Pete Beckman says even with some of the fastest computers in the world, the model of the spill could take days to finish. (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)
Oil from the big spill in the Gulf of Mexico is starting to turn up in places people did not expect.
That’s making it tough for cleanup crews to stay one step ahead of the oil.
Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope supercomputers might help.<
Transcript
Oil from the big spill in the Gulf of Mexico is starting to turn up in places people did not expect.
That’s making it tough for cleanup crews to stay one step ahead of the oil.
Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope supercomputers might help.
Scientists want to put together a 3D picture of what the gulf oil plume looks like, and they’re using new computer code and supercomputers to do it.
The numbers are getting crunched at Argonne national laboratory outside Chicago.
Pete Beckman runs the computing center there.
He says satellites and water samples give us some information, but we could really use a more complete picture.
“If we know for example that, because of eddies and currents, that things will accumulate at a particular map location, well, that’s where you would send the booms to soak up the oil. If you can concentrate your resources in one place, you’re much more effective.”
Beckman says even with some of the fastest computers in the world, the model of the spill could take days to finish.
Some government scientists say right now could be the only time in their careers to make some some key environmental advances. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
We’re hearing more and more about federal
stimulus money being used to help laid-off
workers or repair bridges or roads. Shawn
Allee reports the government wants
stimulus money to move through a wish list
of environmental science projects, too:
Transcript
We’re hearing more and more about federal
stimulus money being used to help laid-off
workers or repair bridges or roads. Shawn
Allee reports the government wants
stimulus money to move through a wish list
of environmental science projects, too:
Department of Energy labs say stimulus dollar figures are staggering compared to what the government has been spending on science.
Take a federal renewable energy lab in Colorado.
Jeffrey Baker is a lab director there.
Baker says they’re learning to make ethanol out of plants other than corn. That project’s getting ten million dollars in stimulus money.
“The Recovery Act is allowing us to expand a project we already have, going to, in effect, double the capacity the nation has to do that research and development.”
Other Department of Energy labs got stimulus money for work on high-tech car batteries, smart energy grids, and radar to model global warming.
Some government scientists say right now could be the only time in their careers to make some some key environmental advances.
Millions of gallons of wastewater is produced by cleaning operations at the Welch's. Some of the sugar in the wastewater is being used to make electricity. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)
Tiny single-celled organisms could become the giants of
energy production in the near future. Scientists are
using bacteria to convert waste into hydrogen energy.
Lisa Ann Pinkerton recently watched a vat of microbes
turning wastewater into electricity:
Transcript
Tiny single-celled organisms could become the giants of
energy production in the near future. Scientists are
using bacteria to convert waste into hydrogen energy.
Lisa Ann Pinkerton recently watched a vat of microbes
turning wastewater into electricity:
More than 17 million gallons of grape juice is sitting in what amounts to be a huge
refrigerator. It’s Welch’s grape juice ready to be bottled. About the size of a
gymnasium, the cooler’s covered with tile and the juice is stored in big
stainless steel tanks.
Paul Zorzie is the plant manager. He says they have to regularly clean the
tanks. And first they rinse them with water to clean out the remaining juice:
“Juice would be anywhere from 10 to 20 percent
sugar, so what goes down the drain might be .3.”
Since there’s still a little bit of grape juice and sugar in that wastewater, it can
still be used. Behind the plant, the faint smell of grape juice wafts from a
bubbling tank of wastewater. It looks kinda like a purple jacuzzi. In a nearby
shed, Gannon University Professor Rick Diz has built a pilot system to covert
the sugar in that grape juice wastewater into electricity. With the help of the
Ohio biotechnology firm NanoLogix, he’s coaxing millions of microorganisms
to consume the sugar and produce hydrogen:
“The sort of bacteria that produce hydrogen and
actually other bio fuels of one sort or another just
love sugar. Just like for people, sugar is the easiest
thing to digest for many organisms.”
Diz says if you keep introducing food that sugar from the watered-down grape
juice, the microbe population will double every 24-48 minutes. He’s trying to
keep the conditions just right to encourage hydrogen-producing microbes to
grow, while at the same time discouraging methane producing ones. They feed
on hydrogen, and it can be a careful balancing act.
When the microbes produce enough gas, the pressure trips a switch and the
hydrogen is pumped into a slender, high-pressure holding tank:
“And so far we’re been quite successful. We are in fact
producing hydrogen gas, we have used that gas to run an
engine that generated electricity for us on just a
demonstration purpose.”
You can imagine, there are all sorts of industries that create waste sugar
water, from fruit juices, and sodas to candy makers. So there’s lots of
potential to generate hydrogen and then electricity from residual sugar in
wastewater.
But, Diz says the Welch’s system is the only one in the US to successfully do
this outside a laboratory setting. The Welch’s plant in Erie, Pennsylvania
spends about one-and-a-half million dollars a year for electricity and
wastewater treatment each. It hopes a large-scale project that Diz will build
this spring can put a dent in those bills:
“Welch’s is certainly one of the first companies that we’ve hear of who’s expressed
interest in producing hydrogen from microorganisms.”
That’s Patrick Serfass at the National Hydrogen Association. He says
developing renewable ways to generate hydrogen is ideal for a greener energy
sector. But the methods have to be economically worth it:
“The trick is to make the leap from the laboratory to real world applications, and using the hydrogen to either produce
electricity or meet some other energy need.”
Serfass says if Welch’s makes good on it’s plans to built a large demonstration
bio reactor it’ll be a major step for renewable hydrogen and an example to the
rest of the nation’s over 200 beverage makers and bottlers.
For the Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.
A new study finds if fish raised in captivity breed with fish in the
wild that might hurt the wild fish populations. Rebecca Williams
reports that’s because the captive fish are genetically weaker:
Transcript
A new study finds if fish raised in captivity breed with fish in the
wild that might hurt the wild fish populations. Rebecca Williams
reports that’s because the captive fish are genetically weaker:
Billions of fish are raised in hatcheries and released into lakes and
rivers.
But a new study in the journal Science says there could be
problems with that. The researchers found a type of salmon bred in
captivity quickly adapted to their less stressful life in the hatchery.
So they weren’t prepared for a cutthroat life in the wild.
Michael Blouin is an author of the study. He says the babies of
captive-bred fish have trouble finding food and aren’t very good at
escaping predators.
“If you have large numbers of hatchery fish mixing with wild
populations, the fear is they’ll be passing those genes to the wild
population and thereby dragging down the fitness of the wild
population.”
Blouin says this has not been proven outside of the laboratory yet, but he says the lab results raise some concerns about the widespread
use of captive fish to boost wild fish populations.
During the summer, lots of people visit the Lake Erie islands at the southwest end of the lake. But there’s one island you can’t visit. It’s the site of a historic home and reserved for scientific research. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant recently visited Gibraltar Island and files this report:
Transcript
During the summer, lots of people visit the Lake Erie islands at the southwest end of the
lake. But there’s one island you can’t visit. It’s the site of a historic home and reserved
for scientific research. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant recently visited
Gibraltar Island and files this report:
(sound of ferry)
Visitors taking the ferry to Lake Erie’s popular South Bass Island can see a castle-like
structure through the trees on Gibraltar Island across the bay. But they can’t go there.
The island is owned by Ohio State University and home to a research lab called Stone
Laboratory.
Recently, a few reporters got to go where usually only scientists go.
(sound on boat)
Lab Director Jeff Reutter is taking soil samples from the lake bottom to show some of the
latest concerns about blue-green algae… an algae that’s toxic to some aquatic life and
makes drinking water taste bad. It’s been appearing more frequently and scientists think
the zebra mussel might be causing it.
(more boat sounds)
Researchers and students from Ohio State and elsewhere study invasive species,
pollution, shoreline erosion, and other ecological lake issues at the lab.
(sound inside castle)
The scientists who worked in the lab used to live in the structure next door, known as
Cooke’s Castle. The large home was built in the 1860’s by the family of Jay Cooke.
Cooke was not a scientist. He was a banker and investment broker, and he played a
major role in raising money for the Union Army during the Civil War. Cooke came up
with the idea of selling war bonds and raised a billion dollars for the Union Army.
Cooke bought the seven-acre Gibraltar Island in 1864 and had his summer home built on
it. Ironically, while the Union fund-raiser was vacationing on his island, Confederate
soldiers were imprisoned on nearby Johnson’s Island.
Retired Ohio State Administrator John Kleberg has been researching Jay Cooke. He says
Cooke was an avid hunter and fisherman, so Kleberg suspects he would be pleased to see
the science lab there today.
“There is a penciled correspondence where Cooke is complaining about the reduction in
the population of the fish, the bass specifically, I think, because people are net fishing,
you know where they’re taking too many fish out of the lake and the bass population
therefore is decreasing. And that’s not the way you ought to protect the bass population.
So obviously in that context he was sensitive about the need for conservation and how we
fish and how we protect fish populations. So I suspect he would be very pleased with the
kind of work that’s being done.”
Cooke’s daughter sold Gibraltar in 1925 to Franz Stone, whose family donated it to Ohio
State.
Outside, the four-story limestone turret’s crenellated top gives the appearance of a castle.
The inner rotunda walls have held up surprisingly well over 140 years.
But after years of use, the building is in need of some major repairs. Lab Director
Reutter wants to renovate the 15 room building into a conference center.
“It’s interesting too, Cooke’s, one of his sons, was an amateur photographer, and we’ve
got great photos of how the place looked at that time, so obviously that’s our goal to take
it back.”
(ambient sound inside castle runs underneath this section.)
The castle includes a spiral staircase and there’s a gorgeous wood-paneled library that
overlooks the bay…
Reutter: “So, obviously, this would be my office…” (laughter)
Ohio State University is looking for money to make renovations. But that’s proved
challenging. The castle will never be open to the public. Lab Director Reutter says that’s
not its purpose…
“Oh no, this would not be used for tourists, this is an education and an outreach facility,
so it would be a conference center but it would be for research conferences, education
conferences, Great Lakes management, this will never be open to the public.”
It’ll cost two and a half million dollars to make the renovations. If they can find the
money, Reutter and the university say Cooke’s castle will become an even more
important research center. One he expects to draw scientists to study the problems facing
the Great Lakes.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.
An artist's rendition of the Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health (image courtesy of DCPAH).
A new animal diagnostic laboratory being built in the Great Lakes region will help farmers and veterinarians get quicker answers about what’s making their animals sick. The lab will also be one of only a handful in the Midwest certified to work with potentially lethal biological agents and infectious diseases. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
A new animal diagnostic laboratory being built in the Great Lakes region will help
farmers and veterinarians get quicker answers about what’s making their animals sick.
The lab will also be one of only a handful in the Midwest certified to work with
potentially lethal biological agents and infectious diseases. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Construction crews are putting the finishing touches on a huge cream-colored building
with green windows. It’s nestled among corn fields and campus dairy farms. When it
opens early next year, Michigan State University’s new animal diagnostic lab will test
thousands of animal samples every week. It’ll be one of the first lines of defense against
animal diseases that are spreading quickly through the Midwest. Testing for Chronic
Wasting Disease, West Nile Virus and Bovine Tuberculosis has already clogged many
labs in the region.
(ambient sound)
Right now, Michigan State’s ten animal diagnostic services are scattered in outdated labs
all across campus. Every day, the labs take in hundreds of samples from all over the
region. Some are entire animals – dead because of some disease or infection. Others are
just parts of animals – a liver or a piece of muscle.
These veterinary students are trying to find out why two pigs from two different farms
died. One had swollen joints and a high temperature. The other one was anorexic.
(ambient sound: “So have you taken your specimens already?”)
William Reed is the director of Michigan State’s Diagnostic Center for Population and
Animal Health. He says the current labs were built 30 years ago, and were never designed
to be used in the way they are now.
“For example, we need state of the art laboratories that have special air handling
capability. We have to be concerned about protecting the workers, we have to be
concerned about containment of the different pathogens that we work on. And it’s just not
proper to continue to run the kind of analyses in the kinds of facilities that we have.”
Besides dealing with various communicable diseases, the new laboratory will also help
the country build up its defense against bioterrorism. The lab will be one of only a few
facilities in the Midwest that’s classified Biosafety-Level 3. That means scientists are
certified to work with deadly biological pathogens and viruses, such as anthrax and
smallpox. Lab Director William Reed says it’s important there are more labs to handle
biological threats to animals and people.
“We will be able to address some of the agents of bioterrorism and it’s likely that we
would join forces with the federal government in addressing any introduction of a foreign
animal disease, whether intentionally or by accident. Particularly, some of the agents that
terrorists would want to use to harm animal agriculture in the U.S.”
University officials say the new Biosafety-3 lab would be safe and secure. People who
work in the high-containment area get special training and have to follow strict safety
guidelines.
There’s been strong opposition to similar bio-defense labs in other parts of the country.
So far, there’s been no sign of opposition to the Michigan State lab.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention won’t say exactly how many Biosafety-3
labs there are in the region because of security concerns. But there are reportedly two in
Ohio, and several others are being considered in the Midwest.
Randall Levings is the director of the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames,
Iowa. He says the Michigan State University lab will help the federal government build a
bigger network of labs that can quickly deal with a serious outbreak.
“And the whole concept behind that is to have not only more laboratories that can work
with some of these agents, but the concept is also that it would be better to have a
laboratory with that kind of capacity close to the outbreak.”
Levings says another biosafety lab in the Great Lakes region makes sense. That’s because
of the large number of livestock farms, and the proximity to Canada, where there have
been recent outbreaks of animal and human diseases.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
An artist's rendition of the Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health (image courtesy of DCPAH).
A new animal laboratory in the Great Lakes region will be certified to work with deadly biological agents and infectious diseases. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
A new animal laboratory in the Great Lakes region will be certified to work with deadly
biological agents and infectious diseases. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin
Toner reports:
When it opens early next year, the new animal lab at Michigan State University will be
certified as a Biosafety-Level 3 facility. That means it’ll be able to test for deadly
communicable diseases, such as Chronic Wasting Disease, and bioterrorism agents, such
as anthrax.
Randall Levings is director of the National Veterinary Services Laboratory. He says the
new facility adds to a growing network of sophisticated labs able to deal with serious
outbreaks.
“It could be crucial in terms of quickly defining what areas have it and which ones don’t
so that you can start putting your control measures in place to contain the outbreak and
limit its impact.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention won’t say how many other Biosafety-3
labs there are in the Midwest because of security concerns. However, two others are
reportedly in Ohio.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
Pete Beckman says even with some of the fastest computers in the world, the model of the spill could take days to finish. (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)
