

Regardless, the RV Polarstern (shown above) is now adding 20 tonnes of iron to an area of the Southern Ocean between Antarctica and Argentina. Data from this experiment should settle the matter, but it does not sound promising.

Photo Credit: Hannes Grobe, Wikipedia Commons

Unemployment in Williams Lake: Explained

2009-02-20T15:00:00.000-08:00

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

If you don't understand what has created the economic crisis in North America, take a very few minutes and watch this video. The visual explanation of the crisis is excellent.

At the point where housing prices plummet and the system begins to fall apart, make the mental connection across the American border to the economy in Williams Lake. As all those houses begin to lose value and homeowners are evicted, who needs wood to build new ones?

Hat Tip: Daily Dish

I Swear: I Did Not Know He Was Missing

2009-02-20T10:13:00.001-08:00

The grave of Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) has finally been found and confirmed.

The December 5th issue of Science (2008) reports that DNA from a skeleton found under a medieval church in Frombork, Poland, has been matched to hairs recovered from the binding of an astronomical reference book used by the Polish astronomer.

Copernicus is generally credited with providing a scientific foundation to the idea that the earth moves around the sun. His work was generally discredited by the Catholic Church although not in his lifetime. Support for the Copernican system, however, was a factor that led to Giordano Bruno's execution for heresy in 1600.

Bruno's fate undoubtedly factored into the later recantation of the Copernican system by Galileo in the 1630s. It was Galileo's work with the just invented telescope that led to new support for the Copernican system.

Photo Credit: My modification of the facial reconstruction of Copernicus by D. Zadel, Forensic Lab, Polish Police.

Orbital Debris

2009-02-19T17:04:00.001-08:00

Looks can be deceiving. This small window crack occurred in orbit when the space shuttle (STS-007: 1983 Challenger flight) encountered what is believed to have been a flake of paint. The pitting was disturbingly deep.

On February 10, two large satellites collided over Russia while travelling in orbits almost 90 degrees to each other. No one knows how much orbital debris was created by the impact but it is assumed there will be hundreds of fragments. Most much bigger than a flake of paint as each satellite weighed much more than half a ton.

These satellites were in an orbit 750 km high which places them almost 400 km above the International Space Station (ISS). So, little risk to the ISS. However, many other satellites are up there and will now be at risk from the hundreds of objects in the debris fields. If a large piece of debris hits another satellite it will create more debris and could cause a cascade of satellite impacts.

In the past two years both China and the USA have tested their anti-satellite capability by hitting old satellites with a missile. Again, more debris. In the latter case I, and my family, actually witnessed the disintegration of the US satellite has it passed over Williams Lake just ten minutes after missile launch.

Photo credit: NASA

The Borg

2009-02-19T08:41:00.001-08:00

Found throughout much of British Columbia is the slave-taking ant Polyergus breviceps.

These ants attack the nests of other ant species--mostly members of what is known as the Formica fusca group, those medium sized black ants common pretty much everywhere. They kill any ants defending the raided nest, then enter and carry away the larvae and pupae. These are taken back to their own nest where they pupate into adults that will now work for their new colony.

As Polyergus ants convert members of other ant species to functional members of their own colony, perhaps they were the inspiration for The Borg of Star Trek infamy. I know of no other group of animals, other than ants, that can do this.

Odd fact: almost all of the raids carried out by Polyergus ants occur between 3 and 6pm.

Other specimens from the particular collection, of which, one member is shown here, are now in Missouri where Dr. James Trager is examining their DNA in an effort to revise the classification of Polyergus ants.

Photo credit: me

My Vote for Best Homepage

2009-02-18T09:21:00.000-08:00

Click on the image above.

My Vote for best homepage, other than An Unreliable Fingerpost, is the Astronomy Picture of the Day. Each day of the week, including weekends, they add a new picture of astronomical or atmospherical interest. The pictures also come with a short explanation of what is being shown.

Images of deep space are some of my favorites. If you take a close look you can see tiny galaxies in the background, millions or billions of light years away. It is fascinating to contemplate what might exist in those galaxies.

Shown here is a non-descript galaxy known only as NGC 4921 (approx. 320 million light years away). What might be happening in any of the hundreds of millions of solar systems within it?
Click on the image above and gaze at the countless tiny galaxies, even further away, in the background.

If you were holding a grain of rice at arms length while looking at the night sky, this image would represent a portion of the sky much, much, smaller.

An Anniversary

2009-02-17T09:04:00.000-08:00

Today, February 17, the mayor of Rome will lay flowers at the feet of the statue of Giordano Bruno in the marketplace of Campo de' Fiori. It is a symbolic gesture of independence from the Vatican, the institution that burned Giordana at the stake on this day in 1600.

Bruno was a philosopher and former Dominican priest. He travelled throughout Europe in the late 1500s, managing to antagonize both Protestant and Catholic officials wherever he went with his annoying habit of open inquiry. He was arrested by the Inquisition in Venice (mostly for deciding to leave the home of a patron who collected intellectuals in a manner analogous to stamps) and then turned over to Roman authorities.

Amoung his heresies was the belief in the existence of other worlds.

Ingrid Rowland has just published a new book on the life of Giordano. While some parts dive into the minutia of philosophy, it is a book that can be read more broadly than just by philosophers. I have a copy if anyone on campus would like to look at it.

Also today, Bill Maher, releases his movie 'Religulous' as a DVD. Religulous, is a scathing attack on organized religion (full disclosure: I haven't seen it).

Is the release date a coincidence?

Photo credit: Me

A Unique Approach

2009-02-16T21:24:00.000-08:00

What is remarkable about this landscape photograph, is that the landscape is in an aquarium and the landscape atmosphere is created by carefully adding colored pigments to the water.

The artist is Kim Keever. For more of these landscapes go to:

http://www.ktfineart.com/artists/kim_keever/?show=home

Hat Tip: Daily Dish

Crime and Punishment

2009-02-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

Ohtshuki and others (in the Jan 1, 2009 edition of Nature), attempt to determine how effective punishment is in achieving a stable and cooperative society through mathematical modelling.

Their results: punishment is seldom effective in achieving this goal.

That doesn't mean, however, that people with poor reputations get away with bad behaviour. The most stable behavioural models, in most conditions, arose when people cooperated with those with good reputations and simply chose not to interact with those with a bad reputation.

This strategy broke down if the public was unable to determine who should have a good or bad reputation. Thus, evolution has equipped most people with fairly good radar in this regard.

Photo credit:WPClipart.com

The Evening Sky

2009-02-15T20:27:00.000-08:00

For those that have been noticing the bright star in the western sky at sunset, it is Venus. As its orbit is much closer to the sun than ours, it is only ever visible near sunset or sunrise. Right now it seems high in the sky around 6pm but has almost set by 9.

Because of its close proximity to both the Sun and Earth, it is a very bright object, often mistaken for a UFO by drivers getting a fleeting glimpse when it is near the horizon.

The photo shows the current night sky at 6pm, looking just south of west from Williams Lake.

Photo credit: Sky and Telescope-Interactive sky chart

University Grading

2009-02-15T12:09:00.000-08:00

Macleans Magazine has recently reported on the case of a University of Ottawa professor who was suspended for giving all of his students an A+.

Grading is near and dear to the hearts of all students and probably the one aspect of teaching that virtually all university instructors dislike the most. Years ago, while attending an academic conference one professor framed the role of universities to me as, "Universities are not about teaching, they are about accrediting."

Is this true? As I often say in class, "Sort of."

Accreditation (i.e., the formal evaluation of a student to assess their grasp of discipline specific standards or of an institution to ascertain this) is absolutely vital in a modern economy. It ensures that students are ready, or at least almost ready, to handle complex tasks when they enter the workforce.

But, what about teaching, or more appropriately, facilitating learning?

Of this, I have almost no idea, however, I feel some comfort in that no one else really does either.

Perhaps a topic for another post.

Ant rules for better highways

2009-02-14T23:03:00.000-08:00

Anyone driving on a busy two lane highway knows how the traffic slows down whenever someone passes and other drivers must adjust their speed to accommodate this. Leafcutter ants that form busy highways between their leaf source and the nest have figured out how to make everyone move with the greatest efficiency.

One simple rule. Do not pass. It seems that dealing with a passing ant slows trail efficiency twice as much as simply following a slower ant.

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/212/4/499

hat tip: Myrmecos blog.

Photo source: National Geographic:Roy Toft

The beginning

2009-02-14T22:24:00.000-08:00

So, a blog going where? Well, ants would be a good place to start and ecology would be a great path. As we travel, perhaps we can look around at life in a satellite university campus embedded in an ever changing political landscape.