Jamba Art continued. . .

Okay so i was at work and talking to a team member about missing my old cup carrier structures. My manager Ryan walks in the back room into this conversation and asked me why i don't make one? Well back at Bascom square i did them on a counter that really had no other function during the day, Prince Kuhio doesn't have that luxury of counter space, so i told him that we didn't have the space. At that point he gave me permission to do it in the lobby. This made my day and i got to create another piece of Jamba art for you to enjoy. And something for my bestest friend Robert and i to top when I get home to San Jose. Enjoy.

Jamba Art

So i got a digital camera for Christmas. Since then i take pictures of whatever I can. One of my major victims have been jamba art. Jamba Art is what we produce when its slow and want to create something amusing and beautiful. I will start with my own pictures than go into stuff i have found elsewhere.

Raspberry Juice Spill gone to far








in honor of the raspberry juice spill




Blender lid pyramid.














The Dip box is happy to see you!



















































even the ice cream snowmen like you

some guys chat room shares this one. i think it would be fun to try
I found this blog "I know Jason goes to Jamba Juice a lot, but apparently his habit has grown to the point that he is funding the 401k's of several of the employees at the Los Altos location. They love him so much they put his photo on the bulletin board. Jason, I think it's time for an intervention."We subject quite a few of our regular customers to this. I have never heard this perspective but i have to say i am amused.


I really wish i knew the story behind this picture.

Aloha

My new favorite word is. . .

When i first came to Hawaii i was under the impression that aloha meant hello, goodbye, and i love you.

Then one day in class a speaker came and she fights for native rights to Mauna Kea and to stop the destruction of the environment on top of the volcano due to the observatories. One of the main things she talked about was having aloha. The question that kept running through my mind was "how do you have hello, or i love you" i tried to rationalize what i already knew about the word to make it work in my head and it just didn't fit. So in college student way i came home and googled it.

Aloha literally translated into English means a breath of life.
Children learn aloha through the "meaning of its letters"

"Akahai", meaning kindness,
to be expressed with tenderness;

"Lokahi", meaning unity,
to be expressed with harmony;

"Oluolu", meaning agreeable,
to be expressed with pleasantness;

"Haahaa", meaning humility,
to be expressed with modesty;

"Ahonui", meaning patience,
to be expressed with perseverance

think i have come to recognize that to have aloha means many things from compassion, affection, empathy, peace, welcoming, mercy and love. I think Aloha is just one of those words that is almost impossible to define or more accurately translate because it has so many definitions.

Vitamin C

Some people swear by Vitamin C, but what does it do anyway? and what are the recommended dosages?



Vitamins are a category of organic substances that help your body to perform necessary functions. Without vitamins our body's abilities to perform certain functions would be radically decreased. This can cause lots of health problems even leading to death. Vitamins are broken into 2 category's: Water Soluble and Fat Soluble this tells you where your body stores the vitamins. Fat soluble are stored in your body's fat, so your body stores it up for much longer periods of time until it can be used. Water Soluble are stored in your blood stream so will quickly go through your system and pass back out of your system in the form of urine if it is not used.

Vitamin C is also know as Ascorbic Acid, and is organic by definition because it is built off of carbon (dark gray in the model to the right).Vitamin C is good for keeping your tissue in a healthy condition and resisting infection. Vitamin C is essential to your body's ability to make collagen, which is found all over the body from connective tissue in our organs, to cartilage, to connective tissue of our ligaments. A deficiency in Vitamin C can result in a disease called Scurvy, symptoms are: Liver spots, weak gums, looking pale, feeling depressed, partially immobilized, bleeding from mucus membranes, and in advanced stages there are open wounds and loss of teeth. But this disease can be avoided (just avoided, which is still far below the recommended daily intake of 60 mg per day) with as little as 10mg of vitamin c per day, which is pretty easy to achieve.

Vitamin C can be found in a variety of sources:

• oranges
• lemons
• limes
  
• Strawberries
  
• tomatoes
  
• Broccoli
  
• Peaches
• Lettuce
  
• Potatoes
  
• Bell Peppers
• Mango's
• Bananas
  
• Watermelon
• Raspberries
• Grapefruit
  
• Blueberries
• Cranberries
• Pineapples

And Packing companies use vitamin c as a preservative in cases such as:

• Wine
• Cured meats (in this case it also prevents cancer causing bi-products)
• Dog food
• Ready to eat cereal
  
• Frozen Peaches
  
• cosmetic creams

Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse

I grew up in San Jose, California, but I had no idea the San Francisco bay was so interesting until i took an environmental science class. As part of the class, we studied a little bit of the wonders of the area, and i would like to learn more about one of the magnificent creatures I met there and share it with you. Why is the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse endangered? Whats so special about it? how can I help?

The salt marsh harvest mouse lives endemically in the green highlighted areas. Meaning is only found in the salt water marshes surrounding the 4 bays (South Bay, San Francisco Bay, Suisun Bay, and San Pablo Bay) that connect to make the San Francisco Bay Area. This brings me to why the mouse is endangered. Over 85% of the bay area's marsh lands have been developed into homes, businesses, and salt ponds since 1850. The area most impacted are the higher marsh lands that the mouse used to retreat to in high tide, but also, because of development, a lot of the tidal salt marshes have been protected by levees and sloughs to prevent businesses and homes from being effected by tides, so the marsh lands no longer flood twice a day do to the tides. Also Cargill (the company that owns the salt ponds) has created land that is no longer tidal but only lets salt water into ponds so that they can dry the ponds up to harvest the salt, eventually that salt is what we use at our kitchen tables. The downside to the environment is it makes the soil super saline and takes away any ability for even salt tolerant plants and animals to survive (to the left is a picture of a mountain of salt being harvested). The final biggest impact that has happened with the area is the bay areas water treatment facilities are dumping its treated water into some of the sloughs creating fresh water streams to the bay in water that used to be brackish (moderately salty) which brings in a whole host of species that can now survive in that environment creating a whole host of invasive species to the area.

Characteristics of the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse:

• about 3 inches long (excluding the tail)
  
• weighs about 2 oz
  
• Dark brown fur
  
• Red belly
  
• nocturnal
  
• eats pickle weed (shown to the left)
• only land mammal that's natural processes allow it to drink only brackish water
  
• lives between 8 months and one year
  
• gives birth to 1-2 litters per life time
  
• each litter has 3-4 baby mice

this mouse is unique in that it survives a high ingestion of salt as its normal systems. Its cute small and is a food source for another endangered species, specifically the clapper rail (shown to the right).

What can be done to help?
Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge is always looking for volenteers to help maintain and restore the land, as well as helping with the many vistors and field trips comming by. The Don Edwards Refuge is located at the very southern most point of the South Bay, so is nestled in an urban area, so lots of urban problems to keep up with, like grafitti, and litter, as well as weeding out the non-native species.

For teachers, they have programs for any grade level to come out and explore the marsh lands and learn about all of the species, and learning the importance of the water your using, and how to use it wisely. Besides its beautiful. Just don't forget the sunblock.

Aspirin

I was curious about aspirin. I know it does wonders on my headaches, but how? and why? Approximately 8 billion Aspirin tablets are taken per year for a variety of reasons including:

• Inflammation
• headaches
• pain
• fever
• preventing heart attacks
• arthritis

As far back as the fifth century B.C. a bitter powder made from willow tree bark has been used to ease aches and pains. The first person to write about this was Hippocrates. In the 1700's Reverend Edmond Stone noticed the abilities of willow to cure fevers with aches, and he wrote about it. Early scientists only knew that the willow bark was bitter and good for fever and pain because of a chemical called salicin (discovered in 1829). (picture of the willow to the left)

Salicin is an acid that is very rough on the stomach lining causes a great deal of problems. As a result a chemist Felix Hoffmann who worked for the company Fredrich Bayer & Co. tested compounds to fix the problem. The result was acetylsalicylic acid (ASA or aspirin) it was gentler than salicin to the stomach and more effective against pain, swelling and fever. It was then named after a rose that actually produces the compound naturally (picture to the left).

ASA is made of 8 Hydrogen (white), 9 Carbon (green), and 4 Oxygen (red). The chemical formula is C9H8O4, and it is a complex made up of acetic acid and salicylic acid.

In the early 1970's it was finally discovered how aspirin works, in 1982 John Vane and his colleges were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for showing how aspirin works.

Here is a very simplified explanation of how aspirin works:

Your body produces a enzyme called cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2). When in pain COX-2 changes into a chemical called prostaglandins which increases the strength of the signal being transmitted to your brain. Aspirin attaches itself to COX-2 and prevents it from turning into prostaglandins which is what causes it to appear to be relieving the pain. Aspirin only works for 4-6 hours because that's how long it takes your body to process it out of your system.

To the right you have a picture of a man trying to build a model of the complex COX-2 molecule. Below you have a diagram of prostaglandins.

Why there are so many warnings about not taking excessive aspirin:

COX-2 is all over your body and doesn't just turn into prostaglandins when your in pain. In your stomach, it is produced constantly so that your body keeps up with the rebuilding of the stomach lining, this keeps the lining thick which is what protects the rest of your body from your stomach acid. To add insult to injury, Aspirin is an acid, so along with weakening your stomach lining over time, it can also cause your stomach lining to break down leading to some serious stomach problems. Prostaglandins aids with blood clotting, so by preventing it from being made, blood clotting slows down It can prevent heart attacks, but can als cause serious injuries to bleed longer.

Aspirin is one of the oldest known drugs, and it was one of the first drugs to be artificially produced on a large scale by the pharmaceutical industry. Like any drug, aspirin can be dangerous when taken in excess or when not following the directions. However, it is a very widely used drug that is beneficial to the millions of people who take it every day.

Properties of Water

I was cooking dinner and for the pasta i needed to boil water. I realized i knew that boiling water is a change in form from a liquid to a gas, but why does it seem to have stages and what is really happening in that pot in front of me? My blog is on the weird properties of water.


Water is composed of 2 hydrogen's and 1 oxygen so written out is called Dihydrogen Monoxide or H2O.


When water starts to heat, all the oxygen gasses dissolved in the water are released and those are the tiny bubbles that appear to be sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Because of the oxygen being removed from the water, water will both freeze and boil faster if its already been boiled recently and been returned to room temperature.


Water Boils at lower temperatures at higher elevations because of the atmospheric pressure difference. There are actually Charts to show this.


The State of water is actually dependant on two things: Pressure, and Temperature (shown in the diagram to the left). In fact, if you get water to the right temperature and pressure level, you can get water to what is called the triple point where you have a container of water as it exists in all three stages.



Ice FLOATS I know its obvious but what other solid form floats in the liquid form? NOTHING. Ice actually floats because the water expands as it freezes and therefore becomes less dense, and of course something less dense is going to rise above something more dense.


In fact heavy water, will actually sink when frozen, as shown in the picture on the left. Because the hydrogen in the water molecule has a neutron, it is heavier than it normally would be which is why its refered to as heavy water and the ice sinks.

Water has a very neutral PH of 7 meaning it is neither basic or acidic

Water is the universal solvent, NOTHING else will dissolve as many things as water does.

VOG

I am curious about VOG what is it? why is it dangerous? how does it form? how much is produced?

VOG is an abbreviation for volcanic smog, a specific form of natural air pollution. It is composed of Sulfur dioxide (SO2), Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S), and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) gasses when it is initially released from the volcano. When magma is exposed, it releases the previously mentioned dissolved gasses into the atmosphere. At which point the gasses mix with moisture and oxygen in the air aided by sunlight to create other gasses and aerosols, one example is Sulfuric Acid (H2SO4). Kilauea Releases anywhere from 1,000 to 2,500 TONS of SO2 per day. That gas then travels down to the south coast then right back north along the Kona side of the island, and then it blows off over the ocean (the picture on the left shows the VOG as red and yellow and the picture to the lower right shows the trade winds that move the VOG around the island). Although most people don't really get bothered by these gasses, for some it can cause problems because the aerosols tend to stay in your lungs. Results of exposure to VOG can be headaches, Breathing difficulties (including asthma), flu-like symptoms, and in severe cases problems with skin being irritated and itchy.

Sources

Wikipedia

Hawaiian Volcano Obervatory

USGS

Green Flash

Green Flash on the western horizon of Madagascar

A green Flash occurs during a sunset (or sunrise), and i knew that they occurred off of the cost on the Kona side of the island. So i was wondering what causes them? and how can I find the right conditions to see one?

Green Flash off the coast of Hawaii

Causes of the Flash
The green flash is caused from the sun's light being bent in the atmosphere, (this also causes the sky to appear blue) only in the few seconds of maximum length between you and the sun as its mostly beyond the horizon causes the spectrum to be bent in a green hue (usually, it can also appear to be blue, yellow, and even violet) for anywhere from half a second to up to 15 seconds, which is why it's described as a flash.

Seeing the Flash has a few rules

1. Your apparent horizon must be lower than your eye level (which is why the ocean is the perfect requirement although not necessary)
2. The Air MUST be reasonably clean. If there is too much dust, smog, or haze than the light from the sun wont refract properly and you will just see a normal sunset.
3. Because the flash is quite small, (especially if you have never seen it before) some kind of aid will be necessary, such as binoculars, zoom camera lens, opera glasses, etc. But Remember: if the sun isn't comfortable to look at DON'T! you will hurt your eyes. so sunglasses are also a good idea, and they really don't diminish your chances of seeing it.

Sources:

Intro To Green Flashes

Wikipedia

Species Status Clasification

I am wondering, what classifies a species as endangered, threatened, vulnerable, or invasive? Quite a few of us have used these words in our Blogs before and i was wondering what makes that species what it is.

Wikipedia Says that species that have dwindling numbers are divided into 3 categories

• Critically Endangered (CR)-Extremely high Risk of Becoming Extinct (example. Florida panther, only occupies 5% of original range and only has 70 animals left capable of breeding)
  
  
• Endangered (EN)-A Species that is in danger of becoming extinct due to a range of reasons being: over hunting (from other animals and humans), changing environment, loss of environment, or just way to few numbers. (example. Nene which is suffering low numbers and loss of environment)
  
  
• Vulnerable (VU)-A species who's runs a risk of becoming extinct but has not been qualified as an endangered species because numbers may still be high despite other factors like loss of habitat. (example. Polar Bear which still has decent numbers but is loosing habitat to global warming)
  

• Invasive Species- a species that has been introduced to a non-native environment and has become harmful to the native environment and/or human health. (example. Coqui Frog which spreads fast due to high reproduction rate, and is hard to get rid of)

Spiny Back Spider

After researching, I have found no exact matches to my "little friends" here, but i have found a few good leads. In 1985 Thelacantha brevispina was found in Hilo, or at least that's what it was identified as at the time. Currently it's known as Gasteracantha mammosa. The other good lead is a spider called Gasteracantha cancriformis which has been in hawaii since the 1950's . Both Species are nicknamed "Spiny Back Spider."

I lean toward calling it Gasteracantha mammosa because Gasteracantha cancriformis tends to be more solitary, where as our spider builds webs off of other webs in quite elaborate structures which is more in line with the description of Gasteracantha mammosa which will do this in areas where prey is plentiful.

Now to tell you about the Spiny Back Spider,

It's length is anywhere between 1mm (when immature) and 6mm (full grown female) wide and it's only slightly wider than it is long. The females spin large webs in high places like between two trees , or on telephone poles (this is a problem for repairmen who want to work on that pole), males tend to spin webs lower and, if they can manage to attach it to the females, they will especially when their is plenty of food to go around. they decorate their webs with small tufts of silk to simulate certain flowers, and this attracts bugs like wasps which they will gladly consume for dinner. The immature spiders tend to build smaller versions of these webs much closer to the ground and further from the large group of adult spiders. Egg sacks are not found on the web but close by, and they are florescent green until the spiders hatch when it turns yellow, and each egg sack can hold up to 200 eggs.

This species is listed as a pest and an invasive species in the Hawaiian islands, both agriculturally and residentially. This spider is not known to come into residences, but it will built its web very close by. They wont bother you unless you bother them; unfortunately, when they build their webs on your front porch and you walk right through their web they will bite you, as is the case in the telephone poles and when they build their webs out in the fields that need to be picked. Their bite causes localized swelling on some people, but if you are sensitive to spider bites you should seek medical attention.

So finally getting rid of them:

the Organic way to get rid of them is to crush them and their egg sacks.
the not so organic way is to use Strike Roach Ender, Raid House and Garden, Johnson's No Roach, and Black Flag Ant and Roach spray.

Sources
Asian Spiny Back Spider
Urban Knowledge Master

Spiders

When I first met these little spiders i wasn't quite sure that they were actually the spiders, but rather i thought it was the prey, but then i noticed that on more and more huge webs (in comparison to the spider) were these little spiky arachnids. After noticing them more often I've also noticed that they seem to live in what looks like colonies. Well they can build webs off of each other which is shown in one pictures. so Ultimately I'm wondering what are they exactly, why do they live like this, especially since i thought that spiders were extremely territorial, and are they poisonous?

Pictures:
top: a close up of the spider
Bottom: The spiders on their webs that are built on top of each other.