BEE - AUTIFUL!

When my family went on summer vacation we always drove.  While in the car, my
sister, Mac, would read and I, being the budding young scientist, would observe the
surroundings.  I noticed white boxes lining the countryside and asked my parents about them. To my amazement, they were bee boxes, full of bees kept by people to get honey and to pollinate their crops. This intrigued me!

We were recently driving on vacation and I saw boxes off in the distance. I wanted to know where honey came from, the role of bees, and why people would keep bees.  Even Mac, who finally noticed the boxes wanted to know more about the bees and the white boxes.

To fully appreciate bees, honey, and pollination, let’s start at the beginning.  Stick your head out of a window and you may smell the beautiful aroma of flowers blooming. Not only do these flowers smell nice, they are visually appealing as well.  This is no accident. These characteristics are designed to attract pollinators (insects, hummingbirds, bats, and bees) to the flower to help spread genetic material from plant to plant.

Pollinators like bees are drawn to showy plants to feed on nectar.  To reach the nectar, which is located close to the bottom of the flower, they inadvertently brush against the male part of the flower—the stamen—that holds pollen.  The pollen stays on the bees' bodies while they transport it with them from flower to flower.

When these pollen besotted bees arrive at a new flower for more nectar, they brush against the female reproductive part of the flower—the stigma—waiting for the pollen. Once the pollen comes into contact with the stigma, the ovule is fertilized and that plant’s life has just become fulfilled with future children.  The connection between pollinators and flowers is called a "mutualistic relationship" because both parties are being used and reaping benefits.  And we, too, reap benefits from such relationships. Consider that honeybees pollinate close to $15 billion worth of crops in the US alone each year. That's
a lot of strawberries, broccoli, and beans, to name a few.

Once bees have reached their maximum intake for nectar they return to the hive.  I must warn you, what happens next borders on the line of disgusting, so, if you like honey, you may not want to read past here.  To transform nectar, which has water and yeast in it, into honey, bees regurgitate it until it reaches its desired quality. Yummy! If they did not do this, the yeast would cause it to ferment.

Knowing now that I am putting bee vomit in my coffee in the morning does not deter me.  In fact, I think I will relish the fact that I am reaping the rewards of a beautiful partnership between flowers and bees.  I, however, do not think the same can be said for Mac, she has not been the same since finding this out.

Burn baby burn

Growing up I had a love-hate relationship with fire. I loved it for smores and Helena's cool fire trucks. I hated forest fires because I thought they were very scary. When the Elkhorn Mountain and the Gates of the Mountains burned in 1989, I'd wake up every morning and check to make sure those wild fires were not coming to get me.

On a recent camping trip I realized fire still intrigues me. While trying to start the
campfire with damp wood, I was reminded that I've often thought it would be sweet if wood
could spontaneously combust. That will never happen though, because a wood fire needs to
have three things for it to be "successful": fuel, oxygen, and an ignition source. Once these three
requirements are met, we can break out the sticks and marshmallows.

There is much more to the science of fire than the three requirements. For that stack of camp wood to become fire, the woody material needs to ignite and decompose. It decomposes in a variety of forms but to keep it simple, think smoke, charcoal, and ash. Charcoal, by the way, is almost pure carbon and some is simply wood that's been heated to remove the volatile gases that create smoke. This is why the hot charcoal in your barbeque grill cooks without smoke.

While looking at our campfire, it occurred to me I really didn't know much about the flames of the fire. I tried to decipher its properties in my head but the flame possessed none of the common properties of solids, liquids or gases. A little quick research revealed a simple explanation.

A flame is neither a solid, a liquid, nor a gas. A flame is plasma, a substance in which some of the particles are free to move rather than be contained.  These moving particles are the rising carbon atoms and emit the incandescent light we see.  If you watch a fire, you might notice the color of the light varies as the flames seem to dance of the logs.

The flames can range in color from blue at the hottest spot to a yellowish/orange at their coolest location.  The "dancing" of the flames we see is the product of gravity.  If we could have a small campfire in the Space Shuttle, the fire would be a sphere, about the size and shape of a basketball!

When it is time to go to bed, we always put the fire out so it does not get away and start a forest fire.  There are a number of ways to do this; we usually pour water on the fire.  This disrupts the combustion process by rapidly cooling the fire down.

I hope this helps in your campfire endeavors for the rest of the summer. Remember to pay attention to warnings in your area to make sure it's safe to build your campfire. I don't want to keep an eye peeled on wild fires coming to get me!

Playground physics phun

I was at Barney Park recently riding on a swing and having a great time.

"Why don't more adults ride swings," I asked one of my older students—let’s call
him Newton.

"Because they look ridiculous," Newton replied.

I asked if I looked ridiculous and Newton said that I did not need to ride a swing
to look ridiculous.

I like Newton, so I decided not to bump him off his swing.

Despite Newtons’s accusation, I continued to ride the swing and thoroughly enjoyed myself while flying through the air.

As I sat there, I wondered why I moved forward when I pumped my legs and then went in reverse. Then I saw my students on the merry-go-round hanging on for dear life. I realized many of the toys on the playground can be explained using laws from Science. I had to share my excitement so the next time you take your children to Barney or Lockey or any other of Helena's great parks, you too can explain the science behind the swinging.

When I was growing up I would wait in line for my chance to defy gravity and feel as though I was flying on all of the park toys—from the swings to the slides. Was I really defying gravity or was I just altering the effect gravity had on me? Since my fascination appears to continue, I'll keep the focus on swings; but first gravity should be explained.

Gravity is much more complex than knowing what goes up must come down. It is the force of attraction between any two objects. Small objects and objects far away from each other do not have much attraction. Here in Helena, the force of attraction is humongous because Earth is so massive and we're close to the center. The farther we move away from the center of Earth though, the less attraction Earth has on us. This is why astronauts can space walk and why we actually weigh a little less when we climb Mount Everest.

When you sit on a swing, it's almost as if you're sitting on a pendulum, similar to a Newton’s cradle. If you throw your weight back while hanging onto the chains, this action causes a reaction of moving the swing forward. Once you reach your maximum height on one side, the attraction between you and Earth pulls you back down. Since you are on a pendulum, rather than smacking into the earth, your momentum is carried back to the other side.

We continue to swing until we stop putting work into it. Once we stop pumping our legs the swing eventually stops.  This is because friction from the air combined with gravity is too much to overcome.

I try to explain all this to my daughter when we go to  the park and she looks at me as if I am ridiculous. It must be because she's only two years old, because as far as I know she's never met Newton.

A touch of gray

It is official. I have completed another full rotation around the sun—my 31st— and thus I am a year older. I love this time of year, not only because of my annual birthday cake, but also because of all the changes. Temperatures are cooler, snow is in the mountains, and leaves are starting to show their brilliance. It is all of these autumnal happenings and end-of-season beauty that make me love October.

When I was growing up, my sister and I gave my dad a hard time about saying his hair color was listed as "black" on his driver’s license when clearly he was going gray. He responded by saying he was not going gray, rather, his hair color was salt-and-pepper and they would not let him put that on his license. Well, now that I have made many trips around the sun, my hair is also starting to turn a wee bit salty. Is it because my daughter is now 2½ years old or because a shock of salt-and-pepper hair equals wisdom?

It turns out hair growth is much more complicated than the vegetative growth seen in a Chia pet, which is how I often think of hair growth. Each strand of hair emerges from its own follicle and involves three stages: a growth stage that lasts 2-7 years; a shut-down stage that lasts 10-20 days, and then another growth stage. If, however, the subsequent growth stage sputters, there is a good chance hormones are acting on the follicle causing hair growth to slow, or maybe even stop for good.

Before one is able to see brown, red, or blonde hair, the growth that begins within the follicle is pure white. Hair does not pick up color until it leaves the follicle, and the mechanism for color is generated by melanin. Melanin is a pigment that not only gives color to hair but to eyes and skin as well.  There is dark melanin called "eumelanin," which determines brown and black hair color, and reddish/yellowish melanin called "pheomelanin," which determines red and blonde hair. The amount of melanin we carry determines color, something we cannot control.

A child's hair color often resembles that of his or her parents', which is no coincidence. The amount and type of melanin we acquire is dependent on what we get from our parents. Genetics—not those loveably unruly 2 year olds—likewise determines when one's hair makes the transition to salt-and-pepper.

This is the part of the story that becomes a scientific gray area. Scientists know a reduction of melanin causes hair to change color, and that the timing of the change is similar within families. Yet they do not know why melanin levels decrease. There is speculation like increased levels of hydrogen peroxide but as yet no definitive answers.

So, like me seeing one more round of autumn colors, my new shade of salt-and-pepper hair just signifies that I am getting older. I did not need my hair to tell me that though. I get the hint from my students whenever I try to act cool and hip.

Those not so pearly whites

I do not remember when my baby teeth came in so I had no idea how painful it was.  When my daughter’s teeth came in, it was clear she was in pain. Ironically, while she was teething, I too started to teeth to feel her pain; it must have been my paternal instinct.  Having been through the experience, it does not feel good.

While we were sharing the experience, the teeth that were coming in were quit different.  She was getting her first of her baby teeth, me being much older and wise; I was getting the last of my permanent teeth, my wisdom teeth.  I recently had my wisdom teeth pulled and all this teething got me curious.

As with everything I have researched, I was immediately amazed how little I knew about teeth.  Our teeth develop in much the same way as non-mammals teeth do.  The interaction between two embryonic layers of tissue of our developing skin come together, fold or change shape.  They then both secrete proteins that will form the structures.  The process in which teeth form is the same process in which feathers, hair, scales, even sweat glands form.  While our teeth form the same way, that does not mean that they behave the same way.

We have two sets of teeth, while other animals can have less or more.  Sharks can grow new teeth almost every two weeks.  Our Baby teeth start developing in utero around six weeks while permanent molars start to form around week 20.  We keep our “baby” teeth until about age six at which time we start to get our second set of teeth.  Current research suggests that periodontal ligaments play an important role in tooth eruption. Once our permanent teeth come in, they do not grow any longer which is different in some rodents.

When I was growing up, we had a rabbit that gave me nightmares because his teeth were long and creepy.  Rodents’ teeth keep growing while maintaining them by gnawing and chewing.  This did not work for our rabbit so we had to cut his teeth with a fingernail clipper so they did not grow too long.

These unique characteristics of teeth are very useful to Scientists.  They can tell what the unknown animals diet was based on their teeth.  They also use them to identify fossil species and their relationships.  Teeth withstand time very well because they are so hard.  The hard part of the tooth is the outer layer and called enamel while the inside is made of dentin.

I was able to see these parts on my teeth because much to my wife’s dismay I kept my wisdom teeth so I could study them.  I have studied them in depth and they my wife is tired of them being under my pillow so if there is a tooth fairy, please stop by and pick them up.

Gobble Gobble

It is hard for me to decide what my favorite thing about Thanksgiving is. It heralds what I like to call the Fantastic Three - family, football, and food!

While I normally eat more than I should, I thought this year I might learn more about the food I so love, and about some of the food on the table I can do without.

Every year in my family the day's discussion is the same leading up to the grand feast, "Is the turkey going to be dry?" Luckily, we have not had the displeasure of having too dry of a turkey.

Because of that, I am then left with a decision I agonize over for the weeks leading up to the big day, "Am I going to eat white or dark meat?" In these times of reflection, I often wonder what the difference is between the white and dark meats.

The meat we eat from the turkey is very similar to chicken because turkeys and chickens are very similar species of domestic fowl that spend much of their time on the ground, not in the air. This means much of their time is spent walking or running. The delicious white meat - the breasts and wings are the muscles Thanksgiving turkeys almost never use because of their lack of flight. The dark meat comes from the muscles that are used more often - the legs and thighs.

These muscles have different colors because the more active the muscle, the more oxygen it needs from the blood vessels. These types of muscles are actually called "slow twitch," while the muscles of the white meat are called "fast twitch."

I have always heard that the turkey we consume makes us tired because of an essential amino acid called tryptophan. It is essential, but our bodies are not able to produce it, therefore we must include it in our diet. While turkey contains tryptophan, it is likely not the only food at the table that contains it. Cheese, for instance, has as much or more tryptophan than turkey.

It is also important to mention the sleep-inducing effects of the amino acid require an empty stomach to kick in. It is the cornucopia of food, relaxed holiday spirit, and inclination to overeat that's most likely responsible for Uncle Tim falling asleep on the couch after the meal.

Consider the holiday decisions one has to make about potatoes. I do not like sweet potatoes but because of "Sam I Am" and his green eggs and ham, I have given yams a try. Sorry Sam I did not like yams. No matter how much sugar and butter, they tasted similar to sweet potatoes. It turns out, however, that 95 percent of yams in the world are grown in Africa, so unless you go to one of the many international markets in Helena, the festive orange tubers on your Thanksgiving table are likely sweet potatoes.

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and that this information helps to make your dinner a little more enjoyable, even if you are a sweet potato fan. Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi - Bear - Nation

Now that winter is here for what could be another six months, I have noticed I see less of my neighbors than I do during the summer months. This is no doubt because we all spend more time keeping warm inside than playing in the cold outside. It is almost as if we are, in a way, hibernating. The more I thought about it, the more the idea of me eating enough to sustain a long winter’s nap intrigued me.

After some initial research I found the idea of hibernation even more compelling. Take, for example, the American black bear, which can go up to 100 days with out eating, drinking, urinating, defecating or exercising.

Black bears are able to accomplish this for a couple of reasons. First, they start preparing for winter in early summer by eating a mostly carbohydrate diet to gain about 30 pounds a week. Second, they are also able to slow their metabolism, which aids in conserving energy and helps explain why they can, well, “hold it,” for three months.

Bears are one of the most famous animals that hibernate, and because of this I seldom thought of other animals going through the same process. I soon discovered that many other animals hunker down through the winter and some, like bats, hunker down much more than the most famous hibernators.

I do not know a lot about bats, but what I do know I really enjoy. They use echolocation — a kind of natural nighttime navigation system —  to find and eat miserable mosquitoes. In researching, I learned bats not only hibernate, but they do it with style. Bats, along with ground squirrels, are in a category I like to call hardcore hibernators because of the drastic body changes they are able to endure while hibernating.

Bats and ground squirrels can slow their heartbeats from 80 to about five beats per minute and their internal temperature can drop from 97 degrees to 38 degrees. This is quite a difference from the famous hibernating black bears that maintain an internal temperature of around 88, only about a dozen ticks lower that their summertime body temperature of 100 degrrees.

I have a close connection with fish. I focused on fisheries in college, my dad worked most of his life with fish, and I spend as much time as possible fishing. One would think I had a good idea of what happens to fish in winter, and one would be wrong.

To my surprise, fish, in a way, also hibernate. They, too, lower their metabolism and hunker down in rocks and deep ponds. One major difference with “cold-blooded” fish, when compared to “warm-blooded” mammals, is their blood temperature mirrors that of the water. If the water is 35 degrees, then the fish’s blood temperature is 35, too.

Now that there is finally snow on the ground, I remember there’s a lot to enjoy outside in winter. If I slept through the winter or stayed inside just to keep warm, I would miss out on all the skiing I plan to do with my daughter this year. So bundle up and wear a hat so you don’t sleep through this year’s winter and enjoy everything Montana has to offer!

Oh baby!

My wife, Cory, just gave birth to our new daughter, Isla. I was not planning on writing about it, but as I sit here, all I can think about is how cool it is and how much info there is. Now my problem is deciding on what to write about.

The biggest question leading up to the birth was how much Isla would resemble the rest of our family.

Marley, now a big sister, has my eyes and dimpled chin, Cory’s nose and hair color, and a feisty personality that seems more like my sister McKenzie’s.

Genetics are responsible for all this variation and while some traits can be predicted, others cannot.

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, makes us who we are. Our entire DNA comes from our parents in the form of chromosomes — 23 from our mom and 23 from our dad for a grand total of 46. Of these 46 chromosomes, two determine our sex. We can only get an X chromosome from our mom, but our dad can give us either an X or a Y. If we get Y, we are male. If we get X, we are female.

We are all different but we are also all the same. To explain this, let’s consider DNA in a little more detail. DNA is made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C).

A’s always pair with T’s and C’s always pair with G’s, and when they do, they are called a base pair. In humans, we have over 3 billion, yes, billion, base pairs to make us who we are.

With all this, you would expect differences; actually, more than 99 percent of bases in humans are the same. It is when they are not the same that we run into mutations that can lead to serious issues.

After all the genetic speculation about what Isla was going to look like, it turned out that something quite invisible — her blood type — mattered most.

Like many newborns, Isla started to look a little yellow soon after she was born. She had jaundice because her liver suddenly needed to start doing the work that Cory’s had been doing for her, and Isla has a different blood type than Cory. This meant Cory’s body was producing antibodies to try and destroy Isla’s red blood cells.

When the red blood cells get destroyed in large quantities, our liver is not able to keep up with the breakdown and thus we see the buildup of the yellow pigment bilirubin. For instance, when a bruise on our arm turns yellow, bilirubin is at work.

Luckily, we did not need to use a biliblanket to mimic the sun’s light for light therapy to help Islas liver break down the excess bilirubin. Isla was able to get rid of the excess bilirubin in her waste so we did not run into serious issues.

Genetics can give us some clues about what our children are going to be like. If we were able to know too much, though, we would miss out on the best part, seeing what your children become.

I love you, girls!

KABOOM!

I was skiing the other day and heard loud booms. The ski patrol was trying to trigger avalanches by detonating explosives.

I heard similar booms when I was younger but did not give them much thought. Now, however, maybe because I am surrounded by sound at work, I started paying more attention.

As the explosives went off I was surprised because it seemed like I could feel the sound while sitting on the chairlift.

How was this possible?

Sound travels in waves similar to waves we see at a beach. They have a top called a “peak,” and a bottom called a “trough.” A sound’s size is called “amplitude.” The pitch we hear is dependent on the frequency.

My little yappy dog has a high frequency and small amplitude, while the low booms from the ski patrol have a low frequency and large amplitude.

As a large amplitude sound wave travels through the air, it pushes the air forward. Think about seeing “the wave” at sporting events or watching dominoes fall. When we feel the blast we are feeling the force of air actually being pushed forward.

Other sound waves are subtler. For instance, take your hand, put it on your throat and read the next sentence out loud making your voice high and low pitched. The vibrations you feel are your vocal folds, or chords, vibrating due to air coming out of your throat and making sound waves.

If you think about music, there are many instruments with chords that vibrate.

But what about the instruments that do not have chords?

Wind instruments make sound by vibrating air inside them by using different mechanisms. Trombones have a mouthpiece that musicians blow into causing their lips to vibrate. The sound from the vibrating travels down the body and is amplified by the opening at the end. Other wind instruments like a saxophone rely on vibrations from reeds as air is blown past them.

When sound emerges from any item, it travels until it runs into something or has no more energy. If a sound wave hits something, it bounces back and travels in the opposite direction. That is why we can hear echoes so well in areas where there is a lot of room for the sound to bounce from place to place. It is no coincidence opera houses are shaped they way they are.

Try it yourself at the band shell at Memorial Park. You’ll discover that it is a lot easier to hear someone talking while they are inside the shell, than it is if they were talking over by the swings. This is because the sound is echoed out of the shell toward where you are standing in the grass.

This really is only the first note in your favorite song when it comes to sound. We did not even get to the ear, which has a canyon full of interesting scientific intricacies when it comes to hearing.

Tasty!

“I can’t like that,” is the response my daughter, Marley, gives us when we try to offer her new food. This behavior has made me do some pretty drastic things, like call my mom and dad to apologize for the deviled egg incident.

When I was a child, like Marley, I had my likes and dislikes. Deviled eggs were a big dislike. No matter how much my mom and dad assured me I would like them, I knew I would not. Finally, after screaming, negotiating, and even some tears, I succumbed and gave a deviled egg a shot. Awful!

Now that I have matured I have given them another chance. Much to my dismay, I actually like them now. I do not know how this could be possible thinking back to that tragic afternoon and how a simple deviled egg forever scared me.

There has to be an explanation.

Stick your tongue out and you will see little bumps all over the surface. I used to think those bumps were taste buds responsible for the sense of taste. It turns out, like most things left unexamined, I was wrong. The actual buds line those tiny little bumps, which are called “papillae,” and in each bud there are little hairs called “microvilli.”

These sensitive, microscopic hairs tell your brain if something is sweet, sour, salty, bitter or umami. Umami is specifically for the amino acid glutamate. If you are like me and don’t know what glutamate tastes like, you might have tasted it in the form of MSG.

Taste buds are not only more complex than I originally thought, they are much more numerous as well. The average person has nearly 10,000 taste buds and, amazingly, they get replaced about every two weeks. As we get older, not as many get replaced and some people may only have 5,000. So it would appear that my tastes are not refining with age, rather my taste is being diminished.

There is another key component to taste that you know if you have ever been sick or held your nose to impede your ability to taste something. When you chew on your food, chemicals are released. These chemicals move up your nose to olfactory receptors, which, like the microvilli, send signals to your brain about what you are eating. When you are sick, or pinching your nose to prevent a taste, the upper part of your nose does not receive the chemicals to trigger the taste.

Finally, taste is genetic. The genes you get from your parents determine the type and number of sensors you get. I would say this is some sort of retribution being able to blame my mom and dad for not liking that deviled egg but I know better. As soon as I do, Marley will blame me, but she has a few years until she understands what this means. In the meantime, I will just wait for her taste buds stop regenerating so quickly so we can get her off the mac and cheese diet.

The sniffles

We Montanans are a hardy bunch. We live in a state that seems to have three months of summer with nine months of winter. It is this short-lived summer that can sometimes lead us to not making the best choices when it comes to springtime clothing. As I lay in bed listening to my daughter, Marley, sniffle and cough I cannot help but think about earlier that day.

The sun was out, no wind and it was almost 50 degrees. Ideal weather for T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, right? While this may be jumping the gun a bit for summer clothes, what you wear, surprisingly to many, does not affect your susceptibility to catching a cold.

One of the biggest factors that affect our vulnerability to catching colds is the quality of the air we breathe. In summer, we play outside breathing nice fresh air. In the short days of winter, we spend a lot more time inside breathing the germs that are contained in our homes, schools and anywhere else we hide from the cold.

Once we breathe in the germ that is the most common vector for the common cold, rhinovirus, we can expect a number of symptoms to show up over the days ahead. I do not know which symptom is worst when it comes to colds. I hate feeling like my head is going to explode in a giant eruption of snot. I would not willingly sign up for this, but now, with two little kids, it is the cough at night I dislike more. I try to hold my coughs in because I do not want to wake up the kids, and when they cough, again, I am worried it is going to wake them up. What causes these reactions when we have colds?

The appearance of snot or mucous is Marley’s first sign of a cold. We start producing excess amounts of mucous in an attempt to keep germs from getting to the lungs and the rest of our bodies. The excess in mucous is partially responsible for some of the other negative feelings we have—like the dreaded nighttime cough. The excess travels down the sinuses to the back of the throat which causes us to cough.

Mucous, however, is not the only unpleasant reaction our bodies produce to ward off the invaders. When Marley has a fever it is one of the most difficult times of the common-cold cycle. I want to do whatever I can to make her feel better. In actuality, her brain is doing a lot of the work for me. Her hypothalamus, an amazing automatic regulator of a number of metabolic processes, is turning up her temperature in hopes it will make it an uninhabitable place for the germs.

While all these symptoms are not fun to deal with on any level, it is important for them to be there to help us feel better. Next time, while I am lying in bed with Marley listening to our symphony of coughing, I will be grateful that the mucous is keeping worse things away.

Yaaaaaawwwwwwwwnnnnnn

With two little daughters in our house I have been tired lately, though, probably not as tired as my wife Cory. Due to this I have been thinking a lot about sleep, specifically why I always yawn and why my coffee consumption has risen.

When Cory and I are able to sit and have conversations, I have noticed myself yawning. Followed by Cory yawning. And then it comes back to me, which Cory sees, and yawns. And then, well, you get the idea.

This yawning is a way for us to actually try to stay awake. We are trying to keep our brains cool, thus keep us awake. It seems with our yawning conversations that yawning is contagious.

While Cory and I are susceptible to each other’s yawns, researchers have found that only about half the population responds similarly. These same researchers say a respondent yawn was a way for early humans to communicate with one another. Such group yawns are believed to signify someone was tired and others in the group were acknowledging that.

Yawning is not the only mechanism I have employed to help keep me alert with the two little kids.

The chemical formula for caffeine is C8H10N4O2. My favorite type of caffeine is a nice, hot cup of coffee in the morning. Why does caffeine have ability to help keep us awake, maybe even twitchy, as in my case?

When we are tired, our bodies start to make a substance called “adenosine.” Adenosine binds to special parts in our brain causing drowsiness by slowing down nerve cell activity. To a nerve cell, caffeine looks like adenosine so caffeine binds to these receptors. This causes our neurons to fire more frequently, which causes our pituitary gland to think there is an emergency and helps to produce adrenaline.

There are negative effects of caffeine with one in particular that I am going to pay attention to. If you are not careful with your caffeine consumption, it will have a negative impact on your sleep.

If you drink a cup of high-test coffee or caffeinated pop with dinner, the caffeine will still be affecting the adenosine 12 hours later. This can impact your sleep and make your body feel like it needs the caffeine as soon as you get out of bed. There are two sides to every story, however, and researchers have found some benefits to caffeine consumption.

Adults who drink coffee on a regular basis appear less likely to get diabetes, colon cancer, Parkinson’s disease and even may have fewer cavities. Now, what you put in your coffee may not help with cavities, like my two tablespoons of honey.

My conclusion is moderation. I can still drink my coffee in the morning, but not my usual five cups. I can also drop that afternoon break at the coffee shop in favor of a brisk 15-minute walk. This will help to break the cycle and give me what started all this in the first place, the need for a good night’s sleep.

Hopefully this column has not made you need to find alternate ways to keep awake for the rest of your day.

The eyes have it!

Siblings have moments of jealousy, most of the time for minor things. Growing up I was I often jealous of my sister, McKenzie, who I thought was lucky enough to be nearsighted and had to get glasses in the fourth grade.

I am older now but still do not need glasses. Since both my mom and dad wear glasses, however, it seems inevitable that one day I will too.

Why do glasses help people see and when people have Lasik eye surgery, what exactly happens to their vision? In order to know this, we must first know more about how the eye works.

The iris, pupil and sclera are parts of the eye we all see when we look in the mirror. The iris (colored part) and pupil (black dot) work together to control how much light enters the eye. The sclera (white part), because it is made of the fibrous tissue, helps protect the eye.

Light travels to the back of the eye through the lens to the retina. The retina contains around 120 million rods and roughly 7 million cones. These specialized cells help to process the light and send it to the brain via the optic nerve. Once there the brain helps make sense of it all by interpreting the nerve signals and by flipping the upside down image the lens sees right side up.

Many of my students have dissected bovine eyeballs and they discover that the lens seems to be kind of like a buried treasure. A cow’s eyeball is about the size of a small marble and difficult to cut through because it is hard and slippery and has several layers like an onion. The lens is a part of the third layer.

The need for glasses is often directly related to the shape of one’s eye. McKenzie is nearsighted (myopia), which means she can see things that are close very clearly, but objects far away are blurry and out of focus. She either has too long an eyeball or her cornea has too much curvature that prevents the light entering her eye from focusing correctly. Her glasses are what are called a minus lens, which means it moves the focus of an object farther back.

Farsightedness, or hyperopia, is almost the opposite of myopia. People can see things far away clearly but not close up. These people either have too short of an eyeball or too little curvature in the cornea and use a plus lens in their glasses.

Some people after years of wearing glasses opt for Lasik surgery to help with their eyesight. For the surgery, doctors use a tool that actually burns the cornea into the correct shape.  

I am sorry, Mac, for my crazy jealousy with you and your glasses. It is only a matter of time until I too will need to get glasses. When I do, it will more than likely be for presbyopia, the “old eye,” and I will need to get bifocals.

Those pesky mosquitoes!

When I was growing up, we used to spend about three weeks in Minnesota every summer visiting my grandparents. While there, they would plan all kinds of fun things for us to do, like going to the science museum, the zoo, Twins games or golfing with my grandpa. All of these contributed to this time being the highlight of my summer.

One small, always present thing, however, severely limited my enjoyment.

We would get on the golf course too early so we could beat the heat and the worst thing about Minnesota — the bloodsucking annoyances, mosquitoes!

It was not like we were hiding from a few select bugs, it seemed like we would sometimes walk through clouds of them.

I had forgotten just how much I disliked them until we recently were on vacation at Seeley Lake, and the memories swarmed back.

If there is any hope in appreciating the mosquito’s plight, we must know their story.

Depending on the species, females either lay their eggs on the surface of water or in protected areas that tend to flood. Eggs can be laid separately or grouped together like a raft.

From the eggs they grow into larvae then pupae. The length of each stage is dependent on the species and the temperature of the water. It is after this stage that they change into adults, the form I am most familiar with.

Once they are able to fly around and get their food, males focus on flowers because they do not have long enough mouth parts to do what their female counterparts do, which is look for blood. Blood provides the females with more protein, which is needed each time they lay eggs.

To help locate this nourishing meal, mosquitoes developed some highly sophisticated ways to find their prey.

Mosquitoes are able to locate prey through chemical reception, visual sensors and heat sensors. My dad and I have always thought mosquitoes prefer us over my mom and sister. Maybe it’s because the clothing we wear attracts them, or we give off more heat, or sweat more. Such things can help mosquitoes find us better.

When we get a bite, there are a couple things going on. First, a mosquito’s long proboscis — that needle nose — moves into our skin and contains an anticoagulant that keeps our blood from clotting to make the bug’s job a little easier.

Next, our bodies try to defend against the proteins left behind and thus we have the itchy lump. This lump is why I always take preventive measures to keep mosquitoes away.

To do this with full success, I enclose myself in what feels like a body bag — a long-sleeved shirt, long pants and socks above the ankle. If this is not feasible for you on a hot summer day, as often times is the case for me, bug repellent is another alternative. Bug spray works by not only blocking our chemicals from the bugs but also by emitting an unpleasant odor to deter them.

The moral of this story is be glad we live in Montana and not Minnesota. In Montana, we don’t have to spend our days always worrying about these bugs.

Happy summer!

Skintimit protection

As I sit and write this, I see a mom hunched down walking very quickly alongside her child, rubbing his arm. My wife and I now do this on a daily basis to our own child, and I recognize the behavior as applying sunscreen to little ones.

This ritual has really developed in my family, from running to catch up with Marley, to begging and pleading with her to let us put it on, to now, finally, acceptance.

It begins with a spray down of sunscreen with 60 SPF and a gentler lotion for her face; if we feel like we missed an area we use another lotion to back up the spray. When we are done, it seems like she has a coat of armor protecting her from the harmful effects of the sun.

But what’s the science behind sunscreen?

First, a little about skin: It is the largest organ in our body and can cover an average 22 square feet and weigh 8 pounds.We are going to discuss two main parts of the skin.

The layered outer part that protects us from the elements is called the epidermis. The top layer of the epidermis is dead cells while the lower layer is where new cells are made. Amazingly every minute of the day we lose about 30,000 to 40,000 dead skin cells off the surface of our skin.

The dermis is underneath the epidermis and contains blood vessels and nerve endings to help regulate temperature and detect pain, like sunburn.

The pink to reddish hue we see after too much sun is blood rushing from our capillaries to help repair the damaged cells. The pain we feel is because we have damaged our skin. In some instances people can even develop blistering.

As we move along further into spring and summer, we can spend more and more time in the sun without harming our skin. This is because our skin contains melanin, which is like our body’s natural sunscreen. As we get more exposure to sunlight, we produce more melanin, which helps absorb the harmful UV rays.

If we do not have much melanin to begin with, we need to use more sunscreen. The less melanin, the higher the SPF we need to apply. For example, let’s say that on the first really nice day of the season I forget to put sunscreen on and I burn in the first 15 minutes I am outside. Had I put on SPF 10, I would have been able to stay in the sun for 150 minutes.

We know it is important to put sunscreen on to prevent sunburns, but the biggest benefit to putting on sunscreen is the prevention of skin cancer.

From what I’ve read, it takes only two severe sunburns to significantly increase susceptibility to skin cancer later in life.

The next time you see someone doing the sunscreen shuffle, let it serve as a reminder for you and your family to reapply your own sunscreen.

A laughing matter

When I hear my daughters laugh, it is one of the best sounds in the world. Their laughter is closely being monitored by my family because I have my dad’s very unmistakable laugh and we wonder if the girls will develop it. For this monitoring, we try to make them laugh every chance we have.

For Marley all we need to do is act like we are going to tickle her, and for Isla all we need to do is make a face. It seems it is too early to determine if they will have the “Hunter” laugh but it has raised some questions such as what is laughter, what causes us to laugh and can laughter actually be medicine? There has been a lot of research put into this field termed gelotology, which for me is a name difficult not to laugh at.

Gelotologists have actually found a number of different health benefits from laughing, stress relief being one of them. Laughter also can strengthen the immune system and reduce food cravings. Knowing these benefits, I want to make sure I maximize my laughing, so I need to know what causes us to laugh so I can laugh more.

Age has a big impact on what people find funny or not. Almost everything is new to Marley and Isla, and as a result, many of their interactions seem ridiculous and surprising, which they in turn find funny. The older we get the more experiences we have and sadly these help “mature” our sense of humor.

Where we live impacts what we deem funny. If there is a joke about a political figure in a town we do not live in, it makes sense we may not understand the joke. When we do find a joke humorous, we laugh not only because it is funny but because it is a way we can strengthen human connections. As I was researching for this column, I read something I found worth sharing: Laughter is a universal language.

Laughing at something and laughing because you are being tickled are two entirely different things. To fully understand why we laugh when we are tickled a very brief description of touch is necessary.

When we feel something brush our arms, we feel it because of our somatosensory system. Sensory neurons respond to external stimuli. At the ends are nerve endings called receptors. These receptors pick up on the external stimuli and carry it to the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) to process.

Laughing in response to tickling is thought to be our bodies’ defense to creepy crawly things. This helps explain why we are unable to tickle ourselves, we know it is coming and from where.

When I tickle Isla and Marley, they see me coming but do not exactly know where I will focus my tickle attack. I am going to have to stay on my game and keep surprising them in hopes that we can determine if they have Hunter laugh!

Take off!

The first time I was on an airplane I was 4 months old and I have continued to fly since that initial flight. I loved everything about flying, but as I have grown, I have found I am much more nervous. Every time that little seat belt sign dings, I think, “Dang, this is it.”

There have been a few experiences that have helped make flying much less intimidating for me. One is having a very good friend, Coy, who is a pilot and who I constantly inundate with questions. The other is an exhibit we had at ExplorationWorks in which the scientific principles of flight were the focus. Both of these have made me much more confident about why it is we are able to fly.

To fly, airplanes need to overcome drag and gravity and they succeed in doing this because of lift and thrust. Drag is countered by thrust and that is from the giant engines moving the plane forward. Lift is dependent on the unique shape of the wing, called an airfoil. The two main principals that are used to help explain lift are Bernoulli’s principle and Newton’s third law of motion.

Bernoulli’s principle states the faster the moving fluid the lower the pressure the fluid has. When air is racing across the wing, it is going across the top of the wing faster than under. This low pressure on top and high pressure underneath helps create lift.

Isaac Newton said for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. We had an exhibit that demonstrated this very well and you can feel it if you stick your hand out of the car window while on the interstate. If you hold your hand out and angle it up, the air hitting it causes it to go up. While these principles ease my mind, they have nothing to do with what really makes me anxious.

When I hear the seat belt sign ding on, it is usually because of turbulence. In one of my discussions with Coy he assured me the bumps we feel in the air are no more dangerous then when we drive over a bump in our car. Right, 30,000 feet is not nearly as dangerous as 3 feet! Coy does have a point however.

 Turbulence is caused by a number of factors and airplanes encounter it every day. Turbulence is caused by movement of air flow. These changes are the result of warm air rising and cold air sinking, the movement of high altitude air currents, air moving around mountains and even movement from other planes.

I called Coy to ask if it was OK to use his name in my column and he said of course. I also asked if he had any quotes that he would like for me to use to which he replied, “Every landing you walk away from is a good one.”

I hope the science in this column instills more trust in flying than his quote.

Beleaf it or not!

Last fall I felt somewhat cheated. We had a very cold week in early October that effectively took care of all the beautiful fall foliage.

This year seems to be making up for the lost time we had last year; it just seems to be keep going on, which is just fine with me. It raises a question I have long sought to know, and I was recently reminded of by my friend Andrew. Why do leaves change color?

Throughout my life, I have heard a number of reasons for this but I am going to attempt to put this seasonal question behind me.

To begin, we must return to biology for a brief lesson in leaves. Plants are autotrophic, meaning they make their own food. They are able to accomplish this through a process we call photosynthesis. Simply put, this is a reaction in which light energy, carbon dioxide, water and chlorophyll all work together to make sugars. It is the pigment chlorophyll that is responsible for the green we see during the summer.

The colorful pigments we see in the fall are called carotenoids (oranges, yellows and browns) and anthocyanins (reds, purples). Carotenoids are present year round, we just do not see them because chlorophyll is continually being produced and broken down. As days get shorter, there is less light for the trees to utilize to make food.

In response to this, chlorophyll production starts to slow down and eventually stops. It is at this point that the carotenoids and anthocyanins are able to show their brilliance; how long they show their colors is dependent on the weather.

Last fall, we had about two weeks of nice colors because of the cold. This year, it keeps continuing. The reason for this is the beautiful weather we had.

In the warmth of the days, lots of sugars are produced. When night temperatures are cool and not freezing, the veins of the leaves close and prevent the sugars from moving out. All of these sugars enhance the production of the anthocyanins and keep the leaves around a little longer for us to enjoy.

Finally, the leaves fall off. The leaves fall off as an adaption these trees have to deal with the cold weather.

Trees that do not lose their leaves, such as pine trees, have developed other ways of coping with the freezing temperatures. Their needles contain a waxy coating, and the fluid inside their cells contains substances that resist

freezing.

I am able to process all of this, but as always there is one outlier that defies what I have learned. Larix occidentallis, or more commonly called the larch or tamarack, has needles like a pine tree but is deciduous like a maple. Scientists are trying to figure out why a tree would behave this way. They believe this life strategy allows the tree to live in some of the harshest environments, like Montana.

In conclusion, shorter days and weather both influence the fall foliage; shorter days are what trigger the whole process.

I can live with that!

A daughter's evolution

My daughter Isla turns one very soon. I am amazed how fast this last year has gone and all the changes Isla went through. I was just as amazed at how quickly my older daughter, Marley, was changing so it has been fantastic to see it again with Isla.

With the changes, it is hard to keep up with everything that happened last year. She went from being this little person who was reliant on us for everything to a much more independent little person. How did this happen seemingly overnight?

Isla was pretty average as far as weight goes when she was born. Not much has changed even though she is three times bigger today than when she was born. Luckily, I am not. Her change in size has been very drastic, as it is with most kids her age. This is because of the significant change in her diet from breast milk to just about whatever we put in front of her!

Initially she only drank breast milk for a large variety of reasons. Her digestive tract was still developing, she did not have teeth, could not sit in a highchair, could not grab for food, could not use a spoon — basically a lot of could nots.

Now we do not have to be as concerned about what we give her for food, we still have a few things we cannot, such as honey. I initially thought this would be because we do not know if she is allergic to bees but it is actually due to a bacterium that can germinate in a baby’s underdeveloped digestive tract.

The weight gain has been a big change; another has been her mobility.

Isla did not do a whole lot early on. She lay on her back cooing and smiling.

From there, she started to roll over to grab Marley’s favorite toy of the day.

Tummy time was next so she could develop her muscles to get ready for crawling.

Once she figured out crawling there was no stopping her. She would crawl to our ottoman to pull herself up and walk along it and our couch.

Most recently, she is taking around 10 steps between my wife, Cory, and me.

In one year, she went from not moving to being a quadruped (crawling on all fours) to a biped (walking on two legs).

This brings me to what has made me the happiest.

When I come home from work, Isla recognizes me, smiles, says “hi” and waves. When she hears a song she recognizes, she starts to dance. It is so cool to see that she has a memory now and learns things.

I think the person she learns the most from is Marley. She loves Marley and wants to do everything Marley does. If Marley is drawing on the chalkboard, Isla is right there mimicking her.

This last year has been so wonderful, I cannot wait to see what happens with my girls in the next year!

Prune Fingers

I cannot believe I have been writing these columns for two years. I write about my family, friends, experiences and things that interest me. I am somewhat surprised that I have not run out of things to discuss. It is actually quite the opposite.

There are many questions I have that I look forward to learning and writing about. The concept of learning is a curious one. We all do it differently and sometimes we learn in ways we may not have expected. I recently learned a couple of things as a result of a mistake I made.

In my last column I wrote how touch screens work and I was incorrect when I wrote potassium was negative. It is actually positive, which was brought to my attention by a couple of friends.

This mistake reminded me how important it is to check not just one source but as many as you can. If I would have done a little more research, I would have found that it is actually an ion gradient that operates the sodium potassium pump.

The other lesson was just how great the power of curiosity can be. Being wrong made me more curious and left me wanting to learn more. As a result I found out some really interesting things I would not have known otherwise. It is this curiosity that drives my daughters’ learning and my attempts to find content for the columns.

My daughter Marley and I were swimming last week and we noticed, after being in the water for awhile, our fingers no longer looked like fingers, but rather like raisins. Of course I have seen this many times in my life, but it was Marley who pointed it out and asked me why it happened. I could not answer her so I am going to attempt to answer it for her now.

The outer layer of our skin, or the epidermis, produces an oily substance called sebum to moisten and protect our skin. It accomplishes this very effectively except when too much of it has been washed off — like overexposure in water. When the sebum is washed off, water can penetrate the skin and cause it to be waterlogged, which causes it to swell, unlike grapes, which dehydrate and wrinkle.

Interestingly, no one really knows why our fingers wrinkle. Some speculate it is because once the sebum is washed away, the dead skin cells start to soak up water. Because the epidermis and the layer of skin below it — dermis —  are attached to one another it does not blow up like a balloon. Instead the skin folds to allow for the excess water, creating the wrinkled look.

Vasoconstriction, or the narrowing of blood vessels, is another explanation scientists are currently studying to determine its role with raisin fingers.

All of this reminds me how great science is in that if there is something we want to know, we can find the answer to it. I know this has given me the ability to answer Marley’s question about raisin fingers!

Plane tails

People will often give me suggestions on what to write. Sometimes the suggestions are solicited and sometimes they are not. About a year ago, my wife, Cory, was brainstorming with me about what to write. We were in the car looking around and she wondered about jet contrails, those long white lines that stretch across the sky in the wake of a jet plane.

A year had passed and I had not delved into this topic for fear I would not have enough content. That explanation was never quite accepted by Cory who has not let me forget about not looking into her idea. I explained that sometimes I need to fully process an idea myself before breaking into the mysteries of science, a notion that has offered Cory little solace.

Thankfully, I was struck by inspiration earlier this month when I happened to be outside as the sun was setting. It was one of those beautiful sunsets we have in Helena and I started thinking about clouds, colors, and, yes, jet contrails!

It turns out contrails are very similar to clouds. They are formed out of similar “ingredients” and the process, while completely different, has the same result.

Contrails are formed when water vapor and other small particles from the exhaust of the plane condenses and freezes along with the surrounding air. Once this happens, the conditions through which the plane is flying come into play, because as Cory pointed out, sometimes we see contrails behind planes and sometimes we do not.

To see the contrails, the conditions need to meet specific criteria. This criteria consist of cold temperatures (minus 40 degrees) and enough moisture in the atmosphere to support the contrail.

While the water vapor to form the contrail is in part from the plane, it is also in part from the air around the plane, the very same air from which clouds are made. The air we breathe contains water in the form of water vapor. Throughout the day, air warms up and rises, and as it rises it expands and cools. When it gets cold enough, the water vapor freezes to tiny dust particles similar to the way the water vapor freezes to the exhaust particles of the plane. When there are billions of these particles together they become a cloud or a contrail.

In comparing clouds and contrails, I have noticed they are often the same colors, mainly white and gray.

Clouds and contrails appear white because they are reflecting the light of the sun; which are all the colors in a rainbow. White is all we see because we see the exact same amount of every color. On the occasion when clouds and contrails appear gray it is likely because there are other clouds or contrails casting shadows. They might also be so dense light cannot fully penetrate them to scatter the light equally.

There you have it Cory, science! Sorry it took me a little over a year to get to it! I hope it answers your questions; it has been so long, I really can’t remember what they were.

Humans best friends!

My family loves dogs and, being surrounded by dogs my whole life, I have experienced great times and tragic times with our pets. Sadly, we recently had a string of sorrow because we had to put Abby, Millie and Minnie to sleep. They were great, old dogs that lived wonderful lives and certainly touched ours. And, probably like your dogs, they had interesting habits and peculiar behaviors worthy of scientific inquiry.

Abby was my dog, Millie was my parents’ dog and Minnie was my father-in-law’s. Abby was a loveable black Lab, and true to form, she ate everything she could find. Under normal circumstances, this would not be a problem, but Abby also had a sensitive stomach. After she ate something she was not supposed to, she would go outside and start eating grass, which was nice because I did not have to mow. One time she ate a lot of grass, came inside and upchucked what my wife Cory and I call the “grass log.”

There is a lot of discussion as to why dogs eat grass. Some speculate dogs like the taste of grass or maybe want to add some roughage to their diet. Others say dogs eat grass to make themselves vomit, which was likely the case with Abby.

When swallowed, the grass tickles the throat and stomach, which may trigger the dog’s “emesis” response to clear its stomach. Upon observation, I would usually discover that the grass was never chewed, rather it was gulped down, which is what some veterinarians believe is an indication that the dog tried to relieve an upset stomach. Whatever the reason, there were definite times when Abby would eat grass — like after gobbling down a few dozen old crab apples off the ground.

Millie was a fantastic dog. She could do a cool, little dance that would make her short of breath. It was kind of a Catch-22 because we would enjoy her amazing moves but then we would have to suffer her very bad breath. This made us think about so many people judge a dog’s mouth as being cleaner than their own, or loaded with some special germ-killing antiseptic?

Author and vet Marty Becker offers his perspective. He believes people think dogs have cleaner mouths because when a dog is injured they spend a lot of time licking their wounds. This action seems to heal the wounds very quickly. Yet, dogs do not have super healing saliva, rather, they are actually removing dead tissue in much the same way a surgeon does for us.

Of the three, Minnie was the oldest at 17. One of my favorite memories of Minnie is having my wife Cory pulling up in her car with Minnie barking her head off. This always perplexed me because Minnie seldom barked —  except when she was in the car. What was it about the car that caused her to bark?

There are many reasons why dogs bark, but among the primary reasons is they are trying to communicate with you or another dog. Barking is also how dogs express emotion. In Minnie’s case, we concluded, she was just excited about being in the car.

One additional way to enjoy your dog is to use science to explore some of his or her peculiar habits and build on the wonderful memories these faithful friends can offer. Thanks for these and all the great memories Abby, Millie and Minnie. We miss you dearly!