All Over Albany

Cooking the Tree of Life: evolution, milk, cheese, cheesecake

The popular Cooking the Tree of Life series is back at the State Museum February 8 with an evening about milk, cheese, and cheesecake. From the press release:

Dr. Jeremy Kirchman, the State Museum's evolutionary biologist, will lead the presentation, and Dr. Reid Ivy, creamery manager for the award-winning Old Chatham Sheepherding Co, will explain how cheese is made. Together they will consider the evolution of mammals, milk production, and the ingenious ways that humans (with help from bacteria) have used this mammalian adaptation to create some of our richest culinary pleasures. Dr. Ivy and Drue Spallholz from Albany's Honest Weight Food Co-op, will lead the audience in a cheese tasting. Lynn Beaumont from Albany's Cheesecake Machismo will be on hand to describe how to make cheesecake, and will offer the audience samples of cheesecake made at her shop. Fresh local milk from Clarksville's Meadowbrook Farms Dairy will also be available for sampling.

The program starts at 7 pm on February 8 (that's a Wednesday). Tickets are $5 at the door.

Earlier on AOA:
+ Old Chatham Sheepherding Company's Kinderhook Creek cheese
+ Milk delivery options in the Capital Region: Meadowbrook Farms Dairy
+ Cheesecake from Cheesecake Machismo

Ecovative in Wired

There's a profile of Green Island startup Ecovative in the February issue of Wired -- the article is now online via Wired UK (which explains the Britishisms in the linked story above).

You've read some of it before, but there are some interesting new (to us) bits that touch on how good ideas come about, and what it takes to foster them. Also: Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre may be the first Wired profile subjects who grew their own headline.

We've posted a bunch about Ecovative, in part because it's an interesting local story with a fun angle (Packaging! Made from mushroom roots! By two good-looking nerdy guys!). But the company also has big potential. The polystyrene packaging business is a $20 billion a year industry (according to the Wired article) -- and Ecovative is looking to disrupt it with a product it says costs the same and doesn't harm the environment. That's an enormous opportunity. And it's growing from the ground up here.

Sure, it's not a multi-billion dollar chip fab or sprawling nanotech campus. But maybe it could be, someday. Upstate New York benefited greatly over the last century thanks to companies that created new industries -- names such as Kodak, Xerox and GE (many of which are now faded). If this part of the country ever finds that sort of prosperity again, it most likely will involve people and companies that have disruptive, industry-creating or shifting ideas.

Is it likely that Ecovative ever becomes as big as Kodak (once was) or GE? The odds are extraordinarily long. But all those companies started somewhere. Why not a warehouse in Green Island?

thumbnail: Chris Crisman / Wired

A fisher strikes a pose

Today's wildlife moment: a posing fisher.

During our email exchange earlier this week with scientist Roland Kays, he passed along two recent clips his wildlife cameras had captured in the Colonie. The first, embedded above, is of a fisher striking a pose in front of a camera just off Sand Creek Road (we're guessing this is the general area):

This camera was ... in a slim strip of forest that connects 2 larger wooded areas (aka core areas). Our GPS tracking of fishers suggested that they used this strip as a movement corridor to get between the larger fragments, we are now testing that by setting cameras out.

We've linked to it before, but here's Kays' "Scientist at Work" series at NYT about tracking fishers in Latham.

The second clip, of raccoons "jogging" over a footbridge near the Hilton Garden Inn at ALB, is after the jump.

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Next stop for Roland Kays: Raleigh

We were disappointed to see recently that State Museum curator of mammals Roland Kays was leaving the institution. As the TU reported, morale at the museum is low and many researchers are leaving as a result, Kays among them (be sure to read chrisck's comment).

Kays is one of our favorite local nerds. He researches how wildlife adapt to urban environments. And the conversation we had with him about fishers in the Pine Bush is still one of our favorite AOA posts (that's him weighing a tranquilized fisher in the photo). Also: he was one of the organizers of the popular Cooking the Tree of Life series at the State Museum. The guy even races unicycles.

So, we emailed him to find out what's next. He emailed back:

[Y]es, sad to be leaving the Albany area, but excited about new opportunities at the new Nature Research Center I'm moving to in Raleigh, NC. I'll also be a Prof at NC State. Dr. Jeremy Kirchman will continue the Cooking the Tree of Life at the NYSM, and I'll also start it up down in Raleigh.

Kays says he's also working on a project that will involve non-scientists running camera traps that report images to a wildlife database. He says that could be up and running this summer and he's hoping it will include some sites here in the Capital Region. We'll see if we can get more details as the project's closer to being ready.

photo via Roland Kays

This just in: the Adirondacks have a lot trees

Where the trees are in New York. (We added the star for the approximate location of Albany as a point of reference.)

Forestry fact of the day: the Adirondacks are one of the areas with the most tree mass in the country, according to a map of "above ground woody biomass" created by the NASA Earth Observatory.

A clip from the map, of New York State, is above. The darker the green, the more tree mass there is.

The national map is posted after the jump in large format. You can see the large swath of forest that runs from Maine, through New Hampshire and Vermont, includes eastern New York, and then runs along the Applachians. And as dense as parts of the swath are, the long, narrow (relatively speaking) forests of the West Coast still trump the East for density of tree stuff (the trees are rather large out there).

Researchers built the map as part of an effort to better understand how much carbon is stored in forests -- and which way that amount is trending.

[via Buzzfeed]

Earlier on AOA: The darkness just to the north

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Where's all the snow?

Yep, something's definitely missing.

This winter has been... unusual. November was really warm. And December? Yeah, not really that cold, either.

But the most conspicuously unusual thing about this winter is the snow. Or, rather, the fact that there's been almost no snow. It's like winter is falling down on the job.

So, what's going on? We bounced a few questions to WNYT meteorologist Jason Gough -- and he had answers about historical snow totals, the subtropical jet stream, rare weather, the unreliability of weather memory, and his prognostication for how much snow we might end up with...

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2011 weather: wet, snowy

Winter, spring, summer, fall.

The National Weather Service's climate summary for 2011 is out. Here are a few of the highlight from the wet, snowy year...

(normals in parenthesis)

average temperature: 50 (48.3)

highest temp: 99, on July 21

lowest temp: -13, on January 24

precipitation total: 53.68 inches (39.35) -- the third wettest year on record

largest 24 hour precipitation total: 4.81 inches, August 27-28 (that would be Irene)

snowfall total: 80.3 inches (59.1) -- 14th snowiest on record

largest 24 hour snow total: 12.8 inches, January 12 (some spots recorded much higher totals)

days with precipitation: 142 (137.8)

days with rain: 64

days with snow: 76 (34.8)

While we're on the subject of weather... This recent cold snap aside, winter is totally falling down on the job this year (so far). A few quick facts about this winter and it's less than impressive effort...

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Talks from TEDxAlbany 2011

A bunch of the talks from this year's TEDxAlbany are now up on YouTube. We've embedded them after the jump for easy skimming.

A few have yet to be posted -- including Jeremy Snyder's charming talk about his family's search for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe. (We talked with Jeremy for a post here on AOA after seeing the talk.)

Now update with the rest of the talks.

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UAlbany researchers working on video games to change the way people think

Interesting: a UAlbany research team has gotten a grant to develop a computer game that aims to train people how to recognize their own cognitive biases. From the UAlbany blurbage:

In partnership with the local game company 1st Playable Productions, the CYCLES project will develop a computer game that will teach players how to recognize six common cognitive decision-making biases: confirmation bias, fundamental attribution bias, bias blind spot, representativeness bias, anchoring bias and projection bias. The goal is to reduce players' dependency on bias in real decision-making situations by as much as 65 percent. "The problem is one that psychologists have been working on for a very long time with limited success," said [psychology researcher Laurie] Feldman.

The interdisciplinary team is headed up by Tomek Strzalkowski from UAlbany's College of Computing (that's him on the right, not impressive-looking whiteboard diagrams) and Information and Jennifer Stromer-Galley from UAlbany's Department of Communication.

The $8.7-million project is funded by US Air Force. And arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is involved -- that arm, called IARPA explained earlier this year, why it's looking to these sorts of games:

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The best November ever?

Something's missing from picture. Oh, right, cold. And snow.

As far as the weather goes, this is one of the best Novembers we can remember in some time -- warm, with only a few traces of snow.

Or, to put it another way: It was 63 today! And 60 yesterday!

Curious about how unusual this warm November is, we looked up the temperature data.

Are there charts and graphs? Oh, you know there are charts and graphs...

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Jeremy Snyder's search for the perfect chocolate chip cookie

Jeremy Snyder with his favorite food

Jeremy Snyder loves a good chocolate chip cookie.

The Albany resident and father of two describes the chocolate chip cookie as "absolutely my favorite food ever." He's been baking them since his childhood and has amassed a huge pile of chocolate chip cookie recipes.

So maybe it isn't a surprise that he and his family took on the methodical task of unearthing the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe -- the chocolate chip cookie that towers above all others. The apex of sweet, chocolat-y, ooey-gooey on the inside, and crisp on the outside.

It took over a month, a lot of research, and the assistance of some 40 volunteers -- but they got there. Or darn close.

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Park and plug in

The future. Maybe.

Kristofer spotted this electric vehicle charging station at the new ShopRite in Niskayuna. There are four spots in supermarket's parking lot designated for electric vehicles. Apparently Niskayuna town officials requested that ShopRite include the spots as part of its design for the store. [Spotlight]

The ShopRite charger brings the number of EV charging spots in the Capital Region to five, according to Dan Gibson at Our Energy Independence Community. In addition to ShopRite, there are stations at the Holiday Inn Express in downtown Albany, NYSERDA in Guilderland, the Saratoga Technology and Energy Park in Malta, and the HVCC Tec-Smart facility also in Malta.

Here's the thing, though: there are extraordinarily few electric cars on the road. The two currently for sale -- the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf -- are new on the market, and the technology -- especially for batteries -- could use some improvement. Most people probably aren't going to be keen to drive a car with a range of at most 100 miles in ideal conditions -- and much less in normal conditions. (To clarify: the Volt also has a gasoline engine, which can kick in after the batteries run out.) [NPR] [USA Today]

It's interesting/fitting that Niskayuna has an EV charging station made by GE, in an everything-new-is-old kind of way. Ace GE scientist Charles Steinmetz had an electric car all the way back in 1914. He used to drive it to his weekend home.

The Edison Exploratorium in Schenectady still has Steinmetz's electric car. There's video of it embedded after the jump.

(Thanks, Kristofer!)

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Cities and towns as puzzle pieces

Here's something to burn off the rest of your Friday afternoon:

Can you guess Capital Region cities or towns by their geographic shape?

A handful are after the jump.

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Favorite local spots for music/acoustic snobs?

The Troy Savings Bank Music Hall is renowned for its acoustics.

Kate emails (link added):

Every since Rev Hall closed, I've been on the hunt to find a comparable music venue with the excellent acoustics that Rev Hall provided. Besides the Egg (which Jon McLaughlin recently told his audience that the sound was so good, he didn't want to stop playing), I've yet to find one that impresses me. Northern Lights, Red Square, and Jillians bring in the bands, but offer terrible acoustics. I fear this may turn off bands from coming to Albany, even though we have an amazing music scene and even more amazing music lovers here. I was hoping your readers had some suggestions.

I just love going to see live shows in the Capital District (all kinds of music). I follow some local bands, but I also love discovering new music too. Maybe some local musicians can share their favorite venues to play at. I hope I'm not the only one in Albany who is an acoustics snob.

Got a favorite place to see music/play music? Maybe a spot that wouldn't immediately spring to mind for people? Please share!

An Albany dialect?

Albany is at the intersection of different dialect areas on this map.

@ajw93 pointed out an interesting site: it's a dialect map of North America. According to this map -- compiled by a linguist named Rick Aschmann -- there's an Albany dialect of American English. A few of the things that characterize this dialect:

+ "Fronted" (tongue near the front of the mouth) vowels in words such as "lot" and "cot."

+ Very little fronting of the vowel in "far."

+ The vowel in "caught" is strongly raised.

+ And these words sound the same: "hoarse" and "horse" | "mourning" and "morning" | "four" and "for."

We've never really noticed a strong "Albany" accent. But if there is one, it's definitely different from other parts of upstate. For example, some people in Central New York have relatively strong accents -- words such as "fire" are pronounced "feuer," and there's the ele-men-TARY pronunciation that occasionally pops up here, too. And, of course, there's the soda/pop divide.

It turns out there's a difference between dialects and accents -- accents are subsets of dialects. And the dialect spoken in Albany and along the Hudson is called, appropriately, Hudson Valley English -- and was influenced by Dutch. Some of the influences from Dutch are still obvious: words such as "kill" (for a creek) and "hook" (for a land point, example: Newton Hook in Columbia County). [Wikipedia] [Wikipedia] [HL Mencken's The American Language]

By the way: The example of the Albany dialect on the Aschmann site is a video clip of Jerry Jennings. Babe.

map: North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns

NANOvember

Not content to only colonize the western reaches of Albany, the Nano Empire has also staked a claim to the month of November -- er, NANOvember.

The month-long series of events includes talks, tours, and demos at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. A few of the events:

November 5: CNSE Community Day
Tours of the facilities and hands-on demos for kids. Also: information about the "NanoFab Xtension," the new building going up along Washington Ave Ext.

November 14: CNSE Community Lecture Series featuring Dr. Alain Kaloyeros
The Nano Emperor himself on "the emergence of nanotechnology, its growing impact on all facets of society, and the growing global leadership of CNSE and New York State in the science that is 'leading to the next Industrial Revolution.'"

November 21: CNSE Community Lecture Series featuring Dr. Laura Schultz
"Dr. Laura Schultz, CNSE Assistant Professor of Nanoeconomics, along with Dr. David Hochfelder, UAlbany Assistant Professor of History, will discuss the rapid development of the region's nanotechnology economy. Their presentation will also touch on the initiative's role in building on the Capital Region's strong history of innovation leadership, as well as expectations for how nanotechnology will help shape the region's economy over the next decade."

And there are more. Some of the events have pre-registration, so if you're interested in going it's probably worth signing up ahead of time.

Earlier on AOA: Section of Washington Ave Ext to close Nov 5-6 (for Nano Bridge construction)

photo: University at Albany CNSE

Nick Brenn and the Altoids flashlight

Here's that Altoids tin flashlight that Union College student Nick Brenn talked about on the Anderson Cooper show Monday. [Daily Gazette]

The show has posted a video of Brenn explaining how to do it yourself (it's also embedded after the jump). But you can also buy a kit from Edmunds Scientific for $19.95.

Brenn came up with the idea for the flashlight as a high schooler in Pennsylvania. He seems to be quite the maker -- here are his profiles on Instructables and MAKE. He's on the crew team at Union. He gets up early. We'll all be working for him someday. If we're lucky.

photo: Edmunds Scientific

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UAlbany study: 92% of top 10 songs mention sex

"Distribution of reproductive themes for 2009 songs as a function of song type" (edited). To quote noted reproductive phrase messenger 50 Cent: I got the (genitalia reference)/ I know if I can (sexual prowess reference)/ I hit the (sex appeal reference)/ Shorty don't believe me, then (short term mating strategy reference).

UAlbany professor Gordon Gallup must have the sexiest lab on campus, what with all the research on interpersonal attraction, semen chemistry, voice attractiveness, kissing, and other topics that stick out.

In a paper published last month in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, Gallup and Dawn Hobbs (one of his students, now a UAlbany graduate) report that 92 percent of the songs that charted in the Billboard top 10 during 2009 "contained one or more reproductive messages" -- with an average of "10.49 reproductive phrases" per song.

A content analysis of songs looked for mentions of "courtship, sex, pair-bonding, parenting, fidelity, mate guarding, and provisioning ... along with themes related to long-term as well as short-term mating strategies." (Hey, baby. come over here and let me present my short-term mating strategy. Just for tonight.) "A content analysis of these messages revealed 18 reproductive themes that read like topics taken from an outline for a course in evolutionary psychology."

Are there examples? Oh, there are examples. From the paper's table of "lyric exemplars" (edited):

(You know, we would have thought "disco stick" would have fit in the first category. That's why they're the experts.)

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The Paper Battery Company

An interesting Troy company announced today it's gotten a $1 million grant from NYSERDA, the state's renewable energy agency. [Paper Battery]

The Paper Battery Company says it's getting the money to build a pilot production line for its "fully printed energy-storage device that is as thin as a piece of paper."

Yep, the company is developing batteries that can be printed onto a paper-like surface.

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Keep up with the Joneses? Pfft. Beat 'em.

Heheh.

We like our neighbors. A lot. They've been friendly and helpful from the moment we moved in. But we gotta admit: it gives us great pleasure to know that we're crushing them.

How do we know? National Grid told us.

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The Wizard of Schenectady

Steinmetz -- with Einstein, Tesla, Langmuir and others -- in New Jersey in 1921.

The Smithsonian's "Past Imperfect" blog has a post about Charles Steinmetz -- the "Wizard of Schenectady" -- this week is that is completely jammed full of awesome. A clip:

He stood just four feet tall, his body contorted by a hump in his back and a crooked gait, and his stunted torso gave the illusion that his head, hands and feet were too big. But he was a giant among scientific thinkers, counting Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison as friends, and his contributions to mathematics and electrical engineering made him one of the most beloved and instantly recognizable men of his time.

In the early 20th century, Charles Steinmetz could be seen peddling his bicycle down the streets of Schenectady, New York, in a suit and top hat, or floating down the Mohawk River in a canoe, kneeling over a makeshift desktop, where he passed hours scribbling notes and equations on papers that sometimes blew into the water. With a Blackstone panatela cigar seemingly glued to his lips, Steinmetz cringed as children scurried away upon seeing him--frightened, he believed, by the "queer, gnome-like figure" with the German accent. Such occurrences were all the more painful for Steinmetz, as it was a family and children that he longed for most in his life. But knowing that his deformity was congenital (both his father and grandfather were afflicted with kyphosis, an abnormal curvature of the upper spine), Steinmetz chose not to marry, fearful of passing on his deformity.

The post was written by Gilbert King and it's a good, quick read of Steinmetz's story. It includes a bunch of great little stories, including one of our favorites, about Steinmetz and Henry Ford (as the story goes, Steinmentz sent Ford what may be the greatest invoice in the history of consulting (or perhaps it was GE, the story has a lot of variations)).

The term genius gets thrown around a lot -- but Steinmetz really was one. And a total character.

Tangent: There needs to be a comic/graphic novel/TV series/something in which Steinmetz's genius scientist/engineer identity is a cover for being some sort of superhero.

(Thanks, Brandon!)

photo from the Franklin Township Public Library collection via Wikipedia

Messing with Schenectady

Chris Churchill recently checked the Wikipedia entry for Schenectady and found an interesting "fact" about the origins of the city's name -- specifically that it's "derived loosely from a Mohawk word for 'dress in layers.'"

Of course, that's not true. The edit was made August 4 at 6:24 pm by user RalphMonster -- the first contribution recorded under that name. It was corrected (with the actual origin) just 8 minutes later by Wknight94, who has a significant record of contributions -- in fact, he/she has the highest number of logged changes to the entry.

The correction was uncorrected (if that's the word) Monday at 4:07 pm, about a half hour after Chris noted the odd "fact." The new version: "The name 'Schenectady' is derived loosely from a Mohawk word for 'church hill,' or 'near the church hill,' or 'place beyond the church hill.' The user: 518Snark, who seemed to be having some fun based on Chris' name. (It was 518Snark's first contribution.) The entry was re-corrected at 11:15 pm Monday by a user who did not login, but whose IP address does have a history of contributions.

Anyway, everyone knows that Schenectady means "place where people swoon over goslings."

The darkness just to the north

The circle marks the Adirondacks.

After Katie's question about places to stargaze, Jim commented today (emphasis added):

If you look at the night satellite photo of the North American continent, you see huge amounts of lights all along the East & West coasts. But - there is a big dark area, where there are few electric lights, which is great for stargazing - & that is the Adirondack Park. Head into the park, the more in the middle the better. We see great stars from Lake George on up. I remember a night we were on Little Tupper Lake (used to be in the Whitney estate) floating in canoes, seeing the Milky Way bright enough to be reflected in the water, listening to loons - & being stunned by the Perseids. Super dark sky, great show.

So we pulled the satellite imagery from NASA and annotated it. A small version is above. Much bigger versions -- of New York State and the United States -- are after the jump.

There's also another 2005 NASA map that highlights how low the human population density is in the Adirondacks.

Bonus bit: economists have been using this satellite imagery to study economic development.

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Web development/design social groups?

Kate emails:

I had a question for you and maybe the AOA readers could point me in the right direction. I'm new to web design and am wondering if there are any web design social groups in the capital district... groups where people get together with beers and binary, groups for drupal or word press, geeks who love to talk nerdy about html 5 and css... can you help a girl out?

Anyone have suggestions for Kate? Please share!

You can pry this incandescent light bulb from my cold, dead hand

You might have heard that federal efficiency regulations will soon phase out traditional incandescent lights bulbs. But are you preparing for when the feds come to take away the warm glow of incandescence?

Former RPI professor Howard Brandston has not been sitting back idly as we're cast out into the cold, harsh light of compact fluorescents. Part of the school's Lighting Research Center before retiring, he's been speaking out against the incandescent phaseout. And stockpiling.

From a recent NYT article about the lightbulb switch:

Brandston's résumé includes everything from theater work to illuminating the Statue of Liberty, but lately he has become the Paul Revere of the movement to save the light bulb, giving speeches to industry conferences and a Tea Party rally in front of the White House. In his testimony, he warned of potential problems with compact fluorescents, which contain trace amounts of mercury. "Some of the most knowledgeable people I know," Brandston said, "have begun to stockpile a lifetime supply of incandescent lamps."

A few weeks later, Brandston showed me his own hoard, in the basement of his handsomely lighted farmhouse in upstate New York. "This is the world's greatest marketing scheme," he said. "You get the government to ban the competition." A slight man with an air of gray-bearded grandiloquence, Brandston contends that his root objection to the law, which he calls "immoral," is connected to his professional appreciation of incandescence, which mimics the natural spectrum. "It's what we grew up with -- it's sunlight," Brandston told me earlier on the phone.

Based on the info on his consulting website, we're guessing Brandston's "hoard" is stashed in Columbia County. (Look for the warm glow in the east.)

As it happens, RPI's Lighting Research Center has a bunch of info on its website about how to make the switch from incandescents to other types of bulbs (CFLs, LEDs, halogens).

photo: Wikipedia user KMJ