THE SCIENCE OF WHY NO ONE CAN AGREE ON THE COLOR OF THAT DRESS

SOLAR POWER TOWERS ARE 'VAPORIZING' BIRDS

BUT THEY AREN'T THE DEADLIEST ENERGY SOURCE FOR OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS

Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project

Wikimedia Commons

This photo was taken on December 31, 2014.

The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada is set to come online in March. Once completed, it will use thousands of mirrors to focus sunlight on a tower, melting millions of pounds of salt contained inside. The molten salt will heat water into steam, which then turns turbines and generates electricity without any carbon byproducts. There’s just one little problem: During a test run on January 14, the intense heat from the mirrors reportedly incinerated and/or vaporized more than 100 birds.

Rewire reports that during the test, operators fired up a third of the 110-megawatt facility’s mirrors, concentrating sunlight on a spot 1,200 feet off the ground. Over a six-hour period, biologists counted 130 "streamers," or trails of smoke and water left behind as birds ignited and plummeted to their deaths. Rewire’s anonymous source said that at least one of the birds "turned white hot and vaporized completely."

Another solar power plant, Ivanpah, reportedly scorches one bird every two minutes. Both companies are trying to devise measures to keep birds out of the concentrated solar energy.

It’s certainly a gruesome way to die. But solar power plants may not be that much worse for birds than other sources of electricity. This graph from a U.S. News & World Report in 2014 shows that overall, fossil fuels cause a lot more feathered fatalities.

Bird Deaths By Power Source

U.S. News & World Report

However, the chart is not a perfect data source. The estimates weren’t taken in any standardized way, and some of the studies were outdated. It’s also not an apples-to-apples comparison, since fossil fuels supply way more power to U.S. homes than renewable sources. So we combined the chart with data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration to calculate how many birds each type of power kills for every 1,000 megawatt-hours of power that’s generated. It's just a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but here’s what we found:

PopSci Does Math

Popular Science

Coal still stands out as the big bad bird killer, but solar and wind power aren’t so angelic either. If you accept the higher estimate for solar power, the impact on our feathered friends is higher than for oil and natural gas. Does that mean we should stick to fossil fuels? Of course not. (A world scorched by climate change is good for nobody.) But it does underline the fact that clean energy needs to clean up its act.

The Best Valentines Day Flower

New "Porta Potty" Flower Discovered
Phallic-shaped species smells like rotting meat and feces.




The newly discovered plant species Amorphophallus perrieri grows to about five feet tall.
Photograph courtesy Cameron McIntire, University of Utah



Botanist Greg Wahlert and the new species. Photograph courtesy Lee Siegel, University of Utah
Rachel Kaufman
for National Geographic News
Published February 8, 2012

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. And a new species of Amorphophallus—the genus that includes the "corpse flower"—still smells like rotting meat and feces.

Discovered on an island off the coast of Madagascar, the newfound plant grows up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) high and blooms once a year with a "really foul" stench, according to discoverer Greg Wahlert, a postdoctoral researcher in botany at the University of Utah.

Lynn Bohs, a biology professor in the same lab as Wahlert, described the smell in a statement as a combination of "rotting roadkill" and a "Porta Potty."

The new flower adds to the roughly 170 species in the Amorphophallus genus, which means "misshapen penis" in Greek after the phallic shape of the plants' flowers.

Finding Flower a Stroke of Luck

Wahlert discovered the new species—named A. perrieri—in full bloom while collecting violets in two remote islands northwest of Madagascar in 2006 and 2007.

Suspecting the plant might be a new species, he brought back samples and began cultivating them. After consulting with an Amorphophallus expert in the Netherlands, he confirmed that A. perrieri was a previously undescribed species.

Because A. perrieri is dormant for much of the year, Wahlert's discovery is a case of good timing.

For months out of the year, there's little rain in that part of Madagascar, so the plants remain dormant underground.

"These things are growing out of the most miserable soil," said Wahlert, who is working on a scientific paper about the species.


The specimen he is cultivating in the university's greenhouse shot up its flower in just two weeks. If Wahlert had been visiting the islands at a different time, "I could have very easily missed it."

Stinky Flowers "Fascinating"

All Amorphophallus species emit smells to attract flies and other insects.

Though a few emit more pleasant aromas, such as chocolate or spices, most smell terrible to human noses, Wahlert said.

"You can imagine in Africa, where big game will die and rot in the sun ... that's what they smell like," Wahlert said.

Despite the stench, he added, "I'm glad I got a stinky one. It's fascinating to me.

World's Tiniest Chameleons Found in Madagascar

Smallest Lizard A juvenile Brookesia micra is barely bigger than a match head.

This little chameleon is one of four miniature lizards identified in Madagascar, adding to our growing list of amazingly teeny animals. The one on the match in this picture is a juvenile, but even the adults max out at 30 millimeters. They're the smallest lizards in the world, and some of the smallest vertebrates found to date.

The Lilliputian lizard is near the lower limits of size in vertebrate animals. Learning about how these creatures live can put some constraints on animal morphology — if your species has eyes, a backbone and a brain, there’s likely a limit to how little you can get. A different group of field biologists just announced the world’s smallest frog, and they claim it is the smallest vertebrate in the world, knocking a tiny Indonesian fish off the pedestal of puniness.

The chameleons are related to other Madagascan lizards, but DNA analysis showed they have enough genetic differences to count as distinct species, according to the researchers who found them, led by Frank Glaw of the Zoological State Collection of Munich. The animals live in leafy undergrowth in Madagascan forests.

Tiny and camouflaged — how did they find these guys? Most of the lizards were collected at night, when they typically climb up into the underbrush to roost. The field biologists used torches and headlamps to spot the sleeping lizards, according to their paper.

Has The End Of The Banana Arrived?

Researchers fear that a relentless and virulent fungus could cripple the world's banana monoculture.

Flickr/Ian Ransley

Two weeks ago, at a conference in South Africa, scientists met to discuss how to contain a deadly banana disease outbreak in nearby Mozambique, Africa. At fault was a fungus that continues its march around the planet. In recent years, it has spread across Asia and Australia, devastating plants there that bear the signature yellow supermarket fruit.
The international delegation of researchers shared their own approaches to the malady, hoping to arrive at some strategy to insulate Mozambique and the rest of Africa: a continent where bananas are essential to the lives of millions. They left the Cape Town-based meeting with an air of optimism.
Only days after the meeting, however, a devastating new survey of the stricken Mozambique farm was released. Scientists at the conference assumed that the fungus was limited to a single plot. The new report suggested the entire plantation was infested, expanding 125 diseased acres to more than 3,500. All told, 7 million banana plants were doomed to wilt and rot.
“The future looks bleak,” says Altus Viljoen, the South African plant pathologist who organized the conference. "There’s no way they’ll be able to stop any further spread if they continue to farm.” Worse, he says, the disease's rapid spread endangers banana crops beyond Mozambique’s borders.

A banana production line in Mozambique. 

Fen Beed

The story of the African farm is the story of a threat to the world’s largest fruit crop. Commercially, bananas generate $8 billion annually and, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, more than 400 million people rely on the fruit as their primary source of calories. Though more bananas are grown in Asia, Africans depend heavily on the crop; in countries like Rwanda and Uganda, for example, average banana consumption is about 500 pounds per person annually, or 20 times that of the typical American. If the bananas vanish, people starve.I originally reported on the malady that’s now infecting the Mozambique plantation in the August 2005 print edition of Popular Science. In that story, which is still relevant today, I described a fungus, commonly known as “Panama Disease” but scientifically termed Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubensis Tropical Race 4 (or “Foc-TR4”). It infects the roots of banana plants, moves upward through the xylem, and clogs the flow of sap, causing leaves to wilt and the plant to rot.
When I reported on the disease, which was and remains incurable, it had spread only to a few Asian nations, including Taiwan and Indonesia. But it soon reached the Chinese mainland, and then jumped across thousands of miles of open ocean to appear in Australia, where it devastated the banana industry in the Darwin region.
The most astonishing thing is that this has happened before, with a breed of banana introduced to America and Europe in the early 20th century. Called the Gros Michel, it was entirely different from the kind of banana we enjoy today and made the fortunes of Chiquita and Dole. These companies created an agricultural business model based on monoculture, whose singular focus resembles the fast food industry more than traditional farming.
The “Big Mike” cultivar soon began succumbing to a variant of Fusarium now known as “Race 1.” By 1960, the breed was functionally extinct. Its replacement is today’s supermarket banana, called the Cavendish. From the start banana marketers considered it an inferior product—less flavorful and more perishable. Yet facing bankruptcy in the wake of the Gros Michel’s disappearance, they adopted it at the last minute to save their industry.
I became so fascinated with bananas that my original article became a book in 2008: Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World. Since then, I’ve traveled the world writing about bananas, learning about how important, delicious, and threatened they are. I attended the South Africa conference, officially titled the “Regional Meeting To Develop A Strategy To Mitigate Foc TR4 In Africa,” and was impressed with the organization and commitment exhibited by the working group.
Then the bad news came.
***
Mozambique is not considered prime banana territory. The food is mostly a commercial crop here, rather than a staple. But it is well placed if one wanted to start an export business; bananas could be shipped north, to Middle Eastern and European markets. At least that was the plan when the now-stricken crops were planted in 2008.
The funding came from Chiquita, the world’s largest and oldest banana producer. Expectations were high. Operations in the nation could soon account for as much as 30 percent of the company’s $2 billion supermarket banana business, according to then-CEO Fernando Aguirre. The plantation would keep world banana supplies and prices stable, and would also provide huge local benefits, adding as many as 3,000 jobs to the regional economy. In 2010, Chiquita left Mozambique, claiming that it couldn’t get high enough quality fruit from the operation, and that northbound shipments were too threatened by piracy along the African coast.

A Mozambique banana plantation. 

Altus Viljoen

One big question is how the disease actually arrived in Mozambique. At the conference I attended, participants offered two theories. One is that Philippine workers who’d arrived to help build the plantation inadvertently brought it in; the malady is so virulent that a single clump of dirt on a shoe or a tool can lead to continent-wide infection. Philippine banana growers have been struggling with Foc-TR4 since the 1990s, and the workers in Mozambique were employed by Chiquita management and then by a company called Matanuska, which took over when the American banana company left.
Another idea is that the disease was waiting in the soil all along, prior to the arrival of bananas in Mozambique. Scientists think this happened in Malaysia when Cavendish were planted there in the late 1980s, leading to one of the earliest outbreaks of Foc-TR4. Researchers are now analyzing the strain of fungus found in Mozambique to see if it shares genetic markers with samples gathered elsewhere. (Viljoen strongly believes those tests will show that the disease came from the Philippines.)
Whatever the origin, it is certain that the new plantation was poorly equipped to handle the fungus. On multiple plots in the Mozambique farms, plants were sharing water drainage facilities, a practice that might allow contaminated water to spread from one plot to another. Likewise, infection from common irrigation sources was one of the primary ways the Gros Michel version of Panama Disease spread in the mid-20th century.
Another likely vector for the spread of the disease was local people walking across the farmland on their way home, says Viljoen. At April’s Cape Town meeting, Jack Dwyer, CEO of the Mozambique plantation venture, acknowledged that more than 2,500 people entered and exited the farm each day, along with 100 vehicles.

An infected banana plant. 

Altus Viljoen

All this has made the banana industry take notice. Just five years ago, Chiquita’s Aguirre told the Cincinnati Enquirer, “We believe that [Panama Disease] is a very limited threat and would take many, many years to spread, even if it does move out of Asia.” Following the news from Mozambique, Chiquita took a more realistic stance. Spokesperson Ed Loyd told me that, “It would be foolish not to pay attention,” and that Panama Disease represents a long-term danger to the industry. (The disease has also recently been identified in the Middle East, with crops stricken in both Jordan and Oman.)
Loyd also confirmed that Chiquita is now researching a replacement banana for the Cavendish. One possibility is a modified version of the fruit developed in Taiwan; the “GCTCV 219” is sweeter than standard Cavendish, and takes a little longer to harvest, but is highly resistant to Panama Disease. The variety is currently being tested in the Philippines and Australia, and it has the market advantage of not being a GMO banana; the technique used to develop it involves “somoclonal variation,” or hand-selection and rebreeding of hardier varieties. (The problem with GMO bananas isn’t the fruit or the technology, it’s that most consumers wouldn’t buy them, banana marketers say.) Other possibilities include alternate breeds. Those would require new packaging technology, but the industry overcame that obstacle during the original Gros Michel changeover. Or, if consumer and regulatory resistance breaks down, a transgenic banana, perhaps crossed with Fusarium-resistant peppers.
The best solution, banana scientists have told me, is variety. Turning the commercial banana crop from a monoculture (in which every Cavendish plant is essentially a clone) to one with multiple resistant breeds would help insulate plantations against disease and also bring some really delicious fruit to consumers. The Cavendish, I can tell you from experience, is a lousy tasting banana compared to just about everything else; in India, where 600 banana varieties are grown, Cavendish is derisively called “the hotel banana.”
Does all this mean the great "bananapocalypse" or "bananageddon" is here? Not yet. But it is getting closer. Currently, about 45 percent of world banana production is Cavendish, and the global export of the crop is growing by about 7 percent annually. As its monoculture spreads, the threat to both livelihoods and lives grows. (There is some good news for subsistence crops: Recent tests of Africa’s most-consumed varieties indicate they could be resistant to Foc-TR4, although researchers say more studies are required.)
For Americans worried about whether they’ll continue to have slices of banana floating in their cereal bowls, the question is when the disease will hit Latin America, which grows the bananas we consume. Mozambique brings disturbing news on that front: Farm managers there didn’t just get assistance from the Philippines, but also from Costa Rica and several other Central American nations. Those workers moved repeatedly between their home countries and Africa through 2011.
With an incubation period of about two to three years, it is possible that the same mechanism that likely caused the African outbreak—infected dirt, carried inadvertently—is already at work in our hemisphere. “The workers who set up those plantations are now back home,” says Randy Ploetz, the Florida-based plant pathologist who first identified Foc-TR4 in the 1980s. “So if we assume it is fairly easy to move this thing and soil from wherever it is—Southeast Asia or Jordan or Mozambique—then it is possible it is already in Latin America. Only time will tell.”

COULD A MOUTHWASH DO AWAY WITH DENTAL VISITS?

One dental researcher thinks he's found a way to permanently stave off the cavity-causing bacteria that lead to expensive and costly trips to the dentist.

Wenyuan Shi of the University of California, Los Angeles, has led efforts to develop a mouthwash with technology that kills Streptococcus mutans, the bacteria responsible for cavities.

First, Shi and colleagues had to understand how these bacteria interact in biofilms, or the sticky colonies of microorganisms that build up as plaque on the teeth. Bacteria often latch on to the surfaces of teeth, breaking down food debris and nutrients into acids that can eat away at enamel and form caries (another word for cavities). These harmful plaque build-ups can lead to gum disease and even tooth loss.

The technology, called "Specifically-Targeted Antimicrobial Peptides" (STAMPs), targets cavity-causing bacteria without interfering with other microbes in the mouth. This differs from most antibiotics that kill unwanted bacteria and do away with the good kind as well.

But after being exposed to Shi's technology, the good bacteria develop a type of protection that prevents bad bacteria from forming near them in the future.

In a small clinical trial of 12 participants, using the mouthwash once over a four-day period helped lower levels of S. mutans bacteria, lactic acid and demineralization.

It's not clear how much the mouthwash would cost if approved for use, and more research is needed to test the long-term effects of the rinse. One UCLA press release says Shi has received an investigation grant through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which would support more trials beginning in 2012.

But can the antimicrobial really rid us of the costly and painful experience of tooth decay in our lifetimes?

We'll have to wait until the mouthwash undergoes more trials before ditching our toothbrushes and floss. Since the rinse doesn't affect other bacteria, people who rely on the mouthwash may still feel the need to brush to remove excess plaque. Another general concern may be exerting selective pressures on the bad bacteria, which may have the potential to create bacteria resistant to treatments or antibiotics. It's unclear if cell signaling creates the same pressures as other antibiotics.

The American Dental Association has warned companies for claiming that products prevent gum disease when there's not much evidence to do so.

Time will tell if the technology will hit the medicine cabinet as cavities' No. 1 enemy. It's also worth mentioning that Shi gained financial support from Colgate-Palmolive and a company he helped establish in 2005.

The science of the lucky charm: the four leaf clover

Scientists have now discovered the gene responsible for creating a four-leaf clover, using molecular markers, according to research published in the July/August 2010 edition of Crop Science.

The white clover plant is actually a genetically complex organism. The gene for four leaves is rarely expressed and environmental factors also contribute. So the answer for why four-leaf clovers exist in white clover is a combination of a rare gene and environmental conditions.

It has been hard to discover the gene up until now because it is hidden by the allele for three leaves. The use of molecular markers made the discovery possible.

The variation in white clover trifolium repens. Four-leaf clovers are considered lucky. (Credit: billaday via Flickr)

(NOTE: I decided that since St. Patrick’s day was moved to the 15th, but is generally on the 17th, I would split the difference and post my themed post on the 16th)

Four-leaf clovers: the rare, sought-after variation of the more common three-leaf clover. It is said to be lucky, and indeed, you’d be lucky to find them. Some statistics state that there are 10,000 normal three-leaf clovers to every four-leaf clover.

I somehow think that is a little exaggerated. I myself have found 3 four-leaf clovers in my life time… mostly before I was out of grade school and had plenty of time to gaze at the grass where White clover, Trifolium repens, grew.

Some people try to claim they’ve found a four-leaf clover, but often they have just picked the leaf of a plant that consistently produces four-leaves, such as Pepperwort (Marsilea Quadrifolia) or Oxalis (any variety).

But what causes a true clover to produce this variation? Obviously it is a variation— the scientific name for clover, Trifolium, means three (tres) leaf (folium). A real four-leaf clover also has a fourth leaf that is often smaller than the rest.

The truth of the matter is that scientists are unsure of the exact cause of four-leaf clovers, and indeed, there may be more than one factor causing this variation. However, here is a list of possible causes.

• Environmental:

To suggest an environmental factor, seekers of the lucky leaflet have found that certain patches of clover were more likely to have four-leaf clovers. This occurrence suggests that environmental factors such as soil pH, soil composition, pollution of the area, or other influencing factors. Some suggest that environmental stressors produce more variation, but this is unknown.

• Genetic:

Taking into consideration the rarity of the four-leaf cover, it is possible that the variation is not so much a mutation, but a recessive gene that crops up occasionally. Personally, I think this a little unlikely. I would expect to see a little more four-leaf clovers. There also exist variations with more than four leaves, which is not explained with genetics naming a single gene.

• Mutation:

This one is my favorite possibility for the origin of the four-leaf clover. All multi-cellular organisms have some mutation occurring. Mutation is a fun word, but it is a good thing and creates variation within a population. Mutations are “changes to the nucleotide sequence of the genetic material of an organism.” Basically, a mutated organism is just a little different from its fellows. In four-leaf clovers, the mutation is most likely somatic, meaning the mutation occurs in the somatic cells. Somatic mutations in plants
can sometimes be are not passed down to their offspring. They are mutations that occur after the plant is started.

• All of the above:

It is possible that in some specimens of four-leaf clovers, more than one of these factors contributed to the variation.

Good luck with finding the four-leaf clover.  Most people associate the white clover as the true shamrock, although shamrock simply means “little clover”. Other sources say each of the leaves mean something, like hope, faith, love, and happiness.