Our Own Little Solar Farm

For those living in Columbia who venture over to West Ash Street once in a while, you may have noticed a curious property that sits across the street from the rear fence of Shelter Gardens. There, in the midst of mall-area hustle and bustle is an open grassy expanse. And nestled into one corner of this city-owned field are two solar panels. There is a sign that reads 'Columbia Solar Initiative' or 'Columbia Solar Plant' or some such thing. Avid readers of this blog (a joke of course...I'm not entirely sure I have a single reader, let alone avid readers) will know by now that I have a particular interest in renewable energy and climate change, and so this strange property has always fascinated me. Why did the city plop two solar panels in the middle of Columbia-proper? Why are there only two solar panels in an area that could hold dozens? Why are they hidden in the corner? I've pondered these questions for months now, and as it turns out, so have the semi-competent reporters at the Columbia Missourian.

An article appearing in the Missourian in early 2008 indicates that Dow Chemical Co received a small grant to undertake feasibility studies of integrating solar energy into city power grids. So Dow partnered with the City of Columbia, and with the help of Missouri Solar Applications, built a rather puny 'solar power plant.' In another article later that same year, the Missourian reported that the city had begun selling power to residential households for a somewhat nominal fee. The project, which goes by the name of Solar One, allows a small number of Columbia residents to receive a portion of their energy from the source on West Ash, along with energy purchased by the city from a small array of solar panels on the roof of the Quaker Oats facility on Highway B. According to their website, it is anticipated that the project will continue to grow as other businesses add solar collection capabilities, after which the city will purchase a portion of the energy produced and distribute it to subscribing residents. If you're interested and would like to know more about this project, there's a pretty good video that can be found here.

After learning about the project, I'm pretty excited about it and I hope that they're able to meet their goal of producing 1% of Columbia's entire energy portfolio from solar by 2023. But their goal, while I'm sure is substantial and probably quite a challenge, seems a bit meager to me. Rather than relying on purchasing power from local residents, it seems like the city might be better off requesting funding via grants and other sources to expand their own solar power capabilities. I realize that the panels and auxiliary equipment are quite expensive, but the ideal vision that I see for Columbia's future is to turn the property on West Ash into a fully functioning solar farm, filled corner to corner with solar panel arrays. I can think of other city-owned locations where solar panels could be erected, too. Sure, 1% is great, but let's shoot for 10%...20%...50%. Go big or go home!

I know this won't happen anytime soon, but as the technology becomes cheaper and simultaneously more efficient, it could happen sooner than most of us think. In fact, I think I'll keep an eye on the West Ash Street property for signs of construction. Who knows, maybe the folks at Solar One and I are on the same page.

Sure, Things Are Bad. But They Could Be A Lot Worse.

Today I think I'll mention a few important points in the news. First of all, if you haven't heard about the results of the Cop15 climate conference, and are interested in such matters, it's worth noting that what came out of the summit was the framework of an international non-binding treaty. I know that combining terms like 'non-binding' and 'treaty' sounds a little oxymoronic, and I find myself thinking 'what's the point?' But the point is this: like the health care reform bill that is being worked over by the House and Senate, a non-binding treaty is still a legal deal that can be refined and added to over time. It's a start (sort of), and that's what we should focus on. According to a brief article on ScienceNews.org, the Copenhagen Accord will establish, among other things, a trust fund that will be financed by industrialized nations to provide monetary aid to poorer nations to help them cope with the effects of climate change, and is a much needed continuation of the Kyoto Protocol. I, personally, am not happy with it, but I'm glad that it's been drafted.

In other news, in the aftermath of the earthquake that absolutely devastated Haiti, I've been hearing lots of stories - mostly on NPR, because I'm a total public radio nerd - about the slowness of aid coming from the US. Here's one such story that I found with a quick Google search. I agree that the US was beginning to look a bit unconcerned about the people of Haiti, considering that at the time when aid workers from Venezuela, China, France, and Iceland were already touching down at the Port au Prince airport, the only thing we had done was send a military plane over the country to examine the destruction and plan what to do. However, in the last 24 hours or so, the US has been able to mobilize or is preparing to mobilize a fairly impressive armada. Popular Mechanics has broken down the rescue effort quite nicely, which will include four Coast Guard Cutters, a C-130 cargo plane with aid supplies and personnel, flocks of urban rescue teams, an 894-foot Navy hospital ship, and the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson. The most important thing to consider here is that this appears to be a well thought-out support plan. The ships and plane should be able to reach their targets quickly and the Coast Guard cutters contain desalinization equipment, providing the clean water that will be needed to stave off diseases like dysentery. In general, I'm please with the US government's actions. Although they were somewhat sluggish, I think the aid workers and supplies that reach Haiti will be effective, and problems that plagued Katrina relief will be avoided. Mainly, I'm thinking of the horror stories about aid workers reaching New Orleans and not having supplies or not being allowed into the city. And I hope that, as disaster relief reaches full force, history will show that the United States was responsible for an effective response to the earthquake in Haiti.

But time will tell.

The Triumphant Return of the Cellular Biosensor

Cell-based biosensors kind of get a bad rap. And the reason for this is pretty simple: cells die. They're delicate little creatures that have to be continually monitored and cared for. And, when used as the basis of a sensing technique, if your cells die, your sensor doesn't work. That's why most sensing schemes use more hearty methods, such as antibodies or synthetic receptors or chemical reactions. This is the reason that I was surprised to see a cell-based sensor grabbing lots of attention in the media recently. In fact, I picked up the story initially from BBC news, but found via a quick internet search that the story had been published on news websites ranging from Science Daily to the India Report.

At any rate, the rationale behind the study was to examine the way in which a popular drug for treatment of schizophrenia works. It is known that the drug causes an increase in production of acetylcholine, but it had also been shown to block the receptors for acetylcholine. Without knowing which dichotomous action was prevailing within the interior of cells, it was impossible to deduce the action of the drug on the brain.

The research team then devised a cell-based biosensor to study the exact effect that the drug had on cells in the brain. The group began with embryonic kidney cells and genetically modified them so that the receptor for acetylcholine was directly coupled with a common G-protein downsteam intracellular signaling cascade. This cascade was then linked to calcium ion upregulation, which activated a calcium-sensitive fluorescent reporter. The fluorescent reporter, then, was fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based, meaning that it consisted of two distinct fluorescent molecules. When exposed to calcium, the two fluorescent molecules move closer together, causing one of the molecules to donate more energy to the other, producing a visible color change. This means that when the cells bind acetylcholine, they produce calcium, which causes the color of their fluorescence to shift. When these cells were implanted into rat brains and the rats exposed to the schizophrenia drug, they found no change in the fluorescence of the sensor cells, meaning that the receptor blocking activity of the drug was its primary function.

At least, all this is what I gathered from their most recent publication in Nature. There you can take a look at the team's data as well as a more detailed description of their methods. Really, this is pretty exciting stuff. Utilizing cellular biosensors in this way could be a major player in future drug discovery research. No more guessing as to the function of drugs based on studies on cells in a petri dish. Implant the genetically modified sensor cells, give the rat the drug, and visually see the effect that the drug has on the cells.

Second Place Is Still a Podium Finish

After what seemed to be a too-short holiday vacation, I'm back in the laboratory making science happen. And of course that means that I'm also back in the office trying to find cool stuff to post on this blog. When I was looking around on Sciencenews.org this morning, the featured story, which I would definitely consider 'cool stuff,' was about the possibility of dark matter being detected from a mine in Minnesota. However, when I returned to the website this afternoon, the feature had changed to the recently released videos from the Cassini probe that is currently studying Saturn. Images sent back to Earth by the probe have been converted into short movies showing some of the notable events of Saturn's moons under the backdrop of Saturn and its rings by the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS). The videos are pretty amazing.

Now, back to the original story that I found. Dark matter has been the focus of much research recently, with the main goal being to physically detect it (or at least its presence). A group of researchers, many of whom hailed from Fermilab, built a detector that would identify the presence of a particular type of dark matter called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). It was thought that the WIMPs would occasionally pass through the detector, vibrationally exciting the Germanium nuclei within, creating an observable signal transduction event. Analysis of such events have resulted in the tentative conclusion that WIMPs are responsible for the signals, although there is a 23% chance that the signals were instead from background radiation within the mine.

Although their conclusions are somewhat premature, we should probably give this research group some slack considering the signal transduction events are extremely rare (it is thought that, at most, a WIMP would contact the detector once or twice a year). Also, it's exciting to see big news like this coming out of Fermilab. They have, after all, been upstaged by CERN's particle accelerator, the LHC. You'll remember that in a previous post, I mentioned that the LHC had reached a power of 1.18 trillion electronvolts, making it the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world. That title was stripped from Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator, which had held the record of being the largest and most powerful accelerator since it became operational in 1983. The machine has also led to major discoveries of elementary particles during its lifetime that have come to be staples of subatomic physics research and education. Despite its rich history, however, the Tevatron must soon go the way of Old Yeller. Because even though second place is a podium finish, in the world of particle accelerators it just means that you're obsolete. So Fermilab is in the process of shutting down their landmark accelerator.

And with New Year's eve right around the corner, it may be appropriate to raise our glasses to the Tevatron, for its many years of proud service.

They're Just Really Big Cameras, Really

The big news yesterday concerned the launch of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It was such big news that it was one of the featured stories on Yahoo!'s homepage. Also, CBS News has a pretty great story on the whole affair, which you can find here.

In essence, the thing is going to circle the planet over our heads for a few months, constantly snapping pictures, until it has photographed the entire night sky. The really cool thing about this, though, is that it will be doing so pretty far out into the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum rather than in the visible wavelength range. Why is this cool? Well, we can see lots of neat heavenly bodies with telescopes here on Earth and with those outside the atmosphere, like the Hubble, but we're only seeing objects that emit a lot of light, mostly in the UV, visible, and near-infrared range. The WISE craft will be taking images in the wavelenth range of 3.4 - 22 micron, and with unprecedented clarity. What this means is that the craft will be able to image things that don't necessarily emit visible light, but instead emit heat. So it is expected that many undiscovered objects will be found, such as asteroids, failed stars, and planets, just to name a few. And it's going to do this for the entire night sky, as observed from Earth.

And speaking of infrared imaging of space, things seem to be coming along nicely with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The Webb Telescope is the observatory that is slated to take the place of the Hubble Space Telescope in 2014. It will take over the tasks of the Hubble, but with infrared-optimized equipment. Like the Hubble, it will take pretty pictures of distant extraterrestrial objects, but it will also be capable of analyzing those objects much more thoroughly. In fact, using spectral analysis techniques - sort of like the now-common mass spectroscopy techniques used to determine the chemical make-up of all sorts of things in laboratories all over the world - to examine far-off planets, it is hoped that the Webb scope will be able to find places that could potentially harbor life.

NASA has posted all kinds of interesting facts and information about the upcoming space telescope on their website. However, I would recommend keeping an eye on their YouTube page, which as of right now, has a couple of really great videos. I would imagine, though, that as pieces are developed and assembled and as the telescope begins to take shape, we'll be seeing more videos uploaded. I won't exactly be waiting with bated breat, since I'm going to miss the Hubble (I mean, I kind of feel like we grew up together). But what can I say? The videos are pretty cool.

Climate Change and Cancer Imaging: A Big Week In The World of Science

I know that all eyes are on the Copenhagen Climate Summit, which is indeed a big deal, but that doesn't stop all of those lab coat-clad researchers and scientists from pressing on. Still, if you'd like to stay up-to-date with the latest goings on from the Cop15, you can do so at the Cop15 official website. There you'll find news updates, as well as some great blogs dedicated to keeping up with the events of this monumental summit. I personally will be keeping my ear to the ground as the meeting proceeds, and although my hopes are high for swift and firm action on curbing our negative impact on the environment and I know that I'm bound to be disappointed, I'm just excited to see the meeting draw such attention from the media. After all, the more time the Cop15 gets in the news, the more John D. down the street, who could care less about climate change, is exposed to it. And this generally translates to a populace that is more knowledgeable, and hopefully, more mindful of our effects on the planet. It's a winning proposition.

Having said that, I couldn't resist posting this video that I found on the Science News website. The video is from a presentation by Erik Sahai, a researcher at the London Research Institute, that was given at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Diego. Although the details of their imaging method are still a bit unclear to me, this research group was able to conclude that signaling by the cytokine TGF-beta is responsible for single-cell metastasis in breast cancer using real-time fluorescence imaging analysis. For clarity, the abstract from the ASCB meeting has been quoted below:

Imaging the metastatic process E. Sahai1; S. Giampieri1 1. Tumour Cell Biology Laboratory, Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, London, United Kingdom.

Cancer cells can invade surrounding tissue either as single cells or in collective units. We use intravital imaging to demonstrate a reversible transition to a motile state as breast cancer cells spread. Imaging primary tumours reveals heterogeneity in cell morphology and motility. Two distinct modes of motility are observed: collective and single-celled. By monitoring the localisation of Smad2 and the activity of a TGFβ-dependent reporter gene during breast cancer cell dissemination we demonstrate that TGFβ signalling is transiently and locally activated in motile single cells. TGFβ1 switches cells from cohesive to single cell motility through a transcriptional programme involving Smad4, EGFR, Nedd9, and numerous regulators of actomyosin contraction: M-RIP, FARP and RhoC. In contrast, different regulators of the actomyosin cytoskeleton are used during collective invasion. Blockade of TGFβ signalling prevents cells moving singly in vivo but does not inhibit cells moving collectively. Cells restricted to collective invasion are capable of lymphatic invasion but not blood-borne metastasis. Constitutive TGFβ signalling promotes single cell motility and intravasation but reduces subsequent growth in the lungs. Thus, transient TGFβ signalling is optimal for blood-borne metastasis.

If, like me, you didn't totally understand every single little tiny syllable of the abstract, have no fear. Without knowing all of the background of the project, the video is still pretty cool. And the caption explains a lot. And so, without further ado, I give you a rare look at the process of cancer metastasis:

How cancer cells move and spread from Science News on Vimeo.

Breast cancer cells (shown in green) individually peel off from the main tumor when they get a "go" signal from a type of growth factor called TGF-beta. Cells can also move in clumps, but that migration is not controlled by TGF-beta, shows a new study presented at the American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting. Immune cells called macrophages are shown in red and connective tissue appears in cyan and magenta.

Credit: Erik Sahai - Cancer Research UK

Let's Smash Some Stuff! Update Style!

While I'm on this breaking news kick, I thought I would provide an exciting update on the news from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). As of yesterday, the world's largest man-made particle accelerator revved up its opposing proton beams to 1.18 trillion electronvolts. This makes it not only the largest, but also the most high-energy accelerator ever constructed.

I don't think I need to, but I'm going to say it again: how freakin' cool is that?!