A quick glance at this category shows that most of the posts relate to space (space! w00t!), evolution, gadgets (gadgets! w00t!), and a smattering of geeky in-jokes. And while I may not have put topics such as Bird Flu under this category, I’ve definitely blogged about various environmental and epidemiological topics as well.
In these outlying cases, it’s been because the politics surrounding the story was, from my perspective, more consequential than the science content; 30-second science blogging came about as a way to provide short-form link blogging on random science and technology tidbits that simply struck my fancy. No politics, and little-to-no commentary beyond a usual summation of “How cool is that?”
But today’s link isn’t about gee-whiz, where’s my flying car tech or science. It’s a piece in Science News Online about what is being called “Colony Collapse Disorder” – mass die-offs of honeybee colonies.
I’ve been following the whole story with more than a little personal interest – my dad is a beekeeper. Not on a large scale, mind you – I think at his largest, he’s had maybe two- or three-dozen hives going. It’s been a long time since I put on a bee veil and fired up a smoker, but I have a fair amount of first-hand knowledge about the ins and outs of hive ecology, and the Science News Online piece does an excellent job covering some of the current research on CCD:
It’s a good mystery all right, with any number of hypothetical culprits: mites, bad bee food, cell phones, bee AIDS, pesticides, genetically modified (GM) crops, overwork. Jeff Pettis, based in Beltsville, Md., as head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s network of laboratories devoted to bees, even suggested to the Washington Post that bees had worn themselves out making crop circles, thus explaining two mysteries at once.
Joking aside, Pettis, his government-bee-lab colleagues, Lipkin, and other researchers have been working in earnest on the problem. So far, they’ve eliminated several hypotheses. Now, they’re mixing old-fashioned case study epidemiology with modern genetics. It now looks, says Pettis, as if “more than one factor may be coming together” in the mystery of the missing honeybees.
[...]
As news spread about the trouble last winter, bells rang for memories of past cases of honeybee-hive disasters, says Jay Evans of USDA’s Beltsville, Md., bee lab. He cites a 1975 paper titled “Disappearing disease of honey bees” in the American Bee Journal. That report cited the paper “Bees evaporated: A new malady” in an issue of Gleanings in Bee Culture from 1897. These old reports raise the possibility that a bee pathogen is always lurking in hives but occasionally flares up in an especially virulent form. “It could be like the Spanish flu,” says Evans. Flu is ever present, but the legendary 1918 epidemic killed an estimated 25 million people worldwide.
I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a ‘How cool is that?’ moment in the piece – it just isn’t that kind of an article. On the other hand, it’s a well-written, sober article highlighting the importance of basic, well-conducted science. And in my book, that’s always cool.
Paddling through the Arboretum would be a lot nicer if SR-520 wasn’t so bloody loud. Note to self: schedule an Arboretum trip during one of the Evergreen Bridge’s inspection days – or when they shut the bridge down because of the Blue Angels.
To get to the Arboretum from where I put in (down by Gasworks Park), one must traverse the Montlake Cut. This was my first time through the cut, and it was… interesting. Talk about a hands-on demonstration of waveforms, harmonic interference, destructive interference, and basic Newtonian physics. The Fremont part of the canal is longer, but I think it’s wider and my impression is that the walls aren’t as steeply-banked; the resultant ride is a lot less hair-raising. Spray skirts are more than just a good idea when passing through the Cut since the probability of water coming over your bow and cockpit approaches 1.
On second thought, ixnay on the U-bley Angels-ay… That’s a lot of motorized traffic that’s going to be passing through the Cut to watch the Angels.
There are a lot of beautiful old wooden cruisers in Seattle.
Let’s see if I have this right: the likelihood of a motorized boat being captained by an inconsiderate asshole appears to be inversely proportional to the size of the boat, with a proportional multiplier for the boat’s horsepower, and an inverse multiplier for the age of the boat. New, small, fast boats? Asshole. Bigger boats? They’ll have a harder time seeing you, but they’re far more likely to be, you know, looking for you in the first place.
Ducklings are funny. And since their swimming motion isn’t really all that different from their walking motion, the way that they deal with lily pads is really funny – sort of a can’t-change-direction, not-really-swimming, not-really-walking kind of thing, with lots of frantic peeping, wing-flapping, and splashing.
Ducks? Less funny. Though the captains are all polite, the tourists… not so much. They enter and leave the lake using a boat ramp just to the East of where I put in, and on a sunny day, it seems like they’re coming and going every five or ten minutes. Yesterday was overcast and breezy with a constant threat of rain, so there were a lot fewer ducks out. Given today’s rain, the lake is probably almost duck-free – but who wants to paddle in the rain (apart from real ducks)?
Seals are really just raccoons with SCUBA gear. I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to having them pop up in Lake Union or Lake Washington…
And I need to get me something like one of these (annoyance warning: embedded YouTube video that plays when the page loads, but at least the volume is low). Otherwise, how will you believe me about the seals? And besides, text-only is boring, boring, boring ;-)
Posted by protected static as random at 12:45 PM UTC
Tonight, the air outside is thick and heavy. Not East Coast urban thick with humidity, but still, for Seattle, this is downright muggy. There is a salt tang to the air, and a whiff of low tide, exposed marine mud cooling and congealing under the night clouds, far from our urban neighborhood yet still making itself known.
Last night we drove down to Portland to visit Indian relatives. Somewhere just outside Tacoma, The Boy announced that he had finished his book, a new (and large, dammit) chapter book that we had foolishly assumed would last us down and back. A hasty tactical withdrawal to the nearest Borders was undertaken, and, armed with our new information about the apparent half-life of a book in the Warriors series, the next two volumes in the series were procured.
This morning consisted largely of family gossip, masala dosa, rassam, and ersatz South Indian coffee, milky and sweet; this afternoon’s salient features were asphalt, gasoline fumes, a multitude of antique cars and street rods, and some spectacular views of (in reverse order) Ranier, St. Helens, and Hood.
Tomorrow we drive up to Bellingham for the day. Tonight, though, I am happy to retreat into an air-conditioned bedroom and pretend that absolutely nothing is on tap for tomorrow.
Posted by protected static as random at 11:32 PM UTC