I’m witnessing one of the most glorious views on our planet - the verdant foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains unfolding to the Pacific through a translucent morning mist.  The vantage point is the terrace of Nepenthe, an iconic restaurant in Big Sur on the California coastline.  Also present on the terrace, perched on a metal railing, are a raven and a bluejay.  They’re checking out the scene on the terrace itself.  Leave your table to put some cream in your coffee and these wily scavengers will steal a piece of that scone you just plunked down $3.50 for.  The bluejay snagged a walnut sized chunk of scone from my plate while I was momentarily distracted by a cell phone call.  Has the jay figured out that any biped holding a small metal object to its ear is easy prey?  This got me wondering who or what else may be watching us - and I mean right at this very moment, wherever you may be. According to  professor James T. Spencer, a forensic chemist at Syracuse University, whenever any warm-blooded creature (including you and me) goes belly-up, within ten minutes an insect will be starting to feed or leave its eggs on the body.  Ten minutes. Now, how exactly do they know so darn quickly?  Are we being surveilled constantly? “Looks like this boy’s ready to pass over;  stand by all units.”  Should I be uneasy every time a fly that takes a passing interest in me?  Would I be less appealing to other species if I switched to a non-fragrant deodorant?  Should we take the expression “what’s eating you” literally?   Have we misjudged our position in the food chain as a top-level predator?  Are the bluejay and raven part of some planetary eco-conspiracy that we are only dimly aware of?  Nah! Just settle back, enjoy the view and figure that the insects legions are looking the other way, for now.

If you’re like me, your eyes glaze over at the mere mention of the word equation. Hang in there. Read this post; there’s a chance to pick up a free copy of one of our Pulse of the Planet CD’s.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been in California with three of our Kids’ Science Challenge winners. SETI winner Kamau Hamilton and I met with Frank Drake, who came up a famous equation that now bears his name. It tells us how many intelligent civilizations there are probably out there in the universe.

The Drake Equation provides a means of figuring out the number of extraterrestrial civilzations which might exist in our galaxy. You factor in the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets - stuff like that.

This got me thinking about equations and daily life. You could write an equation about just about anything, couldn’t you?

How many people are eating poppy seed bagels in Des Moines IA? What’s the probability of a woman over 50 meeting the guy of her dreams? How many emails will you receive this week offering to deposit substantial portions of Nigeria’s treasury in your bank account? What’s the likelihood that you’ll sit next to a computer programmer on your next flight, or that the airline will misplace your baggage?

We do these calculations all the time, perhaps not with equals signs and constants, but it’s a sure bet that moment to moment we’re going through some kind of risk assessment, doing the numbers, navigating the probability curve unconsciously.

So here’s the pitch. As a comment to this post, send in Your Equation for whatever question or calculation you find yourself confronting in your corner of the microcosm. I’ll pick one based on originality and mathematical prowess, and send you a Pulse of the Planet CD. Now what are the odds that you will respond?

Jim

I would encourage all fans of Pulse of the Planet to check out our latest project - the Kids’ Science Challenge. If you know any third to sixth graders - please tell them about it! Here’s a chance to turn their science ideas into realities. And there are cool prizes and free science kits, too.

I hope that by now all Pulse of the Planet fans have checked out our latest project - the Kids Science Challenge

http://www.kidsciencechallenge.com

Yesterday our team - Tim Hawkins, Brett Barry, Nicole de la Parte and I met with a number of the Kids Science Challenge (KSC) scientists in Whyville, our partner virtual world.  There’s a KSC Clubhouse on Whyville, and our scientists give live chats in Whyville’s Greek Theater. A treat to see a virtual Jill Tarter - head of SETI, rubbing elbows with a virtual Paul Schmitt, godfather of skateboarding in the US.  There we all were - cartoon avatars, replete with beanies - learning to “chat”.  Whyville kids wandered in, figured out what was going on, and started asking Adina Paytan about water quality and Doug Vakoch about how to communicate with aliens.  Michael Bream (Gravity Skateboards) was wondering how his avatar could deep-six its virtual tie.  And in the midst of it all, a Whyville Sarah Palin replicant wandered through muttering Palin-drome non-sequitors like, “I can see Russia outside my backdoor window!”  Doug Vakoch will give the first KSC Whyville Chat on Friday October 17th at 3 PST, (6 PM EST).  Hope you can be there.

Here’s the rest of the chat schedule:

Friday, October 17: Doug Vakotch
Tuesday, October 21: Joan Harvey
Wednesday, October 22: Michael Bream
Tuesday, October 28: Adina Paytan
Wednesday, November 5: Joan Harvey
Tuesday, November 11: Seth Shostak
Tuesday, November 18: Paul Schmitt
Tuesday, November 25: Adina Paytan
Tuesday, December 2: Michael Bream
Tuesday, December 9: Joan Harvey
Tuesday, December 16: Jill Tarter
Tuesday, December 30: Adina Paytan
Tuesday, January 6: Joan Harvey
Tuesday, January 13: Paul Schmitt
Tuesday, January 20: Nathalie Cabrol
Tuesday, January 27: Adina Paytan

Collectively, they’re the biggest herbivores on the planet.  Go out and try and find one, I dare you. I just spent a week trying to find caterpillars in the company of people who are very good at  it - Lee Dyer, Grant Gentry and Tara Massad.  A sobering experience.   The trick is to look for leaf damage, which is relatively easy to find.  But the caterpillars have had eons to evolve camouflage and other strategies that make quite challenging to locate - and all the more satisfying when you do.

Upcoming Pulse programs reveal a few of the secrets of finding caterpillars.  If you’re interested in heading to Costa Rica on a caterpillar hunting expedition, check out Lee Dyer’s Earthwatch expedition.  They actually discover new caterpillars there every trip.

http://www.earthwatch.org/expeditions/dyer_costarica.html

Here is a taste of programs to come. Recently, I spent a week on the west coast of Ireland, working with a number of scientists at the Irish Seaweed Center, part of the Martin Ryan Institute of the National University in Galway. One of these lads is Declan Hanniffy, who is searching for ways to harvest and cultivate different varieties of seaweed. In the video, you’ll see a clip of Declan gathering one of the kinds of seaweed he’s trying to cultivate.

{vidavee id=”3077″ w=”320″ }

Along the coastal areas of Ireland, seaweed has been gathered as a food, medicine and fertilizer for centuries, although for the past few decades, the practice has largely been discontinued. Now science and industry are taking a serious second look at seaweed as a source of animal and fish food, nutritional supplements, cosmetics and other uses. On the Aran Islands, just offshore from Galway, they make a pudding from carrageen moss - a kind of seaweed. And of course you can order seaweed salad in most Japanese restaurants. Whether seaweed will ever replace Irish stew is another matter.
More on seaweed science in future Pulse of the Planet Science Diary programs. You heard it here first.

Jim