All Over Albany

UAlbany's garlic guy

The work of UAlbany chemistry professor Eric Block is the main dish in a NYT piece today by Harold McGee, the creme de la creme of food science writers.

Block is an expert on alliums -- that is, plants such as onions and garlic. From McGee's piece:

"It's still astounding to me what happens when you cut or bite into an onion or a garlic clove," Dr. Block told me in a telephone conversation last month. "These plants originated in a very tough neighborhood, in Central Asia north of Afghanistan, and they evolved some serious chemical weapons to defend themselves."

Their sulfur-based defense systems give the alliums their distinctive flavors. The plants deploy them when their tissues are breached by biting, crushing or cutting. The chemicals are highly irritating, and discourage most creatures from coming back for seconds. They kill microbes and repel insects, and they damage the red blood cells of dogs and cats. Never feed a pet onions or garlic in any form. ...

Dr. Block explains that different alliums stockpile different sulfur chemicals to make their weapons, and this accounts for their varying flavors. The stockpiles themselves are inert, but when the plant's tissues are damaged, enzymes in the tissues quickly convert the sulfur compounds into reactive, stinging molecules.

There a bunch of interesting bits in the article -- whether you cook, or just eat.

Block wrote a recently-published book about alliums, Garlic and Other Alliums: The Lore and the Science. The book blurb says it "outlines the extensive history and the fascinating past and present uses of these plants."

Block co-authored a 2007 paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine that reported the neither raw garlic nor garlic supplements appeared to have clinically significant effects on cholesterol levels in people.

[via @ualbany]

Foxes and fishers and bears, oh my!

A moose at the Saratoga Race Course in June.

Where are the wild things? Lately, it seems the answer is here. And by here, we mean our backyard. And your backyard.

Over the last month, there have been moose sightings in Saratoga and East Greenbush, a bear spotted in Troy and reports of rabid foxes. Every few weeks someone drops into AOA to post a comment about a fisher sighting. And we seem to be hearing about coyotes a lot more, too.

So, what's going on? We called up Roland Kays, the mammal curator at the New York State Museum, for some answers. He studies urban wildlife.

Roland says some of these sightings are probably just part of the cycle of young animals heading out on their own for the first time. But he says there's a bigger story here, too: wild animals are moving into our neighborhoods. And that's a good thing.

(there's more)

$10,000 eggs

The board that manages New York State's stem cell research funding has given the OK for researchers to pay women for their eggs (the technical term is "oocytes"). And not just a few bucks, either. The Empire State Stem Cell Board has approved payments up to $10,000.

New York is the first state to allow its research money to be used this way. Guidelines from the federal National Academies of Science "prohibit cash or in-kind payments for donating oocytes for research purposes."

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The Mohawk's ups and downs

Summer's comment about the Mohawk this morning prompted us to go looking for info about the river's water levels. And, as it turns out, there's a bunch of data posted on online -- something to keep in mind if you're a boater, fisherperson or other river user of some sort.

The US Geological Survey posts some pretty simple river level graphs created from data taken at a station in Cohoes. And the National Weather Service uses that data to create a whole bunch of graphs, charts and forecasts for points in Schenectady and Cohoes.

Bonus river data: the USGS service that tracks the Mohawk also tracks rivers and streams all over the state. As you might expect, this list includes the Hudson (here's the reading near Green Island) -- but also smaller streams such as the Normanskill.

Mohawk graph: National Weather Service

Shaking in the Hill Towns

The site of last night's earthquake -- well, here, but 9 km down.

There was another earthquake last night near Berne -- and it was relatively big (for this area).

The seismographic network that monitors this area reports that quake was a 3 on the magnitude scale ("felt quite noticeably by persons indoors, especially on upper floors of buildings"). There are reports that people did feel this one.

Things have been a little shaky in the Hill Towns recently. Over just the last three months there have been 14 earthquakes. Most of them have been tiny. The one last night was the strongest of the group.

There's an interactive map after the jump.

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I think, therefore I Twitter

Check it out: one of the researchers involved with the much-buzzed about brain-to-Twitter interface is from the Wadsworth Institute here in Albany.

Gerwin Schalk, who got his PhD at RPI, is developing software that processes and translates brain signals into action. He and other researchers at Wadsworth helped develop the "keyboard" for the brain-to-Twitter device.

Wadsworth has gained attention over the last few years for its researchers' work on brain-computer interfaces. The institute's Jonathan Wolpaw was on 60 Minutes last year as part of a story about the technology.

(Thanks, Celina!)

Turning thoughts into action

The Wadsworth Center, a New York State research institute in Albany, got some national attention last night on 60 Minutes.

A piece looked at how a brain-computer interface developed by Wadsworth's Jonathan Wolpaw is helping people with conditions such as ALS communicate with the world. The device allows people to control a computer just by thinking.

screengrab: CBS

The stuff of bat nightmares

Those aren't milk mustaches.

You'd think this would be a good time of year for local bats. Fat and happy from eating insects all summer, they're ready to settle down for their long winter's nap.

But hibernation's gotten a little spooky for bats around the Capital Region.

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