Looking ahead to 2017

I enjoy my tradition of reflecting each year on my goals and expectations for the year ahead. Usually I focus mostly on goals, but this year I want to devote more space to expectations in general. I am less optimistic about 2017 than I have been...maybe ever. I am deeply concerned about Trump becoming president tomorrow and I honestly expect the world and its people to be in worse shape at the end of 2017 than now. I expect my family (immediate and extended) to weather this year due to our position of privilege (employed, mostly urban, socially connected, highly educated, white), but even still I expect our lives to be diminished. Republicans in congress, Trump, and his political appointees intend to seriously mess with many things that are personally and professionally important to me (e.g. the Endangered Species Act, everything related to climate change being a real and present danger upon which we should act, protected lands), not to mention their intention to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But I'm not about to let these things happen easily, so part of my goals are related to civic activism. For starters, I'm attending a Women's March this weekend.

Personal/Familial
Help Jon get a new, full-time job with benefits
Applying for jobs sucks. I remember. It was super discouraging. I am doing what I can do support Jon in his career-change job search. This is the most important thing that needs to happen this year and it will make all of the financial goals below much easier!

Get Adele a passport and renew mine
This is among the more paranoid goals that I've ever had, but I want us to be able to leave the country if necessary. My passport expires next year and I have a lull in international travel for the next couple of months, so I need to take this opportunity to renew it. We already filed the paperwork for Adele. Jon's is good for about 5 more years. It would also be great if we could go visit my family in Canada sometime soon.

Clear my inbox every month

I granted myself email amnesty at the beginning of the year and I think I need to do it on a regular basis. I need to let go of more things that I'd like to do but just can't find the time. I can hardly find the time to do the other important things I want to need to do. I need more ruthless prioritization.

Celebrate my blogiversary (10 years!)

I've been blogging for almost a decade! WHAT. My blogging frequency has radically changed over the last few years, but I still enjoy the focus and outlet this platform offers. I want to do something special to celebrate...maybe get this printed as a book!

Read four books

Let's see if I can meet this modest goal this year!

Financial
Pay off our car
We are one small payment away from this! So. close.

Pay off all of Jon's course/credit card debt
We've been making steady progress, but we need to step it up to pay them off before our 0% interest period expires. This is the #1 priority when Jon gets a new job. We should be able to do this.

Shorten the repayment term on my student loans
Once we're sure we have the credit card debt paid for, then we can shorten the repayment term for my student loans to pay it down aggressively (Navient sucks, so apparently that's the best way to automatically increase your monthly payment). Oddly, our car loan has a lower interest rate so ideally, we would have been paying less on that loan and more on the student loan, but the terms aren't flexible like that, so we're waiting to be able to pay down the student loans.

Activism
Carbon offsets
In the face of Republican governance that does not believe in climate change, I think this is more important than ever. The easiest way to do this is probably by estimating our emissions and spreading it out over monthly payments.

Switch to electricity from renewable sources
The Republican love affair with fossil fuels makes me concerned about renewable energy, so I want to commit us to buying our electricity from renewable sources. This will take a big of research, which is the biggest hurdle.

Organizations we'll newly support with monthly contributions:
-wikipedia (we have given to them in the past, but lapsed)
-Pro-Publica (nonprofit investigative journalism)
-An organization that very efficiently transfers donations to extremely poor people (I believe that wealth inequality is a huge problem)
-Southern Poverty Law Center

Looking at these all, they are pretty boring. If this year is boring, I'll be satisfied. This year is not about being wildly aspirational—it's about modest changes to try and protect us (in the immediate and broader sense) in uncertain times. There's a chance that I will change jobs this year, but I suspect not. There's a small chance that we could end the year debt-free, but I suspect not.

Let's do this, 2017. More than ever before, we need to be the change we wish to see in the world and stand up for what is just. All of us. Every day.

Help fund classroom science projects!

Sciencewomen have challenged their readers to fully fund some teacher-proposed classroom science project for Donors Choose. Some of the projects still need more donations, like the one for Kindergarten Geometry that I supported.

Take a moment and think about why you like science. Most of you are probably somewhere on the journey of a scientist right now. Now think back, way back, to your earliest science memory. What is it? I remember holding a baby turtle. What do you remember about science in school? I would bet that you had at least one fantastic science teacher in your childhood that inspired and encouraged you. The teachers from Donors Choose are motivated people stymied by underfunded classrooms. When you give to a classroom project, you're helping another generation of students learn that they can do, understand, and love science.

What are you waiting for? Skip a couple of expensive lattes and go give $5 or $10 to a project you like.

Seeing change happen

Several months ago I wrote about how I was trying to make it easier for people in my department to print double-sided (here). I talked to the IT guy, wrote to the department head, talked to the head secretary, and it sounded pretty hopeless. I hadn't heard anything since February so I assumed my efforts were for naught... until today.

I got an email from the IT guy- they successfully networked our big, fancy photocopier so that you can print to it rather than the very old laserjet that only prints single sided. I hope that this will truly save a lot of paper!

I'm pretty sure this wouldn't have happened at all if someone hadn't suggested it. I'm looking forward to teaching Herb how to use it and that alone I think will save a forest (he currently prints so much single-sided!).

This is a change for the better- and better late than never.

Call Louisiana Governor to support science education

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has the opportunity to veto a bill that was just passed by the state house that would undermine science education by opening the door to intelligent design and creationism as acceptable scientific alternatives. Signing this into law would be an embarassment to Louisiana, the nation as a whole, and would set a precedent that would further erode science education around the country.

Please take a minute to call the Governor's office and tell him that the nation's eyes are on Louisiana and he should prevent SB 733 from becoming law.

Phone: 225-342-7015 or 866-366-1121 (Toll Free)

It really only takes a minute. No one answered when I called the toll-free number, so I just left a voicemail. Go! Call!

Read more at:
-Louisiana Coalition for Science
-Uncommon Ground (thanks Kent for alerting me to this)

Happy Earth Day!

This week I'm going to encourage my students to recycle by giving them postage-paid envelopes to send their old cell phones and other small electronics to be recycled. This week's lab is topical because we're talking about loss of biodiversity. I think almost every student will have something to recycle, and I hope it will encourage them to think about the life cycle of the products they buy and the impact their production and disposal has on biodiversity.

Happy Earth Day everyone!

Coral-Friendlier Sunscreen

Recent research by a group of Italian scientists led by Roberto Danovaro suggests that many common sunscreen ingredients cause coral bleaching. To read my summary of how this happens as well as my criticism of the research, read my previous post.

Most news blurbs and blogs are reporting the culprit sunscreen chemicals as "a paraben preservative, cinnamate, benzophenone and a camphor derivative." If you go to check the list of ingredients on your sunscreen bottle, though, that list won't be much help unless you're an organic chemist. I want people to be able to make informed decisions about the kind of sunscreen they choose to slather up with, which is why I wrote this post.

While doing research about various sunscreen ingredients to write this post, I came across an excellent online database called Skin Deep created by the Environmental Working Group. They have rated hundreds of sunscreens by dozens of brands for their chemical safety and effectiveness in providing UVA and UVB protection. You can also read about specific ingredients and find products that contain the ingredients you specify.

These four common sunscreen ingredients were found to cause coral bleaching (at potentially unnaturally high concentrations?) by Danovaro et al.:
Benzophenone-3 (Oxybenzone)
ethylhexylmethoxycinnamate (Octinoxate)
4-Methylbenzylidene camphor
Butylparaben (this is not an active ingredient but a common preservative in cosmetics)

These three ingredients did not cause significant coral bleaching:
Octocrylene
Ethylhexyl salicylate
Butyl methoxydibenzoylmethane (Avobenzone)

All of the active sunscreen ingredients tested by Danovaro et al. were chemical absorbers (molecules that absorb UV rays before they damage your skin). Sunscreens with physical blockers (zinc oxide and/or titanium dioxide) rather than chemical absorbers are considered safer for you and the environment. Skin Deep has a list of the 141 safest (for humans) sunscreen products, many of which lack the chemical absorbers listed above (although many of these products still contain ingredients listed above that caused coral bleaching, so read thoroughly).

Skin Deep also has product lists for active ingredients and ingredient combinations, such as zinc oxide, titanium dioxide, or zinc oxide and titanium dioxide together. You can look up your sunscreens to learn about the ingredients, or you can use the database to search for a new, better, safer sunscreen.

Some coral reef parks such as Xel-Ha and Xcaret in Mexico have restrictions on what kind of sunscreen you can use in the park. The requirements range from "...it must have the legend 'Oil Free' and natural ingredients. You can also choose any brand if it is labeled 'Paba Free' or 'Bio-degradable' " (Xcaret) to "biodegradable tanning product" (Xel-Ha). Both of these guidelines are vague and there are plenty of oil free and Paba-free sunscreens with the compounds found to cause coral bleaching. Danovaro et al.'s results as well as future research on this topic will hopefully help coral reef managers develop sound guidelines for sunscreen restrictions based on scientific research.

Happy snorkeling!

A Critical Look at Sunscreen and Coral Bleaching

National Geographic News Podcast reported last week that sunscreen has been implicated as a cause for coral bleaching. National Geographic News online also had a brief article about it. A group of Italian researchers studied the effects of some common sunscreen ingredients on corals from the Caribbean Sea (Atlantic Ocean), the Celebes Sea (Pacific Ocean), the Andaman Sea and the Red Sea (Indian Ocean). Their results were published in Environmental Health Perspectives on January 3, 2008 [1]. You can access the article here as a pdf. They found that sunscreen concentrations of 10 μl/L caused complete coral bleaching within 96 hours.

*Note: I edited this post at 10 PM, 2/18/08 to address a comment by ecogeofemme which resulted in a closer, more critical look at the paper on my part. As a result, I split the original post in two and changed the title of this one.*

Here's what you need to know to understand how it happened: Corals are animals in the same phylum as jellyfish, but they also have photosynthetic unicellular alage (zooxanthellae) that live inside the individual coral polyps. The zooxanthellae are what give coral color with their photosynthetic pigments. Corals provide protection and carbon dioxide for the zooxanthellae, and the corals get energy in the form of photosynthetic products (carbon compounds) from the zooxanthellae. Corals are mostly restricted to shallow waters because the symbiotic zooxanthellae require light for photosynthesis. Coral bleaching happens when the zooxanthellae are expelled from the coral polyps, usually due to stress such as rising sea temperatures. This can either kill the coral, or it may be able to recover by recolonizing polyps with a new or the same type of zooxanthellae.

Here's what the authors think happened with the sunscreen: Due to the presence of numerous VLPs (virus-like particles) in the water around the sunscreen-treated corals, they suggest that some of the sunscreen ingredients induced the lytic cycle in latent viral infections in the zooxanthellae. What does that mean? The unicellular zooxanthellae were burst open (lysed) by a virus that had been 'dormant' inside the cells until 'activated' by the sunscreen. Once lysis occurs, the virus can spread to infect new cells. With the zooxanthellae dead, the corals lose their color and a major energy source.

Considering the authors' estimates that 4,000-6,000 tons of sunscreen will be washed off in coral reefs each year, I think this research is unique and important. However, I have concerns about their methods and results.

1. They describe a reasonable procedure for estimating the amount of sunscreen that comes off the body after 20 minutes and say that "The percentage of sunscreen released into the seawater was estimated by HPLC analyses on the sunscreen and seawater samples" but do not report the results of this in their paper. It is not clear if the resulting concentrations were the ones used in the coral experiments.

2. The authors say, "We tested sunscreen (10 μL L-1) containing concentrations of UV filters higher than those reported in most natural environments." After looking through the literature cited, there appears to be only one paper that measured concentrations of UV filters in situ [2]. Poiger et al. (2004) found concentrations of UV filters in the range of 2-125 ng per liter in Swiss lakes. To spare you the math, 125 ng=.125 µg, which means that Danovaro et al. used concentrations ten times those reported in the (sparse) literature. We really need to know what the concentrations are at heavily visited coral reefs for perspective.

3. Based on their results, they conclude, "...the coral response to sunscreen exposure was not dose dependent, as the same effects were observed at low and high sunscreen concentrations. Therefore, we hypothesize that UV filters can have potentially negative impacts even at concentrations lower than those utilized in the present study." This may be true, but there must be some threshold of sunscreen expose that does not cause bleaching. I hope that further research will be able to determine what it is.

4. It was unnatural that the corals were exposed to constant concentrations of sunscreen or isolated ingredients for the duration of the study since the corals were in plastic bags, but this did allow the authors to control level of exposure which would otherwise fluctuate.

I have seen surprisingly little critical discussion of this research, so I'm hoping to start some here. I would really love to hear the authors' responses.

Personally, I do think that excessive amounts of parabens and chemical sunscreens in our ocean is detrimental. However, I'm not convinced by this one paper that sunscreen is a threat in the wild, although this new research certainly presents the distinct possibility. I wrote this post and the next one for people who are interested in making better choices for their environment when it comes to sunscreen.

[1] Danovaro R, Bongiorni L, Corinaldesi C, Giovannelli D, Damiani E, Astolfi P, Greci L, Pusceddu A. 2008. Sunscreens Cause Coral Bleaching by Promoting Viral Infections. Environmental Health Perspectives doi:10.1289/ehp.10966
[2] Poiger T, Buser HR, Balmer ME, Bergqvist P-A, Muller MD. 2004. Occurrence of UV
filter compounds from sunscreens in surface waters: regional mass balance in two swiss lakes. Chemosphere 55(7):951-963; doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2004.01.012.

Reflections on design

UBC is mostly an example of how not to design buildings. Everything is ugly (inside and out) and only moderately functional. Architecture students and structural engineers should take field trips here to learn what their buildings should never look like.

Today I had to go to a big administrative building to turn in a form. I took the elevator up to the 6th floor and decided to take the stairs down. After passing the third floor, I started seeing signs taped to the wall saying, "Looking for the second floor? Go back downstairs and around to the other stairs." WTF?!?! Who builds a stairwell that doesn't access an entire floor? I didn't even know that was legal! Then when I get to the bottom, the door opens outside into the cold, with no access back inside once the door is closed. How in the world can you encourage people to take the stairs instead of an elevator when you make the stairs inaccessible? This means that even people who only work on the second floor will always take an elevator even though most able-bodied people are willing to walk up one flight of stairs.

Next I went to a classroom in a different building to lead discussion. I soon noticed there was water dripping from the ceiling through a light fixture. This seemed serious to me so I called the urgent number listed by the lightswitch (at least they do have a contact number posted in (nearly?) every room for such things). As soon as I mentioned which building I was in, the woman said, "Oh, we're aware of it. The whole third floor on that building is leaking. Would you like me to find a different classroom for you?" I declined, since the drip was small and wouldn't interfere with class. Still, the whole third floor is leaking? Again, WTF?

I could go on and on about how the buildings are ugly inside, hard to navigate, and have extremely noisy ventilation systems that result in people keeping their doors closed, but I think you get the idea.

I am also frustrated by poor system design and practice. Right now, I am trying very hard to make it easier for everyone in our department to print double-sided. I know that most people print everything single-sided simply because it is a pain in the ass to print double-sided. The options are a slow inkjet, printing odd and even separately and risking a misfeed that messes it all up, or walking to a lab in a different building.

Our department recently got a big, new photocopier. When I worked at Mid-Atlantic Field Station we got one like that and it was networked as a printer. I could print to it from another building and it would automatically print double-sided, staple, collate, and make you dinner (you get the idea). I contacted some people in the department about the possibility of hooking our printer up as a copier, but of course it's no simple task.

The current barriers to increased faculty, staff, and grad student productivity, immense paper savings, and reduced individual printer maintenance are:
1) The printer is leased through some long chain of middlemen, and we currently are not leasing the part that would allow us to network the machine.
2) It will cost more to lease that part, and will incur additional per-page printing costs with increased use as a printer.
3) There is only one ethernet port in the room with the copier, and it is currently used by an old laserjet that only prints one side.

I think I will draft a letter to the department head (who has final say on the decision) to argue convincingly that adding this capability to the printer will be worth the additional cost, even if it doesn't break even on the paper savings. We need to make it easy for people to use less resources in the way we design our policies, practices, systems, and buildings, and I'm desperately trying to make one small change happen in one department. I hope it works.