The Air You Breathe, the Food You Eat

Cyanobacteria, a kind of blue-green algae, live in water, manufacture their own food, and, during the Archaean Age, were responsible for creating the oxygen we breathe.

If you were able to travel back 3.5 billion years to the Archaean period in the earth’s history, you would think you were in hell. The atmosphere was made up of methane, ammonia, and other gases toxic to most life on our planet today. And then along came the cyanobacteria. They turned hell into the Garden of Eden.

Cyanobacteria are busy little buggers and it’s a good thing for us that they are. In addition to creating the air we breathe, proterozoic oil deposits can be attributed to the activity of cyanobacteria, and they are also important providers of nitrogen fertilizer in the cultivation of rice and beans. The other great contribution of the cyanobacteria is the origin of plants. The chloroplast with which plants make food for themselves is actually a cyanobacterium living within the plant's cells.

Cyanobacteria are one of very few groups of organisms that can convert inert atmospheric nitrogen into an organic form, such as nitrate or ammonia, which plants need for their growth, and must obtain from the soil. Fertilizers work the way they do in part because they contain additional fixed nitrogen which plants can then absorb through their roots.

Interestingly, many plants, especially legumes, have formed symbiotic relations with nitrifying bacteria, providing specialized tissues in their roots or stems to house the bacteria, in return for organic nitrogen. This has been used to great advantage in the cultivation of rice, where the floating fern Azolla is actively distributed among the rice paddies. The fern houses colonies of the cyanobacterium Anabaena in its leaves, where it fixes nitrogen. The ferns then provide an inexpensive natural fertilizer and nitrogen source for the rice plants when they die at the end of the season. Azolla has been used as a green manure crop in Vietnam and China for centuries.

Like so many other aspects of our earth’s ecosystem, cyanobacteria work their wonders in relative anonymity. One can only hope that we humans come to understand Mother Earth well enough to appreciate and preserve her essential life processes. Live long and prosper, little cyano!

The Universe and all that Stuff

Hubble Photo: Giant Disk of Cold Gas and Dust Fuels Possible Black Hole at the Core of NGC 4261

In proposing an alternative to the conventional "Big Bang" theory of cosmology, Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok point out that "the standard model does not explain the beginning of time, the initial conditions of the universe, or what will happen in the long-term future." For me, these are reason enough to consider other explanations for the nature of the reality we refer to as our universe.

For as long as I can remember pondering the imponderables -- when did the universe come about, when will it end, how big is it, and what is my place in the nature of its reality? -- I have been uncomfortable with the idea that all existence came about suddenly in a massive explosion spewing matter into the void -- the so-called cosmic singularity. What exploded? Where did it come from? Now what?

Steinhardt and Turok propose a cosmological model with an "endless sequence of cycles of expansion and contraction." In their scheme of things, there is, by definition, neither a beginning nor end of time, nor is there a need to define initial conditions. This appeals to me, because I've always felt that my views of reality are inextricably entangled with my experience. That's how I came to understand that touching the glowing red spiral on the stove top would cause pain, but it's also why I am predisposed towards believing that, like me, things are finite, have beginnings and endings, and exist in three dimensions. Truth is, it ain't necessarily so.

Steinhardt and Turok's description of their cosmic model involves black holes, dark matter, string theory, M-theory, quantum theory, branes (short for membranes), gravitational and microwaves, and other challenges for the lay person, like myself. But their cyclic model deals directly with the cosmic singularity, explaining it as a transition from a contracting to an expanding phase.

Of course physicists argue with each other about whose theory best represents "truth." Their arguments are based on evidence already assembled, testable theories/hypotheses, and mathematical proofs. And then there are religious proponents who by and large favor the Big Bang theory because it's a "creation event" -- presumably the big bang happened in the first nano second of the first day and a week later we had physicists arguing about dark energy -- and they weren't referring to Lucifer.

In any case, we have at least two distinct theories of our universe, one in which the universe has a definite beginning, and one in which the universe is made and remade forever. For me, based on nothing more than aesthetics, I believe in an infinite number of parallel universes passing into and through each other -- maybe through black holes -- in an unending blending of energy, dark energy, matter, and anti-matter, all of which looks very nice on God's flat-panel display.

Hubble Photo: Orion Nebula

Tapteal Greenway Association

Thursday night, February 5th, in Richland, the Tapteal Greenway Association held one of two "Rivers to Ridges" public workshops it is conducting in 2009. The other workshop will be held Thursday, February 12th, in Kennewick. The purpose of the workshops is to obtain public input on a long-term plan for developing a rivers to ridges open space network of the Mid-Columbia.

The Tapteal Greenway Association is a private-public partnership of government agencies and groups like the Friends of Badger Mountain, the Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society, and individual citizens working together to coordinate open space planning for the Mid-Columbia Region. The Association's vision is a network of natural features, open spaces and connecting trails that complement residential and commercial development in the Mid-Columbia Region in order to:
Enhance the region's ability to attract/retain people and businesses that grow and sustain our economy
Provide easy access to increase recreational use
Preserve natural and aesthetic values that promote education and special events.

More information can be found on the Association's web site, which also includes a survey that allows individuals to express their thoughts on what the Association's priorities should be.

February 5th Ridges to Rivers Workshop

Letter to President Obama -- Subject: Torture

MSU College of Law: Catherine M. Grosso and Sister Dianna Ortiz,a torture survivor, Issue Letter to President Obama Regarding Torture, LANSING, Mich.

To President Obama regarding torture, from MSU College of Law Professor Catherine M. Grosso and Sister Dianna Ortiz,

The Obama administration has declared that the Geneva conventions apply to the war on terror, that torture is illegal, and that the military commissions violate our basic tenants of fair process. In the euphoria over succeeding in these areas that recently required such vigilance, we must not lose track of the scope and depth of the damage caused by the violations.

When it comes to torture, the greatest risk alights on ordinary people all over the world who come face to face with an interrogator. U.S. policy chipped away at the very notion of an international ban on torture. U.S. rhetoric eroded the belief that civilized nations do not torture. U.S. practice undermined the nascent restraint that might have existed in some interrogation cells in some corners of the world.

We must focus today on how to restore the global understanding that only outlaws, thugs, and renegades torture. The immediate risk is that a "forward looking" administration will shy from the task at hand. It is important to fix the offensive laws. Likewise, an investigation is important. The truth is powerful and we must be ready to hear, to own, and to document the grave breaches of human dignity that have been perpetrated in the name of the war on terror. But repaired laws and an investigation cannot remedy the harm that has been done to customary international law and, more importantly, to the safety of detainees all over the world.

The United States, as a member of the world community, must say loudly and clearly that this discourse was wrong and that those who advanced it stood outside of our laws and our values. We must work to ensure certain prosecutions are squarely on the table as a possible response to the findings of any investigation.

Enough is known by now to suggest that senior officials violated U.S. law. The only question now is whether the president will do what under law, he is required to do. We, as a modern democracy, show that people have transgressed our laws by prosecuting them in court. Our Constitution and our criminal laws require that we do nothing less. Our history holds the stories of similar violations by senior administrators and the ensuing prosecutions.

An independent criminal investigation is how we get from accusations to evidence. It is time to start this investigation, and to follow the evidence honestly and in good faith. Does the Obama administration believe in one law for all citizens or are the powerful exempt from that principle?

Antarctic Warming

In recent decades, rapid warming of the western edge of the Antarctic Peninsula has seen plants moving in to colonize the area and Adélie penguins moving out. Some, including "skeptics" have argued that the warming — which has been disproportionate to that seen in most parts of the world — was a localized phenomenon, and that the bulk of the continent's interior was actually cooling. It isn't. In a new study just published in the January 29th issue of Nature, Eric Steig and his colleagues compared 26 years of temperature measurements from the NOAA AVHRR satellite sensor, with simultaneous weather station measurements, and found a gradual, decades-long warming trend.

The image above, taken from NASA's Earth Observatory, and based on the analysis of weather station and satellite data, shows the continent-wide warming trend from 1957 through 2006. Dark red over West Antarctica reflects that the region warmed most per decade. Most of the rest of the continent is orange, indicating a smaller warming trend, or white, where no change was observed.

Steig's results (on the right) are similar to those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (on the left).

These things are true

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States of America, January 20, 2009

Bush Leaves Office

Americans are prone to be generous and forgiving -- inclined to pull for the underdog. We see this now as George W. Bush leaves office. There are those who object to the criticisms leveled at the former president, and defend his record despite clear evidence of malfeasance and his historically low public approval ratings. Others contend that we should cease rehashing the past and move on to confront the daunting challenges that lay before us.

The Tri-City Herald (McClatchy), allowing the former president to speak for himself, published the full text of his farewell address to the nation without editorial comment (Sunday, January 18, 2009). The former president in outlining what he sees as his accomplishments and in defending his record told us, “I’ve always acted with the best interests of our country in mind… and followed my conscious.” Perhaps we can take him at his word, but it would be an egregious mistake to sugar coat, excuse, or pass over his record in office over the last eight years, whatever his motivation.

One of our nation’s great historians, Pulitzer Prize winning author, David C. McCullough, tells us that, “History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.”

Whether or not we, as a nation, hold Bush and others in his administration legally accountable for abuses, misconduct, and criminality as some demand, surely we must as a people ensure that history hold him morally accountable. We must learn from our mistakes, for without doubt these are perilous times, and we must reaffirm who we are to ourselves and to the world.