issue 9

H2Oh No!Issue 9, Spring 2011

Geological Disasters That Could Hit Home3

Ecology of Language

Discover the Northwest

Tree Octopus

ElementsThe Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget Sound

22 Elements: The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget Sound

CreditsEditors-in-Chief: Chelsea Corser-Jensen, Robert NiesePublication Manager: Dana MaijalaHead Copy Editor: Kallie HussCopy Editors: Maggie Shanahan, Sylvie Daley, Claire SimonFaculty Advisor: Kena Fox-DobbsFront Cover Photo: David Pendleton Back Cover Photo: David PendletonTable of Contents Photo: Kevin Curlett CosmoNerd: Emily LandeckCosmoNerd Photo: Kevin Curlett

AcknowledgmentsWe 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 Morrison-Kerr and Susan Bennett.

Contact & Publishinge-mail: [email protected]: find us on Facebook!mail: ASUPS - Elements, University of Puget Sound, 1500 N Warner St. #1017, Tacoma, WA 98416Published by Consolidated Press600 S. Spokane Street, Seattle, WA 98134

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

Letter From The Editors

We’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 Ele-ments, 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 contin-ued 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 your-self), we would also like to highlight a few of our favorite articles.

Elements had the pleasure of working with writer Phillip Bren-fleck, 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 is-sue’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 sup-plying 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 El-emental core staff. Next year, Dana Maijala, our trusty publica-tion 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 neu-roscience, while Robert Niese, the other editor-in-chief, will be frolicking through the forests of the Olympic Peninsula count-ing birds for the Institute for Bird Populations. We will miss Ele-ments 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 im-portant matters such as slippery dicks, tree octopods, and geo-logical disaster scenarios. Read on, people. Read on!

Over and Out,

Robert Niese and Chelsea Corser-Jensen

Editors-in-Chief, 2010-2011

Elements: The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget Sound

Table of ContentsEndangered Languages 4Phillip Brenfleck

Geology of Doom 7Lisa Kant

Up In Smoke 9Chris Shaw

Hey Ma, Why’s It Glowing? 11Lisa Fazzino

Where the Green House Grows 12Maggie Shanahan, Holly Kvalheim, Claire Armstrong-Hann, Rachael Siegel

Elements Book Review 15Sylvie Daley

Floral Fingerprints 16Betsy Kirkpatrick, compiled by Robert Niese

H2Whoa! 18

Chelsea Corser-Jensen

The Elusive Northwest Tree Octopus 23Kate Merritt

Slater Zoo Opens New Exhibits 24Jarek Sarnacki & Robert Niese

Bacterial Revolution Spreads to Puget Sound 26Claire Simon

BioNumbers 28Robert Niese

Scientific Handwriting Practice 29Kimberlee Redman-Garner

Quiz: Which Scientific Theory are You? 30Ecology Nerd 31Niche, please!


Endangered LanguagesInsights from Contemporary SciencePhilliP Brenfleck

Science in Context

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 clas-sified, so too does Harrison claim that 80% of the world’s languages have yet to be recorded, classified, and under-

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 Geo-graphic, Dr. Harrison and his colleague Dr. Anderson were tasked with documenting the content of these languages with modern technology – essentially preserving the infor-mation forever. According to Dr. Harrison, languages are “entire conceptual universes of thought.” The “universes of thought” that Harrison and Anderson encountered con-tained not only immense, invaluable repositories of cul-tural 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

If 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 ev-ery level. Without biodiversity, life as we know it simply wouldn’t exist. A term you’ve probably never heard of be-fore, however, is “linguistic diversity.” Linguistic diversity refers to languages in the same way that biodiversity re-fers to species. In other words, there are substantial dif-ferences among languages and language families, and these dif-ferences allow languages to be classified in much the same way that Western taxonomy classifies animal and plant species. The di-versity of language also reveals a great deal about the linguistic and social development of words and thought, as well as the bio-logical evolution of ecosystems. But how can language possibly reveal anything about the natural world?

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. David Harrison, Assistant Profes-sor 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 endan-gered 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 particu-lar, 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 con-vinces minority-language speakers to give up their native

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

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5Elements: The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget Sound

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 al-low them to characterize sea ice with enough scientific clar-ity 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.

The list of linguistic examples akin to these is lengthy, and Harrison cites a number of cases where previously undocumented as-pects of human thought are con-veyed through one of these endan-gered or “dying” languages. For ex-ample, in the Tuvan language of South Siberia, to say “go” you must know the direction of the current in the near-est river and your own location and destination relative to it. In this way, a speaker of Tu-van can acquire an idea about the landscape and ge-

ography of their immediate environment by simply having a conversation, easily understanding the lay of the land without ever looking at a map.

So where are all these languages? How do we know where to find such information and concepts, tucked away in the grammar of some obscure language? Harrison describes a process of identifying “language hotspots,” inspired by the biodiversity hotspot model. The main factors used to clas-sify areas as language hotspots (i.e. areas where languages are most in danger of extinction) include the diversity of languages spoken, the level of endangerment to the tongue, and the scientific documentation of a language. With this information, linguists like Dr. Harrison are able to visual-ize and track the global trend of language extinction and isolate areas where it is most severe. Perhaps not coinci-dentally (especially considering the scientific information acquired about these languages’ environments) language hotspots coincide with both biodiversity hotspots and areas where scientific knowledge of flora and fauna is minimal. National Geographic, through the work of Dr. Harrison and his colleague Dr. Anderson, list the following regions as language hotspots: Northern Australia, Eastern and Western

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

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 eco-systems 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 be argued that the concepts and in-formation inherent in these small en-dangered languag-es could just be translated in order to preserve their legacy, Dr. Harri-son describes in an interview with The Economist that he just doesn’t think it’s that simple: “It’s possible, but not likely, and it’s not the usual case we see everywhere from the Arctic to Amazonia. In indig-enous cultures we observe the decline of languages and lifeways occurring in parallel.”4

The most interesting of these sophisticated systems are the Kallawaya language of Bolivia, the Tofa language of the Tofalar people in Irkutst Oblast, southeastern Siberia, and the language of the Yupik people, who live in southwestern Alaska and the Russian Far East. The Kallawaya people of Bolivia have been herbalists since the Incan empire and have transmitted their traditional practices to initiated men via a secret language called “Kallawaya.” To communicate with anyone outside of their herbalist circle, the Kallawaya use the more common Quechua language, but transmitted through Kallawaya to the chosen few are the medicinal properties of an amazing number of plant species, some unknown or untested by modern science. In Siberia, the Tofalar people have domesticated and used reindeer as beasts of burden for generations and have consequently developed a number of Tofa-specific terms to define the dif-ferent types of reindeer. These concepts aren’t entirely inex-pressible in English, but a “four-year-old male, uncastrated, domesticated reindeer” can be expressed in Tofa with the single word “chary.” Tofa even contains a suffix that can be added to any noun to say that something “smells like x.”

Areas where stopping to ask for directions might be very difficult.W

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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 scien-tific 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. Har-rison 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

Melanesia, Taiwan and the Philippines, Central and East-ern 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 North-west Pacific Plateau.5

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 Co-lombia which has a specific classification system for salmon

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/enduring-voices/.

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/john-son/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/.

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

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

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Countless disaster movies are released every year, and every year more and more apocalyptically inclined indi-

viduals 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.

Volcanoes

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 vol-canic 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

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 sur-rounding 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

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

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.

Geology of DoomThe Apocalypse Has Never Looked So Scientificlisa kant

Science in Context

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

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

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While the exact cause of reversals remains unknown, re-searchers have studied what happens when Earth’s mag-netic field changes directions. Computer models show that reversals take approximately 2000 years to complete, mak-ing 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.

Once the reversal begins, the magnetic field won’t ac-tually disappear. Instead, it just gets a little wonky; for

example, there might be more than one set of poles, and the strength of the field will fluctuate. But eventually the field will right itself – only magnetic north will ac-tually be close to true south.

However, in the interim the field will change. So what does it mean if the north pole moves and the

magnetic field weakens? The answer is not much. These are processes that occur on a daily basis. The strength of the field changes constantly, and the north pole currently moves 64 miles every year. So far, attempts to correlate field reversals with mass extinctions have failed, so it is unlikely that a reversal will destroy life on earth. And even if the field were to become very weak, Earth’s atmosphere also acts as a shield to the solar wind.

The Real Threat

Although most Hollywood depictions of natural disasters are entirely false, the disasters are very real. In particular, volcanoes pose a significant threat to those of us resid-ing in western Washington. Geologists have identified Mt. Rainier as the most dangerous volcanic threat in the lower 48 states. Pyroclastic flows from an eruption on Mt. Rainier would incinerate everything within a five-mile radius of the mountain in a matter of minutes. The eruption would also generate massive lahars, mudslides caused by the rapid melting of snow and ice that can travel up to 50 miles per hour. These lahars would bury more than 150,000 people in up to 100 feet of cement-like sediment. Don’t worry too much, though. From the moment of detection, we would have about 40 minutes to evacuate everyone within a 30-mile radius of the mountain. That’s plenty of time, right? Sounds like the plot for Hollywood’s next big blockbuster!

As evidenced by the recent events in Japan, earthquakes can bring life to a standstill. The loss of life and destruc-tion 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.

But no matter how strong it is, there is no evidence that an earthquake can open a giant hole in the ground. While small fissures do sometimes open, giant cracks in the ground that swallow peo-ple and then close up (like those in the movie 2012) are complete Hollywood fic-tion. However, another plot device, the human-caused earthquake, is quite real. In the 1978 ver-sion of Su-perman, Lex Luthor plans to destroy all of California by detonating a few nuclear weapons along the San Andreas Fault. While most geolo-gists agree this probably wouldn’t work, Lex isn’t that far off. Blasting and mining, injecting liquid into the ground, and even building large dams can generate earthquakes. In the case of blasting, the connection is obvious: large explo-sions release a lot of energy. The other two causes are a bit more subtle. In both cases, liquid seeps into the rock and lubricates faults, making it easier for them to move and cause an earthquake. Luckily in the real world, man-made earthquakes are small and only occur close to what caused them. Sorry, Lex.

Magnetic Field Reversals

A magnetic field reversal is one of the doomsday favorites for 2012 believers and other mystical theorists. Although this event has many people all worked up, the reality is that it’s not much of a disaster at all.

The magnetic field is important because it protects the planet from the solar wind, which constantly bombards the planet with charged particles. These particles disrupt com-munication and navigation systems, destroy satellites, and cause radiation that can harm humans and other animals. Earth’s magnetic field is generated nearly 3000 km beneath the surface in the outer core. Circulation of liquid metal with this layer sets up electrical currents, which – like a gi-ant electromagnet – generate the magnetic field.

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1. Yarn ball 2. Yarn ball post-kittens. Actually, these are very complex mathematically modeled simulations of pole-reversals. Blue are north poles, yellow are south poles.

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The 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 stud-ded 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.

Interestingly, as cigarette use has declined in the face of aggressive advertising like American Legacy Foun-dation’s “Truth” campaign, hookah use has contin-ued to increase, especially among college students. From 1999 to 2003, over 300 hookah bars opened within five miles of college campuses across the U.S.1 Other research has docu-mented use among college students, with one study reporting 45% of students surveyed have used hookah at least once.2 The fundamental cause for this growth and general lack of academic research is that hookah smoke significantly differs from cigarette smoke. This mindset aris-es from three common assumptions made by hookah smok-ers. The first is that passing smoke through the water-filled base of the pipe filters harmful chemicals.3 The second is that the use of a coal to superheat the tobacco/molasses mixture produces lower temperatures than a burning ciga-rette, preventing production of certain harmful compounds like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH).3 The final as-sumption is that shisha, the tobacco/molasses mixture that is smoked using a hookah, contains less nicotine than cigarettes and is therefore less likely to lead to addiction.1

In order to assess the validity of these assumptions and examine the possible link between hookah and cancer, I conducted a thorough examination of the available litera-ture. I identified some areas of ambiguity that should be investigated more fully before hookah smoking reaches the ubiquity of cigarettes.

Up In SmokeIs Hookah Safer Than Cigarettes?chris shaw

Science in Context

Evaluating hookah smoking and cancer risks

There are surprisingly few current studies examining the link between specific cancers and hookah smoking. Previ-ous research has linked tobacco use to cancer through biomarkers, compounds that are indicative of a certain ab-normal physiological state or function.4 One such biomark-er 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 tu-mor reproliferation after surgical removal.6 Essentially, high

CEA levels in the blood indicate that the protein is being displaced from cellular membranes as tumor cells become

metastatic (i.e. begin infect-ing other tissues). One study by Sajid et al. examined CEA levels in different categories of hookah and cigarette smokers in order to examine the effect of duration and frequency of smoking.7 The study measured CEA levels in over 60 individuals, who were classified as heavy, medium, or light smokers. Heavy smokers exhibited the highest levels of CEA in their blood compared to non-smokers, although lev-els observed in medium and light smokers were elevated as well. The results of the

study suggest that increased tobacco use is positively cor-related with mean CEA levels, leaving a grim prognosis fol-lowing tumor development.

Carcinogens in mainstream hookah smoke

Carcinogens are compounds that have been shown to con-sistently lead to cancer in a laboratory setting.6 Hundreds of carcinogens have been identified in mainstream ciga-rette smoke (smoke reaching the lungs), including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), nitrosamines, aldehydes, and phenols.6 A chemistry aerosol lab in the American Uni-versity of Beirut has been at the forefront of carcinogen research, having published several articles on the subject since 2001. In 2005 the lab analyzed the chemical composi-tion of mainstream hookah smoke to determine the relative abundance of known carcinogens, carbon monoxide, and total particulate matter (“tar”) produced in the process. They found significant amounts of carbon monoxide and several PAH in mainstream smoke, demonstrating that a

To inhale or not to inhale? That is the question.

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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.

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 path-ways of cell growth or programmed cell death, cancer is a likely consequence.

Addressing misconceptions

Of the previously mentioned assumptions, the idea that wa-ter 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 ac-curately 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 indi-cates 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 Moham-med, 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

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

Although these studies do not allow for any definitive con-clusions to be drawn regarding raw amounts of nicotine in shisha, other methods produced more telling results. In 2009 Eissenberg and Shihadeh recorded the nicotine con-centration in blood plasma of both cigarette and hookah smokers during and directly after smoking sessions (1 ciga-rette or 30-minute hookah session). Their results showed that peak plasma nicotine concentrations of both cigarette and hookah smokers did not differ significantly, suggest-ing that the important variable in dependency development could be exposure time.11 Hour-long hookah smoking ses-sions 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 ses-sion (which varies), and mg/g “tar,” making it difficult to assess which method is most beneficial in quantifying nico-tine 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 set-tings and thus the harmful chemicals are divided among friends, while cigarette smoking is primarily a solitary prac-tice, 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. Epi-demiological 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.


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 biolumines-cence 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 camouflage. Specifically, these organisms pro-duce counterillumination,

where they use bioluminescence to illuminate their bellies, effectively eliminating their shadows so that predators from the depths below cannot detect them.

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 light-producing reactions. One hypothesis suggests that bio-luminescence 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 sensi-tive eyes in the darker ocean; in the dark, being able to produce light was also favorable, so luciferase was co-opted for the production of bioluminescence.

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

It’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. Biolumines-cence! A beautiful alien-like 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 ad-vantageous for organisms?

The sea is a vast open area without any type of infra-structure. As such, there are no places to hide. To deal with this lack of protection, many marine organisms mi-grate 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

Science in Context

Hey Ma, Why’s It Glowing?Revisiting Bioluminescence in an Evolutionary LightLisa Fazzino

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Toxic waste isn’t the only thing that makes Puget Sound glow!

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

12 Elements: The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget SoundScience in Context

Puget Sound environmental group, Students for a Sustain-able 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 com-ponents 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 Fac-tory. Worms travel from layer to layer, eating food scraps and fiber, leaving behind them a trail of nutrient-rich, high-quality 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.”

Born and raised in Yelm, Wash-ington, 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 worms eat fiber: shredded magazines, cardboard, dryer lint, vacuum dust, Kleenex, paper tow-els, 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,

The 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 sustain-ability 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

Where the Green House GrowsA Glimpse Into Sustainable LivingMaggie shanahan, hoLLy KvaLheiM, CLaire arMstrong-hann, and raChaeL siegeL

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

13Elements: The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget Soundbuilding. 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 of-fer 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 re-claimed from the previous house, and recycled glass til-ing 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 sun-shine. 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, includ-ing the best (...and only) dishwashing machine in an on-campus house and Energy Star-rated clothes washing machine and dry-er (sans coin op-eration). A low-flow showerhead and toilet allow us to go with the sustainable flow.

Composting

With green gadgets comes green re-sponsibility. For this reason, we decid-ed to spearhead a composting initiative on campus.

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

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 snake-like, 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.

In tending the worm bins an interesting friendship has devel-oped. 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 straightfor-ward. The worms re-quire a healthy ratio of food waste and fiber. Compost tea must be drained from the bot-tom bin periodically. Ideally, the contents of the bottom bin are 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 Aver-age 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 make-over, 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 experi-ment. 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 sustain-ability education and an opportunity for students and other community members to see the possibilities in green

Anyone care for a spot of tea? It’s fresh!

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Rain barrels irrigate the garden.

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14 Elements: The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget Soundprogram, 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.

To understand this process it helps to know what com-posting 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 pro-cess of decomposition. The pro-cess of composting has multiple components that make it success-ful. An important factor in this process is aeration, which occurs through turning the tumbler five rotations every day, speeding up the normal process of decompo-sition. It is also important to have a good mixture of brown mate-rials, mainly leaves or newspa-per, and green materials, mainly organic waste that you produce (vegetables). A good combination of the two produces an adequate carbon-to-nitrogen ratio that al-lows for a better composting sys-tem. Other factors of successful composting include moisture con-tent, material size, volume, and the temperature.

The Live Green House has taken on the responsibility of maintaining the tumbler. The current house members intend for this composter to be the next step into a sus-tainable composting system on campus. By introducing the tumbler to campus houses, the Live Green House hopes that students will demonstrate their interest in compost-ing through this program. If the composting program takes off, it has the possibility to demonstrate student concern about the environment and hence lead to support for a campus-wide composting system. There are many forces behind composting and sustainability at UPS in general; the ComposTumbler gives voice to the desires of the sus-tainability proponents on campus.

LEED Certification: Worth the Green?

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) cer-tification 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 renova-tions, 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 environmen-tal 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 at-tain a LEED certification requires 45-59 points. The higher levels are as follows: Silver level with 60-74 points, Gold level with 75-89 points, and Platinum with 90-136 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 con-sumption.

Awarding points is the job of the Green Rater, who works as part of the LEED for Homes Provider group. The Green Rater performs two field inspections, one during the construction of the home and one at completion of construc-

tion and performance testing of the house. He or she will also often assist the design and construction profession-als in meeting the sustainability goal for the level desired.

Without taking material and construction costs into ac-count, certification costs range from $500 to $3,000 per home depending on the size of the home and the LEED rating level pursued. Carnegie Mellon, the first university to build a LEED home (Silver level) determined the overall price to be an extra $129,744 and $347,118 more than similar non-LEED residence halls. However, the overall price varies, depending on how much material is recycled, cost of new materials, and differing cost of construction.

Applications to live in the Live Green House are available every spring before the housing lottery. Our hope is that 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!

Mmmm! Smells like sustainability!

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scientific study. While working in tropical rainforest con-servation, 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 practi-cal 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 fin-ish the job within a couple decades. With regard to current taxonomy, Kristin believes that we can learn the following things from Jordan’s work:

1) Taxonomy should not be done just for the sake of nam-ing 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 spe-cies, 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 scien-tific field is to better appreciate the institution – to know the sci-ence, 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 fin-ished. “I totally enjoyed the pro-cess of writing. The research has been fun!”

Kristin Johnson, assistant professor of Science, Technol-ogy & Society here at the University of Puget Sound,

is anticipating the issuing of her first book, which was ac-cepted 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 nat-ural history that she put into her PhD disserta-tion. Kristin received her doctorate in the history of science from Oregon State University.

Her project centered on the life’s work of a Ger-man entomologist named Karl Jordan, who worked in insect taxonomy and 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.

“I picked him partly because he lived quite a long time, and was a great taxonomist, but he also worked on spe-cies 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 corre-spondence network – the manuscript archives of the great minds of an era consulting together on their work, develop-ing 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 cen-tury.”

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

Science in Context

Science or Stamp CollectingProf. Kristin Johnson’s New Book The Species MakersyLvie daLey

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Nice microscope, Karl

16 Elements: The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget SoundResearch Report

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 ex-isted 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 Kirk-patrick, 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

Floral Fingerprints

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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 rober-tianum (2) Lithodora diffusa (3) Hypericum perforatum (4) Eschscholzia california (5) Malva neglecta (6) Rubus discolor (7) Leucantheum vulgare (8) Campanula persicifolia (9) Cy-tisus scoparius.

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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 popular-ity 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 wa-

ter 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 pol-lution and poor-quality tap water, and it quickly became a lifestyle-defining product that revolution-ized the beverage industry. Adver-tised 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 co-workers.

It wasn’t long before gluttonous corporations like PepsiCo (Aqua-fina) and Coca-Cola (Dasani) be-gan to fight for their own piece of 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, healthi-ness, and convenience. As I will discuss, the first two rea-sons 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

What 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 aver-age 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 an-swer, 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 cu-bic miles is more than 96 per-cent 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 riv-ers and lakes.1 That’s only 0.0067 percent of the total water supply readily available for human use. Access to clean water further re-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 con-sumer 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?

Science in Context

H2Whoa!

The True Cost of Drinking Bottled Water Chelsea Corser-Jensen

Imagine all the money you could have save by switching to Geico...

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19Elements: The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget SoundBottled water is regulated By the Fda • tap water is regulated By the epa • Bottled water that never crosses state lines is neither regulated By the Fda nor the epa • the average person consumes 2 liters oF water per day • 0.0067% oF the world’s total water supply is drinkaBle • the earth has 332.6 million cuBic miles oF water: 96% saline, 65% is locked up in ice and glaciers • the average cost oF a Bottle oF water is $1.50 • 44% oF all seaBird species have plastic in their Bodies • Bottled water has been reCalled beCause oF: acillus cereus, Food grade cleaning compound, potentially lethal levels oF sodium Fluoride, Benzene, mold, sodium hydroxide, kerosene, styrene, algae, yeast sand, Fecal coliForms, glass particles, and crickets • plastic Bottles are made From crude oil to produce polyethylene terepthalate (pet) • 2.8 Billion people laCk aCCess to safe drinking water • 3 , 6 4 5 , 5 7 4 , 3 2 5 gallons of water are consumed every day in the united states • we pay hundreds to thousands times more per unit volume For bottled water than for tap • the u.s. house representatives spent $860,000 on Bottled water in 2010 - that’s $2,000 on each house memBer • the north paciFic gyre or great paciFic garBage patch has 100 million tons oF plastic and occupies a space nearly twice the size oF the united states • pet plastic Bottles Cannot be reCyCled baCk to bottles - they get shipped to china to Be made into polyester-derived products like blankets and Clothing • trace minerals in drinking water inClude: • most Bottled water comes From municipal sources • there are 5 gyres oF plastic whirlpools around the world • the epa has set maximum contaminant levels For roughly 90 contaminants including m i c r o o r g a n i s m s , disinFection By-products, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals, and radionuClides • several cities and universities now have bottled water bans • 86% oF plastic Bottles in the u.s. end up in the garBage

20 Elements: The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget Soundtap 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 Coca-Cola to admit that their bottled water is nothing but tap water that may or may not undergo an additional filtration step.

The bottom line is that we really don’t know what we’re drinking. Both tap and bottled water are equally safe to

drink, and the difference in taste that some people claim to be able to detect is typically due to a slight difference in relative min-eral concentrations. Does this difference justify spend-ing up to thousands of dol-lars more on bottled water than what comes out of your sink? Considering that bottled water either is tap water or is subject to less stringent regulations, if you spend more for a gallon of water than a gallon of gas you’re probably just buying the hype.

Plastic: A Malleable Reality?

The last reason on the bottled water drinkers’ manifesto is convenience. We are Americans. We like instant gratifica-tion. 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 terepthal-ate, or PET, produced by mixing hydrocarbons extracted from crude oil with chemical catalysts, triggering polym-erization. The actual bottle that results is both lightweight and sturdy, making it cheaper and easier than glass to package and transport.

(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 al-lowed 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.

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 reg-ular 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 re-quired to provide information concerning the quality of the water source or any contaminants, all of which are detected by testing at the bottled wa-ter companies themselves. Although each state has the freedom to set its own regulations for both tap and bottled water testing as well as facility and water source inspections, the FDA only regulates water in “inter-state commerce,” so it has little to no jurisdiction over water that is sourced, bot-tled, and sold in the same state. This is the reason for all of the different brands from one company; for ex-ample Nestle has four im-ported brands (Perrier, S. 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

No, that’s not enough. Congress needs $0.8 billion worth...

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Within in these gyres, plastics organize in layers by weight. Sunlight and wave action causes the lighter, floating plastics to fragment and break into increasingly smaller particles as they move in a slow, clockwise spiral for several decades toward the center of the gyre, soaking up a variety of wa-terborne chemicals. Marine animals mistakenly consume the small plastic fragments, which can lead to blockages, dehy-dration, starvation, and eventually death. A host of recent studies have determined that 44% of all seabird species, 22% of cetaceans, all sea turtle species, and several fish species have been documented with plastic in or around their bodies. In one study of the North Pacific Gyre, Moore et al. discovered that the mass of plastic is approximately six times that of plankton!8

Several organizations around the world have implemented post-consumer cleanup efforts. These efforts are extreme-

ly expensive and are barely scratching the surface of the problem – the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, alone, is es-timated to weigh 100 million tons9. Changing our behavior and stopping the accumula-tion of these gyres seems to be the only solution.

What began in the United States as a thirst for style and class is now causing irrepa-rable damage to the world around us, both on land and in the ocean. Many companies, like Green Planet (the water 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 dif-ferent 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 – your planet, your conscience, and your wallet will all thank you for it.

Once a PET plastic bottle ends up in the hands of the consumer, it has three possible fates: reused, recycled, or thrown away. Although reuse extends the lifespan of the bottle, the plastic leaches chemicals as it heats up (e.g. by leaving it in the sun or hot car), and it can be very hospi-table for bacteria. The few bottles that actually end up in a recycling bin (less than 30%) are compacted and loaded onto container ships to China, where they are sorted by color and shredded into chips that can be used to make a variety of polyester-based products (e.g. clothing, pillows, carpets, chairs). Very few PET bottles are reincarnated as PET bottles – in fact, until recently the United States didn’t even have the capacity to recycle the plastic flakes back to the initial materials. In 2009, Coca-Cola joined forces with the United Resource Recovery Corporation (URRC) and opened the world’s largest plastic bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in Spartanburg, SC, which has the capacity to pro-duce two billion 20-ounce Coca-Cola bottles each year.7 Over the next ten years the plant will elimi-nate the production of one million metric tons of carbon dioxide emis-sions – that’s like taking more than 200,000 cars off the road! This process of closing the recycling loop is definitely a step, or ten, in the right direc-tion, but this recycling plant only recovers PET from the East Coast.

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 land-fills. 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 ship-ping 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.

1 http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis2 http://water.org3 IBIS World. (2008) “Changing consumer tastes creates explosive growth for domestic

and international bottled water brands – Revenue in 2007 expected to reach $5.974 billion with growth set to climb higher through 2012.”

4 Raloff, J. (2009) “Bottled water may contain ‘hormones’: glass.” http://www.scienc-news.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 boom-ing: 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-rubbish-dump-a-garbage-tip-that-stretches-from-hawaii-to-japan-778016.html.

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L 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 North-west 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 sud-denly 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 cam-ouflage to become a daytime hunter. Bark browns, needle greens, and lichen pastels fool its predators (Sasquatch and bald ea-gles) as well as its prey.

Anti-Freeze Abduction

Although Tree Octopi have a varied diet, beetles are an essential food source. Many beetles produce a nat-ural anti-freeze glycoprotein (AFGP), which allows them to stay active de-spite the freezing temperatures. The Octopi have adapted to extract the anti-freeze chemical from the beetles and incorporate it for their own pro-tection 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

1873 edition of Punch, a London culture magazine, featured “Mr. Punch’s Designs After Nature: Sensation for the Aquar-ium,” a gloriously elaborate Coiffure Octopus popularized among the London elite of the time. This brash cephalopo-dan 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 popula-tion 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 Pa-cific 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 spe-cies 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-Tree-Octopus-safe wood-harvesting practices. (7) Sign an online petition!

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

The Elusive PacificNorthwest Tree Octopus kate merritt

The Allium

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

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24 Elements: The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget SoundThe Allium

After 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.

In The News:Slater Zoological Gardens Opens New Exhibits Jarek sarnaCki & robert niese

Boobies on Display

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 us-ing 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).

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 repre-sentative is the bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus), making its home throughout western North America and your own backyard.

Touch Tank

Here in the touch tank we have a number of hands-on ex-periences 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 adhe-sive 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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Look at those hot booby feet! They’re so...vascularized!(1) Brown Booby (2) Blue-footed Booby

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

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The American Hardwood Forest

The last part of our new animal exhibit showcases a vari-ety 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, colloqui-ally known as timberdoodles, to disappear into virtually any background. While wandering the exhibit, if you hap-pen 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 hard-wood 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 impudi-cus, 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!

Slimy, Scaly, and Skinky

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 Chat-tahoochee 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 (Tili-qua scincoides) will dazzle you with its beautifully colored tongue, and the prehensile-tailed skink (Corucia zebrata) will lure you in with its prehensile tail!

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

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It doesn’t get any more phallic than a Phallus. (1) Dik-Dik (2) Woodcock (3) Phallus impudicus

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26 Elements: The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget SoundThe Allium

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 mem-bers, the Facebook group has twelve fans and over sev-

enty “likes” (three of which are from Estonia, Azerbaijan, and the Netherlands), and the total active group membership has reached an astonishing thir-teen (including a Jared Jenson at the University of New Jer-sey, who plans on starting a sub-branch of the organization called FFLU – Fighting For Lives of Uni-cellular organisms – on the Jersey Shore).

The group’s activities include weekly protests, soap tossings, flyer distributions, and labo-ratory 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 car-rying “annihilation accessories” – also known as Purell hand sanitizer.

In an effort to save the lives of millions of microbes, members of Hey BAAT, man! have devot-

ed their existence to “murder-free” living – reducing the daily death toll of bacteria. Soap has been removed from all parts of their lives, showers occur once a month and consist of a brief rinse-down with lukewarm water, there is no doing laundry, brushing teeth, eating foods cooked in temperatures above that which bacteria can survive, and absolutely no antibiotics of any kind are allowed – ever.

When asked if there was a concern about health, Ed smiled. “Colds, flus, and TB are just the microbes’ way of asserting their existence—we don’t blame them for their natural behavior. You wouldn’t kill a puppy for biting your finger. Plus—[Ed proceeded to cough for four minutes and

What 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. Stu-dents 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 grow-ing organization that has gained national recognition in its fight for the billions of lives that can’t be heard... or seen, for that mat-ter, without the aid of a micro-scope.

“I was like, how could something so hypocritical – so horrifying – happen every week in every lab at every school for years and go unnoticed!” says Ed, dwelling on the moment of the organization’s conception. “Microbes are alive. They are alive just like you and me. They have offspring, reproduce, breathe, eat, and even build colonies. They are creatures with the right to survive just like the rest of us. Just be-cause they’re small or there’s trillions of them doesn’t give us the right to perform experiments and mass genocides without any kind of recognition or restraint.”

Hey BAAT, man! and its derivatives BUBONIC (Ban Unnec-essary Bacterial Onslaught Nestled In Campus labs) and PLAGUESS (Prohibit Lab Assassinating Genocides Under Evil Staff Supervision) have raised awareness of what Coli

In The News:Bacterial Revolution Spreads To Puget Sound claire simon

Members of PLAGUESS block a freshman biology lab in one of their weekly lab lie-downs.

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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.”

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

“It’s like an early Christmas but in-stead 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 re-emergence of old diseases that were thought to be extinct hundreds of years ago!”

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

of the University of Puget Sound 27plague 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 Hos-pital 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 say-ing it DON’T GO NEA—“ He suddenly fled the scene of the interview as protestors began advancing with their hands stretched out – threatening contact.

Despite the increasing intensity of their protests (mass re-moval 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.

“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 dishwash-ers 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.”

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 consecu-tive sneezes interrupted his answer and eventually ended

the interview.

For more information, check out our Face-book 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.

•BAMM (Biologists Against Microbial Murder)

•FFLU (Fighting For Lives of Uni-cellu-lar organisms)

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

•PLAGUESS (Prohibit Lab Assassinating Geno-cides Under Evil Staff Supervision)

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

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28 Elements: The Scientific MagazineThe Allium

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 ques-tions are imperative to success in their field, and sometimes the answers are extremely difficult to find or cal-culate.

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 ge-netics, 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 bal-anced 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

Let’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 Database of Useful Biological NumbersRobeRt Niese

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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 C2H2 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.

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

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 (Saccharomy-ces 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

of the University of Puget Sound 29

Remember learning cursive in 3rd grade? We don’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 don’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 you’re doing a summation rather than an integration.

Scientific Handwriting PracticeKimbeRlee RedmaN-GaRNeR

The Allium

30 Elements: The Scientific Magazine

1. What is your favorite mythological figure?A – A phoenixB – VulcanC – Narcissus D – Atlas E – A chimera

2. You open your refrigerator; what do you eat?A – Sprouts B – You just stop when it’s empty C – Something expired and moldyD – Whatever’s on the middle shelf E – Stale pudding on which a crust has formed

3. What kind of car do you drive?A – A Lamborghini B – A flashy sports carC – A flying aqua-carD – A convertibleE – A clown car

4. What do you talk about on a first date?A – You blurt out non-sequiturs B – You’re too nervous to talk and just shake a lotC – You are a fluid conversationalistD – You only want to talk about yourselfE – You never run out of stuff to gab about

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 birthD – You were fidgety and prone to tantrumsE – You were an overachiever in every subject

6. What trick do you perform at parties?A – JugglingB – Singing karaoke C – Sawing someone in half D – Pulling a rabbit out of a hat E – Turning water into wine

7. What are your annoying quirks?A – Never leaving well enough alone B – Not showing your work on testsC – Being totally self-absorbedD – Tying people’s shoelaces together E – Your unpredictable temper

8. What kind of pet do you have?A – A turtle B – An octopusC – A monkeyD – A peacockE – Some gross maggots

Elements Quiz:Which scieNtific theoRy aRe you?

The AlliumKey1. A = 4, B = 2, C = 1, D = 5, E = 32. A = 3, B = 5, C = 4, D = 1, E = 23. A = 2, B = 1, C = 5, D = 3, E = 44. A = 4, B = 2, C = 3, D = 1, E = 55. A = 1, B = 3, C = 4, D = 2, E = 56. A = 5, B = 1, C = 2, D = 4, E = 37. A = 3, B = 4, C = 1, D = 5, E = 28. A = 2, B = 5, C = 3, D = 1, E = 4

Geocentric Theory (8-13 points)

On a self-guided path, you traversethe center of the universe.It’s a big cosmic joke—so we can only hope—‘til your plot takes a turn for the worse.

Plate Tectonics (14-19 points)

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!

Theory of Evolution (20-26 points)

You sure aren’t much good for solutionsto earthquakes, disease, and pollution.But nature’s selectionwill give you protection,so go with the flow, Evolution!

Spontaneous Generation (27-33 points)

You’re a slob and we are not impressed when you say it was rubbish from whencethese icky fruit fliesjust emerged overnight.You must think we’re all pretty dense.

Theory of Everything (34-40 points)

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

Best Mating Rituals

Cannibals:the ultimate Bad Boys

18

?are his signals honest

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The Best Models

bottomtopdown

orup?

FreshHow to find that perfect

Spring

phero[moan]Scents

Get Fit!

sizematters

issue 9

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