Evolution of the Human Eye

Have a look at this brief but very interesting video from the National Center for Science Education about how the human eye evolved:



(If the video does not play or display properly above, click here to view it on YouTube.)

Tip of the hat to Brad Cavanagh at canspice.org, where I first spotted the video.

Wednesday Blogosphere Roving #13

This Wednesday's found images include a pictorial trip around a Greek island; a striking view from the London tubes; and three photos from nature. (Note to the photographers in the audience: Look at Tom's photo of the fawn and tell me I'm not crazy for coveting his 400mm lens!).

Three of this week's blog articles include two how-to pieces on two entirely different subjects; and three pieces of commentary by writers who work in three separate scientific fields -- but after reading what all three have to say, I'm quite certain that if Brad, Chris and Mark met one another, they'd get along very well.

Here are this week's offerings:

Images:

• A trip around Samos - by Keith in Keith's Images


• Weebill - by David in David Kleinert Photography


• Holland Park - by Hoshisato in There Will Come Soft Rains


• Butterfly - in Perez Studios


• Baby Fawn - by Tom in Mon@rch's Nature Blog

Articles:

• Gloria Baraquio: Mistress of Crazy - by Brad Cavanagh in canspice.org


• 7 ways to be more lucky - by Steven Aitchison in Change Your Thoughts


• How to Combine Two Average Photos into One Spectacular Photo - by Pete in My GPS Camera Phone


• Science Tuesday: Breath-taking insanity - by Chris in chrisdellavedova.com


• Is wilderness a place or a feeling? - by Mark Powell in blogfish

---

And here is an assortment of things I posted on my other blogs during the past week (one example from each blog).

In The Right Blue:

• There's one in every crowd - even some fish hear a different drummer
  

In B N Sullivan - Photography:

• Male House Finch - a common bird, with an uncommonly beautiful color
  

In my aviation news blogs:

• Continental Airlines Boeing 737 has a 'close encounter' with -- a rocket? - in Aircrew Buzz


• Delta flight attendant union certification election results - in Cabin Crew News


• NTSB acts to prevent further Boeing 757 wing panel separation incidents - in Professional Pilot News

That this week's roundup!

Hawaii House of Representatives Committee to Study Vog Effects

A Special Committee on Vog Effects has been appointed in the Hawaii House of Representatives. The committee is tasked with studying the impact of vog (volcano smog) on "the public's health and safety, agriculture, water quality, pets and animals, wildlife, and other areas," according to an item posted yesterday on the Hawaii House Blog.

The committee is composed of eight state lawmakers, mostly from the Big Island. The chairman of the committee is Rep. Robert Herkes (D, District 5: Puna, Kau, North Kona,South Kona), pictured at right.

"What is occurring is a natural disaster, but unlike a tsunami, hurricane, twister or major earthquake, it is not viewed as one," said Rep. Herkes. "The legislature needs to focus on the impacts on Hawaii residents such as health and safety, loss of agricultural crops or the impact on tourism and jobs, and explore all avenues of relief."

The Hawaii House Blog says that a report on the committee's findings and recommendations to the House of Representatives is due at least twenty days prior to the convening of the Legislature's Regular Session in January of 2009.

[Photo Source]

Wednesday Blogosphere Roving #12

The first of this Wednesday's found images are paintographs; the rest are lovely photos of birds and flowers. The Spring theme continues this week.

Three of this week's blog articles are about aviation topics; another tells some surprising facts about the state of volcano research in the U.S.; and Mark Stoneman's article, his first contribution to the Blog Catalog Community Blog, provides good advice to serious bloggers about citing their sources.

Here are this week's offerings:

Images:

• Welcome Spring - by Carol Cooper in Compass Webworks


• Lunch with a Great Egret - by Beverly in Behind the Bins


• Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus) on the coast in Northern Norway - by Thomas Laupstad in Photos from Northern Norway


• Flower Power - by Claire in A Little Piece of Me


• A rose by any other name... - by David Webb in David's Nature Photography Gallery

Articles:

• Swiss Man Flies Jet Wings Over The Alps - by Szafi in Airline World


• The Gizmo Airline Report: Virgin America - by Peter Glaskowsky in Speeds and Feeds


• Vueling Special Liveries - MTV Themed Planes - by Aviatrix in Trust Me, I'm a Flight Attendant


• Volcano monitoring: last night's PGS meeting - by Callan Bentley in NOVA Geoblog


• Do You Link to Your Sources? - by Mark Stoneman in The Blog Catalog Community Blog

---

And here is an assortment of things I posted on my other blogs during the past week (one example from each blog).

In The Right Blue:

• Have you ever seen a pregnant shark? - if not, here's a photo of one
  

In B N Sullivan - Photography:

• Lizard Face - a Gold Dust Day Gecko, up close and personal
  

In my aviation news blogs:

• American Airlines to cut capacity -- and thousands of jobs - in Aircrew Buzz


• New Dance Craze: Flight Attendants Do the Safety Briefing - in Cabin Crew News


• Air Midwest to shut down passenger service - in Professional Pilot News

That this week's roundup!

How to position your wireless router

Here's a handy set of tips about where to place your wireless router, and where not to:

• Find a place that's closest to the middle of all of your networked devices.
• Keep it high and away from walls, furniture, cabinets and shelving.
• Don't compete with appliances that emit interfering radio signals.
• Avoid reflective surfaces that may cause wireless signals to bounce off.

In other words, don't do what I have been doing until very recently: wondering why I got a weak or patchy signal on my laptop while I was positioned a room away from the router (which was on the floor under a desk), with a large mirror on one side of the wall between me and it, and a packed bookshelf on the other side of that wall.

I now see that the poor signal was the fault of neither the router nor my laptop's Centrino innards. Instead it was more like operator error. Sigh. (At least I didn't have it near any 'competing appliances' emitting errant radio signals!)

[Tips Source: Dell Small Business Edge]

Blogging the Vog: Now you see it, now you don't

I have just added a new item to the Hawaii Vog Information and Resources page that I published last week. A unit of the NOAA Satellite and Information Service has provided a web page showing a Kilauea SO2 Graphic, a chart that maps the location of the SO2 plume from Kilauea volcano for the current date, and three preceding dates. When the page loads, you will see a map of Hawaii, and below it a bar with the notation "Current; Previous1; Previous2; Previous3." Hover your mouse over SO2 for each of the four days, and a plot of the SO2 plume for that day will appear on the map.

The above graphic is a link from the project's main page, from which you can click on links to other volcanoes around the world. You can also look at global daily composites of three different regions: Tropics, Northern Hemisphere, and Southern Hemisphere. Those are high resolution mosaics, and they take awhile to load, but if you are interested in volcanic emissions, it's worth the wait. My husband noticed that on the image for the Tropics, the SO2 plume from Hawaii's volcano was huge compared to every other location on the map, without exception. It's also quite sobering to note just how far out to sea Kilauea's SO2 plume extends.

Vog (volcano smog) was a problem for the entire state of Hawaii again this past week. The photo at right illustrates the source of that problem. The May 13, 2008 photo, from the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO), shows the gas and ash plume emitting from Halemaumau crater at the summit of Kilauea volcano on Hawaii's Big Island. According to the HVO: "Stagnant surface winds, combined with higher elevation winds, caused the plume to rise straight up and then shear off." [Click on the photo to enlarge it.]

Yes, the plume sheared off, and the vog drifted up the island chain, ultimately affecting all of the populated islands. The haze hung over the islands for days. Today, May 18, the haze is dissipating again, as light trade winds have begun to blow.

I said in an earlier post that, although we all have been living with Kilauea's more or less continuous erupting since 1983, the increase in vog following the opening of the new vent in Halemaumau crater in March has been noticeable. It's not my imagination. Not only has the daily output of emissions increased, as measured by the scientists at the HVO, the resulting vog has been more bothersome. It is affecting the health of residents, not just in areas immediately down wind of the volcano, but across the entire island chain.

On Friday, May 16, an article in the Honolulu Advertiser reported on the rising number of respiratory complaints from residents across the state. In fact, breathing problems were being reported even by people with no history of respiratory ailments.

"We're seeing probably out of every 10 patients, seven have not had symptoms before and the other three have had a history of allergies and this is just making it worse," said Dr. Irving Harper III, a Maui physician specializing in internal medicine and allergy management.

Harper said doctors he's talked with have reported a 20 percent increase in the number of patients they've seen this week. Many of the patients complain of breathing difficulties, runny noses, irritated eyes and sore throats.

Dr. Harper said the vog seems to be affecting healthy people as well as allergy sufferers. He said he's treated lifeguards and others who work outdoors.

"They're younger people, outdoor people who are usually healthy and are presenting with symptoms that you usually don't see," he said. "A lot of them are saying they just don't have the energy level that they used to have and that they're a little short of breath."

Beth-Ann Kozlovich, the development director of Hawaii's chapter of the American Lung Association, said that the Association has been taking calls from people on all the islands, and that many callers are saying this is the worst vog they've ever seen. Ms. Kozlovich also mentioned that people with no history of respiratory problems are suffering.

By the way, those of us who do have a history of respiratory ailments have been staying indoors and puffing on our albuterol inhalers. I'm thinking it's just about time to pay a visit to a relative who lives in Colorado, just for a breath of fresh air!

To read more of what I have written about Kilauea volcano and the vog, click here.

---

About the Photo: This USGS photo, taken on May 13, 2008, shows the gas-and-ash plume emitted from Halemaumau crater at the Kilauea summit. To view more photos of Kilauea, visit the Kilauea Images page on the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory website.

Wednesday Blogosphere Roving #11

This Wednesday's found images are 100% wildlife of one sort or another: Insect, birds, reptile, wildflower. (I repeat: I love nature photography!)

This week's blog articles are all about aspects of writing, in general -- or blogging, in particular.

Here are this week's offerings:

Images:

• Tiny visitor - by Montucky in Montana Outdoors


• Digiscoped Evening Grosbeaks - by Nancy Castillo in The Zen Birdfeeder


• More Warblers from Ohio - by Tom in Mon@rch's Nature Blog


• Snake On a Log - by Kathy in Photography by KML


• Smokey Mountain Trillium - by Bernie Kasper in BFK Photography

Articles:

• Hot Blonde Reveals Cruel Method to Increase Blog Traffic - by William McCamment in Dead Rooster


• Exit Entrecard, Stage Left - by Matt Keegan in The Article Writer


• Best-Selling Author Turns Piracy into Profit - by Ernesto in TorrentFreak


• Blogging: Defining Moments - by Brightfeather in This Time ~ This Space


• Do you really want to read crappy corporate pitches? - by Kevin in Pointless Banter

---

And here is an assortment of things I posted on my other blogs during the past week (one example from each blog).

In The Right Blue:

• Bubble Coral Plus - a type of coral never seen by snorkelers
  

In B N Sullivan - Photography:

• Rock Rose Ice Plant with Honey Bee - the title says it all
  

In my aviation news blogs:

• Actor Dennis Farina nabbed at LAX with loaded handgun - in Aircrew Buzz


• Flight attendants fight in-flight fire on Northwest Airlink regional jet - in Cabin Crew News


• Pilot shortage in India: Airlines need type-rated ex-pat pilots - in Professional Pilot News

That this week's roundup!

Vog in Hawaii: Information and Resources

This page is a collection of resources about vog (volcanic smog) in Hawaii. Vog, a kind of air pollution, is a product of emissions from Kilauea Volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii.

The volcano emits smoke, ash and gases in amounts that vary constantly. Weather factors, especially the direction and speed of the wind, determine whether the emissions from Kilauea are blown out to sea, or over the coasts and interior of the Big Island. A combination of increased emissions, coupled with winds from the south or southwest, sometimes will carry the vog plume hundreds of miles up the island chain, affecting all of the Hawaiian Islands.

We rely on a partnership among Federal, State, and County agencies to monitor levels of volcanic emissions, and to warn us of potentially hazardous conditions. The Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency has made available an online brochure in a printable ('pdf') format, updated in April 2008, which explains the hazards and summarizes measures that residents can take to protect themselves, their livestock, and their crops. The brochure is a good starting point for understanding how to cope with vog. Here is the link: Emissions from Kilauea Volcano

Sulfur Dioxide

Sulfur dioxide (SO2), one of the gases emitted by Kilauea volcano, is considered to be a potential health hazard. The agencies that monitor concentrations of SO2 in the ambient air use a color code system, illustrated at right, to inform the public of SO2 hazard status.

The new Hawaii County Civil Defense brochure mentioned above says, "It is expected that any area down wind of the vent site of Halema‘uma‘u can expect SO2 levels to be higher than in previous years." Remember: which areas are construed as 'down wind' varies, based on the wind speed and direction.

Health and Environmental Effects of SO2

Sulfur dioxide is irritating to the eyes, nose, throat and respiratory tract. Short-term exposure to elevated levels of SO2 may cause inflammation and irritation, resulting in burning of the eyes, coughing, difficulty in breathing and a feeling of chest tightness. Prolonged or repeated exposure to higher levels of SO2 may be dangerous to children and to people with any pre-existing respiratory or heart conditions.

SO2 also contributes to the formation of acid rain, which can damage trees, gardens, landscaping, and crops. Acid rain can make the soil acidic.

Hawaii County Civil Defense says that in the event that SO2 reaches the red or purple level, information will be given to the public utilizing all means available, including radio stations and field units. Here is the link to the Hawaii County Civil Defense web page, where such notices are posted: Hawaii County Civil Defense Messages.

Vog Haze

According to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), SO2 reacts with other chemicals in the air to form tiny sulfate particles. Haze occurs when light is scattered or absorbed by particles and gases in the air, reducing visibility. In the case of vog, it is important to note that the SO2 component usually diminishes with distance from the volcano. Even if the vog haze looks heavy, it does not necessarily mean there is a high concentration of SO2 in the haze. Conversely, SO2 levels can be high even though the vog haze is light. Heavy vog haze does mean higher levels of particulate matter and smoke.

Hawaii Civil Defense lists these symptoms that can arise from exposure to vog haze: headaches; breathing difficulties; increased susceptibility to respiratory ailments; watery eyes; sore throat. The EPA notes that when particles are breathed in, they gather in the lungs and are associated with increased respiratory symptoms and disease, difficulty in breathing, and premature death.

Ash Fall Hazards

Volcanic ash is composed of tiny rock particles emitted during eruption. The particles can range in size from grit to a very fine powder. Ash particles can be inhaled, causing chest discomfort, wheezing, and coughing. Other symptoms of ash inhalation: runny nose; sore throat; difficulty breathing; and worsening of pre-existing respiratory conditions.

More online resources:

• Kilauea Status Reports - daily info from the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, including current emissions rates


• Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park Current Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) Conditions - National Park Service report on current conditions, with map showing the direction of the gas plumes from Kilauea vents


• Air Quality in the Hawaiian Islands - Maps showing air quality data from the Hawaii State Department of Health (Note: Java scripts - may take awhile to load)


• What Is Vog? - information page prepared by the KonaWeb online community


• How Sulfur Dioxide Affects the Way We Live - EPA information on health and environmental impact


• Air Quality Guide for Particle Pollution - Key Facts from the EPA


• Volcanic Ash - Effects on Water Supply and Mitigation Strategies - information from the USGS


• Kilauea Eruption Update - information from the County of Hawaii, including FAQs


• Halema'uma'u Web Cam - live panorama shot of Kilauea summit


• Pu'u O'o Web Cam - live panorama shot of the east rift zone of Kilauea


• New Activity on Kilauea - regularly updated satellite photos of the Hawaiian Islands and the vog plume, from NASA


• Kilauea SO2 Graphic - chart that maps the location of the SO2 plume from Kilauea volcano for the current date, and three preceding dates, from NOAA Satellite and Information Service

Please use the comments section at the end of this post to let me know of resources you may know about that haven't been included here. I will add more items to the list as I find them.

---

Note: I have been blogging about Kilauea volcano and the vog since March of 2008. To read more of what I have written on these subjects, click here.

Taking Time to Smell the Plumeria

See those flowers in the photo at right? Those are Plumeria, from my garden. Plumeria -- known in some Asian countries as frangipani -- are very fragrant. They are a beloved flower here in Hawaii, and they are a favorite for stringing together into a lei. But sometimes we forget to take time to smell the flowers, even here in Hawaii.

Evelyn, over at Homespun Honolulu, is hosting a blog carnival -- the 9th Carnival of Aloha -- featuring 10 articles about Hawaii. The theme is Take Time to Smell the Plumeria. Good advice in these hectic and sometimes unsettling times!

I encourage all readers of the Virtual Scratchpad to click on over to the 9th Carnival of Aloha to enjoy some of the best of Hawaii, from some of the best Hawaii bloggers. Go smell the Plumeria!