Eight months of Charlotte Observer Sci-Tech stories

In keeping with yesterday’s post, aggregating the eight months of science blogger interviews I’ve done for the Charlotte Observer, this post is a list of all the centerpiece stories and smaller newsy articles I’ve done in the same time frame (also for the Observer). If you haven’t already bookmarked their Sci-Tech section index online, you ought to. Sabine Vollmer, Tyler Dukes, Marla Broadfoot and Robin Smith also contribute on a regular basis to this section. It’s truly a homegrown science and technology section, drawing on not only local science writing talent but also spotlighting the rich diversity of science and tech research being conducted in the Carolinas. (Some of the earlier articles are not online anymore and are uploaded here as PDFs.)

02/10: Stalking the ‘bird flu’ of trees
In 1995, oak trees began dying en masse in some coastal California forests. The disease, which causes oozing cankers and cuts off water and nutrition to oaks, was unknown to science but was soon dubbed Sudden Oak Death. It took scientists five years to pinpoint a pathogenic fungus-like brown algae as the cause. In 2001, it received a scientific name, Phytophthora ramorum. Sudden Oak Death spread north along the West Coast, and today it is established in forests from California to Washington. Nobody knows how much of North America’s forests are at risk of infection, but in the decade and a half since it emerged, a scientist at UNC Charlotte has been one of the leaders in seeking to understand it – and find out if it might infect eastern forests. (More)

02/10: Students take virtual safari
Mike Loomis, chief veterinarian at the N.C. Zoo, faced death while researching elephants in Cameroon, Africa. After tracking a herd for hours in Nki National Park three years ago, his team caught up to the animals and prepared to dart a few and fit them with radio collars. But a female elephant surprised Loomis and mock charged him from about 40 feet away. He raised his dart rifle, aimed down the barrel and waited for a clear shot at her shoulder. He pulled the trigger. The rifle misfired, and the 6,000-pound animal charged with intention. (MORE)

03/10: Citizen science in full flight
Every evening before supper, Benton Bragg takes his three oldest children, ages 9, 8 and 6, for a walk on their farm in the Ramah Creek Conservation Area near Huntersville. They amble to a poplar tree with a nest box nailed to the trunk about 20 feet above the ground. Sometimes the box’s occupant, a female barred owl, comes barreling out when she hears them coming. (MORE)

04/10: Rare frogs find a military home
Amid a daily percussion of artillery fire and munitions explosions, a rare amphibian migration began at Fort Bragg in early March. Carolina gopher frogs emerged from their underground burrows and hopped a mile or so to seasonal ponds. Their instinct to breed was sparked by several days of rainfall and warm nights. About 100 to 150 Carolina gopher frogs live in Fort Bragg’s artillery impact zones, where soldiers train.  (MORE)

05/10: Saving the Earth, or hurting it?
Want to see a bunch of earth scientists completely riled? Say “geoengineering,” then listen to the arguments fly. It’s our last resort and might buy us time, supporters say. It’s delusional lunacy and could ruin our planet, opponents counter. Geoengineering most often refers to deliberately altering earth’s atmosphere to slow or halt the climate-changing effects of greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide. Most geoengineering schemes actually do little or nothing to reduce these emissions. But they do spark a host of questions. “We are talking about a small number of people messing with the whole planet, for heavens sake,” said Duke University geology and civil engineering professor Peter Haff. (MORE)

05/10: Red wolf pups head into the NC wild
By the time the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologists finished their work on April 30, a wild female red wolf in Tyrrell County returned to her den and discovered she had two more puppies than she left. They were not hers, but they wiggled around with her two existing pups just like family. The mom was chosen by the Red Wolf Recovery Program to receive the foster pups, born April 18 – about the same time as her own – at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. (MORE)

06/10: How sea turtles go home again
This month, one of the world’s most mysterious oceanic migrations will come full circle. And another will begin. In June, female loggerhead turtles will return to the N.C. beaches where they hatched to lay new eggs in sandy nests. Fifty-five to 65 days later, baby turtles will clamber out en masse. The 2-inch-long, 0.65-ounce hatchlings will flipper-flop their way through beach sand, push into the salty water and swim out to sea. (MORE)

09/10: Day dreaming plays a role in how we forget
Ever find yourself daydreaming about a recent vacation, only to come back to reality wondering just what the heck you were doing before your reverie? A new study published in Psychological Science by two UNC Greensboro psychology professors explains how daydream-induced forgetting works. You might even call it the science of forgetting. (MORE)

09/10: A plague stalks sleeping bats
In late July, Lisa Gatens surveyed a colony of 200 little brown bats roosting beneath a bridge near Eno River State Park in Durham. One in particular took her breath away. “She was a beast. She was so big and beautiful,” recalls Gatens, curator of mammalogy at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. But when she unfurled the bat’s wing, it was marred with white scars. “It really shook me up.” Those white scars could indicate the little bat has survived a winter infection of white-nose syndrome, an epidemic infecting cave-hibernating bats from Vermont and New Hampshire south to Virginia, Tennessee and Oklahoma. (MORE)

09/10: The strange science of glass
Science, technology and art collide in an exuberant celebration of glass, color and light at a new sculpture exhibit in Charlotte’s Mint Museum Uptown. The new museum facility opens to the public Friday. The museum asked internationally recognized glass sculptor Danny Lane to create the piece. Lane, 55, recalls that when he received the commission, he thought, “At last! A piece where I can really let the color rip.” (MORE)

10/10: Take a new look at our oceans
A decade-long international project to survey Earth’s oceans, which officially wrapped up field work this month, has turned up about 6,000 species that scientists had never seen before. Scientists estimate 230,000 known species are living in our oceans. But the real count, including unknown and undescribed species, may be 1 million or more. The $650 million Census of Marine Life began in 2000 and has involved 80 nations and about 2,700 scientists, including some in North Carolina.

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