Forays into science writing
Bike path from UC Santa Cruz. I bike down every Tues and Thurs after class.
UC Santa Cruz’s Science Communication program has been keeping me busy. I may not have been writing here much, but I am writing elsewhere.
Where?
Here:
The Santa Cruz Sentinel is my internship, some of my favorite stories are these:
- UCSC scientists lead a team deploying robots to forecast toxic algae blooms
- UCSC researchers propose a new way the moon could have generated a magnetic field
- Whale watchers get up close, personal in Santa Cruz Harbor
Our class blog has some great detailed posts from my peers. My posts have been on fluoridation and science hack day.
And even our class assignments can get online. I wrote about pitcher plants that eat mammal poo! Great fun.
How the lunar dynamo might have formed
Full Moon by Luc Viatour (via wikimedia commons)
Here’s my article about how the moon could have gained, then lost its magnetism.
Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and 70s found a mystery on the moon. Some of the rocks they picked up were magnetized, a strange discovery given that the moon has no magnetic field.
Now, researchers at UC Santa Cruz have taken a step toward solving that mystery. In this week’s issue of Nature, they proposed that the moon had a long-lasting magnetic field, billions of years ago, created by a stirring of the lunar core as the moon orbited around the earth.
The cooling of the earth’s liquid core created the magnetic field. But the moon is too small to sustain the necessary heat and generate the lava lamp-like motion, or dynamo, in the liquid core.
“People have been scratching their heads for 40 years, ever since Apollo,” said Christina Dwyer, a graduate student in planetary sciences at UCSC and lead author of the study. The moon’s magnetic field must have formed a different way, Dwyer said.
“The other way is stirring,” Dwyer said. “Just like you stick your spoon in a pot of water and stir to move the water. We have a way of stirring the moon.”
The UCSC team’s calculations show that when the moon orbited closer to the earth than it does today, gravitational tugs from our planet stirred up the core like a giant spoon in a bowl.
There’s more to the article if you follow the link.
Christina Dwyer, the graduate student and lead author on the paper was great to talk to. Here is a story she told me that wouldn’t fit in the paper:
“I love geology, there are so many interesting clues buried in rocks,” Dwyer said.
For example, rocks can tell us how day length has changed over time. The moon’s proximity does have an effect on how the earth spins, so as the moon moves farther away from the earth (at at rate of about 1.5 inches per year) the day gets incrementally longer.
Not so you’d notice it on your wristwatch, but it can be measured in the fossil record.
Dwyer explained that you can have plants growing in tidal regions that later become fossils. Researchers can then count the number of tides by the rings of fossilized tidal mud, divide by two and get the number of days the plant stood there. Dating the fossil gives you an idea of the tidal patterns how ever long ago that plant grew.
“If our theory is right and if we can experimentally measure a really detailed history of the intensity of the lunar magnetic field over time, we can take the known lunar magnetic field and our theory and go backwards.”I have to agree, geology is pretty cool. This paper is even cooler.
But wait there’s more! If anyone has access to Nature:
And published at the same time, a paper about how the dynamo could have come from repeated bombardment by asteroids that tweaked the core out of alignment and created the stirring action. I didn’t cover this paper, but a lot of other articles did. I was going with the “local researchers” angle. Also, since I’m not on any embargo lists– I didn’t know about the other paper!
Other news articles:
Spread of West Nile virus
West Nile virus, a virus that hitchhiked from Africa to America, probably via airplanes, swept across the continent in a few short
Culex quinquefasciatus Photo Credit : Jim Gathany via wikimedia commons
years. Birds are the virus’s primary host, but when viral loads in the blood are high enough, a mosquito can transfer the infection from bird to other animals, including humans.
“The virus is like a rat or a house mouse,” said Kilpatrick when I interviewed him for an article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, “an animal that is helped out by human habitation.”
Kilpatrick’s paper in the October 21st issue of Science pulled together research and findings from the past decade.
“It looks like we have kind of set ourselves up,” he said. ” We have this amazing world of globalization, that increases the movement of the disease but also their vectors.”
This trend becomes clear when Kilpatrick pointed out that the disease is more common in urbanized and agricultural areas. These disrupted landscapes provide the habitat for mosquitos, standing water, and the main hosts. Birds most commonly infected with West Nile include the American robin, pigeons and the Common Crow.
By http://www.naturespicsonline.com/ [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)"If you have a lawn, American robins love to pull worms out of lawns," Kilpatrick said. "We basically give them that habitat."
One example of a super-spreader was Mary Mallon, the infamous “Typoid Mary”, a cook in the New York City area in the early part of the 1900s. She had typhoid but never showed any symptoms. The presentation of a disease without symptoms was fairly unknown then, so health officials had a hard time convincing Mary that she needed to be quarantined. She infected 53 people with typhoid fever.
Another example Kilpatrick gave me was an individual in Bangladesh who got infected with the Nipah virus. The man happened to be a spiritual leader, well respected by the community. Everyone came and paid thier respects, so he became an accidental super-spreader.
Why are robins super-spreaders? Kilpatrick said that scientists don’t know if they are preferentially fed on by mosquitos, but that they suspect that robins don’t defend themselves well (perhaps they don’t avoid mosquitos, or they don’t shake a mosquito off when it bites).
Another trend that Kilpatrick pointed out was that the West Nile virus changed shortly after arriving in North America. By 2005, the virus had evolved into a local variant that completely replaced the original New York strain from Uganda. That local variant is more efficiently transmitted by both C. pipiens and C. tarsali.
It is possible that 2002 and 2003, big years for the West Nile virus nationally, had the perfect weather to encourage the spread of the virus. Or, it could be that once the virus enters an area it can cause an epidemic that declines afterward, perhaps as birds and humans build up immunity to the virus.
“We don’t really know,” said Kilpatrick. “There is kind of a decreasing trend but you don’t want to say that it is all over.”
Links!
Other news coverage: San Jose Mercury News, UCSC press release
CDC fact sheet on West Nile virus
CITATION: Kilpatrick, A.M. Globalization, Land Use, and the Invasion of West Nile Virus. Science 21 October 2011: Vol. 334 no. 6054 pp. 323-327.DOI: 10.1126/science.1201010
Sunset
Sunset on Saturday. The ghost children play in the surf.
Busy scicom student
Our class learning how to take photos
Well it’s happening!
I’m a month into classes at UC Santa Cruz’s Science Communication program. Writing about science is no longer something I fit into the spaces around work. It is what I do now.
Between classes and an internship at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, I’m pretty busy.
One of our classes is taught by Erika-Check Hayden, a reporter at Nature News and blogger at The Last Word on Nothing.
She plunged us into the world of social media. Each person in our class of ten now has a twitter handle whether we wanted one or not. Some are glad to tweet, some are continuing to tweet and others are wary of all the bird-talk. My stream was made considerably more exciting this past weekend as I tweeted from the annual Science Writers meeting in Flagstaff, Arizona. The National Association of Science Writers and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing meet jointly and professional science writers of all stripes gather. This year, seven of the ten slugs showed up, including me (UCSC’s mascot is the banana slug).
I went to talks on covering controversy in science, structure in long form writing, questions for freelance writers, research using genomics to figure out where disease comes from (white-nose syndrome in bats, MSRA, cholera and anthrax) and the microbiome. Lotsandlots of fun. The best part was meeting some science writers that have have stalked admired from afar. I’m inspired and encouraged.
UCSC student working (not me). Look at the redwoods!
We also have a class blog: http://crashingedge.wordpress.com/, where I just posted my first post about water fluoridation.
In my other classes, I’m learning AP style and how to write in short paragraphs. See?
Our instructors are journalists. In addition to Erika, we have Marc DesJardins, the features editor at the Santa Cruz Sentinel; Ken Mcglaughlin, an editor at San Jose Mercury News; and Rob Irion, our director and freelance magazine journalist. All those editors; my writing is already improving.
Class assignments so far have ranged from how cows make milk to the discovery of a planet orbiting binary stars to student reactions to tuition hikes at the University of California.
I’m thinking constantly about science and writing.
Santa Cruz is beautiful and I am happy.
The campus is in a freaking redwood forest, you guys!
A wise man
In preparing for my wisdom series, I asked Q what qualities he thought made a person wise. He described some wise people in his life.
I always thought my friend D was wise—that is why I wanted you to meet him. He is wise in a lot of spheres in his life. He spent a lot of time observing the world and drawing what I thought were accurate conclusions from it about people’s personalities and their behavior and collective behavior. He thinks the world is kinda crazy so he decided to go in a different direction. He had to change a lot about himself but the reward is clear. D reads a lot, is very happy, two great kids—very grounded. He is a combination of loving and intelligent. To me those qualities make him wise. He is also very honest, he is selective—not trying to change anyone, he doesn’t pontificate because he doesn’t need to. D just tries to set an example.
D built his home. He is a carpenter—a woodworker—that is how he makes his living,and also as a trekking guide—a woodsman a herbalist and tree medicine specialist. When I first met him he didn’t have a toilet—he had an outhouse, but he had a bathtub. D doesn’t rely on any fossil fuels, using just a wood stove to heat the house. He built his house around the heating system, without drafts. They heat all their water for baths on the stove. He built a life that doesn’t create much impact. They spend a lot of their time gardening and developing the soil. D and his wife giving classes on wild crafting, finding food and sustenance from the wild.
Most of his life he has lived below the poverty line, but nothing is poor in his world. He saved so he wouldn’t go into debt. If he wanted to add an addition (octagon room for teaching, bunkhouse for guest, wood shop) he saved for the building materials. D home schooled his kids. He was mindful of socialization and made an effort to have kids participate in local sports, and they are some of the most mature, well-rounded people I know.
He knew how to say no, he was polite. A lot of people wanted his attention, but he spent a lot of time with himself–improving himself and his relationships and spending time with nature. This is a reflection of his values and putting his values into action. Exercised—cool lifestyle. Balanced. Not stressed. He worked hard and was focused. A lot of his friends were a lot like him. They have a community of awesome people, people he felt comfortable around. An important part of the community is people’s connection with the natural world. Our society is disconnected from natural cycles. The wisdom in reconnecting is the benefits it brings to a person—fresh air, exploration, diversity, and fascination of the natural world. Something in us wants that connection to make us happy.
D lived on an island without electricity for 10 years. I don’t know what happened but he went from being a teenager with a large family–all his brothers and sisters got high-powered jobs–and he saw that they were unhappy and somehow that led to his own identity. He was shaped by the 60s and 70s and the changes going on then that drove him to be mistrustful of the governemtn and social goals and information. He had a healthy dose of not believing everything. D often said that if there was anything he would have done differently was that he would be farther from people. But he has not withdrawn from society, he is a teacher. D is more connected than I am to the community. He has his sanctuary, but a balanced interior life and exterior life.
Another wise person I knew, I didn’t know for very long, but he was my first host father in Kazakhstan. (Q volunteered in the Peace Corps). L was a politician with a diverse toolbox, but he was also, he was just friendly. He lived in a difficult environment, the politics in KA and especially that city were changing very fast and he was a head of the curve. He seemed to spend less time fighting anything and more time understanding and observing, figuring out where his place was going to be. I played chess and could see how his chess strategy mirrored his life strategy. He was friendly, but way ahead of you in the game. He knew where he was going and where the game was going.
L was wise, but wise from experience. An optimist, idealist, but very much a Soviet, so his ideals kind of clouded his observations.
I think you don’t need a lot of experience to be wise, but you need good observation skills and the ability to draw the right conclusions. You have to ask—what do you want to get out of life and how do you want to get there.
Introspection, humility, honesty, observant, balanced, mindful of your influence and how your actions affect others, calm – not buffeted by storms of emotions but also very true and aware of your emotions. Selflessness. Wise people care about others, but think about the collective good. Everyone has a mix of these qualities. But wisdom is rare in this world.
Can you describe someone you know that seems wise?
Wisdom part IV: searching for wisdom, neurochemicals?
Part IV of a series: Part I; Part II; Part III; Part IV
Neil DeGrasse Tyson says (it’s early in the video) that people get all worked-up about thinking that our brain is ‘all we are’. He says that is a good start, but sort of like saying that elbows are all we are. But why get worked-up? If our brain is all we are, that is pretty damn incredible.
According to a paper by Dr Ahmad Abu-Akel, the ‘theory of mind’ is the ability to represent one’s own or another’s mental states such as intentions, beliefs, wants, and knowledge. This is a definition of consciousness, and as far as we really know, it is a uniquely human phenomenon. Though we are always looking for ToM evidence in animals, in fact this paper calls theory of mind a killjoy: “Yet in the contemporary study of animal cognition, demonstrations that complex human-like behavior arises from simple mechanisms rather than from ‘higher’ processes, such as insight or theory of mind, are often seen as uninteresting and ‘killjoy’, almost a denial of mental continuity between other species and humans. At the same time, however, research elsewhere in psychology increasingly reveals an unexpected role in human behavior for simple, unconscious and sometimes irrational processes shared by other animals. Greater appreciation of such mechanisms in nonhuman species would contribute to a deeper, more truly comparative psychology.”
Patients with disorders affecting the ability of the mind are currently our best window into how consciousness and in the context of this discussion, wisdom, works. At this point it seems easier to study what wisdom is not than to find out what wisdom is.
It seems that neurochemicals might be key to a balanced and healthy mind. It may be that all the memories, worries, personality quirks, language, feelings and every other complex piece that makes up our consciousness, boils down to chemistry.
Serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine, oxytocin, cannabinoids, and other neurotransmitters are chemicals that our brain uses to relay information between neurons. When one neuron receives an electrical signal that needs to be passed on to the next neuron, the channel proteins studding the surface of the cell open and close, regulating the flow of ions across the membrane and providing the basic signal of the nervous system—the action potential. When the action potential hits the membrane near the synapse, neurotransmitter is released. The molecules diffuse across the synapse and may bind to receptor proteins in the cell membrane of the next neuron.
Serotonin
Different parts of the brain can have different combinations of receptors, so that when the brain is washed with one chemical, activity in a specific part of the brain might increase or decrease. It is a chemical and electrical dance that somehow sums up into a mind. The dance is delicate and any imbalance can result in impairment.
Image via Wikipedia
For example, dopamine and serotonin are commonly thought to affect performance in cognitive tasks that are dependent on our large prefrontal cortex. Schizophrenia is linked with dopamine abnormalities, and an inability to breakdown serotonin might result in aggressive and impulsive behavior. High serotonin and low oxytocin levels are also linked to autism. Dopamine is considered to have a central, integrative role in the control of cognitive as well as motor processes. As with much progress in brain research, mental deficits help scientists understand this system. A demyelization of dopamine-receptor neurons in the motor cortex results in Parkinson’s disease, in which initiating motion is difficult. Studies in rhesus monkeys indicate that extraversion, defined as social dominance, might have something to do with dopamine-receptors in the striatum. Serotonin levels are also linked with depression, hence the prosciption of serotonin-uptake inhibitors (SIs) to treat this disease. Check out Scicuious’s excellent posts on the serotonin system and depression.
But everything depends on everything else. Our brain does not do one thing at a time and the picture is not as simple as an excess in A causes behavior B. As Sci explains in the depression post I linked to, our evidence for these chemicals involvment with disease is often sketchy and incomplete. So we continue to treat depression with drugs related to serotonin because it seems to work, not because we know why it works.
Similar story in scizophrenia. It appears that serotonin has a modulatory effect on dopamine release, and as a result, psychopharmacological studies report better results in patients treated with medicines that bind to serotonin and dopamine receptors than medicines that block dopamine receptors alone. So that is the medicine we use.
Complexity confounds, but we still strive
It seems like a herculean task to discover the neurobiological basis of wisdom. Neurobiologists are piecing together the puzzle of how the mind works, but at this point it is like we are blind and some of the pieces are missing. When a piece fits, we can feel that it clicks into place just right, but discovering the whole picture may take a while. This is science, where you can say for sure that the answer is not A, but you can never say for sure if the answer is B. Science only lets you say that B has not been disproved, yet. As someone who grew up in a science-minded household, I’m pretty good with that uncertainty, but many people find it unnerving and as a result distrust ‘science’ as some sort of monolithic institution.
There are people who think that science has pretty much figured everything out. We’ve decoded the human genome, harnessed nuclear energy, discovered evolution, all we need is to do is to cure cancer and maybe fix this global climate change issue, right? It does seem like science has progressed so incredibly in the last century that we can’t keep going at this speed, but that is setting down the book just as the story gets interesting.
Understanding human consciousness and unlocking a mechanism for wisdom may not be around the corner, but science is making fascinating progress. Future neurologists may look back on the beginning of the 21st century as the groundwork for understanding consciousness. We may be in a time, that for neurobiology, is akin to molecular biology just before Waston and Crick elucidated the structure of DNA.
Some papers about neurochemistry
Arenett, JJ (1992). Reckless behavior in adolescence: A developmental perspective. Developmental Review 12:339-373.
Berlin HA, Rolls ET, Kischka U, (2004). Impulsivity, time perception, emotion and reinforcement sensitivity in patients with orbitofrontal cortex lesions. Brain 127(pt5):1108-1126.
Scoville, WB and Milner, B (1957). Loss of recent memory after bilateral hippocampal lesions. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 20:11-21.
Abu-Akel A (2003). The neurochemical hypothesis of ‘theory of mind’. Med Hypotheses 34(6)1211-1220.
Reeves SJ, Mehta MA, Montgomery AJ, Amiras D, Egerton A, Howard RJ, Grasby PM, (2007). Striatal dopamine (D2) receptor availability predicts socially desirable responding. Neuroimage 34(4):1782-1789.
Bachener-Melman R, Gritsenko I, Nemanov L, Zohar AH, Dina C, Ebstein RP, (2005). Dopaminergic polymorphisms associated with self-report measures of human altruism: a fresh phenotype for the dopamine D4 receptor. Mol Psychiatry 10(4):333-335.
Jacob S, Brune CW, Carter CS, Leventhal BL, Lord C, Cook EH Jr. (2007). Association of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) in Caucasian children and adolescents with autism. Neurosci Lett. 417(1):6-9.
Meyer-Lindenberg A, Buckholtz JW, Kolachana B, Hariri A, Pezawas L, Blasi G, Wabnitz A, Honea R, Verchinski B, Callicott JH, Egan M, Mattay V, Weinberger DR, (2006). Neural mechanisms of genetic risk for impulsivity and violence in humans. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 103(16):6269-6274.
Riling J, Gutman D, Zeh T, Pagnoni G, Berns G, Kilts C, (2002). A neural basis for social cooperation. Neuron 35(2):395-405.
Schultz W, Dayan P, Montague PR, (1997). A neural substrate of prediction and reward. Science 275:1593-1599.
New place, new people, new animals!
This summer has been on the run. A big freelance-job landed in my lap and I spent July waking up early and interviewing researchers on the east coast before heading to work, training my replacement, and sleeping on friends’ couches. Yup. I moved out of the apartment right before labor day weekend and hopped between houses for June and July. Q and I took some time together and went to Calabria, Italy in the early part of August. I then landed back home for the rest of August, caught up with a good friend, cooked with the family, and slept in. Last week my Mom flew back to the west coast with me and we took a road trip up highway 1 from Los Angeles to Santa Cruz. I’m now settling into my new digs in Surf City and starting the Science Communication program at UCSC on Tuesday. Oh boy.
The trip up was fantastic. California’s central coast overflows with sea life and beauty. I’m in love and must share some photos.
Point Dume State beach in Malibu. A beautiful place. The promontory is the remains of an ancient volcano.
We climbed up the cliff, the path took us winding through wonderful smelling native brush.
Yellow flower on the point.
Brown pelican soaring. Mom now dubs all motorcyclists 'pelicans' for their tendency to cruise in groups and make sweeping turns.
Looking north to Malibu, swanky mansion on the cliff.
Elephant seals at Piedras Blancas Light. The Friends of the Elephant Seals volunteer told us that the seals lounging now are in serious relaxation mode. Mating season is from December to
Oh their faces are so cute.
The coast was shrouded in ocean mist all through Big Sur, but still we enjoyed the beauty.
A path by the side of the road invited us to stop and take a walk...
This is what happens when a girl accustomed to the ocean of LA goes north. You may all laugh now.
Bird in the brush at Point Lobos State Reserve, a beautiful and highly accessible park full to the brim with wildlife.
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-We took a stop in Los Osos, to stay in the house of a very welcoming couple through AirBnB. It was a great experience and allowed us to slow down our trip and enjoy.-
Looks stormy, but it was fantastic. We spent time scouring the kelp beds for sea otters, no sightings there, but still a beautiful place and well worth the visit.
The path took us through one of two naturally growing stands of Monterey Cypress trees remaining on earth (according to the brochure).The trees were hung with lace lichen and an orange colored green algae (is that an oxymoron?).
We were lucky to spot a young buck Black-tailed Deer. The trees, lichen, and grass made us feel like we were entering Lothlorien. Lichen is created by a symbiotic relationship between algae, which produces food, and a fungus, which provides framework. Deer like to eat the lichen and birds use it for nest material.
Sea colors. Two different kinds of rock make up Point Lobos. The Santa Lucia granite makes up the north shore, while here we see the Carmelo Formation, a sedimentary rock at least 55 million years old. Wave action and weather have shaped these rocks into deep inlets.
Another Black-tailed Deer, this one a doe, nonchalantly grazing as we stared only 10 feet away.
Those rocks are covered with Barking California Sea Lions, dutifully earning their name. The churning stretch of ocean in front of the rocks is called Devil's Cauldron.
The trip was great. I love this part of the world already and am starting to settle into my new home. This past weekend I met a good number of my fellow SciComm students for the first time. We took a walk through redwoods great and tall. I’m nervous and excited and tied up in knots and class starts tomorrow. Here we go.
Visiting home
Last weekend I went home for my brother’s graduation from Cornell. It was a good opportunity to break out my new digital camera and practice taking some pictures. The thing is so easy to use that I even handed it off to a 7 year old and she was able to get a few great portraits. Many of my photos were of robed graduates, but here are a few for you to enjoy:
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Q has moved to DC for a summer internship and fall job at the FDA. He’ll be working through the new Food and Drug Act, figuring out how to communicate the new regulations to the public and such (still a little fuzzy on what he will be doing). But that means that last weekend was the last time I’ll see Q until the beginning of August when we travel to Italy (!). The longest time we’ll be apart (sniff) since meeting. After Italy, I’ll have a fall without him, but I’ll be at UCSC, so hopefully so busy that I won’t notice my lonliness as much.
That’s all the moping I will subject you to. But know this blog readers, I will be sad without my Q.
Wired Science has a fascinating interview with Hans Fricke, The Man Who Swims With Coelacanths.
This fish is just amazing. Fricke explains:
They have the slowest metabolic rate known among vertebrates. We made a calculation that a coelacanth needs, for its resting metabolism, 3.8 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram per hour. A tuna needs 400 milliliters. Because coelacanths are always burning at a low metabolic flame, they are able to live in low-energy areas, where there isn’t much food. The lava fields are a low-product habitat. They need about 12 grams of food a day. This is probably the secret of their evolutionary success. They live where hyperactive fish cannot survive.
Interview by Brandon Keim
