Tag Archives: US Geological Survey

Art/Sci exhibit in Toronto, Canada: “These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees” June 22 – July 16, 2022

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A “These are a few of Our Favourite Bees” upcoming exhibitions notice on the Campbell House Museum website (also received via email as a June 4, 2022 ArtSci Salon announcement) features a month long exhibit being co-presented with the Canadian Music Centre in Toronto,

Exhibition
Campbell House Museum
June 22 – July 16, 2022
160 Queen Street W.

Opening event
Campbell House,
Saturday July 2,
2 – 4 p.m. [ET]

Artists’ Talk & Webcast
The Canadian Music Centre,
20 St. Joseph Street Toronto
Thursday, July 7
7:30 – 9 p.m. [ET]
(doors open 7 pm)

These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees investigates wild, native bees and their ecology through playful dioramas, video, audio, relief print and poetry. Inspired by lambe lambe – South American miniature puppet stages for a single viewer – four distinct dioramas convey surreal yet enlightening worlds where bees lounge in cozy environs, animals watch educational films [emphasis mine] and ethereal sounds animate bowls of berries (having been pollinated by their diverse bee visitors). Displays reminiscent of natural history museums invite close inspection, revealing minutiae of these tiny, diverse animals, our native bees. From thumb-sized to extremely tiny, fuzzy to hairless, black, yellow, red or emerald green, each native bee tells a story while her actions create the fruits of pollination, reflecting the perpetual dance of animals, plants and planet. With a special appearance by Toronto’s official bee, the jewelled green sweat bee, Agapostemon virescens!

These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees Collective are: Sarah Peebles, Ele Willoughby, Rob Cruickshank & Stephen Humphrey

 The Works

These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees

Sarah Peebles, Ele Willoughby, Rob Cruickshank & Stephen Humphrey

Single-viewer box theatres, dioramas, sculpture, textile art, macro video, audio transducers, poetry, insect specimens, relief print, objects, electronics, colour-coded DNA barcodes.

Bees represented: rusty-patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis); jewelled green sweat bee (Agapostemon virescens); masked sweat bee (Hylaeus annulatus); leafcutter bee (Megachile relativa)

In the Landscape

Ele Willoughby & Sarah Peebles

paper, relief print, video projection, audio, audio cable, mixed media

Bee specimens & bee barcodes generously provided by Laurence Packer – Packer Lab, York University; Scott MacIvor – BUGS Lab, U-T [University of Toronto] Scarborough; Sam Droege – USGS [US Geological Survey]; Barcode of Life Data Systems; Antonia Guidotti, Department of Natural History, Royal Ontario Museum

In addition to watching television, animals have been known to interact with touchscreen computers as mentioned in my June 24, 2016 posting, “Animal technology: a touchscreen for your dog, sonar lunch orders for dolphins, and more.”

The “These are a few of Our Favourite Bees” upcoming exhibitions notice features this artist statement for a third piece, “Without A Bee, It Would Not Be” by Tracey Lawko,

In May, my crabapple tree blooms. In August, I pick the ripe crabapples. In September, I make jelly. Then I have breakfast. This would not be without a bee.

It could not be without a bee. The fruit and vegetables I enjoy eating, as well as the roses I admire as centrepieces, all depend on pollination.

Our native pollinators and their habitat are threatened.  Insect populations are declining due to habitat loss, pesticide use, disease and climate change. 75% of flowering plants rely on pollinators to set seed and we humans get one-third of our food from flowering plants.

I invite you to enter this beautiful dining room and consider the importance of pollinators to the enjoyment of your next meal.

Bio

Tracey Lawko employs contemporary textile techniques to showcase changes in our environment. Building on a base of traditional hand-embroidery, free-motion longarm stitching and a love of drawing, her representational work is detailed and “drawn with thread”. Her nature studies draw attention to our native pollinators as she observes them around her studio in the Niagara Escarpment. Many are stitched using a centuries-old, three-dimensional technique called “Stumpwork”.

Tracey’s extensive exhibition history includes solo exhibitions at leading commercial galleries and public museums. Her work has been selected for major North American and International exhibitions, including the Concours International des Mini-Textiles, Musée Jean Lurçat, France, and is held in the permanent collection of the US National Quilt Museum and in private collections in North America and Europe.

Bzzz!

PrepareAthon and ShakeOut! Get ready for disaster

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PrepareAthon

A Sept. 28, 2015 “prepareathon” notice came courtesy of the US Geological Survey (USGS). While this particular programme is US-centric (their ShakeOut mentioned later in this post is international in scope), sign-up or registration is not required and there is good general information about how to prepare and what to do in a variety of disaster-scenarios on the Hazards page of their website.  For those who can participate, here’s more,

Science Feature: Join America’s PrepareAthon!
Practice what to do in the event of a disaster or emergency.

Join millions of people participating in America’s PrepareAthon! on Sept. 30. This campaign encourages the nation to conduct drills, discussions and exercises to practice what to do before, during and after a disaster or emergency strikes.

The campaign will focus on preparing for floods, wildfires, hurricanes and power outages. Each year, the campaign holds two national days of action, with each day highlighting different hazards. This is the second national day of action this year.

Start with Science

USGS science is essential to understanding a wide range of hazards—including volcanoes, landslides, wildlife health and many others beyond this specific campaign—and provides a basis on which preparedness actions are developed.

USGS real-time monitoring of the nation’s rivers and streams provides officials with critical information for flood warnings, forecasts and evacuation warnings.

Before, during and after wildfire disasters, the USGS provides tools to identify wildfire risks and reduce subsequent hazards, such as landslides. USGS scientists also provide real-time maps and satellite imagery to firefighters.

For major storms or hurricanes, USGS science helps forecast the likelihood of coastal impacts. The USGS also measures storm surge and monitors water levels of inland rivers and streams.

Power outages can have many causes, including geomagnetic storms that result from the dynamic interaction of solar wind and the Earth’s magnetic field. The USGS operates a unique network of observatories that provide real-time data on magnetic storm conditions.

Coordination and Community

America’s PrepareAthon! is part of President Obama’s Presidential Policy Directive 8: National Preparedness and led by The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The USGS is one of many supporting and contributing agencies. This campaign is coordinated with federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments, the private sector and non-governmental organizations.

ShakeOut

The same Sept. 28, 2015 USGS notice includes some information about a “ShakeOut” (of particular interest to someone who lives in what’s known as the Ring of Fire or less colourfully as the circum-Pacific Belt earthquake/volcanic zone [Wikipedia entry]). This is an international (Japan, Italy, Canada, and others in addition to the US) event,

Get Ready to ShakeOut on October 15

Sign up for the next Great ShakeOut earthquake drill on October 15, 2015, and practice “drop, cover, and hold on,” the recommended safety action to take during an earthquake.

You can check out your state, province, or country, as I did for British Columbia (Canada). Here’s what I found,

On October 15* [2015], officially “ShakeOut BC Day,” millions of people worldwide will practice how to Drop, Cover, and Hold On at 10:15 a.m. during Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drills!

British Columbians can join by registering for the 2015 Great British Columbia ShakeOut.

The page hosts an embedded video and it’s available en français. It also offers these statistics: 610,000 have already signed up the 2015 event; last year (2014), there were over 740,000 participants.

Cleaning up water polluted by agricultural fertilizers

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Researchers at Rice University (Texas, US) have announced a new catalyst for cleaning nitrites from water polluted by agricultural fertilizers (from the Rice University November 25, 2013 news release ,[also on EurekAlert]),

Chemical engineers at Rice University have found a new catalyst that can rapidly break down nitrites, a common and harmful contaminant in drinking water that often results from overuse of agricultural fertilizers.

Nitrites and their more abundant cousins, nitrates, are inorganic compounds that are often found in both groundwater and surface water. The compounds are a health hazard, and the Environmental Protection Agency places strict limits on the amount of nitrates and nitrites in drinking water. While it’s possible to remove nitrates and nitrites from water with filters and resins, the process can be prohibitively expensive.

There is a map illustrating the problem,

CAPTION: Many areas of the United States are at risk of contamination of drinking water by nitrates and nitrites due to overuse of agricultural fertilizers. CREDIT: USGS

CAPTION: Many areas of the United States are at risk of contamination of drinking water by nitrates and nitrites due to overuse of agricultural fertilizers.
CREDIT: USGS Courtesy: Rice University

Here’s more about these new catalysts designed to ‘scrub’ water clean (from the news release; Note: Links have been removed),

.. Michael Wong, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice and the lead researcher on the new study [says] “Our group has studied engineered gold and palladium nanocatalysts for several years. We’ve tested these against chlorinated solvents for almost a decade and in looking for other potential uses for these we stumbled onto some studies about palladium catalysts being used to treat nitrates and nitrites; so we decided to do a comparison.”

Catalysts are the matchmakers of the molecular world: They cause other compounds to react with one another, often by bringing them into close proximity, but the catalysts are not consumed by the reaction.

In a new paper in the journal Nanoscale, Wong’s team showed that engineered nanoparticles of gold and palladium were several times more efficient at breaking down nitrites than any previously studied catalysts. The particles, which were invented at Wong’s Catalysis and Nanomaterials Laboratory, consist of a solid gold core that’s partially covered with palladium.

Over the past decade, Wong’s team has found these gold-palladium composites have faster reaction times for breaking down chlorinated pollutants than do any other known catalysts. He said the same proved true for nitrites, for reasons that are still unknown.

“There’s no chlorine in these compounds, so the chemistry is completely different,” Wong said. “It’s not yet clear how the gold and palladium work together to boost the reaction time in nitrites and why reaction efficiency spiked when the nanoparticles had about 80 percent palladium coverage. We have several hypotheses we are testing out now. ”

He said that gold-palladium nanocatalysts with the optimal formulation were about 15 times more efficient at breaking down nitrites than were pure palladium nanocatalysts, and about 7 1/2 times more efficient than catalysts made of palladium and aluminum oxide.

I gather this team will be doing more work before promoting the use of gold-palladium nanocatalysts (from the news release),

Wong said he can envision using the gold-palladium catalysts in a small filtration unit that could be attached to a water tap, but only if the team finds a similarly efficient catalyst for breaking down nitrates, which are even more abundant pollutants than nitrites.

“Nitrites form wherever you have nitrates, which are really the root of the problem,” Wong said. “We’re actively studying a number of candidates for degrading nitrates now, and we have some positive leads.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Supporting palladium metal on gold nanoparticles improves its catalysis for nitrite reduction by Huifeng Qian, Zhun Zhao, Juan C. Velazquez, Lori A. Pretzer, Kimberly N. Hecka and Michael S. Wong. Nanoscale, 2014, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C3NR04540D First published online 30 Oct 2013

This paper is behind a paywall.

University of Missouri and the US Geological survey study carbon nanotubes in aquatic environments

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The University of Missouri’s Aug. 22, 2012 news release (by Timothy Wall) announces the result of a carbon nanotube study in aquatic environments,

A joint study by the University of Missouri and United States Geological Survey found that they [carbon nanotubes or CNTs] can be toxic to aquatic animals. The researchers urge that care be taken to prevent the release of CNTs into the environment as the materials enter mass production.

“The great promise of carbon nanotubes must be balanced with caution and preparation,” said Baolin Deng, professor and chair of chemical engineering at the University of Missouri. “We don’t know enough about their effects on the environment and human health. The EPA and other regulatory groups need more studies like ours to provide information on the safety of CNTs.”

CNTs are microscopically thin cylinders of carbon atoms that can be hundreds of millions of times longer than they are wide, but they are not pure carbon. Nickel, chromium and other metals used in the manufacturing process can remain as impurities. Deng and his colleagues found that these metals and the CNTs themselves can reduce the growth rates or even kill some species of aquatic organisms. The four species used in the experiment were mussels (Villosa iris), small flies’ larvae (Chironomus dilutus), worms (Lumbriculus variegatus) and crustaceans (Hyalella azteca).

“One of the greatest possibilities of contamination of the environment by CNTs comes during the manufacture of composite materials,” said Hao Li, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at MU. “Good waste management and handling procedures can minimize this risk. Also, to control long-term risks, we need to understand what happens when these composite materials break down.”

I found the abstract for the team’s paper gave a good overview of how the research was conducted,

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are hydrophobic in nature and thus tend to accumulate in sediments if released into aquatic environments. As part of our overall effort to examine the toxicity of carbon-based nanomaterials to sediment-dwelling invertebrates, we have evaluated the toxicity of different types of CNTs in 14-d water-only exposures to an amphipod (Hyalella azteca), a midge (Chironomus dilutus), an oligochaete (Lumbriculus variegatus), and a mussel (Villosa iris) in advance of conducting whole-sediment toxicity tests with CNTs. The results of these toxicity tests conducted with CNTs added to water showed that 1.00 g/L (dry wt) of commercial sources of CNTs significantly reduced the survival or growth of the invertebrates. Toxicity was influenced by the type and source of the CNTs, by whether the materials were precleaned by acid, by whether sonication was used to disperse the materials, and by species of the test organisms. Light and electron microscope imaging of the surviving test organisms showed the presence of CNTs in the gut as well as on the outer surface of the test organisms, although no evidence was observed to show penetration of CNTs through cell membranes. The present study demonstrated that both the metals solubilized from CNTs such as nickel and the “metal-free” CNTs contributed to the toxicity.

Here’s the full citation and a link to the paper,

Toxicity of carbon nanotubes to freshwater aquatic invertebrates by Joseph N. Mwangi, Ning Wang, Christopher G. Ingersoll, Doug K. Hardesty, Eric L. Brunson, Hao Li, and Baolin Deng in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Volume 31, Issue 8, pages 1823–1830, August 2012

For anyone who’s curious about what carbon nanotubes look like, here’s an image provided by the University of MIssouri,

Carbon Nanotubes Credit: Shaddack, Wikimedia Commons
Multi-walled carbon nanotubes. 3-15 walls, mean inner diameter 4nm, mean outer diameter 13-16 nm, length 1-10+ micrometers. Black clumpy powder, grains shown, partially smeared on paper. Scale in centimeters.

I could have included a larger version of the image but, given that we’re talking about the nanoscale, the smaller image seems more appropriate.