Are you up to a challenge?
If you answered 'yes' to both of those questions then head on over to DSN and sign up for their weekly "Just One Thing Challenge".
A couple of weeks ago, I expressed in passing my hope that Roger Williams University would someday join the ranks of Bowdoin and Penn State (and a slew of others) in "greening" the campus. Looks like folks here were ahead of me on this and in recent weeks the University has brought sustainability to the forefront with the unveiling of the campus shuttle converted to run almost entirely on used canola oil. It's name is still up in that air (or rather stuck in committee), but I've heard two possibilities I like - 'The Canola Rolla' and 'Deep Fried Ride'.
This isn't biodiesel - it runs on straight vegetable oil (SVO) left over from campus dining. Unlike biodiesel, which can be used straight or mixed with conventional diesel in a diesel engine, SVO vehicles require an engine conversion to run properly. In addition to an engine conversion, SVO fueled vehicles generally preheat the oil before running it through the engine since it is more viscous than biodiesel, so most conversions include a two-tank system - one for PVO and one for diesel that will be used at start up and shut down to heat the PVO and clear it out of the engine so it doesn't gum up the works. 
The PVO is recovered from dining service, filtered, and then stored in drums. The 'Canola Rolla' burns the PVO cleanly - releasing CO2 of course, but CO2 that was only recently removed from the atmosphere (via photosynthesis). Thus, burning PVO results in little net addition of CO2 to the present atmospheric carbon cycle, unlike burning fossil fuels which takes CO2 that had been sequestered away from the atmosphere for millions of years (and would have stayed there for millions more). 
As an added benefit, I don't feel guilty about eating french fries. In fact, if I don't eat french fries, I'm being irresponsible, depriving RWU of a clean, renewable fuel source! Time for lunch.
It would have been nice to see it in the top 10, like Kevin Z's Penn State, but honorable mention is a good start. Now if only RWU would follow suit.
I'd hate to have a discussion that I think could be interesting, educational, and useful be buried under months of newer posts.
Of all the ironic things...
Unfortunately, it now seems that the experiment is in serious of danger of being destroyed by encroaching development. The population in the surrounding area has grown to the point where people are starting to spread out into the experimental area - burning some of the forest plots and raiding research camps. I suppose this sort of thing was inevitable with the rate of population growth, especially in developing countries, but it will be a sad day for science if/when such an important and innovative experiment is forced to shut down.
In this month's Scientific American is an article about a topic that gets my blood going whenever I read about it - the concept of Pleistocene Rewilding. For those of you who haven't heard of it, Pleistocene Rewilding is the idea that we should introduce non-native megafauna to North American ecosystems. The basic idea is that up to 10,000 years or so ago, relatives of these animals roamed North America as key cogs in the natural landscape. Then humans arrived and most of the large animals went extinct. The correlation between the extinctions and the arrival of Homo sapiens has lead to the hypothesis that humans hunted the large herbivores to the point where their populations were too low to be sustained. With a lack of large herbivores, large carnivores were also unable to survive. The Pleistocene rewilding is an attempt to reverse this Pleistocene overkill.
Lions, mammoths, camels, horses, cheetahs, and others were all found in various ecosystems throughout North America and helped shape the evolution and ecology of plants and animals still found today. For example, it is hypothesized that the pronghorn's speed evolved to help it evade American cheetahs (why else should it run over 60 mph?), and that the large seeds of the honey locust tree were eaten and dispersed by mammoths (now, the honey locust has no natural seed dispersal). Proponents of Pleistocene rewilding see North American ecosystems as "broken", missing major players. Since the missing fauna are now extinct, the idea is to use extant species as proxies. Re-wilders want to import African elephants, cheetahs, lions, and camels to restore North America to what it was (might have been?) before humans killed off the large mammals.
I first read about Pleistocene rewilding some years ago in the now-defunct journal Wild Earth. More recently, researchers at Cornell have reinvigorated the rewilding push. I think it is a monumentally bad idea. First, it's gimmicky - the article in SciAm talks about the increased tourist revenues it would bring in and even shows an illustration with a monorail in the background. If this is what you want, go to Disney's Animal Kingdom, Six Flags' Wild Safari, or the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park. Second, and most important, these animals don't belong here. I'm all for the conservation and restoration of ecosystems. The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone was a phenomenal, watershed event. But Canis lupus used to live there - in historic times nonetheless - and still were living relatively nearby. Before zoos, African elephants NEVER lived in North America. African cheetahs NEVER lived in North America. The Dromedary Camel NEVER lived in North America. And even though the American and African lions are considered subspecies of Panthera leo I wonder how similar they truly were (isolated for at least tens of thousnads of years, living in different environments). Haven't we seen the results time and time again of introducing non-native species to ecosystems?
I might think differently about Pleistocene rewilding if we were able to actually reintroduce the Pleisotcene fauna. How great would it be to see herds of mammoths roaming around? Or the chance to see a cheetah chase down a pronghorn? Alas, unless there's some Jurassic Park technologies out there, this ain't happening.
My brother, who works for the federal fisheries observer program, sent me some info regarding a pretty impressive "red tide" event currently occurring on George's Bank. Both "Red tides" and George's Bank are rather interesting topics, so I thought I'd take the time to write something about them both. You probably won't find shellfish from George's Bank at your local fishmonger, but if you do, I wouldn't eat them at this point.
[+/-] Show more/less
fetus embryo during pregnancy. The production of estrogen by the placenta and corpus luteum during pregnancy in turn helps maintain the pregnancy and prevents further ovulation.
For this last reason, synthetic estrogen, specifically 17α-ethynylestradiol, is a main component of the birth control pill (essentially the pill tricks the body into thinking that it's pregnant, thereby preventing ovulation, thus preventing pregnancy - ironic, no?). It turns out however, that the efficacy of the pill (which I will go on record as saying I think is a good thing for a multitude of reasons) has resulted in a large amount of estrogen being released into our waterways (normally via waste water treatment plants). Excess estrogen in the water has serious effects on the resident wildlife - including male sterility, delayed sexual development, and the feminization of males (males having female sex organs/characteristics). These effects have been reported before (e.g. here and here)
[+/-] Show more/less
George's Bank
George's Bank is a shallow shoal in the North Atlantic located approximately 100 km off the coast of Massachusetts. GB is a very productive area (or at least, used to be) and was one of the most important areas for New England and Canadian fishermen. Essentially, this area is so productive because it sits where the cold, nutrient-rich Labrador current meets the warmer Gulf stream. Combine this with its shallow waters and you end up with an ideal environment for phytoplankton, which in turns makes George's Bank an ideal breeding and feeding environment for cod, haddock, herring, flounder, lobster, scallops, and clams. Combine lots of fish and shellfish with proximity to land and you have an ideal environment for fishermen (not to mention a veritable cornucopia of seabirds and marine mammals). GB is so shallow and so close to the mainland that it was part of the mainland during the last glaciation event, then became "George's Island" as seas began to rise, before finally succumbing to the sea 6,000 yrs ago. Fishermen sometimes dreg up interesting fossils from GB.
In addition to the shallow waters and mixing of currents, GB has a rather complex and heterogeneous sea floor, including a number of small "canyons", which increases GB's appeal to an even greater range of biodiversity.
Verrazano discovered GB in the early 1500s (though Basque fishermen may have been fishing there since 1000 AD - there was a Basque fishing fleet stationed in Newfoundland) and the entire western North Atlantic become a hotbed of fishing, particularly for cod. You've probably heard the off-quoted aphorism that cod were so plentiful you could walk to shore on their backs.
GB and the western North Atlantic were so important (and profitable) that the U.S. and Canada had to appeal to the International Court in The Hague in 1984 to step in and set international boundaries where their EEZ's overlapped. Fishermen and officials from both countries still squabble over this "Hague Line", which cuts through GB (most of GB falls within the U.S. EEZ; only the eastern edge is in Canadian waters).
Over the years, increased fishing effort and increasingly efficient and technologically advanced fishing gear decimated the fisheries on GB, effectively causing their collapse in the late 80s and early 90s. in 1993 Canada placed a moratorium on cod fishing and placed strict regulations on other GB fisheries. In 1994 the U.S. closed most of GB to commercial fishing. In 1995, this ban was extended indefinitely.
Red Tides
First off, "red tides" are not tides, they're algal blooms. Second, not all "red tides" are harmful and not all harmful algae cause "red tides". So, the more appropriate and scientifically-acceptable term is not "red tide", but "harmful algal bloom", or HAB. HABs are defined as an event when toxic-producing algae populations increase to the point that they become hazardous. For some species of algae, this requires an enormous population explosion, but for other, more toxic species, even a few cells per liter would be considered an HAB.
In the western North Atlantic, most HABs are the result of the dinoflagellate Alexandrium fundyense - incidently, these HABs are also "red tides". These critters produce neurotoxins, such as saxitoxin. Saxitoxin selectively blocks cellular sodium channels, which are necessary for creating nerve impulses. Blocking sodium channels thus prevents nerve impulses. Since nerve impulses control our muscles, saxitoxin can, in severe cases, cause paralysis. Naturally then, HABs of Alexandrium fundyense are responsible for Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP).
PSP occurs because shellfish are natural filters. They take in seawater, pass it through their gills, trapping microscopic organisms that they then digest. During blooms of Alexandrium fundyense shellfish in the area eat the dinoflagellates, but end up storing the saxitoxins in their tissue. Luckily for shellfish, saxitoxins have no effect on them. Unluckily for us (and any other vertebrate that decides to dine on the "infected" shellfish), the toxins enter our bodies when we eat the shellfish, block our sodium channels, and cause PSP. Symptoms of PSP? How about "nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and tingling or burning lips, gums, tongue, face, neck, arms, legs, and toes. Shortness of breath, dry mouth, a choking feeling, confused or slurred speech, and lack of coordination are also possible."1 In the most severe cases paralysis sets in and respiratory failure and death may follow.
HABs on GB:
As if the fisheries on George's Bank haven't been hit hard enough by depleted stocks, it turn out that there is a rather severe Alexandrium bloom sitting right on top of the shoal. The R/V Endeavor has recently completed a survey of the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank and has found an HAB only on GB.
Superimposing the survey data onto the North Atlantic chart, you can see how the HAB is right on top of GB (note thre lack of data from the eastern, Canadian end of GB):
The worst section of the HAB has over 13,000 Alexandrium cells per liter of seawater, more than enough to cause PSP.
So, ignore those "George's Bank Quahogs" on sale at your local neighborhood food mart. Unless of course you think your diet is lacking in saxitoxins. (Actually, if you do see "George's Bank Quahogs" for sale, you best notify your nearest employee of the National Marine Fisheries Service - shellfishing on GB has been closed for more than a decade).