Good Morning all,
Here is the retroactive post for June 3rd. :) I'm going to do June 7th next. :) Hope you enjoy!
Today's Top 5:
1. B.C. Researchers Make a Whale of a Rescue (The Globe and Mail)
2. Biodesign's Rittmann Offers Promising Perspectives on Society's Energy Challenge (Eurekalert.org)
3. Lioness Produces Cubs at Zoo Atlanta (Atlanta Journal Constitution)
4. Arlington Outhouse Yeilds Old Treasures
5. A Survivor in Greenland: A Novel Bacterial Species is Found Trapped in 120,000-Year-Old Ice (Physorg.com)
Honorable Mentions:
1. Recovered Stolen Items On HPD Website (KHON News)
Today's Top 5:
1. B.C. Researchers Make a Whale of a Rescue
Trapped in 100 metres of fishing line, a young humpback is freed by volunteer rescuers after 45 minutes of painstaking work
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080603.wbcwhale03/BNStory/National/home
By KEVEN DREWS
The Canadian Press
June 3, 2008 at 4:47 AM EDT
TOFINO, B.C. — John Forde knew the juvenile humpback whale, entangled in seven bright orange-and-white crab floats and nearly 100 metres of line, was fighting for its life in these remote waters off Clayoquot Sound.
The floats kept the one-to two-year-old mammal close to the water's surface, tiring it out and preventing it from diving deep to get free.
The gear scarred its back. Blubber and flesh were easily visible.
Even a crab line was caught in the eight-metre-long animal's mouth.
"He was in big trouble," Mr. Forde said yesterday. "It's pretty disheartening. It's pretty tough because you just want to help."
Just after 6:20 p.m. on Sunday, Mr. Forde and four other volunteer rescuers associated with the Strawberry Isle Marine Research Society went to work in the cold, choppy waters off Cow Bay near Flores Island and Ahousat, B.C.
Working from an open-decked Boston Whaler, Mr. Forde heaved on the ropes and brought the mammal close enough to the gunnels so other volunteers could cut the gear with a pole equipped with a hooked knife.
After 45 minutes of hard and dangerous work, the volunteers removed six of the seven floats and all the rope except a piece attached to the mammal's left pectoral fin.
When almost all the ropes were removed, the whale took off, covering huge distances and leaving the rescuers too far behind to finish their work.
Lisa Spaven, a marine mammal research co-ordinator with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said the volunteers likely saved the mammal.
"I'm very pleased with the outcome," she said. "With that amount of gear encumbering the animal, it would have been eventually unable to feed and continue normal life processes, leading to its likely death."
Incidents like this are nothing new to the Strawberry Isle Marine Research Society, a Tofino-based, non-profit organization that performs rescues under the authority of the DFO.
Mr. Forde said over the years, he's participated in eight to 10 rescues, of which five or six have been successful.
On May 18, Mr. Forde received a call that another whale was dragging a crab float and was tangled in the rope near Tofino. The whale hasn't been seen since.
Rescuers were originally called about the young humpback on Saturday morning, but after 90 minutes of searching, they came up short.
Then around 5 p.m. on Sunday, Robin Orr, an employee of Jamie's Whaling Station, reported seeing the distressed whale at Cow Bay. He agreed to stay on the scene.
At 5:30 p.m., Mr. Forde and fellow rescuers Rod Palm, Jens Kalwa, Tony Heald and Adrien Mullin left Tofino.
They arrived at Cow Bay within the hour and by that time, Mr. Forde said the whale was fully entangled and showed signs of distress.
As Mr. Heald drove the boat, Mr. Forde pulled on the ropes, Mr. Mullin cut the lines, Mr. Kalwa readied equipment, and Mr. Palm oversaw safety and managed excess lines.
Luckily, the rescuers didn't have to battle a large ocean swell, just a chop, but at one point, the whale swam under the boat.
"I had to watch out for the tail," Mr. Forde said.
Mr. Palm said such rescues are dangerous and people have died attempting them.
But he said he and his colleagues put aside any concerns about themselves because it was so clear the whale was suffering.
"You've just got to get in there and get on the job and do the right thing. You have this desire to help this fellow mammal," he said.
Mr. Palm said the rescuers recovered registration numbers from the floats, which appear to have come from Washington state.
Ms. Spaven said fisheries officers are investigating.
Yesterday, the remains of the gear sat in a heap on the docks at Strawberry Island.
"Yup, it is an awful lot of gear," Mr. Palm said. "We're feeling pretty good about it."
As the whale swam away, Mr. Palm said the rescuers shook hands and slapped backs
2. Biodesign's Rittmann Offers Promising Perspectives on Society's Energy Challenge
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/asu-bro060208.php
Public release date: 3-Jun-2008
Contact: Joe Caspermeyer
joseph.caspermeyer@asu.edu
480-727-0369
Arizona State University
Perhaps there is no greater societal need for scientific know-how than in finding new ways to meet future energy demands. Skyrocketing gas prices, an uncertain oil supply, increasing demand from around the world, and the looming threat of climate change have made identifying and developing realistic energy alternatives a national priority.
For Biodesign Institute researcher Bruce Rittmann, the threat of global warming also presents a significant opportunity for innovation and fresh solutions to today's energy challenges.
"Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, the unprecedented expansions of human population and economic activity have been based on combusting fossil fuels," said Rittmann. "Today, fossil fuels provide 80 percent of the energy needs to run human society worldwide: 34 percent petroleum, 32 percent coal, and 14 percent natural gas."
In a new Perspective article published in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Rittmann points the way toward developing bioenergy as the best realistic alternative to meet our current and future energy needs while cutting back on the use of fossil fuels. Rittmann directs the Center for Environmental Biotechnology and is a professor in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
"The only way that human society has a realistic way of slowing and reversing global warming is bioenergy; and it has to be bioenergy that is done right," said Rittmann, who leads many of Biodesign's sustainability-themed research projects. "Most critically, we need to be able to have bioenergy sources that work on a very, very large scale."
Besides the scalability issues of bioenergy, any technologies developed must also be able to produce energy while minimizing damage to the environment or affecting the world's food supply.
For Rittmann, the most obvious renewable-energy solution – one that passes the tests of scalability, environment, and food – stems from the very factor that makes life on Earth possible: the sun.
"The good news is that we have plenty of energy from the sun. Every day, the sun sends to the earth's surface about 173,000 terawatts of energy, or more than 10,000 times more that is used by human society. So, we have a lot of what we like to call 'upside potential' for capturing sunlight energy."
Up to now, harnessing the energy of the sun has proven to be technically and socially challenging. In particular, approaches to make biofuels from crops such as corn have been met with skepticism in recent days.
"When people think of capturing sunlight energy in biomass, they focus on plants, which are familiar. However, plants are quite inefficient at capturing sunlight energy and turning it into biomass that can be used a fuel," Rittmann explains. As a result, plants could provide only a tiny fraction of our society's energy needs. "Obviously, we need the plants for producing food and sustaining natural ecosystems. Plants simply fail the scalability, environmental, and food tests."
In contrast, microoganisms, the smallest forms of life on Earth, can meet the scalability and environmental tests. Rittmann sees a vast untapped potential of using microbes in service to society to meet our energy challenges.
"Photosynthetic bacteria can capture sunlight energy at rates 100 times or more greater than plants, and they do not compete for arable land," Rittmann said. This high rate of energy capture means that renewable biofuels can be generated in quantities that rival our current use of fossil fuels.
In addition, non-photosynthetic microorganisms are capable of converting the energy value of all kinds of biomass, including wastes, into readily useful energy forms, such as methane, hydrogen, and electricity.
"Microorganisms can provide just the services our society needs to move from fossil fuels to renewable biofuels," said Rittmann. "Only the microorganisms can pass all the tests, and we should take full advantage of the opportunities that microorganisms present."
Rittmann's Biotechnology and Bioengineering article, "Opportunities for renewable bioenergy using microorganisms," is published in the June 1 issue of Biotechnology and Bioengineering. Volume 100, Issue 2, pages 203-212 (2008). It can also be found online at: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117930825/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
To learn more about solar-based microbial biofuel initiatives at ASU, go to: biofuels.asu.edu
To learn more about ASU bioenergy initiatives, go to: http://www.biodesign.asu.edu/news/green-initiatives
A KAET Spotlight video featuring ASU's "Tubes in the Desert" biodiesel project can also be found on the "Alternative Energy" sidebar on the same Web page
3. Lioness Produces Cubs at Zoo Atlanta
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/living/stories/2008/06/03/zoo_atlanta_lions.html
By LEON STAFFORD
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/03/08
They're cute, they're cuddly and their roar doesn't have any teeth behind it. At least for now.
This is the first time that the zoo has had lion clubs since 1997.
Zoo Atlanta's African lioness, Kiki, has given birth to three lion cubs, and for the first 20 days, they won't have any molars, according to Rebecca Snyder, curator of carnivores.
The cubs -- which officials guess are 3 to 5 pounds each -- also won't open their eyes at least until today or sometime next week, Snyder said. And their roar is more birdlike than "King of the Jungle."
"It's a very harsh, noisy vocalization," Snyder said. "It's pretty loud."
The cubs, whose genders are not yet known, were born early Saturday morning. They are the first for Kiki and a feather in the zoo's cap. African lions are listed as "vulnerable" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species because of declining populations in the wild, Zoo Atlanta officials said.
This is the first time that the zoo has had lion clubs since 1997. The cubs will be on display when they are between 7 to 12 weeks old.
"We're ecstatic to have lion cubs here at Zoo Atlanta," Dennis Kelly, president and chief executive officer of Zoo Atlanta, said in a release. "This is a proud moment for all of Atlanta."
Zoo Atlanta has experienced a baby boom of late. Motherhood has come to the attraction's warthogs, Malayan great argus and black and white ruffed lemurs over the last few months. Officials also hope giant panda Lun Lun, who was artificially inseminated in April, is expecting.
Snyder said Kiki gave birth to her first cub around 1 a.m. Saturday and four others over the next three to four hours. Two of the cubs were stillborn.
The surviving trio are estimated to be between 3 and 5 pounds, though an exact weight could not be determined because zoo officials are keeping their distance to allow Kiki maternal care.
One cub is being watched carefully because it is smaller than the others, but is otherwise healthy, Snyder said.
The first day after they were born, Zoo officials only went in to provide food for Kiki. Since then, they have gone in to clean an adjacent cage that the lioness uses as a bathroom, but have stayed away from her children.
"We are trying to leave her alone as much as possible," Snyder said.
Kiki was born in February 2004 at Santa Barbara Zoological Gardens and arrived at Zoo Atlanta in December 2005. Kamau, her mate and father of her cubs, was born September 2004 and came to Zoo Atlanta from the Denver Zoological Garden in October 2005.
Kamau is currently separated from Kiki and cubs, but he will be introduced in about six weeks.
4. Arlington Outhouse Yields Old Treasures
http://heraldnet.com/article/20080603/NEWS01/318259208/1032/LIVING05
Archaeologists dig up the 115-year-old site, which is in the path of a new sewage plant.
By Gale Fiege, Herald Writer
Published: Tuesday, June 3, 2008
ARLINGTON -- They found shoes, old pennies, buttons, broken plates and a pipe that looks like something Sherlock Holmes would have smoked.
An archaeological team excavated a 115-year-old outhouse in Arlington near the Stillaguamish River where the city is now planning to expand its sewer treatment plant.
About 8,700 artifacts were recovered from the archaeological dig, which cost $53,000 and was required by the state as part of a grant requirement.
Other items found in the old privy included medicine bottles, original Mason jars and a clay flute from the 1879 Sydney, Australia, World's Fair.
Hired by the city, Northwest Archaeological Associates excavated, cleaned, analyzed and cataloged the artifacts, which now will be sent to the Burke Museum at the University of Washington. The museum is the state's storage facility for archaeological artifacts.
The city hopes later to arrange to have some of the artifacts permanently lent to the Stillaguamish Valley Pioneer Museum, city utilities manager James Kelly said.
In January, a 5-foot-by-5-foot pit was excavated and workers sifted more than 200 cubic feet of material, layer by layer, through a ¼-inch mesh screen to find the artifacts.
The archaeologists who investigated the privy figure that the outhouse was part of the home of Calvin and Mertella Teager, who lived on the site near the Stillaguamish River in the late 19th century. Records show that he was a doctor and a dentist and that she was a pharmacist and a schoolteacher.
Why would archaeologists get excited about an outhouse pit?
An intact privy can provide valuable economic, historical and social information, said Bill White, who was part of the archaeological team from the Seattle-based Northwest Archaeological Associates.
In the years before indoor plumbing, outhouse toilets often doubled as garbage dumps. Sometimes things accidentally fell through the privy hole. Other times material was tossed in as part of the fill when a privy was closed and the outhouse moved to another site, White said.
The archaeologists also looked for any evidence of American Indian artifacts on the city's property but nothing was found, Kelly said.
Any municipal building project using state funding must also include an archaeological dig, Kelly said. Archeological sites are protected and can't be disturbed without a permit issued by the state.
The privy was in the middle of the building site for the $33.1 million sewage treatment plant expansion, Kelly said.
The city's goal is to complete the improvements by fall 2010.
The technologically advanced improvements to the sewer treatment facility will help the plant meet stricter environmental standards and will be able to treat twice as much sewage waste as the city treats now, Kelly said.
The improvements are expected to help Arlington accommodate population growth. City planners predict Arlington's population will nearly double to around 30,000 by 2025.
Treated sewage from Arlington flows into the Stillaguamish River and the city is working to keep the Stillaguamish River -- and the entire Puget Sound region -- clean, Kelly said.
After the sewer treatment plant is built, who knows what archeologists will find in it 115 years from now?
Reporter Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427 or gfiege@heraldnet.com.
5. A Survivor in Greenland: A Novel Bacterial Species is Found Trapped in 120,000-Year-Old Ice
http://www.physorg.com/news131712233.html
Published: 11:43 EST, June 03, 2008
A scanning electron microscope image of the Chryseobacterium greenlandensis bacteria found in a Greenland glacier. Credit: Jennifer Loveland-Curtze, Penn State
A team of Penn State scientists has discovered a new ultra-small species of bacteria that has survived for more than 120,000 years within the ice of a Greenland glacier at a depth of nearly two miles. The microorganism's ability to persist in this low-temperature, high-pressure, reduced-oxygen, and nutrient-poor habitat makes it particularly useful for studying how life, in general, can survive in a variety of extreme environments on Earth and possibly elsewhere in the solar system.
The work will be presented by Jennifer Loveland-Curtze, a senior research associate in the laboratory led by Jean Brenchley, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State, at the 108th American Society for Microbiology General Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts today.
This new species is among the ubiquitous, yet mysterious, ultra-small bacteria, which are so tiny that the cells are able to pass through microbiological filters. In fact, some species have been found living in the ultra-purified water used for dialysis. "Ultra-small cells could be unknown contaminants in media and medical solutions that are thought to have been sterilized using filters," said Loveland-Curtze.
The ultra-small size of the new species could be one explanation for why it was able to survive for so long in the Greenland glacier. Called Chryseobacterium greenlandensis, the species is related genetically to certain bacteria found in fish, marine mud, and the roots of some plants. The organism is one of only about 10 scientifically described new species originating from polar ice and glaciers.
To study the bacterium in the laboratory, the research team, which also includes Senior Research Associate Vanya Miteva, filtered the cells from melted ice and incubated them in the cold in low-nutrient, oxygen-free solutions. The scientists then characterized the genetic, physiological, biochemical, and structural features of the species. The team hopes that its studies of this species, as well as others living in the Greenland glacier, will reveal more about how cells survive and how they may alter their biochemistry and physiology over time.
"Microbes comprise up to one-third or more of the Earth's biomass, yet fewer than 8,000 microbes have been described out of the approximately 3,000,000 that are presumed to exist," said Loveland-Curtze. "The description of this one species is a significant step in the overall endeavor to discover, cultivate, and use the special features held by these organisms."
Source: Penn State
Honorable Mention:
1. Recovered Stolen Items On HPD Website
http://www.khon2.com/news/local/19477564.html
Story Updated: Jun 2, 2008 at 5:52 PM HDT
By Manolo Morales
HPD laid out just some of the goods confiscated from a pawn shop.
Lots of jewelry, some sports memorabilia, and even a vacuum cleaner. Officers say there are more than 17-hundred items in all.
"We chose mostly the unique stuff that probably would catch your eye and you guys can take a look at just to see. We're just tipping the iceberg here," said Clem Enoka, Honolulu Police Deaprtment.
The goods were confiscated from the Holoholo Pawn Shop in August last year. Police officers raided the store on Kalakaua Avenue and arrested the owner after three months of investigation.
"Our plain clothes, our crime reduction units were pretty much the forefront in that and the information we got back was that the owner of the shop was possibly buying stolen items," said Enoka.
HPD would like to give back the stolen property to the rightful owners. From now through August 2nd, the public is asked to go to HPD's website and click on Online Property Viewing.
The items on display will be numbered and those who want to claim it must refer to that number.
"One good point is that they look at everything. Try and look through as much as possible because that way you get a vision of what's there and what you're looking for," said Enoka.
Anyone who wants to claim ownership must then make an appointment with a detective to see the item in person. HPD says that person must have filed a police report before August 3rd of last year, which is when the pawn shop was raided. Officer Enoka says this raid confiscated more goods than usual.
"This one had a lot more unique stuff. If you look the kimono, that was kinda weird and some sports memorabilia, the statues and stuff like that," said Enoka.
Check the HPD's website to look at the stolen items.
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