A woodrat in Utah's Great Basin is surrounded by toxic juniper leaves, which make much of its diet. Credit: Denise Dearing, University of Utah
Thousands of years ago, the Earth went through a warming phase that rivaled the drama of modern climate change predictions. And at least one species adapted its diet to survive.
Between 18,000 and 10,000 years ago, an ice age was ending. Juniper trees vanished from what is now the Mojave Desert, in the southern reaches of Utah, Nevada and California, and toxic creosote bushes grew in their wake.
The woodrat, a species that had used juniper as a staple food source, faced a challenge.
“It was either eat it or move out,” says biologist Denise Dearing of the University of Utah. The small critters adapted, and they remain common in many western habitats to this day — including the Mojave.
Dearing and her colleagues have narrowed the hunt for detox genes that let the rodents eat the creosote. Their results appeared this week in the journal Molecular Ecology.
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The economy isn't the only subect that gets politically framed; science suffers from a similarly deep divide.
As a newcomer to the blogosphere in recent months, I’ve stumbled on a few really innovative sites. One of the first was “Framing Science,” a blog at scienceblogs.com authored by Matthew Nisbet. Nisbet is a communications professor at American University, and he’s churning out some incredibly helpful ideas.
I love the blog — and Nisbet’s ideas — because they’re providing a solution to a nasty roadblock that I’ve felt both professionally and personally. “Framing Science” simply means talking about science, in a way that unites people on thorny issues like climate change rather than sending them screaming to their respective ideological bunkers. His ideas are helping me think about how I write about climate change, being mindful to avoid the kinds of contexts that will turn partisan readers away. Because of ideas like Nisbet’s, I find that I’m even doing a better job of communicating about science and environmentalism with my right-leaning, evangelical neighbors (and a few family members) here in the Bible Belt. And that feels important.
So when NASA sent out a press release adverstising a chance to hear Nisbet in a teleconference, it went straight on my calendar. The talk was at noon today, out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The rest of the post is a report on the highlights, with one caveat: for a professional communicator, Nisbet speaks awfully quickly! I may have missed a few points …
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I’ll probably never forget that hour in my living room, in the middle of the night in Cullman, Alabama (population about 10,000). The rain drops were so big they sounded like hail on the roof and windows (and might have been), and a city-wide siren was going off — a martial-law type sound accompanied by strobe lights and lightning.
At 3:49 a.m., the National Weather Service Doppler radar had spotted a tornado near Bug Tussle. I’m still not sure where Bug Tussle is. But Cullman was among the warning areas.
“Tornadoes at night are especially dangerous,” the warning admonished. “Do not wait until you see or hear the tornado… it may be too late. Take cover now.”
I didn’t really know how to respond to that. You see, I lived in an upstairs apartment. And even if I braved the wind, rain, lightning and possibly an oncoming tornado to descend the outside staircase and knock on a downstairs neighbor’s door, I didn’t have any guarantees that they would be willing to emerge from their interior hiding places (or their beds) to let me in. And so I sat bolt upright in my recliner, in my raincoat, and periodically refreshed weather.com on my computer screen. And I played the same odds games that have calmed me when I’ve been stuck in my tent in lightning storms. (What are the odds, that of all the roofs that could get ripped off or caved in by this particular tornado, that mine would be pegged?)
At 4 a.m., the radar continued to indicate a tornado. This tornado was located near Good Hope, or about 9 miles south of Cullman, moving northeast at 45 mph. By 5 a.m., it was clear that the worst of the storm – meaning the winds – had skirted the southeast side of town. The sirens got quiet. And so I took off my raincoat and went back to bed.
Somewhere around 100 people die each year in tornadoes in the United States; many more are injured. Alabama isn’t even in the “red zone;” it’s 13th in the national statistics for tornadoes and tornado deaths. As hard as people have worked — including NASA and the National Weather Service — to boost their abilities to predict tornadoes, they’ve only added minutes to the lead time they’re able to issue to people in the path. Many times, tornadoes still go under the radar. If people don’t see them, it’s hard to tell afterwards whether an area was hit by a tornado or just fierce winds.
A new, coordinated national tornado research effort could change all that.
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On the very day a deadly earthquake struck Italy, new research was unveiled that could help people survive such tragedies.
Darcey Donovan directs tests of the straw bale homes she's been building for poor residents of earthquake-prone regions in the Middle East. Credit: Mike Wolterbeek, University of Nevada, Reno
Civil engineer Darcey Donovan, a graduate of the University of Nevada at Reno, has been building straw bale homes since 2006 in the foothills of the Himalayas — where 100,000 people died in a 2005 quake. Her homes are affordable, made from locally available materials, and much more energy efficient than conventional houses. And now, she reports that they can withstand earthquakes too.
A full-scale, 14-by-14-foot straw house, complete with gravel foundation and clay plaster walls, was subjected to double the force recorded at the 1994 Northridge, California earthquake, the largest measured ground acceleration in the world. The house shook and swayed violently, cracked at the seams and sent out a small cloud of dust and straw … and remained standing.
“I am extremely pleased,” Donovan said in a short video about the tests. “The building is intact; nobody would have been killed.” The full University of Nevada press release is here.
I immediately thought of Ed Dunn, a green builder who has designed or constructed 30 straw bale homes since the mid-1990s in Flagstaff, Arizona (where I lived for 10 years). Okay, so they can withstand earthquakes, I asked him. But what about the sorts of weather Flagstaff sees: the temperature extremes, snow, wind, and hard summer rains? The rest of the post recaps his responses.
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Well, I tried to take an evening off! After checking out the Great Moonbuggy Race at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville yesterday, I drove just out of town to Monte Sano State Park. The website advertised trails and primitive camp spots — all I needed, I thought, to stop thinking and writing about science for just a few hours, and relax.
The dog and I set up our tent, enjoying the happy sounds of a very large boyscout troop camping nearby. Then we wandered off to check out some trails, and that’s when I saw the sign: “Planetarium show, 7:30 Saturday night.” I hadn’t even known there was a planetarium up there! And so of course, a couple hours later, I was sitting under a dome at the Von Braun Astronomical Society’s modest mountaintop digs, learning some basic astronomy alongside a hundred or more visitors of all ages, including ample representation from the scouts.
Barred spiral galaxy (NGC 1300)
After writing a handful of stories about the International Year of Astronomy 2009, it was neat to see a sign about the global event atop a wooded little mountain in Alabama. And after writing countless stories about bizarre celestial phenomena and the blurred edges of astronomy theory, it felt great to experience a refresher course on the basics of stars and galaxies.
Best of all, I got to tuck away some fantastic teaching methods. Brenda Rogers passed out white chalk and black construction paper, so the kids could draw four common galaxy types: spiral, barred spiral, elliptical and irregular. She held hands with 10 young volunteers in a circle, then arranged them in loose formation and all squished together, to drive home the difference between open and globular star clusters.
And she made up a great analogy to explain the numbers of stars in galaxies.
Elliptical, or egg-shaped, galaxy (NGC 1316)
Each pound of salt contains about 10 million grains, she learned from a company rep (she actually called Morton!). So it would take 20,000 pounds of salt, she explained, hoisting the tubular cardboard box, to make a smallish galaxy with 200 billion stars.
She had the children pour little cups of salt on black cloth on the floor, with an extra-large pile in the center to represent the galactic bulge, and thick swirls for the arms.
Irregular galaxy (IRAS 19115-2124, aka the Bird Galaxy)
I’ll bet Rogers’ methods worked wonders for the future little astronomers in the room; I learned well even as a spectator. The dome show lasted about an hour, followed by a viewing from the observatory telescope.
If you ever happen to be in the Huntsville area, the Von Braun Astronomical Society would be a great side trip. Make it a star-studded weekend, with a tour of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, then a Saturday night on the mountain! (If camping isn’t your thing, Monte Sano offers plenty of other options.)
