A bird in the land

Is region’s avian diversity at risk?

By Scott LaFee, Union-Tribune Staff Writer

Monday, April 26, 2010 

 Among its assorted accolades, San Diego can claim to be among the “birdiest” regions in the country, at least according to an annual contest sponsored by the American Birding Association

Last year, for example, San Diego placed second among Pacific coast counties with 260 bird species observed during the three-day competition period, trailing only Los Angeles County with 264 sighted species. The city of San Diego, meanwhile, was listed as the second birdiest coastal metropolis with 198 species, behind only Corpus Christi, Texas, with 217 species. Top three finishes for the county and city are routine.

Of course, winning the title of “birdiest” involves a bit of luck and a lot of field observers, but this region has long enjoyed remarkable and indisputable avian diversity. More than 500 bird species have been sighted and recorded here: natives, migrants and exotics. It’s said no county in the continental United States is home — or at least stopping place — to more kinds of birds.

But that is changing — and mostly for the worse.

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Quake myths rely on cloudy facts

By Scott LaFee, Union-Tribune Staff Writer

Friday, April 9, 2010 

Nancy Huang and her son, James, were driving on state Route 56 toward their Carmel Valley home on March 31 when they noticed some striking cloud patterns set aglow by the setting sun. They snapped a few photos.

“I told James they looked like earthquake clouds,” said Huang, who remembered reports of such clouds appearing just before a major temblor in Sichuan, China, in 2008. “We talked about being prepared for a quake. We made a bet about what might happen next.”

Virtually everybody in San Diego County, if not Southern California, knows what happened next.

Four days after the Huangs’ cloud sighting, a series of quakes struck south of Mexicali, about 110 miles east of San Diego. The largest measured 7.2 in magnitude.

Hundreds of aftershocks followed and continue to occur. Seven have reached magnitude 5 or greater, including a 5.3 quake yesterday at 9:44 a.m.

So, did Huang and her son see earthquake clouds?

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Bathed in birds

Restored water source provides a steady drip of avian diversity

By Scott LaFee

October 19, 2009 

Back in March, when rangers at the Cabrillo National Monument in Point Loma permanently turned off “the drip,” feathers flew.

The drip was a persistently leaky faucet — some say it been that way for decades — that famously attracted flocks of thirsty birds, indigenous and migratory.

The great attraction of the drip, said Phil Unitt, an ornithologist with the San Diego Natural History Museum, was its Point Loma location, the only real coastal promontory between Mexico and the Palos Verdes Peninsula and an obvious rest stop for birds flying south for the winter or back north to spring breeding grounds.

“It’s in a unique position to concentrate migrating birds, especially those that migrate at night and inadvertently stray over the ocean during the night or in the fog,” Unitt said. “Over a wide area, Point Loma is the most conspicuous land a migrating bird might see, so it is inferred that it attracts migrants over a wide area. Once they arrive at Point Loma, a source of water and cover — preferably trees — is going to be what many of them will search for first.”

The migrating birds, of course, attracted birders, who set up lawn chairs, pulled out binoculars and happily admired the variegated parade of warblers, thrushes, towhees, flycatchers, vireos and other species that paused for a drink, bath or rest.

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Many years later, a scourge returns

Post-polio syndrome afflicts many who thought they’d left disease behind

By Scott LaFee

November 16, 2009 

In 1950, when he was 31⁄2 years old, Rick Kneeshaw contracted polio.

Within days, the healthy toddler was crippled, paralysis quickly numbing and immobilizing his left leg, hip and parts of his back. Over the next 12 years, Kneeshaw would endure many operations, each attempting to restore at least partial muscle and nerve function. Between surgeries, Kneeshaw would spend hours in physical therapy, going and growing through countless braces, crutches and other supports.

“By the time I was 16, I figure I’d spent a quarter of my life in hospitals,” he said.

The payoff was partial recovery. He was able to walk without braces or crutches — at least on level surfaces for short distances. “It gave me nighttime mobility at least. I could get out of bed, go to the bathroom. That was something.”

But something changed in 1971. At age 25, Kneeshaw’s joints on his polio-damaged left side began to ache and act up, forcing him to resume wearing a leg brace. He would never again be without it. He took up using crutches again. And in 1984, his right leg — the healthy one — began to progressively weaken. It got to the point where he could only stand for brief periods. He began using a wheelchair.

Kneeshaw knew he had never actually conquered polio, but he thought he had put it behind him. He had moved on, becoming an electrical engineer, marrying, having children. Polio caught up.

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More than just fun and games

Monopoly is subject of academic study

By Scott LaFee, Union-Tribune Staff Writer

October 5, 2009

The world record for the longest game of Monopoly is 70 consecutive days, or roughly 1,680 straight hours of passing the Go square without stopping.

Anybody who has ever played Monopoly knows the feeling. The game can be interminable, with no victor ever seeming to emerge.

That’s a real mathematical possibility, Cornell University researchers said in a new study. They calculate that there’s a 12 percent probability of a simple, two-player game of Monopoly never concluding.

“We mean over an infinite horizon, and not just that the game lasts longer than reasonable players might be willing to play,” said Shane G. Henderson, a Cornell professor and mathematician.

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Remains of the fray

Fossils are an imperfect record of evolution, but they’re still the old standard

By Scott LaFee, Union-Tribune Staff Writer

October 12, 2009

In days before his great opus “On the Origin of Species” would be published and Charles Darwin was fretting.

It wasn’t so much the revolutionary nature of his evolutionary theory. Darwin had spent more than two decades thinking about and refining that idea. It was the state of the fossil record, a foundation upon which everything else rested. In 1859, the fossil record dated back only to the time of the trilobites, hard-shelled marine arthropods that first appeared 540 million years ago.

They were fascinating creatures, and the fossil record was fraught with them. But for Darwin, they weren’t old enough to sufficiently support his argument that modern life had gradually evolved and diversified over the eons.

“Darwin knew that if older fossils were not found, his theory might not hold up,” said David Bottjer, a professor of earth and biological sciences at the University of Southern California. “He was a worried man.”

It all worked out, of course. In the century and a half since “Origins,” the known history of life has been been pushed steadily back as ever-older fossilized organisms were found and identified. The fossil record now dates back to 3.5 billion years. It’s microbial, to be sure, but it’s life.

And it existed. The fossils

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Discovery of antibodies could lead to AIDS vaccine

Team from Scripps helped identify potent new weapons

By Scott LaFee, Union-Tribune Staff Writer

September 4, 2009

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla have helped identify two rare and potent human antibodies against HIV,  the virus that causes AIDS.

Their discovery could finally reveal a chink in the armor of the deadly virus and lead to development of an effective, broad-based AIDS vaccine.

The research will be published in today’s edition of the journal Science. The Scripps team worked with those from the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and biotechnology companies Theraclone Sciences in Seattle and Monogram Biosciences in San Francisco.

Before this latest announcement, only five of these pathogen-busting proteins — called broadly neutralizing antibodies, or bNAbs — had been pinpointed in people. The last finding came more than a decade ago.

Although analysis of the new antibodies is still in its earliest stages, the preliminary findings suggest dramatic potential.

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Hanging on, bearly

South America’s only bear species struggles to avoid extinction

By Scott LaFee, Union-Tribune Staff Writer

September 7, 2009

Unlike some of its ursine cousins, the Andean bear is not one to make a spectacle of itself.

It is not particularly big. An male adult rarely gets much heavier than 400 pounds and 6 feet in length, and females are considerably smaller. By comparison, an adult male polar bear typically exceeds 1,000 pounds in weight and 8 feet in length.

Nor do Andean bears necessarily inspire fear or immediate awe. Unlike, say, the grizzly bear, which is too large to escape perceived threats and so tends to defend itself aggressively, Andean bears are extremely capable climbers, preferring to run from danger and hide in treetops.

Armando Castellanos, project manager of the Andean Bear Conservation Project, recalls surprising several bears while conducting surveys with colleagues in the cloud forests of the Alto Choco Reserve in northern Ecuador.

“The bears instinctively climbed the nearest tree and headed for the treetops,” Castellanos said. “While climbing, they groaned and panted heavily, simultaneously urinating and defecating, perhaps because of the intense fright that we gave them.”

Nonetheless, Andean bears (Tremarctos ornatus) are singular creatures. They are the last surviving member of the subfamily Tremarctinae and the only indigenous bear species in South America.

But maybe for not much longer.

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Drawn to Darwin

Evolution’s theorist found inspiration in art, and artists in his ideas

By Scott LaFee,  Union-Tribune Staff Writer

August 3, 2009

In “On the Origins of Species,” published in 1859, Charles Darwin rewrote the story of life, offering a new explanation of how nature worked. His theory of natural selection profoundly and permanently altered the way we perceive the world around us.

The book’s momentous impact was not restricted to the realm of science, however. Darwin’s ideas resonated in the arts as well, challenging and inspiring artists like Martin Johnson Heade, Thomas Moran, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas and others to visualize their environment and its inhabitants in new, marvelous and sometimes fantastical ways.

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Slide shows

Scientific accuracy in movies? It’s neither universal nor paramount

By Scott LaFee, Union-Tribune Staff Writer

July 20, 2009

Can Hollywood make a scientifically accurate film?

Probably not, but then why would it want to? First and foremost, moviemaking is about telling a good story, a tale compelling enough to keep folks largely riveted for 97 minutes, give or take.

I mean, who’s going to take Klaatu, the planet-threatening alien in last year’s sci-fi flick “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” seriously if he looks like a grain of sand? Much better if Klaatu resembles Keanu Reeves, who just has the emotional range of a grain of sand.

But that said, some of the powers-that-be in Hollywood recently declared that it was “vitally important” to make movies and other forms of mass entertainment that are more scientifically accurate. Late last year, they launched the Science and Entertainment Exchange, in association with the august National Academy of Sciences.

They created an advisory board fraught with world-class scientists, powerful producers and directors, even a few famous actors. Their stated goal: To boost cinematic scientific accuracy and help real-world, real-life researchers more effectively communicate with the general public.

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