So I was a little worried when I read that birds are apparently getting bigger in the central Californian area. A team led by Rae Goodman from San Francisco State University studied data of bird populations of 40 years at one site and 27 years at another and found that, slowly but surely, bird wing…
On Halloween, an adventure-seeking Santa Cruz surfer braved wintery water temperatures and paddled a half-mile out past Seabright Beach wearing only a bikini. But she wasn’t trying to catch a wave. The scantily clad surfer was trawling for an intimate look at the humpback whales that had been feeding off the coast. And she was…
Would you like lemon on your transgenic fish? In the interest of subduing the emotional reaction many have to genetically modified salmon when calling it ‘frankenfish’, I’ll refer to it by its technical title. But what is an appropriate name for a modified fish operating under the guise of two different fish genes— a deepwater…
It took me a long time to learn that I have a touch of road rage. The first time my husband watched me come slightly unhinged in gridlock, he only had one thing to say: “If you’re complaining, you’re part of the problem.” Now that I’m spending a year as a California road warrior, it’s…
Zooommbieeees… Hordes of people—numbed by the Great Recession, perhaps—have once again staggered toward fresh zombie fare. But unlike other zombie fever outbreaks, splatters from the pop-culture feast are landing in the far corners of science—and they’re leaving quite the mark. Since George Romero’s 1968, genre-defining film, Night of the Living Dead, zombie zeal has lurched…
Wake up, Linus, the Great Pumpkin is finally coming! On Oct. 10, Leonardo Ureña of Napa won the Half Moon Bay giant pumpkin weigh-off with a 1704-pound behemoth — a new California record. Ureña is part of a blooming subculture of competitive pumpkin growers that are smashing pumpkin records left and right. The world record,…
On a little island off the coast of central California, researchers, conservationists and artists are teaming up to help some threatened sea birds raise their next generation. The helping hand comes in the form of some stylish new housing. The Rhinoceros Auklet is a small seabird that researchers call the “the penguin of the North…
You drink it. You put it on your cereal. You dunk cookies in it. MILK! This magical substance is the first beverage most of us consume, when our wimpy newborn bodies can’t handle much else. But it’s not just a beverage, it’s a hyper-nutritious, calcium-packed nectar, produced by the mammary glands of female mammals to…
Today, 64 percent of Americans will drink and bathe in fluoridated water. Meanwhile Watsonville, CA is at the end of a decade-long debate and legal battle to keep fluoride out of their drinking water. The California Dental Association offered to pay for installation of fluoridation equipment to protect the community from dental decay. After a…
Awhile ago, I wrote about the robots (Stormtroompas) working behind the scenes at the San Jose Mercury News. It would be great, I thought at the time, to capture these things on video. So I did. Here, for your amusement, is a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the Merc-bots. And the massive printing presses, and some charming humans….
