Consider the Pear.

I love pears, having grown up with a bartlett pear tree in our side yard and memories of the coming of fall, heralded by my mom trying frantically to can the pears that filled buckets, lined shelves and overflowed onto counters.I’ve missed them so last time I was at the grocery store, I bought a few.

So I was trying to do my chemistry homework and enjoying a tasty treat of a perfectly ripe barlett pear when I decided my time would be better spent if I procrastinated on the homework and wrote a blogpost for my sadly neglected blog.

Lacking other inspiration and resolving not to rant mindlessly about standard deviation, I considered my pear.

There must be a lot to write about with this pear. They’re high in fiber. They are related to apples, both being of the Rosaceae family. Meg Ryan’s character described them as being like a ’sugary sand’ in the movie City of Angels.  They can be used to treat gout as part of a gout diet. There are 30 varieties of pear.

So lets be more specific. The Bartlett Pear, also known as the Williams pear, has 18% of your daily value of dietary fiber for every cup of pear you eat. And 86 calories. (PMA Labeling Facts)  Be aware that those daily values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.

Lets be even more specific.

According to the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis, Bartlett pears are ripe, and then most desirable for eating when the flesh firmness ranges between 2 and 4 pounds-force. Pounds-force? Always look for the footnotes… they will explain…. Ah! I found it ! Flesh firmness in pounds-force is defined as penetration force with 8 mm (5/16 inch) tip. Of course!

What happened to the simple pear? People are curious. People want the best taste possible. Farmers need to know common afflictions to pear crops. The gout afflicted want cures. Movie goers want to compare pear opinions with Meg Ryan. Others want to know if they really are useful in treating the inflammation of mucus membranes.

Or maybe thats just me. But they are high in Vitamin C.

Consider your pear. Or anything. There is always more information than you think.

-http://postharvest.ucdavis.edu/Produce/ProduceFacts/Fruit/pear.shtml

-photo courtesy of dano via flickr

-http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/list_nut_edit.pl

I assume most of you have given up on this blog ever being updated again. The truth is after spring term finals week I thought I would have more time come summer. Unfortunately, summer brought a full time job and Calculus.

Things have changed. I’ve made the transition from dorm to apartment. This brought around new realizations: cooking is not as fun as it seems, buying toliet paper with hard-earned money is necessary but also depressing, and living  in a place bigger than a walk-in closet is a nice change.

Our Podcaster and Site Manager, Taylor, also moved, but his was a more drastic and exciting change as he has moved all the way to Phoenix, Arizona.

Despite changing lives and busy schedules, the hope is this site will return to its former glory with more regular posting as I restart writing.

Thanks all!

-Kallen Dewey, blog journalist

I was rather intrigued when Mike Rowe was trapped in what resembled quicksand but was actually  layers of guano… bat droppings…

I guess this would work similar to quicksand since quicksand is not necessarily sand but any fine granular matter and in this case the bat guano fit the bill.

The new Tesla Roadster, very slick, very dreamy.

If I were rich, I know which car I’d keep in my garage. With a slick body, and acceleration of 0-60 in 3.7 seconds, and of course, a radio you can hook your ipod up to, the Tesla Roadster is a sports car of my dreams.

Oh, and did I mention its completely electric?

The Tesla Roadster is a new generation of electric cars. Unlike other electric cars with a limited range and top speed, Tesla Motors created a car with an EV range of 220 miles and a top speed of 125 mph. Personally, I can’t recall the last time I went 125 miles per hour, so its good enough for me. A full charge takes 3.5 hours.

There is a reason the Tesla Roadster has taken a jump ahead of the rest of the market, as the website states,

“Most electric vehicles operate under the assumption that driving is merely a necessary evil if you need to get someplace you can’t reach on foot or bike. The result has been cars that are designed, built, and marketed in ways that refuse to glorify driving.”

I have to agree with them… Just take a look at the NMG-1 from Myers Motors. I’m strongly reminded of a deformed grasshopper. They may be electric, but I’m not sure if I could drive one. Of course, that is an extreme examp

I'm thinking I'd rather be biking than driving this thing.

Unfortunately, Electric cars still have a way to go before they are accepted by a large population of the driving community. Why buy a Tesla Roadster running over 100,000 dollars, or for that matter a Prius Hybrid when you can get a car that equals in performance, has a lot larger range and is a few thousand dollars cheaper? The prices always go down, and hopefully, our ecological footprint will as well.

The Tesla Roadster will have to remain the car of my dreams…and exist only in my dreams.

The Governator has one.

Outside Links:

-Top Ten Electric Cars by Autobloggreen- http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/02/07/the-top-ten-electric-vehicles-you-can-buy-today-for-the-most-pa/

-Tesla Motors Official Site:- http://www.teslamotors.com

-ZAP! cars- http://www.zapworld.com/

-Toyota’s Prius Hybrid- http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/

The night dive was the one I was the most apprehensive about and it was the coolest dive I did. There is so much more life at night.

Night diving is awesome. One thing unique to the ocean though is the bioluminescence.

Bioluminescence is light emitted by organisms in a chemical process in which chemical energy is converted to light energy. A terrestrial example is fireflies.

But in the ocean, microscopic creatures, like  dinoflagellates produce bioluminescence When you turn off your dive lights and wave your hands, they light up at the water disturbance. It looks like sparkles in the water, tiny pinpoints of light glowing in the darkness. It is like watching a kids movie and seeing the fairy dust. Tinker bell would be proud.

I was very sad to turn my light back on and stop playing with the bioluminescence.

However, there are so many things that come out at night that I was eager to continue looking at other marine organisms… like crabs, shrimp, fish… the list goes  on.

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Translation? Patella means kneecap, Femoral refers the Femur, a bone in your leg, and the rest is self explanetory. So all it this really says s that you have pain in your kneecap.

Not a diagnosis, its more like just a term. What does this have to do with anything? My doctor says I have Patella Femoral Pain Syndrome which is just a fancy way of saying that he’s not sure why my knee is hurting, but I shouldn’t ride my bike for a while.

What the pain is is really an irritation and inflammation of the underside of the kneecap

Another possible cause of my pain may be some damage I did to my meniscus, a band of cartilage around the knee. Hopefully I didn’t do this as I prefer the rather vague diagnosis of Patella Femoral Pain Syndrome.

Ever noticed a burning sensation in your muscles during a power-intensive workout?

You have lactic acid to thank. During hard exercises (such as sprinting up hills, for one!), your body produces more lactic acid than it can get rid of and it can build up.

The best racers can ignore the discomfort/pain and go for the finish.

Us bike racers joke about lactic acid all the time. I also enjoy singing “Burn, Baby, Burn…”

On that note, Collegiate Cycling races went well this weekend.

Quinine played a large role in the colonization of Africa by the British. It’s really hard to colonize someplace when you send people there, they contract malaria and they die. Quinine was the first effective treatment of malaria. After that, Africa stopped being the “white man’s grave” and became another British colony.

Quinine is extracted from the bark of the South American chichona tree. Ironically, it is responsible for the creation of an alcoholic cocktail. Because Quinine has a bitter taste, British colonists in Africa would mix the Quinine tonic with Gin, hence the creation of the Gin-and-tonic. Nowadays tonic water (a component of the cocktail) contains less quinine and is therefor less bitter.

Malaria is caused by protozoa of the genus Plasmodium. It is still considered a threat even with the discovery of modern antimalarial drugs. There is no vaccine for malaria and the tropical disease is still prevalent and some drug-resistant strains of malaria are popping up.

Malaria, Gin-and-Tonic, and the British Empire… who would have thought they were all related?

In fact, there is even a blog response by Kevin at Deep Sea News regarding my cavalier attitude on the coolness of snails. After he mentions Endosymbiotic bacteria, I must admit, I am hooked. There is just something really cool about bacteria, so of course the organism harboring them is also cool by proxy.

This is not to say all mollusks take the cake… Here is my rough graph of my opinion.

Mollusca Graph

A strikingly interesting chiton. Credit: Ken-ichi via Flickr

Aplacophora: This class of worm-like sea creatures loses points due to its recent (1987) abandonment of the Echinoderm status. I applaud them for reaching out of the sea cucumber mold and stepping forth as newly classified benthic (deep) beings, but they have fallen in the eyes of some.

Polyplacophora- Chitons are just cool. The prehistoric look of the eight overlapping valves just leaves some people feeling good. Otherwise, the polyplacophora class seems to me like it JUST has chitons in it. Too bad.

Monoplacophora- Limpets we know nothing about. Okaaay… They live in the deep? I suppose they would be really awesome to study, since there is so much to know, but for right now….

Bivalvia- As a seashell collector, I guess I am grateful for the bivalvia class, with its scallops and clam like creatures. Giant clams excite any child’s imagination and some scallops can even swim! However, they lose points because of the invasive actions of mussels. Don’t let mussels take over or the biodiversity will plummet. Mussels are even ruthless to other mussels.

Scaphopoda- These guys are just bivalvia wannabes that look like mini elephants lost their tusks. But the idea of mini elephants losing their tusks does give them a little boost over monoplacophora just for the awesome imagery.

Gastropoda- After hearing so much about snails I bow to their relative awesomeness. Also, I love the word abalone as a journalism word nerd. Plenty of people also like eating organisms from this class and I love looking at the colorful varieties of nudibranch, like the Lemon Peel Nudibranch I saw while diving in the Puget sound. Gastropods take over the land and the sea and many of them are strikingly pretty or quirky and weird. Too bad this class has to include slugs.

Southern Calamari Squid (Sepioteuthis australis). Credit: Richard Ling via Flickr

Cephalopoda- As already said in the previous post, this class includes Octopi and Squid and we’ve already established their coolness. An Octopus is a thing to reckon with, and I would love to see one closer the next time I go on a dive. The Cephalopods are the rulers of the Mollusca phylum.

The Human Population is NOT growing exponentially.

In population mathematics, growth rate is measured by the formula b-d=r. The rate is r. A population can only if r is constant. You could calculate teh doubling time of the population, but you find that the population doesn’t really follow a specific doubling pattern because r isn’t constant.

In fact, in recent years, r seems to be finally declining, although it is still positive.

If you look at the graph of human population,  it sure looks like an exponential graph, but the highest growth rate occured between 1965 and 1995.

This doesn’t mean that the world isn’t overpopulated, it just means that the phrase is incorrect.