Issue 9

Elements The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget Sound

Discover the Northwest Tree Octopus

Ecology of Language

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Geological Disasters That Could Hit Home

Issue 9, Spring 2011

H2Oh No!

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Letter From The Editors

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Credits

Editors-in-Chief: Chelsea Corser-Jensen, Robert Niese Publication Manager: Dana Maijala Head Copy Editor: Kallie Huss Copy Editors: Maggie Shanahan, Sylvie Daley, Claire Simon Faculty Advisor: Kena Fox-Dobbs Front Cover Photo: David Pendleton Back Cover Photo: David Pendleton Table of Contents Photo: Kevin Curlett CosmoNerd: Emily Landeck CosmoNerd Photo: Kevin Curlett

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Physics, Math & Computer Science, Biology, Chemistry, Science Technology and Society, Geology, and Environmental Policy and Decision Making departments for their continued support. Oh, and a special thanks to the Pre-Engineering program for their valuable contribution this semester. We would also like to thank the following groups: Office of the Admissions, ASUPS Media Board, Tamanawas and Photo Services. Lastly, an extra-special thanks to the following individuals: Kena Fox-Dobbs, Peter Wimberger, Mark Martin, Alex Lewis, Stephanie Baugh, Marta Palmquist Cady, Carol Curtin, Michal MorrisonKerr and Susan Bennett.

Contact & Publishing e-mail: elements@pugetsound.edu web: find us on Facebook! mail: ASUPS - Elements, University of Puget Sound, 1500 N Warner St. #1017, Tacoma, WA 98416 Published by Consolidated Press 600 S. Spokane Street, Seattle, WA 98134

This issue was published on paper from well-managed forests, controlled sources and recycled wood or fiber.

e’ve done it again. For the past 72 hours the Elements staff has been staring at computer monitors, pouring heart, soul, blood, and sweat into 32 pages of scientific brilliance. We are proud to present to you, dear reader, our ninth issue of Elements, the Science Magazine of Puget Sound and our first as an official ASUPS-sponsored medium. Yes, congratulations are in order. Thank you, thank you. We greatly appreciate your continued support and would never have made it to this momentous point were it not for you. We hope that you will continue to enjoy our goofy antics, insightful research, creative content, and full color features for many issues to come.

In the meantime, we would like to highlight a few of our favorite moments from issue nine’s particularly lengthy editing process.

We learned that “spraint” is the technical term for otter dung, not street jargon for the verb “to spray-paint.” We devised a novel system of pronunciation for the names of languages in Phil’s article. We discovered that onions, when frozen, expand significantly and leech yellow secretions into the surrounding ice. Aside from the various shenanigans of our editing weekend (by the way, it’s extremely difficult to say “edited it,” try it yourself), we would also like to highlight a few of our favorite articles.

Elements had the pleasure of working with writer Phillip Brenfleck, part biologist, part linguist, on his article reflecting on the ecology of endangered languages. Did you know that our very own backyard is home to three languages that are spoken by fewer than 20 people? Yeah, neither did we. Thanks, Phil. This issue’s feature article analyzes the differences between tap and bottled water, revealing some surprising details regarding the dirty secrets of the so-called pristine bottled water industry.

We have historically had the full support of faculty in all of our Elemental efforts, but never have we received such energetic and enthusiastic suggestions as we did this semester when we asked the biology faculty for animals to fill our double-entendre animal exhibit! We would also like to thank Stacey Weiss for supplying the entire wardrobe of this issue’s Cosmo Nerd. We still find it amusing that she has so many odd items readily available.

Ecologists are an odd bunch.

Lastly, this will be the final issue for the second-generation Elemental core staff. Next year, Dana Maijala, our trusty publication manager, and Kallie Huss, our proficient head copy editor, will both be exploring new, uncharted territory - the real world.

Chelsea Corser-Jensen, editor-in-chief, will pursue a PhD in neuroscience, while Robert Niese, the other editor-in-chief, will be frolicking through the forests of the Olympic Peninsula counting birds for the Institute for Bird Populations. We will miss Elements a great deal, but we will be continuing down the path of science and doing exactly what we love – more science.

With that, we’ll let you get back to reading about far more important matters such as slippery dicks, tree octopods, and geological disaster scenarios. Read on, people. Read on!

Over and Out, Robert Niese and Chelsea Corser-Jensen Editors-in-Chief, 2010-2011

of the University of Puget Sound

Table of Contents Endangered Languages

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Geology of Doom

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Phillip Brenfleck Lisa Kant

Up In Smoke 9 Chris Shaw

Hey Ma, Why’s It Glowing?

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Where the Green House Grows

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Elements Book Review

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Floral Fingerprints

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H2Whoa!

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The Elusive Northwest Tree Octopus

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Slater Zoo Opens New Exhibits

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Bacterial Revolution Spreads to Puget Sound

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BioNumbers

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Scientific Handwriting Practice

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Quiz: Which Scientific Theory are You? Ecology Nerd

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Lisa Fazzino

Maggie Shanahan, Holly Kvalheim, Claire Armstrong-Hann, Rachael Siegel Sylvie Daley

Betsy Kirkpatrick, compiled by Robert Niese Chelsea Corser-Jensen Kate Merritt

Jarek Sarnacki & Robert Niese Claire Simon

Robert Niese

Kimberlee Redman-Garner

Niche, please!

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Science in Contex t

Endangered Languages Insights from Contemporary Science P hillip B renfl eck

To answer this question, we need to know exactly what happens when a language dies and what kind of information we lose when people stop speaking a given language.

In order to better understand this process, Dr. K. Percent of described David Harrison, Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Swarthmore College, and Dr. Gregory D.S. Anderson, founded the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting dying and endangered languages.1 Harrison and Anderson are among the world’s first scientists to investigate what kind of scientific information is encoded in these dying languages. In particular, their research hopes to discover the environmental and biological secrets tucked away in the syntax and grammar of some of the world’s smallest languages.

Currently there are more than 7,000 languages spoken around the world; at least half (around 3,586) of these are “endangered” and have the potential to die out within this century. About 83% of the world’s languages are spoken by almost 80% of the world’s population. 2 Remember that 3,586? These endangered languages are spoken by but 0.2% of the world’s population. To widen the gap further, that 0.2% continues to be threatened by the growing social threats of an ever-expanding global economy, which convinces minority-language speakers to give up their native

tongue in favor of a language more viable in the workforce.

But just how quickly are these languages dying out? Dr. Harrison and other linguists estimate that every two weeks the world loses another language, and that languages are more endangered and going “extinct” at a faster rate than animal or plant species. Just as biologists tell us that 80% of the world’s plant and animal species have yet to be classified, so too does Harrison claim that 80% of the world’s languages have yet to be recorded, classified, and under-

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I

f you’ve ever taken an entry-level biology course, you’ve definitely heard the term “biodiversity” and heard a dozen different reasons why it’s important in ecosystems at every level. Without biodiversity, life as we know it simply wouldn’t exist. A term you’ve probably never heard of before, however, is “linguistic diversity.” Linguistic diversity refers to languages in the same way that biodiversity refers to species. In other words, there are substantial differences among languages and language families, and these differences allow languages to be classified in much the same way that Western taxonomy classifies animal and plant species. The diversity of language also reveals a great deal about the linguistic and social development of words and thought, as well as the biological evolution of ecosystems.

But how can language possibly reveal anything about the natural world?

species listed as threatened (CR, EN, VU) by the IUCN.

stood from a social and scientific standpoint. The problem with losing these languages, in Dr. Harrison’s own words, is that “we don’t even know what it is we’re losing.”2 You might be inclined to ask, “So what? It’s terrible these languages will never be spoken again, but what does their loss have to do with us?” Partnering with National Geographic, Dr. Harrison and his colleague Dr. Anderson were tasked with documenting the content of these languages with modern technology – essentially preserving the information forever. According to Dr. Harrison, languages are “entire conceptual universes of thought.” The “universes of thought” that Harrison and Anderson encountered contained not only immense, invaluable repositories of cultural insight, but also biological and ecological information and concepts unknown to modern science. “Eighty percent of species have been undiscovered by science, but that doesn’t mean they’re unknown to humans,” says Harrison, “because the people who live in those ecosystems know the

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of the University of Puget Sound species intimately and they often have more sophisticated ways of classifying them than science does.”3

The Yupik people of Alaska and far-eastern Russia speak a language that was recently discovered to harbor surprisingly precise information regarding the frozen world around them.

Yupik speakers have 99 incredibly descriptive terms that allow them to characterize sea ice with enough scientific clarity to both measure and predict global climate change with accuracy comparable to (and in some cases more accurate than) contemporary environmental science – without the aid of modern technology. Together with scientists, Yupik elders wrote “Watching Ice and Weather Our Way,” a book with elaborate descriptions, definitions, and sketches of sea ice of every shape and variant.

WoRMS/Honk Hoossen

In a speech he gave at a Pop!Tech conference in 2008, Dr. Harrison described the “triple threat of extinction”2 for an endangered language. Just like an endangered species, tiny languages are restricted to the unique habitats from which they were borne, and any threat to these ecosystems is a threat to the language itself. In addition, the unique culture of each society has an intimate connection with these ecosystems that has developed through thousands of years of evolution. The massive bank of knowledge and experience amassed throughout these thousands of years is encoded and conveyed through each small language. While it could The list of linguistic examples akin to these is lengthy, and Harrison cites be argued that the a number of cases concepts and inwhere previously formation inherent undocumented asin these small enpects of human dangered languagthought are cones could just be veyed through one translated in order of these endanto preserve their gered or “dying” legacy, Dr. Harrilanguages. For exson describes in an ample, in the Tuvan interview with The language of South Economist that he Siberia, to say “go” just doesn’t think you must know the it’s that simple: direction of the “It’s possible, but current in the nearnot likely, and it’s est river and your not the usual case own location and we see everywhere destination relative from the Arctic to to it. In this way, Amazonia. In indiga speaker of Tuenous cultures we van can acquire observe the decline Areas where stopping to ask for directions might be very difficult. an idea about the of languages and landscape and gelifeways occurring ography of their immediate environment by simply having in parallel.”4 a conversation, easily understanding the lay of the land The most interesting of these sophisticated systems are without ever looking at a map. the Kallawaya language of Bolivia, the Tofa language of the Tofalar people in Irkutst Oblast, southeastern Siberia, and So where are all these languages? How do we know where the language of the Yupik people, who live in southwestern to find such information and concepts, tucked away in the Alaska and the Russian Far East. The Kallawaya people of grammar of some obscure language? Harrison describes a Bolivia have been herbalists since the Incan empire and process of identifying “language hotspots,” inspired by the have transmitted their traditional practices to initiated men biodiversity hotspot model. The main factors used to clasvia a secret language called “Kallawaya.” To communicate sify areas as language hotspots (i.e. areas where languages with anyone outside of their herbalist circle, the Kallawaya are most in danger of extinction) include the diversity of use the more common Quechua language, but transmitted languages spoken, the level of endangerment to the tongue, through Kallawaya to the chosen few are the medicinal and the scientific documentation of a language. With this properties of an amazing number of plant species, some information, linguists like Dr. Harrison are able to visualunknown or untested by modern science. In Siberia, the ize and track the global trend of language extinction and Tofalar people have domesticated and used reindeer as isolate areas where it is most severe. Perhaps not coincibeasts of burden for generations and have consequently dentally (especially considering the scientific information developed a number of Tofa-specific terms to define the dif- acquired about these languages’ environments) language ferent types of reindeer. These concepts aren’t entirely inex- hotspots coincide with both biodiversity hotspots and areas pressible in English, but a “four-year-old male, uncastrated, where scientific knowledge of flora and fauna is minimal. domesticated reindeer” can be expressed in Tofa with the National Geographic, through the work of Dr. Harrison and single word “chary.” Tofa even contains a suffix that can be his colleague Dr. Anderson, list the following regions as language hotspots: Northern Australia, Eastern and Western added to any noun to say that something “smells like x.”

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

A family’s not complete without sombreros, reindeer and shaman hands. From left to right, Kallawaya, Tofa, and Yupik.

Melanesia, Taiwan and the Philippines, Central and Eastern Siberia, Southeastern Asia, Eastern India and Malaysia, Eastern, Western, and Southern Africa, Northern, Southern, and Central South America, Mesoamerica, Oklahoma and the Southwestern United States, and our very own Northwest Pacific Plateau.5

Swarthmore College/KD Harrison

The Northwest Pacific Plateau has 54 languages, spread out over British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. The most endangered languages in this region are Kutenai, Quileute, Squamish, and Yakima. The Kutenai, Quileute, and Yakima languages have less than ten speakers and Squamish has less than twenty. Particularly interesting is the Halkomelem language of south-western British Colombia which has a specific classification system for salmon

What?! Are you kidding? They ride the reindeer?!

and trout that matches up precisely with the biologically defined taxonomy of the Oncorhyncus genus. These fish are keystone species that the indigenous people of this region have known for far longer than modern scientists. 6 So what steps are being taken to save these languages, and chronicle this information? Dr. Harrison believes that the internet is perhaps the most powerful tool. The internet has the potential to empower the cultural identity of a language group and advocate for the use and survival of a language, which subsequently preserves both the cultural and scientific information associated with it. Programs like Rosetta Stone have already started to work on software designed for some of these endangered languages. Programs like these have enormous potential among young people – the individuals who ultimately hold the fate of any language.

However, it doesn’t take technology to save a language – just initiative. Performing hip-hop in or otherwise advocating the use of an endangered language is something Dr. Harrison has seen prove successful, and in many cases the hardest battle to be won is getting the future generation of speakers to care. Dr. Harrison says that he has hope for the future of endangered languages and the knowledge they contain. While in Australia, he witnessed one of the last three speakers of the language, Yawuru, teaching a group of schoolchildren the names of various plants and their medicinal purposes. The amazing part? “The children had elected to take the course—no one forced them,” says Dr. Harrison. “When we asked them why they were learning it, they said, ‘This is a dying language. We need to learn it.’” 7 1 “Enduring Voices Project, Endangered Languages, Map, Facts, Photos, Videos -- National Geographic.” Travel & Cultures -- National Geographic. National Geographic Society. Web. http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/enduringvoices/.

2 G., R. L. “Interview: Seven Questions for K. David Harrison | The Economist.” The Economist World News, Politics, Economics, Business & Finance. The Economist Group, 23 Nov. 2010. Web. Mar. 2011. <http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/11/interview>.

3 “Global Language Hotspots: Northwest Pacific Plateau.” Swarthmore College. http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/langhotspots/hotspots/NPP/index.html.

4 Living Languages Digital Dialog - 39 Translation(s) DotSUB. Perf. Dr. K. David Harrison. DotSUB. 23 Oct. 2008. Web. Mar. 2011. http://dotsub.com/view/ d88e920e-9d6b-4862-a712-7259003bd00a.

5 Living Tongues Institute For Endangered Languages. Web. Mar. 2011. http://www. livingtongues.org/aboutus.html.

6 Lovgren, S. (2007) “Languages Racing to Extinction in 5 Global “Hotspots” Daily Nature and Science News and Headlines National Geographic News. National Geographic Society.

7 Thill, S. (2009) The linguists battles language extinction. Condé Nast. http://www. wired.com/underwire/2009/04/qa-babelgum-pre/.

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of the University of Puget Sound Science in Contex t

Geology of Doom The Apocalypse Has Never Looked So Scientific L isa K ant

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ountless disaster movies are released every year, and every year more and more apocalyptically inclined individuals rant and rave about their predictions for the end of the world. However, their predictions are rarely ever based in science. Here’s a closer look at three misunderstood natural disasters, the threats they pose to us, and the real science behind each one.

Many movies feature characters fleeing lava flows. At least Hollywood got this part right. On flat ground you could probably outrun a lava flow, or at least out-drive one. Most flows travel less than 1 kilometer per hour, unless they are moving down steep slopes or through channels. But what the movies often get wrong is just how hot magma can be. There is no way Frodo and Sam (from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) could have entered Mount Doom’s magma chamber to destroy the ring or waited for the eagles on the flanks of the mountain while it erupted.

Magma can reach temperatures of 1400°C, so it would be impossible to get that close.

While lava is undoubtedly dangerous, there are other volcanic hazards that are far more deadly and would make much scarier movies.

One such hazard is an ash flow. Ash flows occur where magma compositions, higher viscosity, and high gas content

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Volcanoes

I can’t believe we wore the same shirt to the tsunami!

cause eruptions to be explosive, rather than effusive, or flow-producing. Geologists refer to ash flows as pyroclastic flows or nuées ardentes (French for glowing cloud). They form when a volcano erupts violently, ejecting ash and gas rather than lava. As the material mixes with the surrounding air it cools rapidly, causing the density to decrease. If the cloud of hot gas and ash becomes denser than the surrounding air, gravity pulls it back towards the ground, and it flows down the flanks of the volcano at alarming speeds.

Pyroclastic flows travel up to 450 miles per hour and more than 6 miles from their source and can reach temperatures of over 1800°C, destroying everything in their path. In the event of a pyroclastic flow, your best bet is to be far away from the volcano. If you were caught in its path, you’d be toast.

Earthquakes

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Since earthquake prediction is very difficult, there is often little warning before a quake. This makes earthquakes extremely hazardous, because many people are caught inside buildings when shaking causes them to collapse.

It’s a good thing we got pyroclastic flow insurance!

Earthquakes often take place on faults, or places in the crust where rocks move past each other. They occur when these rocks move or break suddenly, releasing large amounts of energy. This energy travels in waves through the earth to the surface, where it wreaks havoc. Buildings collapse, soils flow like liquids, and if the earthquake occurred at sea, high-energy waves called tsunami occur that can ravage coastlines.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

As evidenced by the recent events in Japan, earthquakes can bring life to a standstill. The loss of life and destruction caused by earthquakes and their associated hazards is catastrophic. Although they occur daily, as of today there is no good method of prediction, and certainly no way to prevent them. This makes earthquakes one of the most dangerous geologic disasters.

While the exact cause of reversals remains unknown, researchers have studied what happens when Earth’s magnetic field changes directions. Computer models show that reversals take approximately 2000 years to complete, making them a quick process, at least geologically speaking.

Reversals occur once every 300,000 years, and since the last one was 780,000 years ago, we’re overdue for another.

NASA/Glatzmaier & Roberts

NASA/Glatzmaier & Roberts

But no matter how strong it is, there is no evidence that Once the reversal begins, the magnetic field won’t acan earthquake can open a giant hole in the ground. While tually disappear. Instead, it just gets a little wonky; for small fissures example, there 1 2 do sometimes might be more open, giant than one set cracks in the of poles, and ground that the strength swallow peoof the field ple and then will fluctuate. close up (like But eventually those in the the field will movie 2012) right itself – are complete only magnetic Hollywood ficnorth will action. However, tually be close another plot to true south. device, the However, in human-caused the interim earthquake, is the field will quite real. In change.

So the 1978 ver1. Yarn ball 2. Yarn ball post-kittens. Actually, these are very complex mathematically what does it modeled simulations of pole-reversals. Blue are north poles, yellow are south poles. sion of Sumean if the perman, Lex north pole Luthor plans moves and the to destroy all of California by detonating a few nuclear magnetic field weakens? The answer is not much. These weapons along the San Andreas Fault. While most geoloare processes that occur on a daily basis. The strength of gists agree this probably wouldn’t work, Lex isn’t that far the field changes constantly, and the north pole currently off. Blasting and mining, injecting liquid into the ground, moves 64 miles every year. So far, attempts to correlate and even building large dams can generate earthquakes. In field reversals with mass extinctions have failed, so it is the case of blasting, the connection is obvious: large explounlikely that a reversal will destroy life on earth. And even sions release a lot of energy. The other two causes are a if the field were to become very weak, Earth’s atmosphere bit more subtle. In both cases, liquid seeps into the rock also acts as a shield to the solar wind. and lubricates faults, making it easier for them to move and cause an earthquake. Luckily in the real world, man-made The Real Threat earthquakes are small and only occur close to what caused Although most Hollywood depictions of natural disasters them. Sorry, Lex. are entirely false, the disasters are very real. In particular, Magnetic Field Reversals volcanoes pose a significant threat to those of us residing in western Washington. Geologists have identified Mt. A magnetic field reversal is one of the doomsday favorites Rainier as the most dangerous volcanic threat in the lower for 2012 believers and other mystical theorists. Although 48 states. Pyroclastic flows from an eruption on Mt. Rainier this event has many people all worked up, the reality is that would incinerate everything within a five-mile radius of the it’s not much of a disaster at all. mountain in a matter of minutes. The eruption would also The magnetic field is important because it protects the generate massive lahars, mudslides caused by the rapid planet from the solar wind, which constantly bombards the melting of snow and ice that can travel up to 50 miles per planet with charged particles. These particles disrupt com- hour. These lahars would bury more than 150,000 people munication and navigation systems, destroy satellites, and in up to 100 feet of cement-like sediment. Don’t worry too cause radiation that can harm humans and other animals. much, though. From the moment of detection, we would Earth’s magnetic field is generated nearly 3000 km beneath have about 40 minutes to evacuate everyone within a 30the surface in the outer core. Circulation of liquid metal mile radius of the mountain. That’s plenty of time, right? with this layer sets up electrical currents, which – like a gi- Sounds like the plot for Hollywood’s next big blockbuster! ant electromagnet – generate the magnetic field.

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of the University of Puget Sound Science in Contex t

Up In Smoke Is Hookah Safer Than Cigarettes?

C hris S haw

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he first time I sampled hookah, it was a completely ethereal experience. My friends and I basked on a warm, sandy beach listening to Brother Ali and watching wispy columns and ghostly rings of smoke rise into the star studded sky. My first time was not terribly different from the typical hookah session, consisting of music, friends, and voluminous clouds of fruit-scented vapor. Generally young people use hookah, which originated in the southwestern recesses of Asia, as a centerpiece for groups of people while they catch up or simply unwind from a rough day of studying. The social aspects and tranquil nature of hookah might mask the fact that smoking is an inherently risky behavior, which can result in the development of a myriad of diseases.

Evaluating hookah smoking and cancer risks There are surprisingly few current studies examining the link between specific cancers and hookah smoking. Previous research has linked tobacco use to cancer through biomarkers, compounds that are indicative of a certain abnormal physiological state or function.4 One such biomarker is carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA).5 High levels of CEA in the circulatory system have been correlated with poor prognosis in cancer patients and higher probability of tumor reproliferation after surgical removal. 6 Essentially, high

Photo Services/Isabelle Chiosso

CEA levels in the blood indicate that the protein is being displaced from cellular membranes as tumor cells become metastatic (i.e. begin infecting other tissues). One study Interestingly, as cigarette

by Sajid et al. examined CEA use has declined in the face levels in different categories of aggressive advertising of hookah and cigarette like American Legacy Founsmokers in order to examine dation’s “Truth” campaign, the effect of duration and hookah use has continfrequency of smoking.7 The ued to increase, especially study measured CEA levels among college students. in over 60 individuals, who From 1999 to 2003, over were classified as heavy, 300 hookah bars opened medium, or light smokers. within five miles of college Heavy smokers exhibited campuses across the U.S.1 the highest levels of CEA Other research has docuin their blood compared to mented use among college non-smokers, although levstudents, with one study els observed in medium and To inhale or not to inhale? That is the question. reporting 45% of students light smokers were elevated surveyed have used hookah as well. The results of the at least once. 2 The fundamental cause for this growth and study suggest that increased tobacco use is positively corgeneral lack of academic research is that hookah smoke related with mean CEA levels, leaving a grim prognosis folsignificantly differs from cigarette smoke. This mindset arislowing tumor development. es from three common assumptions made by hookah smokers. The first is that passing smoke through the water-filled Carcinogens in mainstream hookah smoke base of the pipe filters harmful chemicals. 3 The second is Carcinogens are compounds that have been shown to conthat the use of a coal to superheat the tobacco/molasses sistently lead to cancer in a laboratory setting. 6 Hundreds mixture produces lower temperatures than a burning cigaof carcinogens have been identified in mainstream cigarette, preventing production of certain harmful compounds rette smoke (smoke reaching the lungs), including polycyclic like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). 3 The final asaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), nitrosamines, aldehydes, and sumption is that shisha, the tobacco/molasses mixture that phenols.6 A chemistry aerosol lab in the American Uniis smoked using a hookah, contains less nicotine than versity of Beirut has been at the forefront of carcinogen cigarettes and is therefore less likely to lead to addiction.1 research, having published several articles on the subject In order to assess the validity of these assumptions and since 2001. In 2005 the lab analyzed the chemical composiexamine the possible link between hookah and cancer, I tion of mainstream hookah smoke to determine the relative conducted a thorough examination of the available litera- abundance of known carcinogens, carbon monoxide, and ture. I identified some areas of ambiguity that should be total particulate matter (“tar”) produced in the process. investigated more fully before hookah smoking reaches the They found significant amounts of carbon monoxide and several PAH in mainstream smoke, demonstrating that a ubiquity of cigarettes.

10 smoking session using 20 g of shisha delivers approximately 20 times the amount of PAH in a single cigarette.7 Several PAH have been identified as carcinogens. These compounds are not carcinogenic when they first enter the lungs, but metabolic enzymes called cytochrome P450’s change the PAH structure, sometimes creating dangerously reactive compounds. 6 These transformed compounds can bind to DNA, causing mutations that can lead to protein malfunction. If the affected proteins are involved in pathways of cell growth or programmed cell death, cancer is a likely consequence.

Addressing misconceptions Of the previously mentioned assumptions, the idea that water acts as a protective filter in hookah smoking is the least investigated. This is possibly due to the fact that chemical properties like solubility can be determined relatively accurately without in-depth analyses. The main concern in hookah smoking should be PAH, as these compounds have been most definitively tied to cancer and do not dissolve in water. Other compounds present in mainstream smoke, like nitrosamines and aldehydes might partially dissolve, but no current literature exists that supplies a quantitative answer to this question. However, the findings of the Beirut lab strongly suggest that water is not sufficient to remove any significant amount of toxins from mainstream hookah smoke.

The Beirut lab addressed the assumption that using a coal to superheat shisha is healthier than burning tobacco (as in cigarettes) in a 2008 paper. It was commonly thought that the temperature of the tobacco/coal interface was not hot enough to produce PAH and other polycyclic molecules. 8 Yet the temperature of the burning coal, the most commonly used method to heat the shisha, is in fact high enough to produce significant amounts of PAH. Temperatures must reach a minimum of 800°C before PAH are produced at detectable levels. In order to quantify the relative amount of toxic substances contributed by the coal, the Beirut lab constructed an electric heating device that mimicked the temperature range and heat distribution of a burning coal.

The electric coil apparatus consumed a significantly larger amount of tobacco than trials using coal while producing 90% less carbon monoxide and PAH.9 The relative reduction of PAH and carbon monoxide in the absence of a coal indicates that the fuel used to heat shisha is the main source of carcinogens, rather than the burning tobacco.

The assumption that shisha contains less nicotine than cigarette tobacco is the most hotly contested and most ambiguously addressed in the research I reviewed. Different labs have utilized a variety of approaches in order to best quantify the risk of nicotine dependence in habitual hookah smoking when compared to cigarettes. Hadidi and Mohammed, 2004, analyzed the relative amount of nicotine present in both flavored and unflavored brands of shisha, and the results showed that nicotine concentration varies depending on the brand and flavor. The average nicotine concentration across the thirteen surveyed brands was significantly lower

Elements: The Scientific Magazine than mean nicotine concentration of thirty-two American cigarette brands (3.35 mg/g tobacco and 13.8 mg/g tobacco, respectively).10 Previous studies quantifying nicotine content using the same method found the complete opposite – raw nicotine content was not significantly different when comparing samples of cigarette and shisha tobacco.

Although these studies do not allow for any definitive conclusions to be drawn regarding raw amounts of nicotine in shisha, other methods produced more telling results. In 2009 Eissenberg and Shihadeh recorded the nicotine concentration in blood plasma of both cigarette and hookah smokers during and directly after smoking sessions (1 cigarette or 30-minute hookah session). Their results showed that peak plasma nicotine concentrations of both cigarette and hookah smokers did not differ significantly, suggesting that the important variable in dependency development could be exposure time.11 Hour-long hookah smoking sessions may be more hazardous than cigarette smoking.

There are several difficulties to address when evaluating the relative amount of nicotine in hookah and cigarettes. First, the range of available data almost certainly is a result of the large number of available brands, for both cigarettes and shisha. Additionally, different studies report nicotine concentrations using different units of measurement, most commonly mg/g tobacco, mg per cigarette or hookah session (which varies), and mg/g “tar,” making it difficult to assess which method is most beneficial in quantifying nicotine concentration. Also, different practices associated with both methods of smoking make it difficult to evaluate which measure to use. Hookah is usually consumed in social settings and thus the harmful chemicals are divided among friends, while cigarette smoking is primarily a solitary practice, leaving a single set of lungs to absorb all the harmful chemicals inhaled.1 Suggestions for the future It is clear that more research is needed to better quantify potential health risks of hookah smoking, especially as the practice becomes more popular in America. Of the literature reviewed, only one lab conducted extensive research of the carcinogens present in mainstream hookah smoke. Epidemiological studies could elucidate connections between chronic hookah use and certain types of cancer. Although there is a general lack of information regarding the relative risks of hookah smoking, the literature I reviewed makes a strong case for the position that hookah smoking is just as hazardous to your health, if not more so, than smoking cigarettes.

1 Cobb C, et al. (2010) Waterpipe Smoking: An Emerging Health Crisis in the US. Am J Health Behavior 42: 526-529.

2 Primack, B., et al. (2008) Prevalence of and Associations with Waterpipe Tobacco Smoking among U.S. University Students. Ann Behav Med 36: 81-86.

3 Eissenberg, T., et al. (2008) Waterpipe Smoking on a U.S. College Campus: Prevalence and Correlates. J Adolesc Health 42: 526-529.

4 Hecht, Stephen. (2003)Tobacco Carcinogens, their Bio-markers and Tobacco-induced Cancer. Nature Reviews Cancer 3: 733-744.

5 Duffy, Michael. (2001) Carcinoembryonic Antigen as a Marker for Colorectal Cancer: Is it Clinically Useful? Clinical Chemistry 47: 624-630.

6 Priollie, DG., et al. (2010) Morphofunctional Malignancy Grading is a Valuable Prognostic Factor for Colorectal Cancer. Arq Gastroenterol 47: 225-232.

7 Sajid, KM., et al. (2007) Carcinoembryonic Antigen (CEA) levels in hookah smokers , cigarette smokers, and non-smokers. J Pak Med Assoc 57: 595-600.

8 Ledesma, E., et al. (2006) Global kinetic parameters for the formation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from the pyrolisis of catechol, a model compound representative of solid fuel moieties. Energy and Fuels 16: 1331-1336.

9 Monzer, B., et al.(2008) Charcoal emissions as a source of CO and carcinogenic PAH in mainstream narghile waterpipe smoke. Food and Chemical Toxicology 46:2991-2995.

10 Hadidi, K., Mohammed, F. (2004) Nicotine content in tobacco used in hubble-bubble smoking. Saudi Med J 25: 912-917.

11 Eissenberg, T., Shihadeh, A. (2009) Waterpipe tobacco and cigarette smoking direct comparison of toxicant exposure. Am J Prev Med 37: 518-523.

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of the University of Puget Sound Science in Context

Hey Ma, Why’s It Glowing?

Revisiting Bioluminescence in an Evolutionary Light L isa Fa zzino t’s that first warm, clear night in Tacoma when you happen to lack the usual papers and lab reports that often plague our fellow inhabitants of Thompson Hall. Whatever will you do with all that free time?

Instead of grabbing a computer and pulling up some terrible movie on Netflix, you should truck on down to our most beloved spot in Tacoma: Point D. I know, I know, it’s a little creepy going there at night, right? But just you wait - it’ll be worth the judging looks and skeptical questions from your fellow classmates.

What waits for you down on that smelly waterfront is… magic! Or at least that’s how some people explain it.

BioluminesToxic waste isn’t the only thing cence! A beautiful alienlike glow that causes the ocean to light up!

As you may have read in a previous issue of Elements, our very own backyard is home to two major glowing organisms: dinoflagellates and jellyfish. While both these organisms use similar mechanisms to produce light, not all bioluminescent organisms do. Dinoflagellates, a form of marine plankton, and jellyfish use luciferin, a pigment, which reacts with oxygen and the enzyme luciferase to produce energy in the form of light.

While the mechanistic approach to bioluminescence is certainly an interesting topic and has yielded many new research techniques (e.g. GFP - green fluorescent protein that allows the tagging of specific proteins and even DNA sequences; see Elements Issue 7), we can also ask an evolutionary question: Why would bioluminescence be advantageous for organisms?

The sea is a vast open area without any type of infrastructure. As such, there are no places to hide. To deal with this lack of protection, many marine organisms migrate down into the depths during the day and return to the surface at night to feed when the sea is darker and it is harder to see. Because of this vertical migration, many organisms, especially plankton, spend most of their lives in half-darkness, an environment in which producing their own

light is advantageous. Bioluminescence is useful in three general ways: for locating food via “headlights” or lures, attracting mates, and defending against predators. The third use of bioluminescence is most common and takes many forms. In many crustaceans, squid, and jellyfish, glowing chemicals are expelled into the water around them to distract or blind predators. Others mark predators when caught so they can be found more easily by even larger predators, which invokes the saying “the enemy of an enemy is a friend.”

Other species, many fish in particular, can even use bioluminescence as that makes Puget Sound glow! camouflage. Specifically, these organisms produce counterillumination, where they use bioluminescence to illuminate their bellies, effectively eliminating their shadows so that predators from the depths below cannot detect them.

Wikimedia Commons

I

Such a complicated function must have evolved only once, right? Nope! Bioluminescence is thought to have evolved independently at least 40 times. There are two generally accepted hypotheses for the evolution of bioluminescence, both of which involve selection on the substrates to the chemical reactions and the enzymes catalyzing the lightproducing reactions. One hypothesis suggests that bioluminescence was incidentally selected for its reduction of potentially destructive free oxygen species within an individual. The alternative hypothesis is that luciferase (the bioluminescence enzyme) originally had multiple functions and that natural selection favored the selection of sensitive eyes in the darker ocean; in the dark, being able to produce light was also favorable, so luciferase was coopted for the production of bioluminescence.

While bioluminescence is amazing to read about (who doesn’t love glittery and shiny things?!), it’s even better in real life! So, grab some friends in late April and May and head to Owen’s Beach!

Widder, E. (2010) Bioluminescence in the ocean: Origins of biological, chemical, and ecological diversity. Science 328:704-708.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Science in Context

Where the Green House Grows A Glimpse Into Sustainable Living M aggie S hanahan , H olly Kvalheim , C l aire A rmstrong -H ann ,

T

he Green House is not actually green. The recycled paint coating its exterior is the color of “oak moss” and “mars clay.” Apart from the rain barrels, this sustainability themed house looks remarkably like your regular old, energy-eating LEED-less Tacoma residence. But the Live Green House is neither regular nor old. It was renovated in 2008 as part of an ongoing commitment to, according to the University’s website, the “integration of sustainable solutions at the campus/community level.”

This August marked the Live Green House’s second (re-) birthday, yet the house remains little-known in the campus community. Even we did not know much about the Live Green House when we applied last spring. ‘We’ are four sophomores and a youthful junior from different academic background who applied because of a common interest in sustainability.

Concerned with its anonymity, we worked this year to increase the house’s presence in the campus community.

The Live Green House now hosts weekly meetings for the

and

R acha el S iegel

Puget Sound environmental group, Students for a Sustainable Campus, and coordinates the new composting system for Theme Row and on-campus houses. In this article we will describe the origins of the Live Green House, explain some of the house’s best features, and discuss the components and purpose of a LEED-certification.

The Worm Factory On our porch sit two stacks of black bins, each about two feet high. This is vermicomposting. This is The Worm Factory. Worms travel from layer to layer, eating food scraps and fiber, leaving behind them a trail of nutrient-rich, highquality castings. Their castings collect in the lowest layer and can be harvested as fertilizer.

The red wiggler, or Eisenia fetida, is an expert digester. It is a communal worm whose rapid reproduction cycle allows it to double in population every three months. This is ideal for its role. According to The Worm Factory operational manual, “in full operation, your worm composter will house 10,000 to 12,000 worms.”

Robert Niese

Born and raised in Yelm, Washington, our red wigglers came to campus as part of a sustainability grant in 2008. The worm bins were placed behind the SUB so students could compost leftover food scraps.

Unfortunately, interest waned. The project was tragically abandoned and left the worms with empty stomachs and administrators with bad tastes in their mouths. Most of the worm bins were disassembled and returned and remain a sore subject…. Our worm factory was salvaged.

The Green Team! From left to right: Maggie Shanahan, Claire Armstrong-Hann, Holly Kvalheim, Rachael Siegel, and Amanda Ohsiek.

The worms eat fiber: shredded magazines, cardboard, dryer lint, vacuum dust, Kleenex, paper towels, junk mail, and bad grades. They also take care of food scraps: fruit and vegetables, toast and oatmeal, muffins, cereal, coffee grounds and tea bags. Worms work with bacteria to break down food. The bacteria do the dirty work; they decompose the broken cells of green scraps,

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of the University of Puget Sound

Photo Services/Daniel Pendleton

In tending the worm bins an interesting friendship has developed. Most of us have grown attached to our slimy friends and are now mildly offended that the vermicompost manual comes with an “ideal worm fattener recipe.” (Chicken mush, mostly).

Maintenance is fairly straightforward. The worms require a healthy ratio of food waste and fiber.

Compost tea must be drained from the bottom bin periodically.

Ideally, the contents Anyone care for a spot of tea? of the bottom bin are It’s fresh! garden-ready after a month or so. Once the compost has been eaten and pooped out several times, it comprises a rich, black soil and can be used as fertilizer.

This material is so nutritious that unless diluted 1:1 with soil, it will choke your plants with nutrients.

The Green House Grows Until just three years ago, 3211 North 13th was an Average Joe of a house, offering the same worn-down charm as any other on Theme Row. Then in 2008 the school decided to renovate, giving Average Joe a full-body makeover, transforming him into a high-tech tree-hugger with a penchant for saving energy. Students applied for residence, and the Live Green House was born.

The purpose of the house is two-fold. First, the staff members of Sustainability Advisory Committee (SAC) who conceptualized the project, specifically John Hickey and Bob Kief, wanted to use the house as a sort of experiment. They wanted to see how well its sustainable features would withstand the wear and tear of student life and how cost-effective they would be in the long run in terms of energy savings.

Secondly, the house is meant to be a center for sustainability education and an opportunity for students and other community members to see the possibilities in green

building. The house residents facilitate this education by giving tours and by reporting back to the administration about how well the house is functioning. Beyond that, it is up to the students themselves to decide how best to use the house as a resource and home base in the pursuit of green education and community.

As the third group of students living in the house, we couldn’t be more stoked about what our house has to offer in terms of both sustainable function and style. Some of the more decorative features of the house are kitchen countertops made of recycled paper, wooden flooring reclaimed from the previous house, and recycled glass tiling in the bathroom. The walls are painted cheery yellow and green with a combination of low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) and recycled paint.

Depending on what you call “decorative,” this list could also include the rooftop solar panels and the big black rain barrels in the yard. The solar panels are designed to heat 60% of our water – in a sense, we shower in sunshine. The rain barrels collect rainwater from the gutters and are attached to an irrigation system that waters the drought-tolerant and native plants in the yard.

Adding to the luxury and sustainability credentials of our house are super-energy-efficient appliances, including the best (...and only) dishwashing machine in an oncampus house and Energy Star-rated clothes washing machine and dryer (sans coin operation). A low-flow showerhead and toilet allow us to go with the sustainable flow.

Composting With green gadgets comes green responsibility. For this reason, we decided to spearhead a composting initiative on campus.

Photo Services/Daniel Pendleton

and the worms suck the smaller scraps into their little worm mouths (which we still cannot distinguish from their little worm butts). The worms can’t handle all fruit and vegetable scraps. Their bodies may be long and snakelike, but red wigglers lack the detachable jaw necessary to handle avocado pits. Determining exactly what the worms will eat has been a science in itself.

Rain barrels irrigate the garden.

In an institution such as UPS, it takes approval from many levels of university government to get approval for initiatives. Through the fall 2010 semester members of the UPS community, Maggie Shanahan, Lizzie Lombardi, and Ellie Barber worked with Bob Kief, the associate vice president for facility services, to gain approval for a composting machine for on-campus houses. The idea was to start small. The composting

14 program, once established on Theme Row, could spread to other departments of campus. In February of 2011 the new composting machine was set up and introduced to students living on campus, specifically on Theme Row. The ComposTumbler is an off-ground two-chamber tumbler.

The two-chamber system means that it has two separate chambers that allow for one unit to decompose while still allowing for the addition of more organic materials to the other chamber. It has the ability to convert compost waste into fertile soil in as few as 14 days. As a low-maintenance contraption, it only requires five rotations every day.

Elements: The Scientific Magazine â&#x20AC;&#x2021; LEED Certification: Worth the Green?

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification is a designation of a building that meets specific environmental standards. Certification is determined based on a point system and can be acquired at four different levels: Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum. These can be achieved in both new constructions, for example the new health sciences building on campus, as well as renovations, such as the Live Green House.

The rating system for houses consists of eight major categories: innovation and design process, location and linkages, sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and awareness and education. Each category is designated a certain number of points.

The total number of points determines the certification levels. To simply attain a LEED certification requires 45-59 points. The higher levels are as follows: Silver level with 60-74 points, Gold level with 7589 points, and Platinum with 90136 points. The point system is adjusted based on the house size and the number of bedrooms, which compensates for the effect of home size on resource consumption.

Photo Services/Daniel Pendleton

To understand this process it helps to know what composting is. Composting can be described as the natural breaking down of organic wastes. All organic waste rots or decomposes over time into organic materials, or soil. The ComposTumbler serves as a way to control and speed up the process of decomposition. The process of composting has multiple components that make it successful. An important factor in this process is aeration, which occurs through turning the tumbler five rotations every day, speeding up the normal process of decomposition. It is also important to have a good mixture of brown materials, mainly leaves or newspaper, and green materials, mainly Awarding points is the job of the organic waste that you produce Green Rater, who works as part (vegetables). A good combination of the LEED for Homes Provider of the two produces an adequate group. The Green Rater performs carbon-to-nitrogen ratio that altwo field inspections, one during lows for a better composting systhe construction of the home and Mmmm! Smells like sustainability! tem. Other factors of successful one at completion of construccomposting include moisture contion and performance testing of the house. He or she will tent, material size, volume, and the temperature. also often assist the design and construction professionals in meeting the sustainability goal for the level desired.

The Live Green House has taken on the responsibility of maintaining the tumbler. The current house members Without taking material and construction costs into acintend for this composter to be the next step into a sus- count, certification costs range from $500 to $3,000 per tainable composting system on campus. By introducing the home depending on the size of the home and the LEED tumbler to campus houses, the Live Green House hopes rating level pursued. Carnegie Mellon, the first university that students will demonstrate their interest in compost- to build a LEED home (Silver level) determined the overall ing through this program. If the composting program takes price to be an extra $129,744 and $347,118 more than off, it has the possibility to demonstrate student concern similar non-LEED residence halls. However, the overall about the environment and hence lead to support for a price varies, depending on how much material is recycled, campus-wide composting system. There are many forces cost of new materials, and differing cost of construction. behind composting and sustainability at UPS in general; the ComposTumbler gives voice to the desires of the sus- Applications to live in the Live Green House are available every spring before the housing lottery. Our hope is that tainability proponents on campus. the Live Green House will continue to develop its presence on campus in years to come. This program is still green; it has plenty of room to grow.

Also, visit FindWorms.com for your nearest worm supplier!

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of the University of Puget Sound Science in Context

Science or Stamp Collecting Prof. Kristin Johnson’s New Book The Species Maker S ylvie D al e y

K

ristin Johnson, assistant professor of Science, Technology & Society here at the University of Puget Sound, is anticipating the issuing of her first book, which was accepted for publication in March.

Kristin’s book, tentatively titled The Species Maker – Karl Jordan’s Life in the Naturalist Tradition, is a culmination of eight years of research in natural history that she put into her PhD dissertation. Kristin received her doctorate in the history of science from Oregon State University.

scientific study. While working in tropical rainforest conservation, Kristin became aware of the residual resentment against Europe and the United States doing their work in tropical places. Delving into this history, she also became aware of the way the world wars affected the naturalist tradition – limiting financing, trade networks, access to foreign lands. Naturalists were expected to justify, in practical terms, the research they wanted to do. These effects changed the institution of natural science.

More recently, efforts have begun to comprehensively name, describe, and catalogue every species on earth, and a lot of money has been invested in taxonomy, in hopes to finish the job within a couple decades. With regard to current taxonomy, Kristin believes that we can learn the following things from Jordan’s work:

“I picked him partly because he lived quite a long time, and was a great taxonomist, but he also worked on species concepts, which is a big deal in evolutionary biology,” Kristin said. Part of what drew her to Jordan’s work was that, beyond his work in taxonomy and evolution theory, he was also active in organizing scientists internationally. As a historian, Kristin was especially intrigued by Jordan’s correspondence network – the manuscript archives of the great minds of an era consulting together on their work, developing scholarly ideas. In her book, Kristin wanted to examine the way those ideas developed the field of natural history.

“I used Jordan’s work as a sort of biographical case-study of a life in natural history work. I wanted to look at how biology and natural history changed in the nineteenth century.”

Kristin herself became interested in the history of science after studying tropical biology. She came to learn about the natural sciences in their historical contexts, particularly with regard to inventory collecting. Historically, the British Empire had ultimate authority to collect specimens for purposes of

1) Taxonomy should not be done just for the sake of naming species. To lose sight of the spirit of science in the pursuit of personal recognition is to diminish the integrity of the research.

2) Taxonomy should never be rushed. In inventorying species, the objective is not to get it done in a certain amount of time, nor to catalogue a specimen only to set it aside and move on to the next – “it would imply static species,” said Kristin.

Rather, Kristin believes, taxonomy should be used as a tool to try to better understand the paths of evolution.

In part, she presents Jordan’s work as a caution against reckless taxonomy and reveres his careful, comprehensive technique: “Jordan did brilliant taxonomy – it’s really robust; the names haven’t changed much.”

Overall, Kristin’s book will demonstrate the importance of understanding the historical contexts of current science.

To understand how theories and techniques developed in a scientific field is to better appreciate the institution – to know the science, rather than just know about it.

Kristin’s book will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press and will be available on Amazon.

As to the writing itself, Kristin said she is happy to have it finished. “I totally enjoyed the process of writing. The research has been fun!”

Coutesy of Kristin Johnson

Kallie Huss

Her project centered on the life’s work of a German entomologist named Karl Jordan, who worked in insect taxonomy and Professor Kristin Johnson ultimately in evolutionary biology theory. It was this combination of real, empirical science with more theoretical work that turned Kristin on to Jordan’s work as a subject for her research.

Nice microscope, Karl

16 Research Report

Floral Fingerprints

There are approximately 250,000 pollen-producing plant species in the world. An individual plant can produce more than 50 million pollen grains each year (although it varies widely by species). In any given spring, this might equate to anywhere between 1015 and 1020 pollen grains per square kilometer. That’s more pollen than there are grains of sand in the Sahara Desert! Pollen is so ubiquitous and has existed for so long (about 140 million years) that an entire field of study (palynology; Greek for “the study of dust”) has evolved to analyze variations in pollen type, quantity, and distribution. For Puget Sound professor, Dr. Betsy Kirkpatrick, studying pollen began as a hobby, but now she hopes that her large collection of SEM photos will be used to construct a key to the pollen of the Pacific Northwest – an enormous task of microscopic proportions. Not only

Elements: The Scientific Magazine would this key be a first for the Pacific Northwest, but it would be the first ever created for pollen! A dichotomous key to pollen grains would allow apiologists (people who study bees) to identify the species to which each grain of pollen from a bee’s pollen basket belongs. Additionally, the key would provide agricultural engineers and botanists with a means of identifying each pollen grain that lands upon a fertile flower. This could potentially revolutionize agricultural science, providing us with a more intimate understanding of flower-pollinator interactions.

To give you a better idea of the scale of this project, we have included a small sample of Betsy’s SEM photographs.

Each pollen grain has been magnified 1000 times and placed with its corresponding flower. (1) Geranium robertianum (2) Lithodora diffusa (3) Hypericum perforatum (4) Eschscholzia california (5) Malva neglecta (6) Rubus discolor (7) Leucantheum vulgare (8) Campanula persicifolia (9) Cytisus scoparius.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Science in Contex t

H2Whoa!

The True Cost of Drinking Bottled Water

W

hat is the one thing you absolutely could not survive more than three to five days without? No, not iPod, cell phone, or Facebook – the answer is water. Humans need water to live, plain and simple. It helps regulate body temperature, lubricate joints, carry nutrients and oxygen to cells, and flush out waste products. We lose water in sweat, urine, and feces, and this water needs to be replaced in order for our organs to continue functioning properly. The average urine output for adults is 1.5 liters (6.3 cups) per day, and an additional liter (4 cups) of water is lost through breathing, sweating, and bowel movements. So the average person needs to consume 2 liters of water each day to replace lost fluids. For the current world population of 6.9 billion people that’s 13.8 billion liters or 3,645,574,325 gallons of water consumed each day!

So where does all the water come from? This seems like an easy answer, right? Earth is, after all, the “water planet,” but you might not know that the world’s total water supply of about 332.6 million cubic miles is more than 96 percent saline (oceans), and of the total freshwater over 68 percent is locked up in ice and glaciers – leaving 22,300 cubic miles of fresh surface-water sources, such as rivers and lakes.1 That’s only 0.0067 percent of the total water supply readily available for human use.

Imagine all the money Access to clean water further reby switching duces this number, as one in eight people in the world lack access to safe drinking water. Of those without access to drinkable water, two-thirds survive on less than $2 each day, and the U.N. estimates that by 2025 48 nations (2.8 billion people) will face freshwater “stress” or “scarcity.”2 The United States is among the countries with the greatest access to safe drinking water, yet we have the largest consumer market for bottled water in the world. 3 The average cost of a bottle of water in the U.S. is about $1.50 while the same volume of tap water costs a mere fraction of a penny. Considering how much we spend on bottled water ($11.2 billion per year4) there must be something unique about it, right?

Did French water destroy America?

Bottled water has been around for a long time, dating back to 1767. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, new glass technologies allowed for mass production, and by 1856 over 7 million bottles were produced annually at Saratoga Springs, selling at $1.75 per pint. 2 The popularity of bottled water was motivated by health concerns but became associated with image and status – people wanted their water to be both clean and stylish. The advent of chlorination in municipal water caused bottled water to go out of style in the early twentieth century, and it didn’t make a comeback until the late 1970’s when imported water took advantage of the growing obsession with health and image.

The marketing of Perrier, in the sleek green bottle, took advantage of emerging concerns about pollution and poor-quality tap water, and it quickly became a lifestyledefining product that revolutionized the beverage industry. Advertised as “the champagne of table waters,” Perrier created a niche of non-alcoholic social drinkers who began ordering a bottle at lunch with friends or after work with coworkers.

Wikimedia Commons

C helse a C orser -J ensen

It wasn’t long before gluttonous corporations like PepsiCo (Aquafina) and Coca-Cola (Dasani) beyou could have save gan to fight for their own piece of to Geico... the pie, and soon enough water became the fastest-growing segment of America’s beverage business.5 So what’s the appeal? Some of the most common reasons given by bottled water drinkers are purity, healthiness, and convenience. As I will discuss, the first two reasons are somewhat misguided, and the third, our demand for ease and expedience, has had substantial, irreparable environmental consequences.

Regulation Complications The FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) is responsible for regulating bottled water as a packaged food item, which means that it must be packaged in a sanitary container in a sanitary environment. Beyond that basic rule, there are two rules specific to bottled water. The first is that it must come from an “approved” source. This doesn’t mean that the FDA goes to check the safety of the source – the water just has to come from either a protected natural source

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of the University of Puget Sound

B ot tl ed wat er is regul at ed by the FDA • Tap wat er is regul at ed by the EPA • B ot tl ed wat er that ne v er crosses stat e lines is neither regul at ed by the FDA nor the EPA • The av erage person consumes 2 lit ers of wat er per day • 0.0067% of the world ’s total wat er supply is drink abl e • The E arth has 332.6 million cubic mil es of wat er : 96% saline , 65% is lock ed up in ice and gl aciers • The av erage cost of a bot tl e of wat er is $1.50 • 44% of all se abird species hav e pl astic in their bodies • B ot tl ed wat er has been recall ed because of : acillus cereus , food grade cl e aning compound , pot entially l e thal l e v els of sodium fluoride , benzene , mold , sodium hydroxide , k erosene , st yrene , alga e , y e ast sand , fecal coliforms , gl ass particl es , and crick e ts made from crude oil to • P l astic bot tl es are produce poly e thyl ene t erep thal at e (PET) • 2.8 billion peopl e l ack access to safe drinking wat er • 3 , 6 4 5 , 5 74 , 3 2 5 gallons

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20 (e.g. a spring or artesian well) or a municipal source (i.e. tap water). The other bottled water-specific FDA rules deal with labels on the water bottles. Companies are not allowed to lie about the source of water, they must say if the water was originally untreated, and anything that has been added, such as fluoride or minerals, must be disclosed on the label.

Elements: The Scientific Magazine tap water from various cities across the countries – in fact, one of Aquafina’s sources is the Detroit River!

At least Evian Water does come from France and Fiji Water actually comes from Fiji, but does that make it taste better?

Numerous blind taste tests have demonstrated that even people who say they don’t like tap water rank it higher than some bottled water brands, sometimes even higher than expensive water brands like Evian. Growing environmental and political opposition in recent years to the bottled water industry has pressured companies like PepsiCo and CocaCola to admit that their bottled water is nothing but tap water that may or may not undergo an additional filtration step.

Wikimedia Commons

Here’s where things get tricky – The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulates drinking water from municipal sources, setting strict legal limits on hundreds of different chemical and microbial contaminants. The EPA requires regular testing by certified labs as well as a report to the EPA and consumers of any contaminants. The FDA standards are much more lax – bottled water companies are not required to provide information concerning the quality of the The bottom line is that we really don’t know what we’re water source or any contaminants, all of which are detected drinking. Both tap and bottled water are equally safe to by testing at the bottled wadrink, and the difference ter companies themselves. in taste that some people Although each state has claim to be able to detect the freedom to set its own is typically due to a slight regulations for both tap and difference in relative minbottled water testing as well eral concentrations. Does as facility and water source this difference justify spendinspections, the FDA only ing up to thousands of dolregulates water in “interlars more on bottled water state commerce,” so it has than what comes out of little to no jurisdiction over your sink? Considering that water that is sourced, botbottled water either is tap tled, and sold in the same water or is subject to less state. This is the reason for stringent regulations, if you all of the different brands spend more for a gallon of from one company; for exwater than a gallon of gas ample Nestle has four imyou’re probably just buying No, that’s not enough. Congress needs $0.8 billion worth... ported brands (Perrier, S. the hype.

Pelligrino, Acqua Panna, Contrex), one national brand (Nestle Pure Life), and seven different domestic brands (Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Ice Mountain, Ozarka, Poland Spring, and Zephyrhills).

Message in the Bottle Many people say they buy bottled water because it tastes better. We’ve all heard and probably said things like “It tastes good…. it tastes crisp….it tastes natural” or “I’m afraid to drink my tap water – it tastes like sewer.” Well, it looks like those sneaky marketing and advertising people have done it again. We are drowning in the sea of TV and magazine ads, billboards, vending machines, supermarkets, and even subliminal advertising on TV shows and movies.

It’s the picturesque mountain scenes glued onto the labels and into our minds with words like “pure,” “glacial,” “clean,” “pristine” that make us think that the water inside the bottle was collected straight from a melting glacier or from a lake uncharted by man. No. You actually have to read the fine print or even call the manufacturer to find out, for example, that Everest Water is from Corpus Christi, TX, and Glacier Clear Water is actually just tap water form Greeneville, TN. Top-selling Dasani and Aquafina are also just reprocessed

Plastic: A Malleable Reality?

The last reason on the bottled water drinkers’ manifesto is convenience. We are Americans. We like instant gratification. We like things that are fast, easy, and simple. Using a water fountain or faucet, for some reason, seems to be much more difficult than having to pay for a bottle of water every time we feel the least bit parched. This is the reason more than 70 percent of plastic bottles end up in the trash rather than being recycled.

The vast majority of plastic bottles are manufactured from petroleum, some of which comes from deposits up to three billion years old. Meeting the bottled water demands in the United States alone requires 1.5 million barrels of oil, enough to power 100,000 cars for a year! 6 Most of these bottles are a type of plastic called polyethylene terepthalate, or PET, produced by mixing hydrocarbons extracted from crude oil with chemical catalysts, triggering polymerization. The actual bottle that results is both lightweight and sturdy, making it cheaper and easier than glass to package and transport.

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Once a PET plastic bottle ends up in the hands of the Within in these gyres, plastics organize in layers by weight. consumer, it has three possible fates: reused, recycled, or Sunlight and wave action causes the lighter, floating plastics thrown away. Although reuse extends the lifespan of the to fragment and break into increasingly smaller particles as bottle, the plastic leaches chemicals as it heats up (e.g. by they move in a slow, clockwise spiral for several decades leaving it in the sun or hot car), and it can be very hospi- toward the center of the gyre, soaking up a variety of watable for bacteria. The few bottles that actually end up in terborne chemicals. Marine animals mistakenly consume the a recycling bin (less than 30%) are compacted and loaded small plastic fragments, which can lead to blockages, dehyonto container ships to China, where they are sorted by dration, starvation, and eventually death. A host of recent color and shredded into chips that can be used to make studies have determined that 44% of all seabird species, a variety of polyester-based products (e.g. clothing, pillows, 22% of cetaceans, all sea turtle species, and several fish carpets, chairs). Very few PET bottles are reincarnated as species have been documented with plastic in or around PET bottles – in fact, until recently the United States didn’t their bodies. In one study of the North Pacific Gyre, Moore even have the capacity to recycle the plastic flakes back et al. discovered that the mass of plastic is approximately to the initial materials. In 2009, Coca-Cola joined forces six times that of plankton! 8 with the United Resource Recovery Corporation (URRC) and opened the world’s largest plastic bottle-to-bottle recycling Several organizations around the world have implemented plant in Spartanburg, SC, which has the capacity to pro- post-consumer cleanup efforts. These efforts are extremeduce two billion 20-ounce ly expensive and are barely Coca-Cola bottles each scratching the surface of the year.7 Over the next ten problem – the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, alone, is esyears the plant will elimitimated to weigh 100 million nate the production of tons9. Changing our behavior one million metric tons of carbon dioxide emisand stopping the accumulasions – that’s like taking tion of these gyres seems to more than 200,000 cars be the only solution. off the road! This process of closing the recycling What began in the United loop is definitely a step, States as a thirst for style and or ten, in the right direcclass is now causing irrepation, but this recycling rable damage to the world plant only recovers PET around us, both on land and from the East Coast. in the ocean. Many companies, Who knew we could see all those giant arrows from space? like Green Planet (the water It almost seems more reasonable to just throw our plastic bottles away rather than shipping them all the way to China, right? Wrong.

When a plastic bottle enters a landfill it can take hundreds of years to decay, gradually leaching harmful chemicals into the ground, potentially polluting the soil and water, and causing irreversible damage to numerous plants and animals in the surrounding ecosystems. …and now for the real buzz kill.

Not all discarded plastic bottles make their way into landfills. The world’s oceans are becoming host to a rapidly growing collection of plastics that come from litter, poorly secured landfills, storm drains and watersheds, spilled shipping containers, or are tossed carelessly. Ocean currents, coupled with wind and the earth’s rotation, create “gyres,” massive, slow-moving whirlpools where trash accumulates.

There are five major oceanic gyres worldwide, with several smaller gyres in Alaska and Antarctica. The North Pacific Gyre, or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, extends from the coast of California to China, spanning an area nearly twice the size of the United States.

sold at Puget Sound), now are producing plastic bottles manufactured from bioplastics, plant-derived materials that do not require the extraction of crude oil and will compost under the right conditions. In the grand scheme of things, however, the greatest benefit of these bottles is to our conscience. Considering the cost of bottled water – $11.2 billion per year plus many more in clean-up efforts – and the benefit (virtually none), it simply doesn’t make sense to be paying for water that is no different from our water fountains and faucets. The short-term convenience of drinking bottled water carries with it an inconvenient, long-term truth that is definitely not worth the price.

We like things to be as simple and easy as possible, right?

Well hurry, quick! Go get yourself a reusable water bottle – 1 http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis 2 http://water.org your planet, your conscience, and your wallet willforall thank 3 IBIS World.

(2008) “Changing consumer tastes creates explosive growth domestic and international bottled water brands – Revenue in 2007 expected to reach you $5.974 for it. billion with growth set to climb higher through 2012.”

4 Raloff, J. (2009) “Bottled water may contain ‘hormones’: glass.” http://www.sciencnews.org/view/generic/id/41706/title/Bottled_water_may_contain_’hormones’_Glass.

5 Reier, S. (2000) “With consumption on the rise, the bottled-water business is booming: growth is the message in the bottle.” http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/22/ your-money/22iht-mbot.2.t.html.

6 Layton, J. (2010) “How bottled water works” http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/ bottled-water.htm 7 http://www.thecocacolacompany.com/presscenter/nr_20070905_ccna_sup port_recycling.html8 http://5gyres.org 8 Lattin, G., Moore, C., Zellers, A., Moore, S., Weisberg, S. (2004) A comparison of neustonic plastic and zooplankton at different depths near the southern California shore. Marine Pollution Bulletin: 1-4.

9 Howden, D and Marks, K. (2001) “The world’s rubbish dump: a tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan.” http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbishdump-a-garbage-tip-that-stretches-from-hawaii-to-japan-778016.html.

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of the University of Puget Sound The Allium

The Elusive Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus K at e M errit t

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ittle did you know, traipsing though the forests of the Olympic Peninsula on your Passages trip, you were walking among the fabled Northwest Tree Octopi! Although these elusive beings have been spotted as far abroad as Northern California and British Columbia, the population is most dense in the Olympic National Forest, right here in Washington State. So, since it may show up on the Bio 112 Familiar 50 list, you should probably become acquainted.

Here are the top five things you probably didn’t know about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus: Cryptic Creatures I bet you didn’t even know it existed! The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (Octopus paxarbolis) is an amphibious arboreal cephalopod with a tentacle-tip-to-tentacle-tip (T5) span of 65-75 cm, although the largest individuals of the species have been measured at up to a meter. They move by tentaculation though the coniferous foliage of Northwest forests so stealthily that you, the avid PSO member, have not even noticed their presence.

Positively Predatory Have you ever been watching a bird and *POOF* it’s suddenly gone? Tree Octopus predation caught in the act!

Because it preys on diurnal creatures, including rodents, insects, and birds, the Tree Octopus has adapted its camouflage to become a daytime hunter. Bark browns, needle greens, and lichen pastels fool its predators (Sasquatch and bald eagles) as well as its prey.

1873 edition of Punch, a London culture magazine, featured “Mr. Punch’s Designs After Nature: Sensation for the Aquarium,” a gloriously elaborate Coiffure Octopus popularized among the London elite of the time. This brash cephalopodan coiffure initiated a string of Octopus-based fashion, including the use of taxidermied Octopi as bourgeoisie hat garnish. The most notable use of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus appeared on the cover of the November 1923 issue of The Cascadia Evening Post.

Fickle Future Logging, and pollution, and farming! Oh my! These are just a few of the recent pressures that have reduced the population of Octopi in the wild to a critically low level. Additional habitat pressures include suburban encroachment, farming and residential run-off, and feral cats.

Here are seven things that you can do to help save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus: (1) Write your representatives!

Let them know that you are concerned and that you feel the tree octopus should be included on the endangered species list and given special protection. (2) Build awareness!

Tell your friends an coworkers about the Tree Octopus. (3) Participate in Tree Octopus awareness marches. Have your friends dress up as Tree Octopi while you attack them in a lumberjack costume. (4) Pamphlet your neighborhood.

Tentacle ribbons make excellent doorknob hangers. (5) Join and donate to an organization committed to conservation.

(6) Look for the tentacle ribbon of approval on lumber before buying, and boycott companies that use non-TreeOctopus-safe wood-harvesting practices. (7) Sign an online petition!

For more info on Octopus paxarbolis and its habits, visit http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Although Tree Octopi have a varied diet, beetles are an essential food source. Many beetles produce a natural anti-freeze glycoprotein (AFGP), which allows them to stay active despite the freezing temperatures. The Octopi have adapted to extract the anti-freeze chemical from the beetles and incorporate it for their own protection against freezing. Incidentally, this is the first report of a natural anti-freeze chemical in a cephalopod.

Perilous Past Haute coiffure of the 1870’s brought Octopi to the public eye. The April

Photo Services/David Pendleton

Anti-Freeze Abduction

This mature adult female Tree Octopus was photographed in Dosewallips State Park by Mary and Roger Lewis, former skeptics.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

The Allium

In The News: Slater Zoological Gardens Opens New Exhibits J arek S arnacki & R obert N iese

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fter more than two months of preparation, construction, and hard work, the Slater Zoological Gardens is poised to re-open their gates to the community. The zoo has gone through some major changes this winter but is proud to announce the opening of several unique exhibits.

Boobies on Display

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Lovely Tits: (1) Bushtit (2) Great Tit (3) Penduline Tit

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Look at those hot booby feet! They’re so...vascularized!

(1) Brown Booby (2) Blue-footed Booby

Tits of the World The world is full of tits, both great (Parus major) and pygmy (Psaltria exilis), ranging from North America, Africa, and Asia, all the way to the Auckland Islands. Although different species tend to share many traits, this exhibit highlights their diversity, showing just how unique tits can be. Some tits, like the penduline tits, build elaborate bag nests that sag from hanging branches. Other tits, like the titmice, are hole-nesting birds that typically use trees but may build nests on the ground. The local tit representative is the bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus), making its home throughout western North America and your own backyard.

Touch Tank

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Here in the touch tank we have a number of hands-on experiences where our visitors can feel nature without getting too dirty. Visitors have the opportunity to touch a variety of fish, including the thicklip chub (Cyprinella labrosa), the slippery dick (Halichoeres bivittatus), or any number of members of the lumpsucker family, which use their adhesive pelvic discs to really get close to their surroundings.

Lucky guests might even get caressed by the wonderpus (Wonderpus photogenicus), a crepuscular hunter that uses elaborate color patterns to catch prey and its next date.

Aside from these amazing animals, visitors will also have the opportunity to touch the smooth, silky bodies of a number of nudis (that’s short for nudibranchs), including Fiona sp, Hancockia spp, Jason sp, and Julia sp.. Oh, and we also have a few anemones.

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Come on in! Stop by to watch some goofy boobies! The booby, a member of the family Sulidae, is a common, medium-sized charismatic seabird that has some rather unusual behaviors. Perhaps the most well-known of these mannerisms is the waddle-dance of the blue-footed booby in which males point their beaks in the sky and present their bright blue feet to potential mates. In addition to using their feet to attract the ladies, boobies use their feet to incubate their eggs! All boobies lack brood patches, so instead of sitting on their eggs, they stand on them! In this exhibit we have four species of boobies on display including the red-footed booby (Sula sula), the blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii), the brown booby (Sula leucogaster), and the masked booby (Sula dactylatra).

Bet you can’t guess which one is the Slippery Dick...

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of the University of Puget Sound

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If fish and birds aren’t your bag, then come on down to Slimy, Scaly, and Skinky. In this exhibit, amphibians and reptiles are showcased to their maximum entendre. Here in the North we refer to these two animals as the horned lizard (Phrynosoma cornutum) and the red-bellied turtle (Pseudemys nelsoni), but in the South they’re called the horny toad and the red-bellied cooter! Horny toads will spray a stream of blood out of their eyes when faced with a predator, and the bravest of cooters will sometimes lay their eggs in the nest mounds of alligators. Our slimy friends include the spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) and the white-lipped frog (Leptodactylus labialis), both of which are found in the United States along with the Chattahoochee slimy salamander (Plethodon chattahoochee).

The Lake Titicaca frog (Telmatobius culeus), also found in this exhibit, is known for the excessive folds of skin found afore its face. This “afore-skin” is useful in helping the frog absorb oxygen from its environment. If this exhibit isn’t skinky enough for you, you will be able to see several members of the skink family. The blue-tongued skink (Tiliqua scincoides) will dazzle you with its beautifully colored tongue, and the prehensile-tailed skink (Corucia zebrata) will lure you in with its prehensile tail!

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Slimy, Scaly, and Skinky

(1) Horny Toad (2) Red-bellied Cooter (3) Prehensiletailed Skink (4) Titicaca Frog (doesn’t shrink in the cold)

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The American Hardwood Forest

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It doesn’t get any more phallic than a Phallus.

(1) Dik-Dik (2) Woodcock (3) Phallus impudicus

The last part of our new animal exhibit showcases a variety of unique species found throughout the United States’ hardwood forests. As you quietly stroll through the tall Pinus and leafy Acer that dominate our hardwood canopy, keep your eyes peeled and perhaps you’ll stumble upon the elusive woodcock hiding among the underbrush. Their beautiful camouflage allows these wading birds, colloquially known as timberdoodles, to disappear into virtually any background. While wandering the exhibit, if you happen to hear a little bird sing “dick dick ciss ciss ciss,” you may be hearing our resident dickcissels!

Don’t spend too much time looking up or you might trip over one of our Spermophilus holes! Two species of these ground squirrels are currently breeding in our hardwood forest, so be sure to check them out! In addition to the ground squirrels, we also have several small dik-diks.

These small deer are native to eastern Africa scrubland and stand a mere 12 to 16 inches tall. That’s a small dik-dik! The American coot, another resident of our hardwood forests, lives in huge groups called rafts and coexist peacefully with the other animals in this exhibit. We don’t just have animals in this exhibit though. Phallus impudicus, the stinkhorn fungus, grows on the ground all over our forest and reproduces with the help of their distinctive Phallus smell, attracting flies to spread their spores. Be sure to stop by and check them out!

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

The Allium

In The News: Bacterial Revolution Spreads To Puget Sound

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hat initially seemed like a routine bacteria-streaking in a Biology 111 lab at the University of Puget Sound went down in history as the event that sparked a revolution.

From deep within the swirling, complicated maze of Ed Coli’s brain a novel realization surfaced for the first time. Students were startled by the sound of a dropped micropipette. Their gazes shifted from the horrified eyes of the budget-concerned professor to the flabbergasted culprit, whose hands remained frozen midair in an expression of disgust.

“MURDER!” Ed yelled and ran out of the lab - slapping Petri dishes out of several students’ hands on his way.

Two weeks and one university withdrawal later, Ed re-appeared on campus, armed with a stack of flyers and a cause. Hey BAAT, man! (Hey Bacteria Are Alive Too, man!), established in the spring of last year by Ed and his friend, a former clean freak, is a growing organization that has gained national recognition in its fight for the billions of lives that can’t be heard... or seen, for that matter, without the aid of a microscope.

calls “Microscopic Genocide” on many college campuses around the Northwest.

Its fan base has spread from local supporters at UPS to members in unlikely places.

The group e-mailing list has increased to over 50 members, the Facebook group has twelve fans and over seventy “likes” (three of which are from Estonia, Azerbaijan, and the Netherlands), and the total active group membership has reached an astonishing thirteen (including a Jared Jenson at the University of New Jersey, who plans on starting a sub-branch of the organization called FFLU – Fighting For Lives of Uni-cellular organisms – on the Jersey Shore).

Claire Simon

C l aire S imon

The group’s activities include weekly protests, soap tossings, flyer distributions, and laboratory lie-downs during which Ed or one of his members will stand or lie in front of the door of a biology lab, making it slightly more difficult to enter during a class. Their current project has completed over one hundred handwritten letters to local Bartell’s and Target stores to persuade them to stop carrying “annihilation accessories” – also known as Purell hand sanitizer.

“I was like, how could something In an effort to save the lives of so hypocritical – so horrifying – Members of PLAGUESS block a freshman biology millions of microbes, members happen every week in every lab lab in one of their weekly lab lie-downs. of Hey BAAT, man! have devotat every school for years and go unnoticed!” says Ed, dwelling on the moment of the ed their existence to “murder-free” living – reducing the organization’s conception. “Microbes are alive. They are daily death toll of bacteria. Soap has been removed from alive just like you and me. They have offspring, reproduce, all parts of their lives, showers occur once a month and breathe, eat, and even build colonies. They are creatures consist of a brief rinse-down with lukewarm water, there is with the right to survive just like the rest of us. Just be- no doing laundry, brushing teeth, eating foods cooked in cause they’re small or there’s trillions of them doesn’t give temperatures above that which bacteria can survive, and us the right to perform experiments and mass genocides absolutely no antibiotics of any kind are allowed – ever. without any kind of recognition or restraint.”

When asked if there was a concern about health, Ed Hey BAAT, man! and its derivatives BUBONIC (Ban Unnec- smiled. “Colds, flus, and TB are just the microbes’ way of essary Bacterial Onslaught Nestled In Campus labs) and asserting their existence—we don’t blame them for their PLAGUESS (Prohibit Lab Assassinating Genocides Under natural behavior. You wouldn’t kill a puppy for biting your Evil Staff Supervision) have raised awareness of what Coli finger. Plus—[Ed proceeded to cough for four minutes and

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of the University of Puget Sound

plague have all been found on the members and some of their belongings.

“I think they should be isolated in a hospital,” Dr. Smith (name changed for anonymity) from Tacoma General Hospital claimed outside the hospital last Friday. “Some of these samples we’re analyzing are from the very flyers they were handing out to people! These diseases are highly contagious and this bacterium is stronger than anything we’ve ever seen before. I’ve said it once, and I’ll keep saying it DON’T GO NEA—“ He suddenly fled the scene of the interview as protestors began advancing with their hands stretched out – threatening contact.

Indeed, a small faction of scientists has gone into a frenzy over the emergence of rare and new bacteria.

Blackwater fever, dairy fever, sudor anglicus, and the black

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“It’s like an early Christmas but instead of getting several new vests, I’m getting thousands of microbial miracles. I’ve not only discovered new species unlike any life form on this planet, but I’ve even seen a reemergence of old diseases that were thought to be extinct hundreds of years ago!”

For more information, check out our Facebook group or write an e-mail to any of the following subdivisions of Hey BAAT, man! to receive a flyer on how to do your part for the cause.

ed

Intrigued by some of the emerging symptoms that members of Hey BAAT, man! displayed, professor of microbiology Mark Martin analyzed one of the protestor’s water bottles found at the scene of a lab lie-down, and he was enraptured by what he discovered.

m

his nose started oozing blue mucus]. Plus, bacteria were here millions of years before us – we should respect their authority and be in awe of their power.”

Even though their organization faces many challenges, Ed Coli and his supporters remain optimistic. “If we convince one person to stop using soap, we will have saved millions and billions of lives. To me, that’s wor—“ Thirty consecutive sneezes interrupted his answer and eventually ended the interview.

ik i

Purell endorses bacterial genocide! Stop killing 99.9% of bacteria with every drop!

“We’ve been monitoring their efforts, and frankly, there’s not much to be concerned about,” Campus security officer Janet Hadley said. For instance, we had word of a protest that was scheduled for today to stop the use of dishwashers in the SUB, but as you can see, only one person showed up and he’s sitting over there.” She was pointing at a bundle of blankets people assumed was modern art; when indeed it was a member of the revolution whose meek voice was barely audible between unsettling coughs that sounded like Jabba the Hutt. “They’re just too sick to participate. My theory is that they’ll either die off or just get medical treatment and quit.”

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Claire Simon

Despite the increasing intensity of their protests (mass removal of soap dispensers and coughing on biologists) and the fact that they are a walking disease factory, doctors and authorities do not express much concern.

•FFLU (Fighting For Lives of Uni-cellular organisms)

•BUBONIC (Ban Unnecessary Bacterial Onslaught Nestled In Campus labs)

•PLAGUESS (Prohibit Lab Assassinating Genocides Under Evil Staff Supervision)

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

The Allium

The Database of Useful Biological Numbers R obert N iese

et’s play a game. It’s quite simple, and you’ve probably played it before. Actually, you probably play this game every day – multiple times every day. You just don’t know it.

Alright, here’s how to play: read the phrases below, and fill in the blank. I told you it was simple. Ready?

There are: ___ days in a week, ___ seconds in a minute, ___ months in a year, ___ hours in a day, ___ dimes in a dollar, ___ eggs in a dozen, ___ meters in a kilometer, ___ billion people in the world, ___ chromosomes in the average human, ___ gas giants in our solar system, ___ active volcanoes in the lower ___ states.

After playing this little game it becomes painfully clear that we know hundreds of numbers. Our lives revolve around numbers – how much does gas cost, how many minutes will it take to get coffee before work, how many tomatoes do I need to make dinner tonight, how many of these cookies have I eaten today, and so on. Some of them are essential to everyday life, while others, such as the number of tracks on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album, just take up space in our memory banks.

Sometimes our basic repertoire of number knowledge fails us. This is especially true for anyone who has ever taken a class in Harned or Thompson;

The Best of BioNumbers •Ratio between number of bacteria and number of cells in the human body: 10:1 •Largest known genome size: the amoeba Polychaos dubium 6.7 x 1011 base pairs •Doubling time of the fastest-growing eukaryote: Yeast, Kluyveromyces marxianus, 52 minutes •Number of skin cells in the human body: 1.1 x 1011 •Average heart rate of the pond mussel: 4-6 beats per minute •Protein production rate in haploid yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) under the fastest growth conditions: 13,000 proteins/cell/second •Turnover time for plant organic matter on land: 19 years •Turnover time for plant organic matter in oceans: 2-6 days •Volume of the world’s largest egg: Ostrich, Struthio camelus, 1338 cm3 •Number of olfactory receptor cells in the human nose: 1.2 x 107 •Largest cell diameter of any bacterium: Thiomargarita namibiensis, 180 μm

How many stomata are there in one square millimeter of an Arabidopsis leaf? How many molecules are in 5.3 moles of acetylene? How many days does it take for Drosophila eggs to mature? What is the half-life of 238U? How many seconds does it take for a metabolite to diffuse across a cell of E. coli? What is the boiling point of lead? How old is sediment containing fossils of Agnostus? What is the specific gravity of healthy cat urine? I mean, really. Why do I need to know the specific gravity of cat urine?! Is my success in this class really affected by my knowledge of the physical properties of cat pee? I certainly hope not.

Although the specific gravity of healthy cat urine may not be on your list of important, need-to-know numbers, for some, these questions are imperative to success in their field, and sometimes the answers are extremely difficult to find or calculate.

Robert Niese

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Ostrich Eggs: A complete meal for predators on the go.

Have no fear! If you are a biologist, look no further than Harvard’s extremely informative blog BioNumbers. If you’re looking for a number related to any realm of biology – be it genetics, behavior, anatomy, physiology, ecology, ichthyology, or another obscure -ology – BioNumbers has all the answers.

Need to know how much effective rainfall Pinus halepensis uses for transpiration? 93%, according to BioNumbers.

What about the annual amount of global transpiration and evaporation? Approximately 7 x 1016 kg, says BioNumbers.

Dying to know the maximum temperature at which balanced growth of E. coli can be sustained? About 49°C if you ask BioNumbers.

This website has it all! Never fret about finding an obscure number ever again. Bookmark it! bionumbers.hms.harvard. edu Answers: There are 7 days in a week, 60 seconds in a minute, 12 months in a year, 24 hours in a day, 10 dimes in a dollar, 12 eggs in a dozen, 1000 meters in a kilometer, 6.9 billion people in the world, 46 chromosomes in the average human, 4 gas giants in our solar system, and ~40 active volcanoes in the lower 48 states. 10 tracks on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album. 45-720 stomata per square millimeter in Arabidopsis. 3.1922 x 1024 molecules of C 2H2 in 5.3 moles. Drosophila eggs mature to adults in 7 days. Half-life of 238U is 4.468 billion years.

Metabolites diffuse across E. coli in ~0.001 seconds. Boiling point of lead is 1740.0°C. Sediments with Agnostus are 540-438 million years old.

Specific gravity of cat urine is 1.035-1.060.

of the University of Puget Sound The Allium

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Scientific Handwriting Practice K imberl ee R edman -G arner

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emember learning cursive in 3rd grade? We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t either. But if you had, you would remember that they provided you with ample room to trace and practice the letters. Here is some help with your Greek alphabet and other useful symbols in the world of science. We heard that handwriting is linked to intelligence. Although debatable, we know you brilliant folks donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessarily have time to write all of that stuff out well. Muscle memory is as important in handwriting as it is with pipetting, so give yourself some practice, and soon we will be able to tell that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re doing a summation rather than an integration.

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– – – – –

What is your favorite mythological figure?

A phoenix Vulcan Narcissus Atlas A chimera

Plate Tectonics (14-19 points)

2.

A – B – C – D – E –

You open your refrigerator; what do you eat?

Sprouts You just stop when it’s empty Something expired and moldy Whatever’s on the middle shelf Stale pudding on which a crust has formed

You’re shifty and slow and sardonic and you demagnetize electronics.

Then erupt, and —surprise!— you disrupt people’s lives.

Smooth move for one so catatonic!

3.

A – B – C – D – E –

What kind of car do you drive?

A Lamborghini A flashy sports car A flying aqua-car A convertible A clown car

Theory of Evolution

4.

A – B – C – D – E –

What do you talk about on a first date?

You blurt out non-sequiturs You’re too nervous to talk and just shake a lot You are a fluid conversationalist You only want to talk about yourself You never run out of stuff to gab about

You think everything must relate in every conceivable way from here to infinity, although you, admittedly, have got way too much on your plate.

= = = = = = = =

5, 1, 3, 1, 2, 4, 5, 1,

E E E E E E E E

= = = = = = = =

3 2 4 5 5 3 2 4

What kind of pet do you have?

A turtle An octopus A monkey A peacock Some gross maggots

(34-40 points)

D D D D D D D D

8.

A – B – C – D – E –

Theory of Everything

1, 4, 5, 3, 4, 2, 1, 3,

What are your annoying quirks?

Never leaving well enough alone Not showing your work on tests Being totally self-absorbed Tying people’s shoelaces together Your unpredictable temper

You’re a slob and we are not impressed when you say it was rubbish from whence these icky fruit flies just emerged overnight.

You must think we’re all pretty dense.

= = = = = = = =

7.

A – B – C – D – E –

(27-33 points)

C C C C C C C C

What trick do you perform at parties?

Juggling Singing karaoke Sawing someone in half Pulling a rabbit out of a hat Turning water into wine

Spontaneous Generation

2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 4, 5,

6.

A – B – C – D – E –

You sure aren’t much good for solutions to earthquakes, disease, and pollution.

But nature’s selection will give you protection, so go with the flow, Evolution!

= = = = = = = =

5. What was your childhood like?

A – You were spoiled and treated as the center of the universe B – You beat up your weaker siblings C – You were raised by Catholic foster parents who said that you were the result of a virgin birth D – You were fidgety and prone to tantrums E – You were an overachiever in every subject

(20-26 points)

B B B B B B B B

1.

A B C D E

scientific theory are you ?

On a self-guided path, you traverse the center of the universe.

It’s a big cosmic joke —so we can only hope— ‘til your plot takes a turn for the worse.

4, 3, 2, 4, 1, 5, 3, 2,

W hich

(8-13 points)

= = = = = = = =

Elements Quiz:

Geocentric Theory

Key 1. A 2. A 3. A 4. A 5. A 6. A 7. A 8. A

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