Going for Gold

Team U.S.A. celebrates big winsFebruary 18, 2010By Jaime JoyceThe U.S. Olympic team snagged three gold medals Wednesday in Vancouver. The top prizes went to a trio of athletes favored to win at the Winter Games—Lindsey Vonn, Shani David and Shaun White. Here are the highlights.Downhill SkiingA nasty shin injury kept Lindsey Vonn sidelined at the start of the 2010 Games, but weather delays bought her the time she needed to recover.Vonn started off strong in her race and developed an early lead. A few bumps at the end slowed her down, but she still finished ahead of her competitors by 0.56 seconds. Teammate Julia Mancuso finished second to win silver. "This is everything I've wanted and hoped for," Vonn said.The win must have come as a relief to Vonn. Even before the Games began, she was heavily favored to take home the gold. But the injury she sustained during practice two weeks ago threatened to upset her chances at Olympic victory. "It's so painful to ski, especially on this course because it's so bumpy," Vonn admitted. "It's so tough to ski down, but I did it and it's awesome."Vonn is favored to win in two more races during the Games. But she is thankful just to be in the competition. "I have what I want, and I'll just keep fighting every day," she said. "It's definitely a huge relief that I finally did it."SpeedskatingHe won gold at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. This time around, in Vancouver, American speedskater Shani Davis once again swept past his competitors to earn the top prize in the men's 1,000-meter race, an event in which he already holds the world record.Davis didn't even come close to winning his first two events during these Games, so Wednesday's win was a sweet comeback. "To go out there and win the 1,000 meter twice is truly amazing," Davis said.SnowboardingSnowboarder Shaun White had victory in his sights when he scored big on his first run on the halfpipe. But he dazzled judges and fans of the sport when, on his second run, he pulled off his signature trick, the Double McTwist 1260. This risky move combines 3 twists and two flips. "I just felt like I didn't come all the way to Vancouver not to pull out the big guns," White said.

White was a two time Olympic gold medalist going into the Games. He won the top prize in Turin in 2006, and in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2002. Now, White has another medal to add to his growing collection.

Power Lunch

Past, present and future Presidents meet for lunch at the White HouseJanuary 07, 2009By Jonathan RosenbloomA historic gathering took place Wednesday at the White House in Washington, D.C. Lunch was served! No big deal about that, but the guests were a big deal. Every living U.S. President was there, along with President-elect Barack Obama. The last time all living Presidents gathered at the White House was in 1981.The idea for the lunch of Presidents began with the newest member of the club, Barack Obama. Obama will take office as the nation's 44th leader on January 20. When Obama met with President Bush in November, the future President suggested the idea. President Bush liked it and invited Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton for the get-together.The five men share something only they can claim: They were elected to the nation's highest office. That bond makes them members of a very small and special club. President-elect Barack Obama described the Presidents' lunch today as "an extraordinary gathering."A Meeting of MindsBefore lunch, Barack Obama and President George W. Bush met privately in the Oval Office. They then joined the others in a dining room next to the President's office.What did the five men talk about? No one outside of the room knows for sure. "All of us would love to be flies on the wall and listening to that conversation," said White House Press Secretary Dana Perino. "These are leaders who only understand what it's like to be in each others' shoes and none of us can put ourselves in those shoes," noted Perino. The press secretary thought that the men talked about what it's like to live in the White House and about raising children there. Perino also said that they probably discussed serious problems with the U.S. economy and the recent events in the Middle East.Besides all the talking, the Presidents found time to eat. What was on the menu? Perhaps presidential club sandwiches!The Guest ListHere's a look at the guest list at today's White House presidential lunch, the political party each belongs to, and when they served as President.Jimmy Carter, Democrat, 39th President, 1977-1981George H.W. Bush, Republican, 41st President, 1989-1993William J. Clinton, Democrat, 42nd President, 1993-2001George W. Bush, Republican, 43rd President, 2001-2009Barack Obama, Democrat, 44th President, 2009

Earth Day

We take a look at Earth Day by the numbersApril 23, 2010Compiled by Claudia Atticot

AP

How many plastic bottles do you

think you throw away each a year?

• An average American family consumes about 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk and 26 gallons of bottled water per year.

• Recycling one aluminum can save enough energy to run a television for about three hours.

• Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.

• Most glass bottles and jars contain at least 25% recycled glass.

• Letting a bathroom faucet run for five minutes uses as much energy as letting a 60-watt light bulb burn for 14 hours.

• Almost 50% of office paper is recovered through recycling.

• The average American uses 650 pounds of paper each year.

• Recycling 2,000 pounds of paper saves 17 trees.

• Almost 97% of the world's water is salty or otherwise undrinkable. Another 2% is locked in ice caps and glaciers. Only 1% is usable for agriculture, manufacturing and personal needs.

• The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a floating dump located in the Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and Hawaii. The trash found there is almost 80% plastic, and weighs 3.5 million tons.

• The U.S. produces a quarter of the world's waste, making it the number one garbage producer in the world.

• Americans throw away 25 billion Styrofoam cups every year.

 

 

Watching out for vultures

By Stephen Ornes / January 5, 2010

Oriental white-backed vulture populations in South Asia have proved extremely sensitive to the livestock drug diclofenac and have declined by more than 99 percent.

Richard Cuthbert

What’s good for one may not be good for all, especially in the animal kingdom. Consider the case of ketoprofen. Ketoprofen is a drug that, like ibuprofen, provides pain relief and reduces swelling. In India, some farmers give ketoprofen to their cattle and other animals for pain relief.

But giving ketoprofen to cattle may ultimately poison vultures, according to a recent study. Vultures are giant, flying scavengers that eat the carcasses of dead animals, including cattle. For farmers, vultures act like nature’s janitors. The birds’ feasts mean that farmers don’t have to figure out how to dispose of the bodies of dead animals. And vultures eat fast: Dozens of birds could take care of a dead animal in 20 minutes.

When a vulture eats a dead animal, however, it may also end up eating medications that were given to the animal. In the case of ketoprofen, this is a big problem, according to a study by Richard Cuthbert and his fellow researchers. Cuthbert is a zoologist, or a scientist who studies animals, in England. He recently led a team of scientists from around the world in

a study of how ketoprofen affects vultures. He and his team found that even small amounts of the drug can kill a vulture.

In their experiment, the scientists found that vultures died after being given ketoprofen directly, or after eating the body of an animal that recently had been given the pain medication. It didn’t take much: Vultures died after consuming less than one-millionth of their body weight in ketoprofen. That amount shows that even veterinarians should be very careful about giving ketoprofen as a medicine to birds, the team said in its research paper on the work

This isn’t the first time farmers have accidentally poisoned vultures. Another drug that reduces swelling, called diclofenac, became popular among farmers about 20 years ago. But that drug also turned out to be toxic to vultures, and as a result three different species are on the verge of becoming extinct. In 2004, Lindsay Oaks, a veterinarian at Washington State University, helped connect the vulture decline to the use of diclofenac. He told Science News that even a small number of tainted carcasses could cause a large decline in vulture populations. Since Oaks’ study, countries such as India, Pakistan and Nepal have laws against making diclofenac for animals.

The way a drug given to a cow can end up killing a vulture is one example of how interconnected the food chain is.  Scientists such as Cuthbert look at the effect of medicines on vultures to learn information that will help in preventing the type of disaster diclofenac has already caused. Prevention would not only help the vultures, but would also help the farmers, who now have to deal with carcasses that sit rotting. Cuthbert says even though vultures may be rather repulsive, they do important work for the planet — and they’re connected to other species.

“With their heads in a carcass, they may not be that attractive, but they’re doing their job,” Cuthbert told Science News. Plus, he added, “They’re mind-blowing flyers.”

POWER WORDS

food chain A succession of organisms in an ecological community that constitutes a continuation of food energy from one organism to another as each consumes a lower member and in turn is preyed upon by a higher member.

veterinarian A scientist who studies the causes, diagnoses and treatments of diseases and injuries in animals, especially domestic animals.

zoology The branch of biology that deals with animals and animal life, including the study of the structure, physiology, development and classification of animals.

scavenger An animal, such as a bird or insect, that feeds on dead or decaying matter.

carcass The dead body of an animal, such as one slaughtered for food.

Watering the Air

By Stephen Ornes / February 10, 2010

The average temperature around the world is rising. People living in the U.S. Midwest might find this fact hard to believe, though. Two new studies show that in America’s heartland, summers are now cooler and wetter than they were in years past. The scientists suggest that the change in the Midwest climate may have happened because of farming.

The first study was led by David Changnon, a climatologist at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. He presented one of the studies in January during a meeting of scientists who study weather and climate. A climatologist studies the climate of an area, which includes measuring rainfall, temperature and wind. Climatologists want to know how these factors have changed in the past, and how they’ll change in the future.

Crops of soybean and corn (pictured) are the main type planted in the Midwest.

Purdue9394/iStockphoto

Changnon and his team studied temperature records from Chicago and 13 other sites in the Midwest. They found that since 1970, the average temperature in Illinois and Iowa during July and August has gone down

— by up to one degree Fahrenheit — from what it was during the years between 1930 and 1969. Their investigation also showed that the average rainfall in those two states during those two months has increased. Between 1970 and 2009, about 0.33 inches more rain fell than between 1930 and 1969.

These two changes — lower temperatures and more rainfall — may be connected by humidity, Changnon says. Humidity is the measure of how much moisture is in the air. Humid air, which contains a lot of moisture, takes longer to heat up than dry air, Changnon notes. And humid air often releases its moisture through rainfall.

So where did the extra moisture in the air come from? Changnon points to farms in the region. As plants grow, they pull moisture from the ground and release it into the air. And among plants, soybean and corn plants release a lot of moisture. Midwestern farms now plant more soybeans and corn than in the past, with 97 percent of farmland today planted with these two crops. In the 1930s, corn and soybeans covered only about 57 percent, Changnon says. He also notes that the plants are planted closer together now than they used to be, so there are more plants per acre than in the past.

The second study, like Changnon’s, also found an increase in rainfall in the same area. But it points to another possible source for the increased moisture. Alan Robock of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., was part of the team that produced the second study and presented the group’s findings at the same meeting as Changnon. The group includes Ying Fan, who led the study, and Anthony DeAngelis, M. D. Kustu and D. A. Robinson, all from Rutgers University.

The team found that irrigation practices in the Great Plains have changed over the years. (Irrigation is how farmers get water to crops, especially crops far from a river or other body of water. Irrigation is a way of bringing water to those crops all the time.) The researchers studied a vast area of the United States that stretches from South Dakota to Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle. They found that in 1930, farmers in that region irrigated only about 1.8 million acres of farmland, an amount roughly half the size of Connecticut. In 1980, however, farmers irrigated nearly 15 million acres — more land than Vermont and New Hampshire combined.

Much of this irrigation uses water from natural reservoirs, such as those that are underground. Plants use the water and then release it into the

air, so irrigating more and more plants means that more and more water makes it into the air. Robock suspects that as farms in the Great Plains received more irrigation, they released more moisture into the air — which then was carried downwind to the Midwest, where it caused more rain.

These results by Changnon and Robock and his colleagues are the first step toward understanding a change in the weather. But it will take more studies before crop irrigation can definitely be blamed for changes in temperature and rainfall.

POWER WORDS

irrigate To supply (dry land) with water by means of ditches, pipes, or streams; water artificially.

acre A unit of area in the U.S. Customary System, used in land and sea floor measurement and equal to 4,840 square yards or 43,560 square feet.

humidity Dampness, especially of the air

climate The meteorological conditions, including temperature, precipitation, and wind, that characteristically prevail in a particular region.

New waves for safe flying

By Emily Sohn / April 28, 2010

On December 21, 1988, hundreds of passengers boarded Pan Am flight 103 at Heathrow Airport in London. Travelers included families, musicians, businessmen, hair stylists, teachers and dozens of college students flying home for the holidays. Their destination was New York City.

The flight took off around 6:30 pm, just a little behind schedule. About half an hour later, a bomb exploded onboard. The plane broke apart. Chunks of metal showered a small Scottish town called Lockerbie. The accident, now known as the Lockerbie Bombing, killed all 243 passengers, all 16 crewmembers, and 11 people on the ground.

It wasn’t the first attack on an airplane, and it certainly wasn’t the last. Perhaps the worst, and most famous, attack happened on September 11, 2001. That day, terrorists flew two airplanes into skyscrapers in New York City. Nearly 3,000 people died.

But Pan Am flight 103 also stands out because it was one of the first times that terrorists carried out a major attack on a non-military airplane. The bombing also started a new era in science, says Doug McMakin, an electrical engineer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. Suddenly, airport security was a big deal.

“It kicked up research dollars on explosive detection technologies,” McMakin says. “This is one way [terrorists] try to put fear in us — by blowing up airplanes. What we’re trying to do is counter that threat.”

In the race to stay one step ahead of terrorists, researchers are working on a new generation of machines that can peer through fabric and see what people are carrying inside their clothes. Some airports are already starting to use these devices, called scanners.

Even as technology makes skies safer, however, worries have popped up. Some people wonder if airport scanners will threaten their privacy by showing every curve of their bodies and what’s in their pockets. People also worry about how the machines might affect their health.

Experts are doing their best to assure people that the new equipment is safe. More than that, it’s necessary. Our lives, they say, depend on it.

The long wait

If you’ve ever been on an airplane, you know the drill. After arriving at the airport, you wait in one snaking line to check in your luggage. Then you move to an even longer line, where you wait to get into the main terminal.

Security gates are a staple of modern airline travel. New work would add new detail to security screening.

fenlan1976/iStockphoto

After throwing away your water bottle, you show your I.D. and boarding pass to an official. You take off your jacket, belt and shoes. You put them on a conveyor belt, along with your carry-on bag. As X-rays zap your belongings, you walk through a doorframe that has no door. If it beeps, you start over.

As annoying as the whole process may seem, each step is designed to keep travelers safe. And behind the scenes, a whole lot of technology — and history — is involved.

When everyday people started traveling by air in the 1930s, they simply walked into the airport and onto their planes. In response to hijacking threats in the 1960s and 1970s, American airports began to require that passengers and their bags be screened. Airports added metal detectors to prevent weapons and explosives from getting onto planes.

Since then, airport security agencies have been pursuing the latest technologies. Every time an attack happens, new security rules follow. In December 2001, for example, the “shoe bomber” boarded a plane with

explosives hidden in the soles of his shoes. After that, airports started to require that passengers send their shoes through X-ray machines.

A spectrum of strategies

Among the security technologies you may have already seen at airports are chemical-detecting swabs, explosive-detecting puffer machines, even drug-sniffing dogs.

Coming next are full-body scanners that look through clothes to detect what people might be trying to sneak through the gate. Two types of scanning technologies are in the works. One is called a backscatter machine. The other is a millimeter-wave system.

This illustration gives the general idea: New scanners in the works would quickly reveal what’s in your pockets.

Both are already starting to appear in airports around the world. Still, experts continue to debate which one is better.

Behind both machines is the same science: the electromagnetic spectrum. The spectrum describes a range of energy forms, which travel and behave as waves. At one end of the spectrum are low-energy radio waves and microwaves. At the other end are high-energy gamma rays, X-rays and ultraviolet radiation. Visible light — what we can see — lies somewhere in the middle.

A millimeter-wave imaging scanner looks like a round phone booth. It uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum called millimeter waves. These waves lie just to the right of microwaves, which means they carry a little more energy than microwaves do. But they have less energy than infrared waves.

Millimeter-wave machines would scan passengers using a part of the electromagnetic spectrum (illustrated) that sits between microwaves and infrared. See the full video.

When a person steps inside a millimeter-wave imaging scanner, two 7-foot long beams of millimeter waves scan his body from head to toe. These waves pass through fabric, but they bounce off the water in our skin and in liquids that people might be trying to sneak onboard. (Some explosives start out as liquids). Millimeter waves also ping off plastic, paper, ceramics, even little nuggets of gum.

A computer inside the scanner detects the reflections and turns them into a three-dimensional image that pops up on a screen. The picture shows the outline of a passenger’s figure and everything he’s carrying under his clothes or in his pockets. Workers survey the image for suspicious objects.

“They’re going to detect threats that metal detectors don’t get,” says McMakin, who researches millimeter-wave machines. “The eyes will go to things that shouldn’t be there.”

The system is quick, and getting quicker. With modern computers, McMakin says, a scan takes about a second and a half. A visible image shows up just two or three seconds after that. As computers get even faster and cheaper, the equipment is becoming increasingly practical.

Millimeter-wave technology is also safe. It uses 10,000 times less power than a cell phone does. And millimeter waves have too little energy to harm human health.

Backscatter

In a sort of technological face-off, millimeter-wave scanners are going head-to-head with backscatter scanners. Instead of using millimeter waves, backscatter devices employ X-rays. These are the same waves that machines at hospitals use to penetrate flesh and look for broken bones.

Because they use the higher-energy X-rays, backscatter scanners produce images that are more detailed than millimeter-wave machines spit out. Some people think the images are clearer and make unusual objects easier to identify.

For now, backscatter scanners are a little slower than millimeter-wave scanners, McMakin says. The technology has also raised some health concerns. X-rays produce a type of radiation that can, in some cases, damage human cells and cause cancer.

Despite the rumors, however, even backscatter machines are safe, says medical physicist James Hevezi, chair of the American College of Radiation Medical Physics Commission. One scan, he says, delivers the same amount of radiation as spending two minutes in an airplane at 30,000 feet.

In other words, the machines are far safer than flying is.

“It really is not a health concern,” Hevezi says. “It is a much lower dose than anything used in medicine.”

Perhaps a bigger concern is privacy, and that applies to both systems. In addition to showing slips of paper in pockets and explosives in underwear, scanners reveal every curve of a passenger’s body.

Some day, computers might be able to read the scans on their own without the help of human eyes, making this worry irrelevant. In the meantime, Hevezi, says, people will have to compare the benefits of scanning technology with the potential risks of flying without its help.

“The benefit is safety in the air when we travel,” he says. “If people want to travel in modes other than air travel, they can do it that way. Or they can ask to be patted down instead. There are still some choices we can make.”

Toward the horizon

As engineers continue to tinker on imaging technologies, their discoveries are fueling industries that have nothing to do with security. A company called Intellifit, for example, is using millimeter-wave scanners to help people buy jeans.

In less than 15 seconds, the machine spits out precise body measurements that can be used to design custom-made clothing. Scanners could also help dieters take body measurements to see whether they are getting slimmer. Scanners are already being used for these reasons in a few places.

As for security, advances in science should make air travel safer and safer, experts say.

“We’re just at the start of where we could go,” McMakin says, “and what it could be.”

Ready, unplug, drive

By Emily Sohn / October 28, 2008

Plug-in hybrid cars run on both gasoline and batteries, an energy combination that would let drivers travel longer without refueling.

When a handheld video game runs out of juice, all you have to do is plug it in and charge it up. Within a few years, some of you might do the same thing with mom’s car.

Automobile companies are developing vehicles that will plug in to electric sockets, just like many laptops, digital cameras, cell phones and small video-game players do. Called “plug-in hybrids,” these cars will getmost of their power from electricity. Their drivers will rarely have to stop at gas stations.

The technology is more than just gee-whiz cool. In our automobile-filled world, plug-in vehicles could reduce the amount of gasoline our nation uses. That gas is made from crude oil, which has been skyrocketing incost. Much of our oil also comes from countries overseas where wars and other unrest make supplies uncertain. So plug-in hybrids could both save both money and lessen the nation’s dependence on overseas energy supplies. Plus, motoring around in these hybrids may even help the environment.

“Plug-in hybrids are a promising automotive powertrain option for the 21st century,” says Dan Santini. He’s a transportation economist at Argonne National Laboratory, a government research center run by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The first company-produced plug-in hybrids could hit the roads by 2010.

But plug-in hybrids aren’t a cure-all for energy problems. Some experts say that replacing gasoline with electricity (much of it generated byburning coal) might simply swap one type of environmental strain for another.

And engineers still have a lot of work to do to make plug-in hybrids practical and inexpensive. Researchers need to figure out what kind oftechnologies will work best and how much people will be willing to pay for the cars, among other questions.

“The answers don’t exist yet,” says Ted Bohn, an electrical engineer at Argonne, near Chicago. “As a kid I thought someone someplace knows the answer to everything. All of these questions haven’t been decided. That’s what engineering is about — making a guess, running tests and fine-tuning assumptions.”

Out of gas

In many places, people depend on their cars and trucks to get everywhere — from school and work to the grocery store or doctor. And mostautomobiles today get their vroom from gasoline. It produces enough energy to power the engine, turn the wheels and make the car go.

Burning gas produces more than just energy, though. Gas-burning cars also produce a lot of carbon dioxide, a type of greenhouse gas. These gases accumulate in the atmosphere, where they trap heat and fuelglobal warming.

Recharging the batteries in a plug-in hybrid car would be similar to recharging the batteries in an all-electric (no gas) car, shown here.

Gasoline is also getting more expensive — and prices at pumpsthroughout the United States surged to record highs this past summer. Reasons for the rise are complicated, but the trend is leading many people to look for alternatives to gasoline.

Hybrid vehicles are one solution. Introduced in the late 1990s, hybrid cars get power from a combination of electricity and gasoline. At times, such as when driving on the highway, they run like regular gas-powered cars. But hybrids also have a special type of rechargeable battery and anelectric motor, which allow them to sometimes drive with the engine off. With the engine off, the car uses no gasoline.

As a result, hybrids can go more miles on less gas. For example, the newest model of the Toyota Prius, the most widely purchased kind of hybrid in America, gets an average of 46 miles per gallon, according to the website www.fueleconomy.gov. By comparison, the gas-powered Toyota Camry, a similar-sized car, gets about 26 mpg on average.

Plug-in hybrids will go a step further. On a full charge, they’ll be able to drive up to 40 miles without using any gasoline at all, Bohn says. Surveys show that nearly 80 percent of Americans drive fewer than 20 miles a day. So people who only drive short distances could, in theory,

rechargetheir cars every night and not refill the gas tank—for years! During longertrips, plug-in hybrids will work like regular hybrids, with a gas-poweredengine that recharges the battery.

On average, a typical plug-in hybrid driver would get an estimated 150 miles per gallon. Sounds like the perfect way to save money on gas, right? And you might even help to save the planet from pollution.

Perhaps, but scientists still have some kinks to work out.

The Weak Link

Batteries pose the biggest challenge. A standard gas-powered car uses something called a lead-acid battery. These devices are fairly cheap and they last a long time. But lead-acid batteries are also extremely heavy.You also have to run the engine regularly to keep them charged. And they are only strong enough to power the car’s lights and other electronic equipment.

In a hybrid vehicle, batteries must store much more energy — enough to actually run the car with the engine off. It would take many, many lead-acid car batteries to do the job, Bohn says. In fact, so many that batteries would take up half of the car.

Instead, most hybrid cars use nickel-metal-hydride batteries. They’re lighter, more efficient and quicker to charge than lead-acid batteries. They are also more expensive, which helps explain why hybrids costthousands of dollars more than gas-powered cars the same size.

Batteries for plug-in hybrids need to be able to store even more energy than do those in typical hybrid cars. And that’s where scientists keep getting stuck — designing smaller, more powerful, long-lived andlighter-weight batteries

Not surprisingly, Bohn says, “Battery research is very hot.”

In the plug-in-hybrid world, lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are getting the most attention. These batteries can store a large amount of energy in a small package, and they last a relatively long time between charges. Li-ion batteries are standard in laptops, cell phones, heart devices, power tools and similar portable devices.

Scientists have found ways to make Li-ion batteries — and the gadgets that contain them — smaller and sleeker in recent years. But because cars are so big and heavy, it would still require a suitcase-sized Li-ion battery to power about 8 miles of driving, Bohn says. It would take five of these mega-batteries to propel a car for 40 miles. What’s more, the batteries are extremely expensive.

“A car filled with batteries could go a long distance,” Bohn says. “But it couldn’t haul any people, and it would cost $100,000.”

Engineers continue to look for ways to shrink Li-ion batteries even more. In the meantime, companies that are designing plug-in vehicles are making lots of guesses about how much money people are willing tospend on them, Bohn says. Batteries are central to those questions.

“As we speak, huge decisions are being made [by the automobile industry] about how big the battery should be,” he says. “The battery can be as expensive as the whole car.”

Drive for the environment

Several companies plan to release fleets of plug-in hybrids in the next few years. Still, it’ll probably be a while — if ever — before most people make the switch. One reason is that there simply aren’t enough Li-ionbatteries on the planet right now to produce enough plug-in cars for everyone, Bohn says.

In addition, these cars may not be a good choice for people without a garage to store their hybrid — and plug it in. The same would be true ofpeople who live in high-rises or apartment buildings. Where would these people plug in their cars? And for rural families, daily travels may far exceed the 40-mile range of plug-in hybrids. These people might be better off with the less-expensive, conventional hybrid vehicles.

There are environmental complications, too. One study last year found that if 60 percent or more of U.S. drivers switched to plug-in hybrids, the country would produce a third fewer greenhouse gasses. But most of the electricity that comes out of our wall sockets is produced by power plantsthat burn coal, Bohn says. And burning coal produces pollution, just as burning gasoline does.

To get around that environmental dilemma, Bohn says, plug-in owners could someday choose to charge their cars in the middle of the nightinstead of in the middle of the day. Thanks to the way the country’s

energy system works, the timing would allow the car to get electricity created by wind power and other more Earth-friendly technologies.

In this way, drivers of the future might start to realize that, “My car is not just going to get me from point A to point B,” Bohn says. “It will help me make energy decisions.”

Swirling seas of plastic trash

By Amanda Rose Martinez / June 22, 2011

The ocean dumps literally tons of plastic trash on Hawaii’s Kamilo Beach each year. Credit: Amanda Rose Martinez

Kamilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii, is no ordinary beach. While it has sand, most of the island is made up of cooled chunks of lava rock that formed when Mauna Loa, one of the island’s volcanoes, erupted in 1868.

There are no roads that lead to Kamilo (pronounced: ka-MEE-low). The only way to get there is to drive for two hours over piles of volcanic rock. I share a ride with some locals and a scientist, and we bounce wildly and try to keep our heads from bumping the ceiling of the truck. When we arrive, the beach is deserted. There are no sunbathers, no swimmers and no surfers, and the gusts of wind blowing off the ocean are so strong that it’s hard to keep our balance.

But the strangest thing about Kamilo is that it’s covered with plastic trash — things that we use every day. I find shoes, combs, laundry baskets, Styrofoam, toothbrushes and countless water bottles. There are even toys like LEGO blocks and a little green army man. Beneath the recognizable things are millions of tiny, colorful plastic pieces — the fragments of broken-down larger objects. They look like confetti.

None of this trash was left by careless beachgoers. It looks like it has spent a long time in the ocean, being tossed about by waves. The objects are faded and brittle, and some have big chunks missing, as if they have been chewed on.

Plastic trash in the ocean and on beaches harms sea animals of every size, from microscopic organisms called phytoplankton to whales. Some eat the trash, thinking it’s food. The animals’ stomachs fill up with garbage, and if they can’t poop it out, they die. Other animals get

tangled in the trash and drown. This trash may even contain dangerous chemicals that are making their way into the seafood we eat.

Barnacles usually live on floating pieces of wood, but now they’re often found living on plastic trash adrift at sea. Scientists are concerned that because the plastic is so abundant, the barnacle population might grow larger. Credit: © 2009 Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, J. Leichter

Noni Sanford lives on the Big Island and regularly cleans Kamilo with a group of volunteers. She says that before the cleanups started, the trash was piled 8 to 10 feet high. It’s much better now, but each year, the volunteers still remove between 15 and 20 tons of new trash from Kamilo and other beaches that stretch nine miles up the coast. That’s enough junk to fill 1.5 to two garbage trucks to the brim. “It’s overwhelming,” Sanford says.

How could a beach that no one visits have so much garbage? Scientists now know the answer — the trash is coming from the middle of the ocean.

Plastic in the middle of nowhere

Miriam Goldstein is a biological oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. In 2009, Goldstein and a team of scientists sailed to an area of the North Pacific Ocean about 1,000 miles west of California and 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii. “It was really as far in the middle of nowhere as you can get,” Goldstein says. She had heard about people finding plastic trash in this spot and wanted to see if she could find plastic there as well.

Goldstein was surprised by how much junk there was in the area. “We saw a lot of large objects floating by, construction hats, fishing nets, bottles,” Goldstein says. “But mostly there were just lots of little pieces that you could barely see [when] looking over the side of the boat.”

There are five major ocean gyres. Scientists have found large concentrations of plastic in the North Pacific and North Atlantic gyres. The remaining three gyres have yet to be scientifically studied. Credit: ©2005 American Meteorological Society

Goldstein and her crew used a special net designed to catch plankton to skim the ocean’s surface. The net’s mouth is 3 feet wide and its mesh is very fine, smaller than the holes you can see in your T-shirt when you stretch it. In 15 minutes, the net filters a patch of ocean roughly the size of a football field’s end zone.

The scientists collected 132 samples from a 1,700-mile stretch of ocean. That’s almost as long as the distance between New York City and Denver. All but two samples contained plastic. Plastic is produced on land. Yet, here scientists were finding it more than 1,000 miles from the nearest land!

Goldstein is doing experiments to see if the plastic affects sea animals on the ocean’s surface. Some of the plastic pieces she found were home to organisms like barnacles, which need a hard surface to grow on. At sea, barnacles are usually found living on floating pieces of wood. But if plastic trash offers more surface area, the barnacle population could grow larger than it would without the abundant plastics. This would give barnacles an unfair advantage over other species, which in turn could alter the balance of animals in the ocean ecosystem.

Bubbles in a bathtub

Plastic debris gave this northern fur seal a serious neck wound on Bogoslof Island off the coast of Alaska. Credit: Michael Williams, MMPA Permit #782-1708

Goldstein and her crew found so much plastic because they were in a special area of the North Pacific called a gyre. A gyre is a vast expanse of water surrounded by a loop of fast-moving ocean currents. Strong winds blow trash from the beaches of countries that border the North Pacific — such as the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan and China — into the gyre’s currents. Some trash stays within these currents, but wind also sweeps a lot of the garbage into the center of the gyre.

Within this eye of the gyre, small surface currents churn slowly due to Earth’s rotation. There is very little wind in the center of the gyre, so the water there is usually calm. Plastic trash carried into the gyre gets trapped, and because most plastic floats, it accumulates at the surface like bubbles in a bathtub. Passing storm winds can lift trash out of the gyre. Because Hawaii is located near the gyre’s southern edge, storm winds blow trash onto Hawaiian beaches — including Kamilo.

But the gyre in the North Pacific isn’t the only one in the world’s oceans. There are four other major gyres, located in the South Pacific, South Atlantic, North Atlantic and Indian oceans. Scientists have found large amounts of plastic in the North Atlantic, but they don’t know if plastic is also collecting in the other three gyres, because they have yet to be studied. However, a group of conservationists and concerned citizens recently visited these remaining gyres and reported finding plastic in each one.

 

2.4 million pounds

A team of scientists at the Sea Education Association, or SEA, in Woods Hole, Mass., has been collecting plastic in the North Atlantic gyre for the past 22 years. Using a net similar to Goldstein’s, the scientists have gathered more than 6,100 samples. Sixty-two percent of those samples contained plastic pieces that were 10 millimeters or smaller in size and had an average mass of less than 0.15 grams. This means that the pieces were no bigger than a pencil eraser and one-tenth as heavy as a paper clip.

On Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, dead albatross chicks are often found with stomachs full of plastic junk. Credit: Chris Jordan

The scientists painstakingly counted each tiny, plastic fragment by hand, using a tool resembling tweezers. The team estimated that the region contains 2.4 million pounds of plastic. If all of those plastic pieces were laid across an area the size of a football field, they’d form a layer almost 6 inches deep.

Because those pieces are instead scattered throughout the North Atlantic gyre, there are only a few in any one place. That may not sound like much, but the problem with plastic is that it can’t quickly biodegrade, or be broken down by living organisms. Crashing waves and constant sunlight cause the plastic to crumble into smaller and smaller pieces. Some scientists think the pieces can take hundreds of years to completely disappear.

Because the plastic hangs around for so long, many animals interact with it. In fact, SEA chemical oceanographer Giora Proskurowski says the smallest pieces may be the most devastating to the ocean ecosystem, “because now you’re dealing with things that zooplankton might eat.” Zooplankton are small ocean animals at the base of the food chain. So perhaps the biggest question scientists are asking now is: How might plastic trash affect the health of sea life?

Saving tangled seals

Scientists have long known that large pieces of plastic junk harm or kill countless sea animals each year. Michael Williams, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, studies northern fur seals on the Pribilof Islands off the coast of Alaska. Between 1998 and 2006, Williams and his team saw more than 800 young male seals swim ashore tangled up in trash.

The stomach of this triggerfish, caught by SEA scientists in the North Atlantic gyre, contained 47 pieces of plastic. Credit: Sea Education Association/David M. Lawrence

Every winter, the seals migrate through the northern edge of the North Pacific gyre, where garbage like plastic bands and fishing line can get wrapped around the seals’ necks and flippers. The more a seal tries to wiggle free, the tighter the trash’s grip can become, sometimes digging into the animal’s flesh and killing it.

Williams and his team capture and cut the trash off of as many entangled seals as possible. It’s hard work because the seals move fast, are very strong and bite. It takes three to five people to restrain each seal, which typically weighs between 23 and 45 kilograms (or 50 and 100 pounds). “Sometimes whatever they’re tangled in is just horribly embedded, so we end up having to really dig in and fight to cut it off,” says Williams.

This often forces researchers to ask a tough question: Will they hurt the animal more by trying to free it? Sometimes, the researchers just have to let the seal go, knowing it will probably die. “It can be devastating,” says Williams.

Bellies full of bottle caps

Other sea animals eat the plastic, thinking it’s food. To a seabird flying above the ocean, floating plastic trash looks identical to favorite foods like fish eggs and squid. Dead albatrosses have been found in Hawaii with bellies full of cigarette lighters and bottle caps.

To sea turtles, which are endangered, a floating plastic bag looks exactly like jellyfish, their favorite meal. If the turtles’ guts get full of this plastic, which can’t be pooped out, they eventually will die.

Even fish eat plastic. In the North Atlantic gyre, Proskurowski and his crew caught a fish that had 47 plastic fragments in its stomach. Other researchers recently reported that 35 percent of the lantern fish they caught in the North Pacific gyre had an average of two plastic pieces in their stomachs. Lantern fish are incredibly important because they’re the most common fish in the ocean. Nearly everything eats them, from squid to some types of whales.

A superdose of poison

But what worry some scientists the most are the tiniest plastic pieces, those as small as sand grains. These pieces attract persistent organic pollutants, or POPs (see SNK story “Pollution at the ends of the Earth”), that float in the water. POPs are poisonous chemicals that stay in the environment for a long time. Some are used in paints or fluorescent light bulbs, while several others have been sprayed on crops to kill pests. POPs cling to plastic pieces like sprinkles to an iced donut, and these chemicals can become up to a million times more concentrated on plastic than they are in seawater!

Mark Browne, an ecologist at University College Dublin, in Ireland, conducted experiments with blue mussels. These 2-inch-long marine bivalves filter their food from the water. Browne showed that the mussels don’t just have plastic in their guts — the pieces can pass through the gut’s lining and get lodged in other organs.

Browne is concerned that the plastic pieces might be delivering a superdose of chemicals to the mussels. He’s currently doing experiments to test whether the POPs that plastics carry are affecting the mussels’ health. It’s important to find this out, Browne says, because “mussels are not only eaten by fish and crabs. They’re also in our diet.”

Finding solutions

So how does all this trash get into the ocean? Most of it appears to come from land. That includes litterbugs who leave their garbage on the beach. Some trash also gets washed into drains on the street and out to sea after big storms. Other trash can be blown off of the top of landfills or off garbage trucks speeding down the highway.

Nobody yet knows how to clean up the trash, because there’s so much and it’s so widespread. We can’t scoop it out of the ocean with nets because we’d be catching and killing tons of sea life at the same time.

While scientists search for solutions, we consumers can help by discarding trash only into garbage cans and by using less plastic, especially plastic packaging. This includes bringing reusable bags to the grocery store, avoiding Styrofoam takeout containers, and drinking beverages from reusable bottles. When people do use plastic, they must remember to recycle it wherever and whenever possible.

We can all help keep trash out of the ocean, even if we don’t live near the beach. Every river, stream or lake ultimately empties into the ocean, says Kara Lavender Law, an oceanographer with SEA. “It’s all interconnected.” So even if you’ve never seen the ocean, what you do may still directly affect its health.

POWER WORDS (adapted from the Merriam-Webster Student Dictionary, Dictionary.com and www.chem.unep.ch)

phytoplankton Microscopic, free-floating plants that live in watery environments.

oceanographer A scientist who studies the biology, chemistry or movement of the ocean.

ecosystem A system made up of a community of living things interacting with their environment.

ocean gyre A ringlike system of ocean currents that rotate clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

zooplankton Plankton that consists of animals.

biodegrade Capable of being broken down by living things.

migrate To pass from one region to another, usually on a regular schedule for feeding or breeding.

persistent organic pollutants (POPs) Chemicals that stay in the environment and pose a risk of harming human health and the environment.

bivalve Having or being a shell that consists of two movable valves.