SPOTting the Deep Past

This summer, I went journeying Into The Deep Past again. This time, it wasn't a chance to walk through my home neighbourhood again and see the geological changes that have shaped the world around me. Nope! This time, instead of the familiar hills and ocean shorelines of Vancouver Island, I was exploring the Alberta Badlands along the Red Deer River.

See that tiny dot mid-river, below the bluff? That's me in my kayak!

There are so many ways of showing that process of being in a place and learning to understand what we are seeing. My daughter Lila is a professional photographer; she took the photos above and below, which show me setting out on the river in an inflatable kayak that has served me well in many places close to home, and now on the river.

These photographs contrast well to the painting artist Suzanne Robb made of another location a day's paddle downstream from my launch point. Here, Suzanne shows the striking patterns of weathering that are so visible from the river. The deep runnels that cut into the layers of sediment expose fossils from millions of years ago, when this area was under the shallow Bearpaw Sea.

Suzanne's painting shows the colours as they are felt, instead of the muted way they are shown in Lila's photos. Eroded hillsides looked like dinosaur bones sticking out of the clay and sand -- and yes, there are dinosaur bones all through the sediments from 65 million years ago and older! Other eroded bluffs along the river banks have round faces like Mount Rushmore, and some crumbles have sharp broken edges like profiles of faces looking up-river at the Buffalo Jump.
It's wonderful how different people can be in the same place and create different ways of showing what they have learned. I'm not the photographer that Lila is, nor the painter that Suzanne is. I use other technology to help show people where I've been. One of my best tools is the SPOT device. It's a small electronic device a little bigger than a cell phone. Press the OK button, and it sends a signal to any passing communications satellite to send a pre-written message to up to ten of my friends, with a link to my GPS location on a map.

This is a map of the first message I sent from the Red Deer River.

The map of my second day's travels shows that I went through Dry Island Buffalo Jump Park and camped near Tolman Bridge. The spot marked 4 on the next map shows where I looked at the buffalo jump and the mesa called Dry Island. Some maps look better on a satellite photo, like this one that even shows the shadow of a few little clouds.

The buffalo jump is impressive if you know what you're looking at; a cliff becomes a cliff where the buffalo would fall, not just a crumbly bluff. And below wasn't just a jumble of muddy crumbles mixed with old bones. It was the place where people would have been waiting with spears to finish off the buffalo, after the runners had driven them off the cliff. Falling a hundred feet onto its head doesn't kill a buffalo. But the fall does stun it or break a leg, so it's easier to kill. And then, there's lots of water here from the river and a nearby stream, for the butchering and cooking. The science of buffalo hunting makes sense when you can see the cliff and the water.
The river makes more sense in some ways, too, when I see it on the map that shows how few roads there are in this part of Alberta, or on the satellite photo that shows how the river gouged out its little canyon through this dry land. The SPOT is no substitute for a camera, but it's a good tool to have for keeping track of where I've been. Ultimately, nothing matches being there, feeling the slippery clay clinging to my feet, or the tea-brown river quietly slipping between banks where cattle graze and swallows dart.

funny honey

Photo and Video by Shar Levine, taken in Vernon, BC at Planet Honey.

In my book, "Paperbook and Papermaker", I wrote about wasps who were given colored paper to munch on and who, in turn, produced rainbow colored nests in the confines of the scientist's screened sunroom. I'm certain the scientist's wife was less than pleased to have this experiment buzzing around her home, but that's a different story and I digress.

Flash forward to summer of 2012 when bees in France began creating colorful honey.  Andre Frieh, an apiarist who lives near Colmar in the eastern part of France, was stunned to discover that honey from his hives was technicolor shades of blue and green.  Fingers were soon pointed towards the local M and M candy factory where residue from containers was thought to be the cause of the unique shades.

As any honey lover knows- describing something as "honey colored" can have different meanings. Honey can be light yellow to deep amber, or almost brown.  It has different flavors depending on the kinds of flowers bees were visiting. There's Buckwheat, MacNut, Clover, you name it.

While it might seem shocking to know that bees will be drawn to junk food, this is not the first time the insects have chosen artificial over natural sugars.

In November of 2010, bees near the Dell's Maraschino Cherry Company in Red Hook, New York began producing red colored honey.  Samples sent to test labs confirmed that the honey contained Red Dye No. 40, which is, as we all know, the color that gives maraschino cherries their vibrant look.

If bees don't know they ought not to be eating junk food, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Marine Science Adventures

http://vimeo.com/25656437
(Alaska Underwater)

Diving into Adventure!

I love visiting different places and learning from different cultures. My husband and I have moved a whopping 24 times! With our children, we once traveled for a whole year. And with an adventurous park ranger father and a writing mother, it might be natural that my children did not find jobs that offer any kind of monotony or lack of excitement!

While both of my sons are avid divers, my son Alex is currently working toward a captain’s license on the MV Nautilus Swell. This refurbished tug boat is now a small, luxurious cruise ship that carries extreme divers to Alaska. The company’s other boat, the Nautilus Explorer, sails to Mexico where they dive with great white sharks (http://www.nautilusexplorer.com/guadalupe_great_white_shark_diving).

I am not a diver but the photos and stories my kids share, make me wish I could explore the ocean depths in person. You can see some photos of their cruises here: http://www.nautilusswell.com/

The other day Alex sent me an email:
“Rough day at the office. It was noisy. Bald eagles wouldn't stop screaming at each other over the salmon that were running in the stream nearby. It was hectic. Three grizzlies and a black bear on the beach while at the same time a group of humpbacks swam through our anchorage - didn't know which way to turn.” That does sound like a rough day at the office!
He shared a video with me that I love. If you want to be a marine scientist, you will love it, too. Here it is:

http://vimeo.com/25632285






Photo Copyright © 2012 Nautilus Explorer

Celestial Navigation

by Joan Marie Galat

Imagine you’re a sailor more than 300 years ago. A storm takes you out of sight of land and you don’t know your location. You worry you could run out of fresh water and food or pirates might attack. Clouds hide the Sun and make it difficult to tell your direction. You have a compass but maps in the 1700s are not very accurate. With night coming, all you can do is hope your ship doesn’t hit any rocks.

Now suppose your only compass falls into the sea! Good thing you know a bit about celestial navigation. If the Moon should rise before the Sun sets, you will be able to tell your direction. The rising Moon is illuminated on its west side because the Sun sets in the west. But if you look after midnight, the eastern side is lit.

If the sky clears you’ll be able to find Polaris, the North Star. You can use your sextant to measure the angle of a star or other celestial body. This tells you your latitude—how far north or south you are from the equator. Celestial navigation can save your life. But you still need to know your longitude—your direction east and west.

A carpenter named John Harrison spent many years trying to solve the problem of determining longitude at sea. He realized that if you knew the time at a specific location on land, as well as your exact time at sea, you could figure out your longitude. Unfortunately, time pieces were not very accurate at this time. Clocks with pendulums could not keep accurate time on a boat.

Harrison devoted his life to solving the problem but it took the King of England to make sure he got the recognition he deserved. Thanks to Harrison’s work, everyone on Earth recognizes the same time zones. 

You can read his story in my newest title, The Discovery of Longitude. This historical picture book for ages five and up

is published by Pelican

Publishing Company. Visit www.joangalat.com for details.

The Anniversary of Silent Spring

By Claire Eamer

Rachel Carson in 1944.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service photo

This week marks an important anniversary. Fifty years ago yesterday - September 27, 1962 - was the official publication date of Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring. It was a ground-breaking, impeccably researched, and lyrically written chronicle of the damage being done to the environment by excessive use of synthetic chemicals, especially DDT. And it’s generally credited with launching the environmental movement.

Even before Silent Spring reached bookstore shelves, its friends and foes were lining up to do battle. The book had been serialized in the New Yorker magazine over the previous summer, so its contents were no secret. One of the big chemical companies threatened a lawsuit in an attempt to block publication, but Carson’s publishers went ahead anyway. With thousands of pre-orders and a spot on the Book of the Month Club roster, Silent Spring was heading for the best-seller list.

And Rachel Carson was heading into battle. She was an unlikely environmental warrior. Born in 1907, Carson was a biologist who had worked for the United States government until her successful books about the ocean made it possible for her to quit and write full-time. She was a quiet, private person who had worked hard all her life, supporting her parents, sisters, nieces, and an adopted son. Walks along the seashore and peaceful hours of writing were what she wanted – not a public platform.

Rachel Carson and Bob Hines conduct marine biology
research in Florida, 1952.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife photo

But the public platform is what she got. As soon as the book appeared, it was attacked by spokesmen for the big, powerful chemical companies, by agriculture departments, by scientists who had tied their reputations to the chemical revolution of the 40s and 50s, and by a lot of politicians who knew where their campaign funds came from. The problem facing her opponents, however, was that Carson had done her homework. Her research was solid, and she had consulted the leading experts in the United States and beyond. She had facts on her side.

Stymied in their attempts to attack the book’s content, Carson’s opponents turned to attacking its author. She was called a hysterical woman, a fanatic devotee of bird-huggers and organic gardeners, even a tool of subversive (read Communist) forces that were threatening America’s food supply by trying to ban all pesticides (a position Carson never took). It was the kind of firestorm of personal attacks that American climate scientists face today.

Through it all, Carson remained calm, polite, and eminently rational – all the more remarkable because she was desperately ill. In fact, she was dying of breast cancer, although very few people knew it. Her words, both written and spoken, won her plenty of supporters, including the American President, John Kennedy. By the time she died, just 18 months after the publication of Silent Spring, Carson knew she had made a difference and that the first steps were being taken to control the use of pesticides and other chemicals and limit their environmental impact.

For more about Rachel Carson and Silent Spring:

http://www.rachelcarson.org/

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/rachel-carsons-natural-histories.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/blog/2012/sep/27/rachel-carson-silent-spring-legacy

Evolution - Not Just for Carbon-Based Organisms

by L E Carmichael

For about twenty years now, scientists have been studying evolution using a new kind of life form - a digital one.

Digital organisms are programs designed to replicate their own code, and were originally inspired by computer viruses.  Their computer-based habitats are restricted in space (RAM) and restricted in energy (the CPU time required to run the program).   As the organisms reproduce, errors are introduced into their codes at a fixed frequency - the mutation rate.  This results in a genetically variable population which is competing for resources.  And because some variants in the population can reproduce faster, while randomly-chosen organisms are periodically deleted from the system (simulating death), the composition of the population shifts over time.  In other words, the digital species evolves.

There are major advantages to using digital organisms in the study of evolution.  For one thing, complex carbon-based life forms tend to have long generation times, making it difficult to observe evolution in action.  With some exceptions, such as Darwin's finches, scientists are usually restricted to studies of the fossil record, or relationships between living species.  This research is therefore largely observational.  Experiments on evolution can normally be done only on carbon-based bacteria and viruses, and even then, it takes years to propagate the population through enough generations for evolution to occur.  In contrast, digital organisms can go through thousands of generations in just a few hours.

More importantly, because digital organisms share no history with life on earth, they are a completely independent example of evolution.  This allows scientists to distinguish general principles of evolution from quirks that might be specific to DNA-based organisms.

Some of the most interesting results to come out of this research relate to complexity.  In most cases, digital organisms develop faster replication rates by losing code - stripping themselves down to the essential instructions required for reproduction.  In other words, they get simpler over time.  Under computational scenarios, however, simple organisms can obtain numbers from their environment (equivalent to necessary chemicals or food resources).  If they have the right code (genes), they can perform calculations using these numbers (just as carbon-based life forms use enzymes to transform nutrients).  They then release the products of the computation back into the environment.  If those products are deemed beneficial, the organism is rewarded with an increase in fitness - the ability to replicate more quickly.    As mutations which allow new computations are rewarded, what results is a spontaneous increase in complexity over time.  In fact, over the course of several hundred generations, digital organisms evolve that can perform up to 50 distinct calculations.

Another mind-blowing result of this research is the spontaneous evolution of parasites - digital organisms with stripped-down genomes that piggy-back on more complex organisms, using the code of their hosts to copy themselves.  This is exactly what the average cold virus does when it infects a human nose.  What's even more incredible is that the host organisms begin to evolve parasite resistance, launching a digital arms race analogous to that between influenza and annual flu shots!

Digital organisms are a powerful model system, but there is also scientific interest in studying them as life forms in their own right.  I suspect Isaac Asimov would approve.

Science Plus Kids TV Equals Fun!

Written by Helaine Becker

For the last three years, alongside my other writing projects, I've been the staff writer for a science- and environment-themed television show for children called Planet Echo (You can see it on APTN, or watch it on line.). The segment I write is called Dr. Greenie's Mad Lab. It mixes serious, science-y information with an abundance of fart jokes. Hey, what's not to like?



Dr. Greenie mixing up something gross  - and educational! - in his lab.

The Mad Lab segment has indeed proven so popular with viewers that we are spinning it off into a stand-alone show. Some sample footage from the new show was submitted recently to the Juried competition at MIP Junior, the preeminent international trade show for children's television.
And guess what! Dr. Greenie's Mad Lab has been selected as a finalist!

The awards will be given out at a chi-chi red carpet gala in Cannes on October 7. Alas, a plane ticket to attend the event is not in my pay package; I will have to get the news of the winner via a tweet from producer Chris Greaves.

In the meantime, I'm adding tweaks to the all-new webisode for the show, an exciting project that includes both a fun plot and three interactive games kids can play on their tablet or phone.

Watch this space for news of the award winners, and wish us luck!