Here in Seattle the tulips are blooming, spring is springing, and they are celebrating the 50th anniversary since the World Fair was held around the space needle. Time flies…

Tomorrow I’m going down the west coast of the US, so please point out any poignant science spots on the way. I hear there’s some cool fault lines near Las Vegas, big trees near San Francisco, and vampires in Forks.

I need some encouragement to keep the blog updated while I’m gallivanting about – if you want to read more about something, please poke me by posting a comment. It’ll help me get to the fourth birthday.

Thanks for stopping by and reading, hats off to ye.

Betsie (adapted, credit USFWS)

Apologies, again, for the inconsistencies of my posts. Events such as the Cowbell of 2012 tend to distract.

In any case, I made hasty haste to the udder-shaped island. I soon ran into troubles. I had marked on a dotted line the most direct direction to the treasure, straight as an arrow she flies, and the wind would not have it.

Oh ho ho no, the wind would blow sideways, wouldn’t it.

Then, dear friends, last week I read about a GPS for sailing! Rather than pointing as the crow flies (or in this case, cow), it shows the ideal zigzag to tack, catching the optimum amount of oomph from an errant wind.

By adding in the size of my substantial boat, and the speed of the prevailing wind, it does all the brain work for me to get me to the X quickest. Quite clever. At $399, it’s a steal!

So I followed it, on and on, night and day without pause.

And there she lays, like a speck of cheese, the island.

Before long I was there, on her, traipsing across the lands dotted here and there with milk vetch, all over with long and luscious green grass. Across the hill, through the shrubs, into a lowland meadow, and ah. The cross. Thoughtfully decorated in large cow pats, courtesy of Betsie herself I’d wager, which I carefully avoid with my boots.

Then, with my shovel, I dig.

Down and down, further than you would think possible for a bovine with hooves and not hands, but Betsie and her crew were of a brilliant breed, as all who did battle with those cattle will attest. Down and down, until the stars wink and glitter at me. Down and down and DRING! There it is!

Brass and mahogany, the chest gleams under my lamplight. With shaking fingers I open the latch.

Peeouw! What a whiff!

‘Twas nothing but goat’s cheese.

Well I sealed it, hoisted it up and got back on me boat. Perhaps I can sell it in port, and make me funds back on this awesome GPS (as seen on Gizmodo.)

Check out this robot ($195) that decorates eggs, golf balls, baubles and other strangely shaped objects. You can make designs from Inkspace on Mac, Windows or Linux. How geeky and Eastery is that?

Their website is egg-bot.com, and this picture of eggboot in action is from their homepage.

Their flickr page has some amazing designs. Very cool.

Own picture, free to use or share

A brisk wind flowed through the trees as I retreat for the car. Ignition on, -17°C outside, warm air flows through the vents. Another cold clear night – perfect for viewing the elusive aurora borealis. We’d been sitting out for almost two hours, but it was 1:20 am and we were throwing in the snap frozen towel for the night. Nada.

The next day we went on a wildlife tour, and the British travellers in front of us were showing off their pictures on a camera. “When did you see the Northern Lights,” I asked. “They look amazing!”

“Last night,” one of them replies, “about 1:30am”.

Bummer.

That night we stayed inside and watched TV until 1 am, then took a mug of hot chocolate and plenty of warm clothes to go aurora hunting. It’s 4:30 am before we give up, with cold noses and toeses, having missed them again. The next morning (well, afternoon by the time we wake up) we find out the lights had started early, about 10 pm.

Bummer bummer.

Three more days we stay in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada, hoping for a glimpse of the lights. Once we saw a pale white streak across the sky, which showed up green on the camera under long exposure.

Disappointing, really, as we head back South – away from the elusive Northern lights.

First stop is Liard hot springs, and I recommend it a LOT. Wow, is it steamy! Anyway, we went for a dip, and as we were walking back to the accommodation, we saw them!

Green swirls, curtains and purple streaks!

The colours come from electrons around atoms jumping back and forth between orbits. Electrons absorb light to move up an orbit, then emit light of a particular wavelength to fall back down. Some excited states are more stable than others, and certain transitions happen more readily.

Own picture, free to use or share

Green light is emitted by oxygen atoms at lower altitudes, while a red glow can be seen from another oxygen transition at high altitudes. Purple is from transitions in nitrogen molecules that emit blue and red. A mix of the colours can appear white. A great chemistry-heavy explanation of the colours can be found here.

Did you know the northern magnetic pole is moving towards Siberia at a rate of around 40 kilometres per year? Aurora hunters in the US in 2060 might be more unlucky than we were!

Here’s a screenshot of the aurora predictor on the night we snapped these pictures, to give you some idea of what the conditions were like that allowed the aurora to occur.

Want more aurora? Check out this video which describes how they occur, and shows footage from above filmed on the International Space Station.

Being the adventurous sort, he couldn’t comprehend such laziness, not, that is, until he mopped his clammy brow. His hand returned smeared with squashed mosquitoes and his own bright red blood.

He reflected, not for the first time, that life in the jungle wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, all things considered. Charles Darwin had joyfully described the Brazilian rainforest as “a great wild, untidy, luxuriant hothouse.” The tales of Alfred Wallace, a fellow young botanist, absolutely dripped with adventure.

Money truly did grow on trees here – there was a fortune to be made by transporting unusual plant species to England, where new novelties for Victorian gardens fetched a pretty penny.

Plus, the trailblazers in taxonomy whispered, it was delightfully warm, warm being a most thrilling word to Brits.

Had they mentioned the innumerable insects? If so, he still hadn’t expected the particular, primal discomforts of living in a cloud of whining and dining mosquitoes. Likewise, he hadn’t realised that breathing the air’s rich humidity would be as drinking tepid whisky through a straw. Nor how hot the nights were, wrapped tight as a flower bud in his stockings and blanket with a handkerchief over the face to ward away bloodsucking bats.

Nonetheless, Richard Spruce was not one to fret. He was of unfazeable stock, and though inch of his bare skin was soon in welts (not to mention his unmentionables), he followed the river and its plethora of plants to plunder. The cloud of mosquitoes followed too.

It’s not surprising what happened next.

The fever came on suddenly; a shivering, sweating, aching fever that rendered him helpless, striking him down mid-step on the border of Venezuela and Colombia.

His guides carried him shaking to a village. He knew the symptoms, hell he’d seen it before, but he denied his own diagnosis. Though he had the cure in his pocket, quinine from the bark from the Cinchona tree, he was loath to take its bitter rescue. He didn’t want it to be malaria.

Like a pot of swamp water on the boil, was his brain, his temperature climbing like lianas, curling like fern fronds, perching like epiphytic orchids. Images sprung forth from his fertile mind. The first two days he flashed on those damn mosquitoes, a haze of infected blood cells bursting. It didn’t make sense! The mosquitoes had left him three days ago. Certainly it wasn’t malaria, certainly, for it had been weeks since he was around the bad air of stale water, giving the Italian term mal’aria. Still he kept seeing mosquitoes.

As the fever broke into freezing chills, Richard’s guides began to mutter. When those chills turned once more to fever, they sensed his impending demise and sold his scientific equipment for rum. The patient was in no condition to care.

Spruce was stuck on mosquitoes, thriving in stagnant water and stale air, their droning drilled through his brain. He shrunk to the size of a grain of pollen and was sucked up like whisky through a mosquito’s straw. Inside the mosquito gut (it sure was hot and sticky) blood cells burst to release hideous parasites. These sex cells, for he identified them thus as surely as an anther and stigma, combined inside the mosquito. In the gut wall they formed cysts full of eggs. Or were they seeds? Or ferns?

Whatever they were, they grew for over a week, and exploded (much like his mind) yielding youngsters that frolicked freely.

Richard wasn’t frolicking. By the twinges in his aching joints, he knew the pangs of an elderly mosquito carrying young parasites, which had moved to his salivary gland to yield virulent juices. Next time he ate, dipping his mosquito’s double straw through the skin, spitting and sucking simultaneously, he would administer his chemical cocktail – anaesthetics to dull the pain, anti-blood clotting agents and, of course, the parasites.

Through the whisky straw Richard swirled, straight to the liver. His own liver, human and wracked with heat. From the liver, parasites paraded to the blood cells. Inside they ate oxygen-carrying haemoglobin and ran round after round of asexual reproduction, like spores or strawberry runners, each strawberry red and juicy, dripping. Each round took three days to replicate, feast and rupture the blood cells, like clockwork, and his body followed the same ticking cycle, burning fever following freezing chills following fever. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Richard shivered.

From outside he heard the nurse employed for his care, drunkenly yell “die, you English dog, that we may have a merry valorio with your dollars.” Well may she want a valorio, or watch night, but Richard was no a corpse.

After fifteen days of dreaming fever, he relented. Malaria it was. He took the bark of Cinchona trees, which kept him alive (just) by reducing his extreme body heat and causing the haemoglobin-chomping parasites to choke on their own waste. Such sweet relief from such bitter bark.

Thirty-eight days after his collapse, Richard was alive, but exhausted. His full recovery took many months more though, naturally, he kept collecting plants once he found new equipment.

Trudging onwards, Richard felt naught but respect and gratitude for the fine tree, Cinchona (though he preferred moss as a general rule).

Ten years later, having bushwhacked his way through saucer-sized tarantulas and marching fire ants, Richard found himself in the Andes. Gone were the South American rainforests, here roamed high altitude winds and freezing snows. After so long in the heat, the extreme chilliness didn’t suit him at all. But, onwards and upwards, as they say, and he was here to hunt Cinchona trees.

The trees were in high demand by the British and Dutch, both needing supplies for their malaria-wracked colonies. They had no steady supply, as the species had never been cultivated. There were sincere concerns that people would harvest it into extinction.

Richard spent a cold, windswept year collecting seeds and growing young plants. Almost 700 seedlings, well wrapped in moss, were tended all the way to England by a gardener assigned to their care. From the survivors, more than two hundred thousand precious plants were sent on to grow in Indian plantations.

Richard’s success with the species that saved his life did nothing less than change the world, making the heart of Africa habitable and saving millions of lives – but in the end he paid for it with his own health. Another disease cost him the use of his limbs, and he spent the rest of his days on a small pension in Britain.

Today, malaria kills around two million people each year and infects 200 million more. It has quite possibly killed more people throughout history than all our wars and plagues combined. Quinine, along with other chemicals, is still used for cures and prevention, and is gathered from the decedents of Richard Spruce’s trees.

Drinking notes: Enjoy this true tale with warm whisky or gin and tonic. Small quantities of Quinine are added to some brands of tonic water for flavour. Fluorescent, the chemical glows under black light. Many thanks to highly informative Flower Hunters by Mary and John Gribbin for the biography of Richard Spruce.

Subjectivity is inherent in the western scientific method, she said. We use inductive reasoning, interpret data, and models that are not ideal (eg. animals). A hypothesis may be generated by hunches, mistakes, or serendipity, as well as logical questioning. This, she said, is something we don’t usually acknowledge.

In fact, people try to hide it. In writing up a paper, the sequence of experiments and even the thinking process can be adapted to fit the prescribed, logical process of SCIENCE. We leave out illogical sources of ideas, even if they were important. We remove ourselves by using the third person, and our experience by using the passive voice.

Thus we perpetuate the notion of purely rational, logical science.

However, facts do not exist in a vacuum. Scientists are subject to cultural bias. Though numbers don’t lie, we do interpret what they mean.

Her example of bias in scientific thinking was the Thrifty gene hypothesis describing genetic causes of diabetes in First Nations people. For a long time it was believed a faulty genetic ability that stored extra calories in case of famine was responsible for the disease. Actually, there wasn’t any proof of it at all. You can read the story at “How the diabetes-linked ‘thrifty gene’ triumphed with prejudice over proof” from Globe & Mail, Feb 2011.

How can we correct the bias in science? She says, by knowing and acknowledging it, even taking advantage of human bias.

Feminist science does this, she says.

Feminist science
- is openly biased (doesn’t pretend to be unbiased)
- exposes male bias and the patriarchal nature of western science
- is non-hierarchical
- is by, with and for a community, collaborative
- this pdf article Can there be a feminist science? may be a useful reference.

She says feminist science has changed science as a whole, moving it to a point where collaborative, team research is now the norm.

What about different ways of thinking in different cultures? Not only do different cultures have particular traditional knowledge of areas like astronomy and medicine, they also have particular processes to gain knowledge.

Her heritage is Chinese and Cree, and she mentioned ways of knowing that emphasised listening skills, elders, and a holistic world view (rather than analysing pieces at a time.)

People have claimed only people with Indigenous minds can solve the problems of quantum physics, she said, then pointed out that person was Aboriginal. I recommend reading Dialogues between Western and Indigenous science if you’d like to know more.

Scale: Earth globe = size of my hotel room

It’s a fitting spot for the first annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, pronounced not aaaass, but triple ay ess) to occur outside of the US. A huge number of people are in attendance, filling the seats and lining the corridors.

Jet lag still nibbles at the ragged edges of my mind, not quite satiated by coffee though I’ve certainly drunk my limit. I’ve been here since Saturday, and been busy with work and museums and squirrels – SQUIRRELS! – and identifying coins and notes (the five and ten are, in size and colour, opposite to in Australia.)

The program is as multidisciplinary as it is multinational. From culture to computing, from food to forest fires.

After a welcome from Chief Jacob – who sang a song with his niece, accompanied by drums, and it was totally awesome – the AAAS president Nina Fedoroff spoke for around 40 minutes on her life.

Giant golden eggs outside the ballroom

She had her first child when she was 17, then went back to school and her partner left her. Single, working mother she made her way through uni, and had another child and a husband a few years later. Then she started working in labs – and back then it was HARD for women in science. Hell, I think it still is.

Guess my age is showing, but I find it strange to think that obvious, even blatant discrimination was happening just a few decades ago. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad in Aus? (Anyone?) Despite that, she did a hell of a good job studying plant genetics, became an expert in the field and was awarded a prize for science in the White House.

It’s nice to hear stories like that – real stories, you know? Bumpy, unexpected journeys that grip success by not only skill, but determination. I’m sure many other stories like hers are out there, and people could really benefit from hearing them.

After that, there was food and drinks in the foyer, but I dashed out to the reporters gala (a GALA, oh my), and missed the lighting of the Olympic torch.

Well, that was day one, and I’ll leave it there for now.

Picture taken from the plane at dawn

So I’m feeling pretty exhausted! I’ll recover some energy before making a big push to post plenty of contact during the conference, including the IgNobel award ceremony and a visit to nuclear science lab TRIUMF.

Here’s some of the seminars I want to attend:

Saturday 18 Feb: Globalising Indigenous architecture: The Power of tradition, providing for the future.
Sunday 19 Feb: The next agricultural revolution: Emerging production methods for meat alternatives.
Monday 20 Feb: Radioactive isotopes in medicine.

If anyone else, specially my peeps in Aus, are coming to the AAAS meeting, send me a comment with your tips.

Must snooze! over and out.

HMB Endeavour in full sail

You know how they say when one door closes, a window opens? For me it’s the opposite. I closed all the windows to open the door, and an opportunity has flown SMACK into the glass. I can’t go on the HMB Endeavour, ‘cos I’m leaving Australia soon! Bummed out doesn’t begin to describe it.

For you peeps still in Aus, here’s the lowdown.

Cook’s Endeavour is currently sailing with a full, hammock-napping, rigging-climbing, star-gazing crew about Australia.

Over halfway through its yearlong trek, it’s docking in Adelaide from 16-23 February 2012 to open to those of the public keen to run their hands across the varnished wood and polished brass and marvel at the many ropes. Swoon. Details here.

If you, like me, want a closer inspection of the vessel and to get in those hammocks yourself, here’s your chance.

From end of May to mid June, the Endeavour is sailing from Sydney to Lord Howe Island to observe the transit of Venus on June 6. It’s a prime viewing location, and one of the first spots in Australia to see the rarest of eclipses.

Cook travelled to Tahiti in 1769 to view the transit, part of a global movement to find out the size of the solar system (specifically, how far Earth is from the Sun, an astronomical unit) by watching the transit in different locations around the world. Worked pretty well, too!

All Australia is in a good spot to see the transit, when Venus moves between Earth and the Sun and looks like a small black dot on our bright sun disk.

Don’t actually look at the Sun, will you, ‘cos you’ll damage your eyes. Use eclipse glasses or shadows. Though I do find eye patches rather fetching…

Transit of Venus, credit NASA/LMSAL

This is another opportunity that has faceplanted into my closed window. I’m going to be in South America during the transit, one of the few places where you get to see zip, zilch, zero. Bummer…

So I’ll be living vicariously through you, dear Australian readers, so make the most of it! See it at home, or hit up the Endeavour and make a trip from it. The voyage in June is $4000, so quite pricey but a trip of a lifetime! Crew will be selected by ballot, and you need to enter here before 10 February 2012 – which is really soon. Do it now. Are you doing it? Go, right now, click here, live my dream. Take a pirate hat!

I travelled on the Young Endeavour back in me younger days, another replica tall ship used as a training sail vessel, it’s one of those memories that just sticks with you. Like seeing Stonehenge or being in a circus. Ballots for that are open too, but only available to people 16-23 years old. If that’s you, check it out and apply now!

Looks like I’m missing out on the sailing action in Australia this year, but I’ve got some pretty sweet plans myself. I’m heading out that door and leaving in just over a week for Vancouver, Canada, where I’m hitting the AAAS annual meeting. I’ll tell you all about it!

Rice University graduate student Shuzhen Ye used an ultraviolet laser to create a Rydberg atom in order to study the orbital mechanics of electrons.

An electron orbiting an excited potassium atom has been confined with radio waves to mimic the movement of the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter.

The Trojan asteroids precede and follow Jupiter as it orbits the sun, like an entourage of bodyguards around royalty. Earth’s first Trojan asteroid was recently discovered, but it’s nothing to the group that Jupiter’s got, numbering over a thousand.

Resembling this comma-shaped group of asteroids, the electron was limited to a confined “wave packet”, say researchers from Rice University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Vienna University of Technology.

How’d they do it? Lasers, radio waves and supersized atoms.

Here’s a video, with my explanation below it.

First they created a Rydberg atom using ultraviolet laser. That’s a highly excited atom, where the outermost electron has jumped up from its normal orbit into a much, much higher one.

As the outer shell electron jumps outwards, the atom becomes bigger. In this case, an unimaginably small potassium atom grew as large as a full stop! Say wha? I mean, that’s HUGE!!! That’s bigger than a bacteria, than a skin cell – from ONE ATOM?! Get out!

Locating that electron, even in a supersized Rydberg atom, is no easy task. Electrons, I was told at uni, wink in and out of existence. They can act as a particle or a wave. Instead of pinning down an electron, you just predict where it’s most likely to be – called a wave function. It’s a fuzzy way of looking at things.

The team could collapse the wave function with a sequence of electric field pulses, which basically limited where the electron would be. That created the comma-shaped wave packet that resembled the Trojan asteroids.

Next job – make it move! They made the localised electron move in an orbit using radio waves, which rotated the nucleus.

Brilliant!

But how can you check where the electron is, and measure your results, when you can’t see it?

The answer was to do it in snapshots. Each snapshots of the wave packet was made using another electric field pulse. Unfortunately, the process destroyed the Rydberg atom, so they had replicate the experiment tens of thousands of times to get enough data to complete the picture.

Seems like a lot of work to make something extremely tiny and wavy move like you want it, but who knows where research like this might lead. To have this kind of control over electons could lead to new types of chemistry, and quantum computing.

Mind blown.

Source: The press release and paper, published in Physical Review Letters this week.