My mom just sent me an E-mail. Why's that worthy of a Buzz post? Well, it just so happens that she's on board the OSV Bold, the US Environmental Protection Agency's only ocean and coastal monitoring ship. (It's crawling along the coast of Maine right now.) From the boat, scientists are able to sample the water column, ocean bottom, and sea life to get a sense of how the ocean is being impacted by human activities, and how we can better manage what goes into it. If you're curious, you can follow the adventures of the OSV Bold on Twitter, or read the daily observations log. (There's a photo of Moms in the batch posted for day 4, but her face isn't visible. Just trust me: she's the beautiful on the Bold. Oh, and lest you think this is a completely frivolous and nepotistic post, check it: www.whitehouse.gov picked up the story, too.)
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It's Barcelona...: But it's like I can see through the buildings to their real colors.
Courtesy MorBCNIt’s Friday again, Buzzketeers, and you know what that sometimes means.
Yes, it means I may put on drag and take a jog out to the Walgreen’s.
Yes, it means that as soon as the sun sets, I’ll probably go down to the river and scream at the mer-people.
Sure, it means that I might leave work early, so I can go up on my roof and get some extra time in working on my flying eagle costume.
But more than any of that, it sometimes means that it’s time for an Extravaganza!
I know, right? Hoorays all around!
To be more specific, today’s extravaganza is a drugstravaganza. And to be even more specific, it’s a Euro illicit drugstravaganza. Better grab yourself some glowsticks!
Check it out: Spanish scientists have found that the air in Madrid and Barcelona is laced with illegal drugs. In addition to regular old city air-pollutants, the air-quality control stations discovered cocaine, amphetamines, LSD, opiates, and marijuana floating around in the cities’ air. The researchers hasten to point out, however, that these drugs were only found in trace amounts, and that you couldn’t absorb nearly enough to have a noticeable effect even in a lifetime’s worth of breathing. I think, however, that this might just be an attempt to discourage a flood of people who are both drug users and freeloaders from coming into Spain.
The scientists also pointed out that one of the testing stations was located near “a ruined building believed to be frequented by drug dealers” (in English: a “crackhouse”), and that both stations were located near universities, which we all know to be hotbeds of illegal activity. The study was even able to determine that drug levels in the air were higher (ah ha) on weekends, suggesting that local drug use was up on these days. It’s like when your mom smells your jacket for cigarette smoke… only instead it’s your government smelling your neighborhood for coke. (Except I don’t think these scientists were looking to get anyone grounded.)
And then there’s this little item: The Case of the Wandering Trip-fish. Apparently a some British fishermen recently netted a species of bream that causes frightening visual and auditory hallucinations when eaten. (I guess the fishes’ heads, in particular, are pretty hallucination inducing.) The fact that the fish makes people trip isn’t news—in 2006 two men in France were hospitalized after eating the fish, suffering hallucinations for two days, and supposedly this type of bream was consumed as a recreational drug in the Mediterranean region during the Roman Empire. What’s more remarkable is that this is a typically a Mediterranean fish, and it was caught near England. That is to say, it’s a warm water fish, and it was caught in what should be cold water. Its presence near England could be a fluke, but some scientists see it as further evidence of global warming, that colder waters are warming up, and exotic species may be moving it. None of us mind new neighbors, certainly, but we don’t like it when they bring drugs into the neighborhood.
So… I know this isn’t a very extravagant extravaganza, but we’re dealing with sensitive issues here (global warming, duh) so I think I better cut this one short. Plus, I want to get working on my eagle costume.
An environmentalist's dream: The rat-filled cans are too small to see in this picture.
Courtesy steven.bussHere at Science Buzz, we sometimes have what might seem like a Through the Looking Glass attitude towards Earth Day and environmentalism. I, for one, litter filthy old cans all over my yard, comfortable in the knowledge that these cans will provide wonderful little shelters for the population of rats in my neighborhood. Sort of counter-intuitive, huh? Well check this out: after I get rats living in those cans, I’m going to use highly toxic chemicals to poison the little suckers in their homes. I will then plant sunflower seeds in my dead rat filled cans. So litter + poison + patience = a beautiful garden + delicious sunflower seeds.
Sophisticated environmentalism can be complicated like that.
It feels good though, doesn’t it? A little weird, but good.
Here’s another one (and this one comes from scientists who published in the journal Nature, not just from, you know, me):
Air pollution is fighting global warming!
Say what? We thought global warming was caused by air pollution.
Yes, but… think back to flowers growing from cans of dead rats. It’s like that, kind of.
See, yes, air pollution in the form of carbon dioxide (and other gases, but we’re dealing with CO2 here) is warming the planet. But CO2 isn’t the only junk we’re burping up into the atmosphere. Think about the grey brown haze you see over some big cities. Co2 is invisible, so what’s that stuff? Some of the chemicals we put into the atmosphere have the effect of absorbing sunlight, or reflecting it back into space. Some particles form the nucleus of water droplets in clouds, and cause the same amount of water in a cloud to be spread out among a much larger number of droplets, and more droplets cause light to be reflected and scattered more. It’s all part a phenomenon sometimes referred to as “global dimming”.
Some scientists believe that “global dimming” has had the effect of partially masking global warming; we aren’t as warm as we might otherwise be for the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere because a significant amount of solar energy has been prevented from reaching the Earth by other pollutants. So there’s that.
The Nature article, however, focuses on something else entirely. While many people might assume that plants have a harder time growing in our pollution-dimmed world, it turns out that they actually seem to grow better under a hazy blanket of pollution. The light-scattering effect of many air pollutants actually causes light to reach more plant leaves. So more photosynthesis is taking place under this diffused light than under direct sunlight. That means that plants are growing more, and growing plants suck up more carbon dioxide.
The scientists behind the study estimate that global dimming could be responsible for as much as a one quarter increase in plant productivity from 1960 to 1999, causing a 10% increase in the amount of carbon stored by the land.
This also means that as we have stricter air pollution controls, the rate of global warming probably won’t decrease as much as we’d have thought—there’d be less CO2 in the air, but because other pollutants would be reduced as well plants would be less productive, and suck up less of the CO2 that is released.
Well, shucks.
Biologists are using clams to identify and clean up river pollutants.
Clams are filter-feeders, meaning they gather water into their shells, eat any food they find in that water, and then release the water back into the environment. The clam inadvertently filters more than just their food out of the water. Other material suspended in the water, such as toxins and pollutants, can accumulate in the clams.
Biologists in Washington, DC, along with help from high schoolers, released clams downstream from industrial parks and highways. The clams absorbed any lurking pollutants and then the scientists could identify the kinds and quantities of pollutants in the water. This process can be quite costly, but the clams offer an alternative method.
The ultimate goal is to be able to trace the pollutants back to their sources. From there, the cleanup process can begin.
A bear of constant sorrow: The expression on his face speaks volumes.
Courtesy SketchzillaBuzzketeer General Liza put me on to this story last week, and I’m glad she did. Folks should know the plight of the polar bear.
So, you know those images of polar bears standing on the edge of ice sheets, looking sad because the ice is shrinking, and they need that ice to, you know, stay alive? You know what I’m talking about.
Well… it turns out that shrinking ice may be the least of their worries.
How do I put this? There’s trouble down south in the far north? A great big bear has a… Oh, forget it. Polar bears’ genitals are shrinking.
Oh, this is bleak. Two genital-based posts in a row? I don’t like it any more than you do, and I know you don’t like it. But we’re being beaten down and overwhelmed by genitals in the news, and we can’t ignore the news.
So, yes, after millennia of fearlessly swimming in an ocean of ice water, the mighty polar bear is finally suffering from shrinkage. But this isn’t one of the many problems that global warming can solve—this little situation is being caused by pollution, not cold water.
Y’all know about bioaccumulation and biomagnification? Toxic compounds can be found at very low concentrations in the environment, but still end up at dangerously high levels in certain plants and animals. This is caused by organisms taking in toxins faster than they can get rid of them, and by animals eating lots of other animals or plants that already have toxins in them. That’s what’s happening in the arctic. Tiny organisms are absorbing certain organic pollutants from the environment, and those organisms are getting eaten by tiny fish, and those tiny fish are getting eaten by bigger fish, and so on until big fish, with lots of the pollutants stored up in their bodies get eaten by an animal that doesn’t often get eaten by anything else, animals like killer whales, arctic foxes, or polar bears.
Biologists studied preserved polar bear genitals (penises, testicles, and ovaries) collected between 1999 and 2002, and found that individual bears with higher concentrations of these organic pollutants (called “organohalogens”) consistently had smaller bits and pieces. The organohalogens act like hormones in the bears, and we all know the amazing things hormones can do.
Now we must ask ourselves that age old question: “What does this mean for the bears?” Well, it seems that bears can’t rely on personality alone for successful mating. Polar bears don’t reproduce that often in the first place, and shrinking reproductive organs (in both boy-bears and lady-bears) is only going to make things trickier. And then there’s that whole ice-shrinking thing, which has probably taken a back seat in the minds of young bears everywhere.
In related news, a couple of polar bears at a Japanese zoo were having trouble conceiving until their handlers finally realized that they were both female. (I imagine that they would still have trouble conceiving, but I think the pressure is off now.) Apparently telling male and female bears apart is difficult as it is.
A new jet engine is being developed that will burn less fuel and create less pollution than current models, making air travel cleaner.
A massive algae bloom is choking China’s Yellow Sea and threatening some Olympic events. Many Chinese cities dump untreated sewage into the Sea. Rich in nutrients, the sewage makes the algae grow like crazy. The problem goes beyond the inconvenience to boaters. The growing algae changes the near-shore habitat. And when all this algae dies, the bacteria that decays it sucks oxygen out of the water, killing fish and creating a dead zone.
Oh my! Researchers in Virginia have found high levels of mercury in local songbirds. The birds live near a contaminated river, but do not eat any fish or other water creatures that might be contaminated. So, how did they get mercury inside of them?
Turns out the birds ate lots of spiders. And spiders are scavengers who’ll eat pretty much anything. Mercury from the environment accumulates in them, and gets passed along to the birds.
The next question is – how do the land-dwelling spiders get water-borne mercury inside of them?
March 29 - April 4 are Nano Days at The Science Museum and other museums areound the country. To celebrate, here's a selection of recent nanotechnology stories in the news:
Japanese doctors are trying to build nano-scale robots to build custom-designed medicines,one molecule at a time.
Pharmaceutical companies are using nanotechnology to deliver more effective anti-cancer drugs.
Researchers at MIT are trying to develop an electric car with a battery using nanowires.
Engineers in California are looking for ways to use nanomaterials to store hydrogen, which may someday power pollution-free cars.
Scientists are using nanotechnology to develop more efficient solar panels.
Building a better future: One piece of junk at a time.
Courtesy thebigdurianJust when you started to think things weren’t cool anymore (I know you were thinking that), something great comes up in the news, and turns your frown… upside down.
For the last few years the world has been sulking and pouting over the lack of continents. “We’ve discovered them all,” people say. Or, “Look at that darn Pacific Ocean, sitting there with practically no continents in it.” Or, “Hawaii must be so lonely!” Well, Lonesome No More!, Hawaii, because you’ve got a new friend, a friend the size of the continental United States!
Where did this massive mass come from? And how could such a thing have gone so far unnoticed? Whoa, explorers, one question at a time! The mass came from our own human ingenuity! That is to say, it’s trash! And we don’t really notice it because it’s largely translucent plastic, and because it’s located just beneath the surface of the ocean, so it can’t be seen in satellite photographs!
Now before you get excited and start purchasing real estate (although I like the way you think), our new garbage blob isn’t quite ready for building yet. It’s currently more of a “plastic soup,” held together by “swirling underwater current.” It is, nonetheless, a fairly cohesive chunk of junk, consisting of two connected bodies that span from about five hundred miles off of California almost to Japan.
Like many natural and quasi-natural wonders, however, Trashlantis is being threatened. Primarily by aquatic animals. Nearly 100,000 aquatic mammals choose to kill themselves every year by abusing floating garbage in some way or another, and sea birds have proven to be shameless garbage thieves, spiriting away everything from toothbrushes, to lighters, to syringes from our trashy endeavor. Where’s the proof? Inside their dead stomachs. Try to hide that, birds!
Approximately a fifth of the garbage dumped into the ocean comes from oil platforms and ships. If you want to ensure that Trashlantis remains more than a fable for your children and grandchildren, though, be sure to do your part, and produce as much plastic waste as possible, and dispose of it improperly.
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