Proposition 7 is one of the green propositions – in more ways than one.

The amount of cash that’s being spent on this so-called Big Solar initiative is prodigious. It is one of the most expensive measures on the ballot. On one side you have a little more than $5 million to pass the proposition, all from Peter Sperling, the son of the man who created the online college, The University of Phoenix. And on the other side, three utility companies have pitched in well over $27 million to defeat it.

Interestingly, the companies that stand to profit from this initiative – the many small companies that make up most of the solar and wind energy industry – are actually against the bill.

PG&E and Southern California Edison are the two biggest donors, chipping in more than $13 million apiece. To see a list of spenders, for and against proposition 7, click here.

For more on the debate, check out this discussion from KQED’s Forum.

Listen to the Big Solar on the Ballot radio report online.

The CCHT twin house facility in Ottawa, CanadaTwo weeks ago in this blog I tried to answer the question, Do compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) save energy overall? Even though CFLs contribute a lot less heat to a house in the winter, compared to incandescents, CFLs still save energy overall, even in places like Anchorage, Alaska. Thanks to the folks at the Canada Centre for Housing Technology (CCHT) who did the research to answer that question.

The Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and others recommend that we set our thermostats at 68°F in the winter and 78°F in the summer. Some people are comfortable at home with these temperatures and some or not. So how can we save energy and still be comfortable?

Besides recommending that people replace their incandescent bulbs with CFLs, we at Home Energy also encourage people to turn their thermostats down when they are away from home during the winter, and to set them up when they are away from home in the summer. Both actions are supposed to save energy. But do they? It’s not really that clear. For example, if you set your thermostat at 60°F before you leave for work in the morning, and then set it at 68°F in the afternoon when you get back, does your furnace use more energy raising the temperature of your house from 60°F to 68°F, than it saves by having the temperature at 60°F all day?

Once again the Canadians have come up with an answer. Marianne Armstrong and her colleagues at CCHT used the twin house research facility to show that thermostat set backs in the winter and thermostat set forwards in the summer really do save energy.

In the research house where they set the thermostat back to 64°F at night and during work hours, from 72°F, it saved more than 10% on heating costs compared to the house that was set at 77°F all day and night. A 61°F setback saved more than 13%.

In the summer, a set forward to 77°F at night and during work hours from 72°F saved 11% on cooling costs. Now for the big winner: Setting the thermostat up to 75°F all day and all night saved 23% of cooling costs compared to the house set at 72°F. That’s a savings of about 8% for every degree adjustment.

If you lower your thermostat a few degrees when you are away from home this winter, or when you are asleep, you’ll save energy and money. If you set your thermostat up a few degrees when you are away from home or asleep this Indian Summer, you’ll save energy and money. And you won’t be uncomfortable.

Mary Collins School teacher Blythe Shelley touching
a leopard shark at the Aquarium of the BayThat was the question put to a group of Bay Area teachers-all participants in Watershed Week, The Bay Institute’s annual back-to-school teacher-training institute, facilitated by our Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed (STRAW) Project. At the Aquarium of the Bay, these teachers-turned-students got to see, touch, and learn about some of the creatures that live under that Bay-including the Bay’s sharks. They also learned about the Aquarium’s shark tagging program, which aims to help us better understand these amazing and elusive animals.

So, how do the Bay’s leopard sharks, soupfin sharks, sevengill sharks, spiny dogfish, and other shark species differ from “non-shark” fishes? Here are a few key distinctions:

#1. You could say that sharks don’t have a bad bone in their bodies. In fact, sharks don’t have any bones in their bodies. Sharks-along with their relatives skates, rays, and ratfish-belong to a diverse class of fish that have cartilaginous skeletons, unlike the bony skeletons of other fish.

#2. Body shape. If you look at most fish head on, they have a generally oval shape. Sharks, in contrast, tend to be more triangular with a wide, flat under-surface. Their broad pectoral fins give them lift as they move through the water, not unlike the wings of an airplane. This hydrodynamic shape is key to keeping sharks afloat (you’ll see why as we move on to difference #3).

#3. Besides bones, sharks lack the air-filled swim bladders that most fish use for buoyancy (If sharks are airplanes, does that mean bony fish are hot air balloons?) Instead, sharks keep afloat with the help of a large, low-density liver, their unique body designs, and the physics of forward motion. If a shark stops swimming it won’t necessarily drown-only some sharks need to swim to breath-but it will sink!

#4. While most fish have gills tucked behind a bony flap called an operculum, sharks exhale water through gill slits located behind their head. Five gill slits are typical, but some sharks -like the sevengill shark found in the Bay-have more. Most sharks use ram ventilation to breath, swimming constantly with their mouths open to keep water flowing over their gills. Bottom dwelling sharks, whose mouths may be buried in the sand, inhale water through an opening on the top of their head called a spiracle and pump water past their gills.

#5. A shark’s skin is covered with tiny dermal denticles that differ from scales on most fish. As their name indicates, they bear a physiological similarity to teeth. Their unique structure helps reduce drag as the shark moves through the water-in fact, sharkskin helped inspire the high-tech swimsuits we saw at the Summer Olympics.

#6. Most fish spawn by releasing large numbers of unfertilized eggs and sperm into the water. Sharks, in contrast, reproduce via internal fertilization. Depending on the species, they then lay a much smaller number of fertilized eggs, or carry the eggs inside until they hatch, giving birth to live pups.

Old Adobe Elementary teacher Juliet James examining shark teethSadly, these unique creatures are declining all over the world due to overfishing, pollution, loss of habitat from coastal development, and climate change. And that’s bad news not just for sharks but also for their ecosystems. Like lions and wolves, most sharks sit atop the food chain as apex predators; thus their disappearance can trigger a cascade of disruption up and down the chain.

All the more reason for us to study up.

Ball Python (Python regius)The majority of staff were “all hands on deck” this past Saturday and Sunday at the California Academy of Sciences. Yet, we were vastly outnumbered. Fifteen thousand people perused the new building while thousands more enjoyed the festivities in the park.

Two of us, with animal handling experience, were rotating handling of a a four foot Ball Python and a six and half foot Red tailed Boa Constrictor to give guests a chance to get up close and personal with nature.

However, not everyone loves snakes. I had stickers in my pocket for those kids who were too shy or scared to come and see the snake I had in my hands. But the majority of kids would approach unabashed and when I was on the floor with the Ball Python, I was often surrounded by “shorter” guests. As I was going through the Piazza, I was approached by a woman, her daughter, and with trepidation her husband. They were visiting from England and the woman and her daughter were enjoying petting the snake and were asking questions about it. The woman asked her husband to join in and I looked up to see the fear palatable on his face.

My mom, who was bitten as a child has a large fear of snakes, so I could read the fear easily on the man’s face. I asked him about it and he said one of the reasons he loved England was its lack of snakes. Talking to him, I explained my mom’s fear and why the snake I was holding was a great snake for him to pet if he would like to. At full growth, the Ball Python only reaches four feet. The Ball Python gets its name for hiding it head into the ball of its body when threatened, so a chance of being bitten by a Ball Python that is used to being handled is slight. This particular snake, was incredibly docile and had been handled for over ten years. He approached visibly shaking to pet the snake’s body. Tears were rolling down his face, it was apparent that he was facing a life long fear. His daughter and wife were beaming at the exchange. It felt wonderful allowing someone to face a fear in such a safe and positive way.

Stories of moments have been shared amongst staff since opening weekend. All of these stories relate small moments exchanged between staff and guests. Some are funny, some touching. This is just my own story. The majority of Academy staff volunteered to work a ten- to fifteen-hour day each day in order to be part of the opening weekend. Staff coped with long days, tired feet, and answers repeated over a hundred times with a smile. They continue to replay opening with stories like this with each other. It is great to be open and I am looking forward to many more stories and shared moments.

I’m not a gambling man but I suppose living in the Bay Area is a gamble in and of itself, given that the likelihood of an earthquake here of magnitude 6.7 or greater in the next 30 years is 67 percent. As our QUEST TV segment on the Hayward Fault, produced by Amy Miller, and an upcoming QUEST radio segment produced by Andrea Kissack attest, the greatest seismic risk posed to Bay Area residents is the Hayward fault, which last ruptured 150 years ago. The fact that the fault ruptures on average every 140 years, offers a sober reminder of the seismic risk that people working and residing in the East Bay face every day, including Amy and Andrea, as well as several other QUEST colleagues who reside in Berkeley and Oakland. As Mary Lou Zoback stated during the interview, a major earthquake along the Hayward fault would be economically much more catastrophic than Hurricane Katrina, coupled with the difficulty of coordinating relief services in communities like Fremont, where more than 100 languages are spoken.

So we know – or should know – the seismic risks of living in one of the most vibrant, diverse places in the U.S. Short of leaving the region, what can we do?

Well, one of the most illuminating things about working on this story for me was learning a bit about retrofitting one’s home to make it withstand the lateral and vertical forces that accompany a strong earthquake. In short, you need to build shear walls – made of reinforced plywood and shear transfer ties – and bolt them to the walls in the foundation of your house. Suprisingly, there are no official codes as to what constitutes a proper seismic retrofit of a residential unit in California, nor is there a dearth of licensed contractors who will offer quotes and purport to retrofit your home but without any standards in place, homeowners are often at a loss to evaluate the quality of the retrofit which can easily exceed ten thousand dollars, depending on the size of the home and its location. Still, homeowners can avail themselves of a few retrofit resources online, such as Plan Set A, a guideline for retrofitting one’s home that has been approved by building departments of several Bay Area municipalities such as Oakland and Hayward. Also on the Association of Bay Area Government’s web site is a set of schematics illustrating shear wall construction. If you are interested in retrofitting your home, you should get quotes from several contractors, consult your city’s building department to inquire about permits and possibly consult a structural engineer to perform a building analysis on your home.

If you’re like me, though, and don’t own a home but want to prepare for “the big one,” it’s imperative to get an earthquake survival kit. The sells earthquake survival kits but why not make your own, provided that it has water, first aid supplies, a flashlight, food rations and other essentials for you to survive 72 hours while waiting for emergency help. If you want to make your own kit, try the USGS, the city and county of San Francisco, or helpful suggestions from the San Francisco Chronicle and LA Times.

Living in earthquake country, it pays to be vigilant. I applaud the 1868 Hayward Earthquake Alliance, a consortium of agencies that are raising awareness of the risk posed by the Hayward fault with a series of events aimed at educating the public about the importance of preparedness, including a city-wide drill in San Francisco on October 21st, the 140th anniversary of the 1868 Hayward earthquake. We may not be able to predict when exactly the next earthquake on the Hayward fault may occur but we can start planning today to mitigate its effects.

For those who aren’t familiar with the Hayward fault, check out our this link to the USGS Google Earth tour over the fault.

Editor’s Note: Guest blogging for Producer Joan Johnson is QUEST team member and sailing fanatic Sandy Schonning.

The real physics of sailing are so deep and so complex, people
are still debating it.

It was another average Tuesday. I was sitting at my desk, looking at my calendar. Another day of budget meetings, returning emails, reviewing contracts, yawn. The usual buzz of production was going on around me, a crew going out to do a story about… sailing. Ah sailing, my favorite topic. My husband and I had recently moved both ourselves and our Tayana 37 up the coast from Long Beach. Okay, a well-qualified captain had actually moved the boat to San Francisco for us… but since Polaris had gotten here, we had become a bit obsessed about Bay sailing. Sailing in So Cal had not prepared us for the currents, tides and winds of the Bay, so we tried to get out there as much as possible.

Okay, back to Tuesday morning. The buzz moved over to my desk… the shoot was supposed to show a group of beginners on a sailing lesson, but the family that was booked for this purpose had suddenly cancelled that morning. Could I fill in? I considered my clothes… skirt, heels, not really sailing clothes. And moving all those meetings… but a day on the Bay… the beautiful, sunny, windy Bay. Plus, sailing with an instructor, there is always something to learn about sailing, how could I pass this up? Okay when are we leaving? No wait, what am I going to wear… isn’t there a West Marine near the sailing school. Can we stop to get me pants and a pair of shoes? Yes, that’s how much I really wanted to go out that day, I bought new clothes to do it.

It was a great day on the Bay. Stan, our instructor from the sailing school, was great at explaining the physics behind why a boat sails. At the direction of the producers, I asked every sailing question I could think of. Who has the right-of-way, what is this line for, what do we do when the wind blows harder? Okay, I knew many of the answers, but I babbled on anyway. Was I having fun? In much of the segment, I have the goofiest grin on my face. I wish I had a job that took me sailing every day…

Anyway, it was over too quickly - and then it was back to my meetings. But I’ll tell you the biggest surprise of the whole experience: I though the physics behind sailing were pretty simple - a little Bernoulli Principle, a little lift generation. But what I learned made my head spin. It turns out that most of the simple explanations of sailing physics are ‘helpful models’ that make sailing understandable to sailors. The real physics of sailing are so deep and so complex, people are still debating it. If you’d like to see what I mean, check out Arvel Gentry’s website. Gentry was an aerodynamicist for 40 years, is an avid sailor, and an America’s Cup boat designer. His technical papers will give you an idea of what’s really going on:

http://www.arvelgentry.com

Love is in the airI love you. Because you smell different than I do. Not quite Titanic or Casablanca or even Olivia Newton-John in Grease. But smells may be part of the reason why we fall in love with a certain person. At least that is what a new study argues.

We’ve known for awhile that animals find their “true love” partly through smells. One of the things they are sensing is whether the potential mate has a different set of MHC genes.

MHC genes are a big part of our immune system. These genes are used to create the huge number of antibodies that we each make to battle bacteria, viruses, etc. Everyone has a different set of these antibodies.

The more varied your MHC genes are, the more invaders your immune system can recognize and defeat. So two parents with very different MHC genes will have kids with immune systems that can recognize (and so defeat) lots of different kinds of bacteria and viruses. Parents with similar MHC genes will have kids with less varied immune systems. (This is a big reason why inbred animals are so sickly.)

Animals can tell about a potential mate’s MHC genes through smell. And people might be able to do this as well.

Lots of experiments have been done where men or women sniff the sweaty t-shirts of members of the opposite sex to see which t-shirt smells better. If the potential mates are of the same ethnic group, the sniffers tend to prefer mates with very dissimilar MHC genes. If the potential mates were of different ethnic groups, the sniffers preferred mates with somewhat but not wildly dissimilar MHC genes.

The new study looked at a group of 30 European American couples from Utah and 30 Yoruba couples from Nigeria. Thankfully there was no sweat smelling involved. Instead the researchers compared the DNA between the spouses of each couple in many different places throughout their genome.

What they found was that for the Utah couples, the DNA around the MHC genes was much less alike than the DNA almost everywhere else. This did not appear to be the case for the Yoruba couples. This suggests that at least for these 30 couples from Utah, having a very different set of MHC genes may have been part of picking a spouse.

Why the difference between the Utahans and the Yorubans? It is hard to say without more data but one possibility has to do with how much of a role social factors play in picking a spouse in each society. Perhaps the European Americans are freer to choose a mate. If this is the case, then they might be more likely to follow some sort of biological imperative.

Another possibility is that this smell test is only a big deal if the potential mates are all very similar to start with. The Utah couples all had pretty similar DNA to each other to begin with. The Yoruba couples’ DNA was less alike.

Of course, this is a total of 60 couples and so is in no way exhaustive and may be proven wrong tomorrow. But it adds to a growing pile of evidence that suggests how mate selection works at the biological level. And it shows the wide range of things we can learn about ourselves by studying our DNA in great detail. Maybe it even gives perfume companies some ideas too.

For these notes, I thought I’d focus on something that didn’t make it into the sea lions radio broadcast: the necropsy.

Each year the Marine Mammal Center treats somewhere between 600-1000 animals, including California sea lions, Pacific harbor seals, Northern elephant seals, and steller sea lions. About half of them are treated successfully at the center and released into the Pacific. The other half either die naturally or have to be euthanized.

Most of them end up at the center’s hospital after passersby spot the animals on the beach and sense something’s wrong. (The Marine Mammal center responds to calls anywhere between Mendocino and San Louis Obispo Counties — some 600 miles of coastline.) Some problems are human-caused, like boat-propeller injuries or ingested fishing nets and hooks. Other times, it’s cancer, domoic acid poisoning, or increasingly these days, leptospirosis. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell exactly what happened — hence the need for necropsies.

On the day that Quest intern Jennifer Skene and I visited the center, veterinarian Nicola Pussini performed two necropsies, both on sea lions. One animal seemed to have died from a tumor underneath his fin; the other was a suspected domoic acid intoxication.

Each necropsy takes about an hour and a half. First Pussini measures the animal, then he slices it open and inspects every part, from tongue to tail. He inspects the teeth, pulls out all the organs, checks to see how much fat the animal has. The data, along with tissue samples, are archived and shared with other research institutions. This is the kind of basic research that Marine Mammal Center staff cite when people ask why they devote so many resources (most of it from private donations) to animals whose populations are neither threatened nor endangered.

I should mention that I didn’t exactly see this entire process firsthand. Let’s just say that after my first strong whiff of sea lion intestine, I felt a compelling need to go check on things outside the necropsy room. Luckily for me, Jennifer has the stomach of a true scientist and managed to both hold the microphone and take photos. Luckily for you, we’re sparing you her gorier shots.

Watch the Sea Lion Rescue audio slide show online.

Artist concept of lightning on Venus. Credit: NASAVenus has reentered our sky in its part-time job as the Evening Star, appearing as a uniquely brilliant white beacon over the western horizon after sunset.

With all the attention that the exploration of certain other planets has received lately, I feel that Venus exploration has fallen off our radar a bit, and that it is high time for an update.

There is no lack of exploration of Venus today: NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, bound for Mercury, flew by Venus twice (2006, 2007), making observations on the fly; Japan is currently planning to send a climate orbiter mission (“Planet C”) there in 2010; and the European BepiColombo will perform a couple of Venus flybys of its own, in 2013, on its way to Mercury.

Most notably, the European Venus Express orbiter is in the middle of a two-year mission of exploration, and has revealed new and fascinating things about Venus–a planet whose cloud-shrouded surface kept us mostly ignorant about it until recent decades. (Before the 1960’s it was even speculated that Venus might be a steamy swamp or rain forest world!)

Here’s a quick recap of some of the highlights of Venus Express’s findings:

“Hurricanes” at the poles: Venus Express’s VIRTIS instrument, which is able to probe several different layers of the atmosphere, has put together a detailed picture of wind behavior at different latitudes and different altitudes. What was discovered from these observations is that Venus has giant, hurricane-like vortexes capping its poles. Winds within these systems all flow in generally the same direction, as you’d expect with hurricanes, circling mostly windless “eyes” at their centers at the poles.

Lighting: Evidence of lightning on Venus was detected by earlier orbiter and lander missions, and Venus Express has confirmed it–maybe more lightning activity than on Earth. What makes Venus’s lightning unique among the planets with lightning (Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, as far as we know) is that it’s the only case where lightning is formed by something other than clouds of water droplets–in Venus’s case, sulfuric acid droplets do the trick. Lightning can be an important factor in that it breaks up atmospheric molecules and allows them to recombine in different forms.

Active volcano search: It has long been suggested that there may be active volcanoes on Venus today, though no direct evidence (like images of erupting volcanoes, for example) have yet been obtained. Venus Express has measured large variations over time in the concentrations of sulfur dioxide in Venus’s atmosphere–a compound that on Earth comes from volcanic eruptions.

There’s a lot more to say about Venus, as it is a world as varied and fascinating as the Earth (minus the life forms, as far as we know). Though it may not be the hottest vacation spot in the solar system, with its pressure cooker of a toxic, acid-laced atmosphere, it is one of those great mysteries that we actually get to watch unfold before us as exploration of it moves forward.

Credit: California High Speed Rail AuthorityThe devil’s in the details, so the details aren’t entirely in the proposition. There are still many open questions about Prop. 1A on the November ballot, the proposal to bring high speed rail to California - and that makes sense, since there are a billion details, many of them contentious, in any $9.95 billion initiative and $45 billion project.

One of those outstanding questions is: Where will the train go?

In the Bay Area, that has been a huge issue. There are two proposed routes (check out an interactive map here) — one through the East Bay and the Altamont Corridor toward Sacramento, and the “preferred alternative,” which runs down the Peninsula, through San Jose, Gilroy and the Pacheco Pass, and then loops back around to Sacramento.

Some rail advocates filed a lawsuit, pushing the state to do more study, particularly environmental study. The Pacheco Pass route cuts through some pristine landscape, and that worries environmentalists. And the Altamont route runs through some of the heaviest traffic corridors in the Bay Area, so a high speed train could relieve some of the East Bay’s congestion. In addition, the Peninsula communities of Menlo Park and Atherton joined the lawsuit, because they’re concerned about the potential of massive above-the-street construction there.

The Rail Authority says it’s working with communities to answer their concerns. For instance, it’s possible that some of the high speed rail stations could go below ground on the Peninsula — and that they hope to build BOTH routes eventually. Right now, they say, the Pacheco Pass route is preferred, but they point out that it’s a long way till the tracks go down and the train starts running, and there will be a lot to work out over the next decade.

Listen to the Fast Trains radio report online.