Living Lab

Here's your science factoid of the day: male Atlantic cod grunt during spawning season. It may sound like useless trivia, but that behavior could help fishery managers better protect cod stocks.

Underwater microphones - hydrophones - installed along the shipping channels leading into Boston already listen for right whales and automatically alert nearby vessels in real time. In fact, you can even get that information on your iPhone.

Now, a new study demonstrates the ability to use a similar method of passive acoustic monitoring to locate aggregations of spawning cod, known as haystacks.

Back in June, I spoke with Whitney Bernstein and Michael McMahon about their nascent artist-scientist collaborative, Synergy. The project has now reached fruition; eight artist-scientist teams have produced science-inspired works of art that will be shown at Boston's Museum of Science starting February 16th.

The exhibit spans media from music to abstract video, from sculpture to painting. Each work of art is as unique as the artist-scientist team that came together to create it.

There’s nothing new about tension between New England’s fishermen and the scientists and regulators who oversee their industry. But the situation has reached fever pitch in the past two years, in large part due to a federally mandated deadline to end overfishing and the introduction of a new management scheme, known as catch shares, in which a total catch limit is set and the catch is divvied up among eligible fishermen.

I feel like I'm becoming a broken record. Each week, my guests wow me with just how little we know about their chosen field. Today, it was the diversity of life on Earth. Earlier this year, Encyclopedia of Life (EOL.org) passed the one million page mark. While that's impressive, it's nowhere close to the project's goal of one page for every species on Earth. In fact, Nathan Wilson, technical director for EOL.org and a curator on the site, says we don't even have a good handle on how many species there are on Earth.

Dust is unsightly, a sign of poor housekeeping, perhaps. But toxic? Unfortunately, yes.

In 2003, researchers from Massachusetts-based Silent Spring Institute sampled dust from 120 homes on Cape Cod looking for hormone-like chemicals known as endocrine disruptors. They followed that up with a study of 50 homes in California. In both cases, they found what they were looking for.

One of the chemicals they found in high levels was a banned flame retardant called PBDE. So they went back, again, to look for other flame retardants in those California homes. And, again, they found what they were looking for in abundance. One class of flame retardants, known as chlorinated Tris compounds, made up as much as 0.1% of dust. That's a lot for a single chemical.

Oceans cover three quarters of the Earth’s surface, so it’s no surprise that three quarters of volcanic activity happens on the sea floor. Understanding those volcanoes has ramifications for everything from climate science to the evolution of life. But studying volcanoes covered, in some cases, by miles of water is no mean feat. So it’s also no surprise that there are still plenty of discoveries yet to be made and questions remaining to be answered.

While conversations about climate change typically focus on cars or power plants, the food we eat is a major factor that often flies under the radar. Food - it's production, processing, and transport - accounts for nearly a third of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The irony is that putting a dent in that portion of our carbon footprint could be fairly simple. If everyone in the U.S. avoided meat and dairy one day a week for a year, it would be the carbon-cutting equivalent of taking 7.6 million cars off the road. On the other hand, since transportation actually accounts for just 2% of food-related emissions, eating locally may not be the climate panacea some have made out.

You've no doubt heard of the butterfly effect. Well, Gareth Lawson of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has his own version: the sea butterfly effect. As carbon dioxide emissions build up in the atmosphere, some of it is absorbed by the ocean, where it turns to acid - a phenomenon known as ocean acidification.

Among those who make a living communicating science to the public, there are two main groups. There are those who began as writers, journalists, film makers, what have you, and somewhere along the way discovered a particular affinity for the subject of science. Increasingly, though, there’s a second group who received formal training in science, may even have made a career as a scientist, but somewhere along the way discovered that research wasn’t quite the right fit and instead turned to telling the stories of science.

Hurricane Sandy couldn't have been more appropriately named. With storm surges of 3-6 feet around the Cape and Islands, and up to 12 feet along the Jersey Shore, coastal erosion is one after-effect that communities in Sandy's path will be wrestling with even after the power is back on.

Oceans cover three quarters of the Earth's surface. Those vast waters provide food, enable global shipping and drive the global climate. They could also provide much of the world's electricity needs. Waves, tides, even differences in salinity and temperature, are all potential sources of energy. The trick is harnessing that power.

While it may not be the issue that decides elections, funding for scientific research is a fundamentally political beast. Take, for example, President George W. Bush's 2004 manned space exploration initiative - an overhaul of NASA's priorities aimed at putting American men and women back on the moon and, eventually, on Mars. Or there's Sarah Palin's somewhat notorious comments during the 2008 presidential campaign mocking biomedical research using fruit flies and calling it a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Plants and photosynthetic bacteria sustain much of life on Earth. They form the base of food chains both on land and in the ocean, and they produce the oxygen we breathe. Indeed, when the first photosynthetic algae arose some 3 billion years ago, they fundamentally changed our planet — breathing oxygen into the atmosphere and paving the way for life as we know it today.

While photosynthesis is typically covered in elementary and high school science classes, studies have shown that even the most fundamental facts are often forgotten quickly. In contrast, the books we read as children sometimes stay with us for a lifetime.

I've read my fair share of science books and field blogs and talked to more than a few scientists. In most cases, I hear their stories and think "Cool! I want to do that!" In a few other cases, I think "That's hardcore, but I could probably handle it." As I read Ben Linhoff's Following the Ice blog this summer (and re-read it last night), all I could think is "That guy is crazy. I never want to camp next to a glacier in Greenland for three months." I'll moderate that a bit now that I've met Ben. He isn't crazy. But I still never want to camp next to a glacier in Greenland for 3 straight months. I'm certainly glad Ben is willing to, though, because his research is important.

It’s been said so many times, it’s hard to even find an original source. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but not her own facts.

When it comes to climate change, though, there seem to be two versions of the facts – the Democratic and the Republican.

When I first met Ari Daniel Shapiro, he was a college student spending a summer doing research here in Woods Hole. He subsequently returned and earned a Ph.D. from the M.I.T.-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program. As he was finishing his dissertation on killer whale behavior, though, he realized his heart wasn't fully in the research. Instead, he decided to try radio. And am I ever glad he did. He's now an independent radio producer and science reporter for PRI's The World. I'm a big fan of Ari's work, so I was looking forward to talking with him about making the transition from research to reporting (something I, myself, also did) and about the radio producers who influence and inspire him.

Unfortunately, our conversation was interrupted by technical difficulties.

What is a human life worth? That’s really the question at the heart of a controversy brewing over aerial pesticide spraying to kill mosquitos that may carry the viruses responsible for West Nile or Eastern Equine Encephalitis, known as EEE or triple-E.

WGBH science editor Heather Goldstone, best known as the brains behind the Climatide blog, has launched a new show and blog. Climatide focused on how climate change is affecting Cape Cod. Living Lab expands on that theme and takes a broader look at the role that science and scientists play in our daily lives. We asked her to explain.

Imagine this: your spouse (best friend, sibling) has just been in a bad car accident. You rush to the hospital and pounce on the doctor.

The local science institutions have been brimming with news lately. We'll do this rundown in geographical order, starting on the outermost tip of the Cape and working our way back.

What do you get when you cross a short, fat lamp with a tall, skinny lamp? Nothing, silly, lamps can't breed ... until now. 

There's been a rise in shark sightings on the Cape this summer — drawn not by humans in the water (pace "Jaws") but by an abundant population of seals. So ... can we drive away the sharks by culling the seals? As WGBH science editor Heather Goldstone told Bob Seay, it's not the first time marine experts have proposed this strategy.

If last week was all about Mars, this week is all about the ocean.

The top story is a new Ocean Health Index. An international team of scientists (including Scott Doney of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution .. working on getting him on Living Lab in the next few weeks) evaluated 171 coastal areas around the globe on the grounds of ten human goals - things like fishing opportunities, clean water, food provision, and sense of place. When the task of boiling the immense complexity of ocean ecology down to a single number was complete, the result was .. drumroll, please .. 60 out of a possible 100. We've all been to school and can do the translation. That's barely a passing grade. So plenty of room for improvement.

News of a “rust tide” in Buzzards Bay made headlines earlier this week. Reading a handful of the stories left me with an incomplete and jumbled picture of what’s going on. Is "rust tide" just another way of saying red tide? Is it or isn't it "dangerous," as some headlines proclaimed? To get some answers, I got in touch with Dr. Don Anderson, a harmful algae expert at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Here’s the skinny:

Dr. Jesse Ausubel is Director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, a Vice President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and an adjunct scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He received the Blue Frontier/Peter Benchley prize for ocean science in 2010 and shared the 2011 International Cosmos Prize. He joined me for a conversation about climate change, population growth, and the human capacity for innovating our way out of our most pressing problems.

I don't know about you, but I've got a bit of Olympic fever. While most of us are focusing on whether the U.S. can get more medals than China, Mass Sierra Club and Environmental Entrepreneurs have been taking stock of how Massachusetts stacks up against the competition when it comes to climate and environmental policies.

There's nothing like a bird's-eye view to really put big events into perspective...or is there?

On the heels of a giant iceberg that broke off Greenland's Petermann glacier, NASA last week announced thatsatellites had observed unprecedented melting all over Greenland's ice sheets.

Mark Tercek is CEO of The Nature Conservancy. But he hasn't always been an environmentalist. In 2008, he left his job as a managing director at Goldman Sachs to lead the Conservancy. He joined me to talk about that transition, and about his controversial vision for a more inclusive environmental movement that brings together businesses, environmentalists, and citizens.

Greg Poulos captured this, and several other dramatic images, of a thunderstorm approaching an outer Cape beach last week. I loved the almost tropical colors and all of the not-quite-parallel lines.