Early Saturday morning, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off the coast of Chile near the town of Maule. The earthquake generated a tsunami, and much of the Pacific Basin was placed on alert for a possibly severe tsunami.

The initial reports from Chile are sketchy, and indicate moderate damage from the quake and tsunami. Officially, 147 people are reported killed. The epicenter is 200 miles from Santiago, Chile.

While the US West Coast is only under an advisory (below watch and warning), the State of Hawaii is under a tsunami warning, with the initial wave expected to arrive at 11:05am HST. Wave heights in the Hawaii are projected to be potentially as high as 8ft. at Hilo, HI.

According to a email sent by the Alex Zwissler, Executive Director/CEO of the Chabot Space & Science Center to members of the Mount Diablo Astronomical Society, a proposed City of Oakland FY 2010-11 budget will include drastic cuts in the City’s contribution to the Chabot. In the proposed budget document, the budget cuts, designed to eliminate a $32M shortfall would include the elimination or significant reduction of yearly contributions to a number of social and cultural programs along with the Chabot, programs like the Oakland Zoo, the Symphony in the Schools program, and the Oakland Asian Cultural Center.

In the case of the Chabot, the proposed budget will zero out the City’s contribution of nearly $500,000:

On Tuesday, February 16th, a Special Concurrent Meeting of the
Oakland Redevelopment Agency/City Council will take place to
recommend measures to balance the city of Oakland 2009-2010 budget and to recommend cuts for the 2010-2011 fiscal year that will be considered by the Council in the spring.

The proposal from the Office of the City Administrator for the 2010–2011 budget recommends eliminating 100% of the current funding for Chabot Space & Science Center. This proposal will decrease our allocation in 2009-2010 of $480,000 to a 2010-2011 allocation of $0.

The elimination of the City of Oakland contribution, a $300,000 subsidy and an additional $180,000 grant, looks to be a massive cutback, but would not cause the shutdown of the museum, which sees 150,000 visitors annually. According to a strategic plan document available at the Chabot website, the loss would represent about 5% of the Chabot’s total yearly revenue of $9.9M and a little over 7% of the $6.6M in grants received annually. However, since most non-profits operate will little budgetary maneuvering room, a cut of even 5% could force reductions in programs, staff, and even hours of operation.

We appreciate the difficult choices the city currently faces, and
over the last couple of years we have withstood these increasing
city funding cuts by making our own significant cuts to our staff
and programs, while working diligently to increase our other sources of funding – not an easy task in these challenging economic times.

We are fully prepared to share the burden…however, we must be able to maintain our services to the community and to the 50,000+ students we serve each year. Chabot is partially owned and administered by the City under a Joint Powers Agency Agreement, so Completely eliminating Chabot from the city budget is untenable.

We need your help in sending a message to city officials that this elimination of any funding to Chabot will result in the Center
having to cut services and programs we consider to be critical in
achieving our mission to the community.

The email includes a call to action to contact the following city officials.

City Administrator Dan Lindheim: dlindheim@oaklandnet.com

Mayor of Oakland Ron Dellums: rdellums@oaklandnet.com

Oakland City Council

• Jane Brunner (President): jbrunner@oaklandnet.com
• Jean Quan (chair, finance committee): jquan@oaklandnet.com
• Desley Brooks: dbrooks@oaklandnet.com
• Ignacio De La Fuente: idelafuente@oaklandnet.com
• Rebecca Kaplan: rkaplan@oaklnadnet.com
• Pat Kernigan: pkernighan@oaklandnet.com
• Nancy Nadel: nnadel@oaklandnet.com
• Larry Reid: lreid@oaklandnet.com

If you want to contact the City on behalf of the Chabot, Zwissler requests you cc: him at:

Alex Zwissler, (Chabot CEO): c/o jgordon@chabotspace.org

An emergency City Council meeting to adopt an amended budget for FY2009-10 is scheduled for February 16th, at 5pm. The agenda for the meeting is posted online, and includes Open Forum time for making public comment. A formal proposal of the FY2010-11 budget is set for later in May.

There is no question the Chabot Space & Science Center provides a significant resource to this community. Its telescopes are open to the public many nights of the year, and its educational programs reach 50,000 Bay Area children each year. Over 2,000 K-12 teachers receive science training annually, and over 150,000 yearly visitors, many of them adults, experience the wonders of space through their exhibitions, special programs, lectures, and classes.

I would encourage you to consider becoming a member of the Chabot Space & Science Center, and to make a donation.

I’m sure that the email from the Chabot was not to create a competion among various City-funded agencies for these scarce resources, but I do want to include a list of additional cultural programs that are on the list of proposed reductions:

• Vietnamese Senior Services %100 reduction
• Cypress-Mandela Training Center %100 reduction
• Hacienda Peralta %100 reduction
• Oakland Asian Cultural Center %100 reduction
• School of the Arts %100 reduction
• Symphony in the Schools Program %100 reduction
• Women’s Business Initiative %100 reduction
• Day Laborer Program %100 reduction
• Art Grants %50 reduction
• Zoo Subsidy %25 reduction
• Jack London Square Aquatic Center Project %100 reduction
• Human Services – Academies Program %100 reduction
  

I’m sure these are all worthy programs, and the loss of any of them would be to the detriment of a city that needs to protect and nurture the cultural health of its adults and children, especially when times are tough.

Juliana Gallin of “Ask a Scientist” is spinning off a new monthly event called “How-To Night.” This month’s event at Bazaar Cafe will teach attendees some magic tricks:

“How-To Night” will take place the second Wednesday of each month at San Francisco’s wonderful Bazaar Cafe (birthplace of Ask a Scientist). Each event will feature a different guest instructor who will lead a one-night workshop on how to do…just about anything.
We’ll launch the series on February 10th with “How to do Magic Tricks,” taught by professional magician Robert Strong. Twice voted the Bay Guardian’s “Best Comedian in SF,” Robert knows how to put on an awesome show, as you’ll see. Suggested items to bring: coins, deck of cards, dollar bill, business card, pencil, 6 feet of rope, scissors, and $1 donation to cover other supplies. (If you don’t have all of these items, no worries, we’ll bring extra.) The fun starts at 7:00pm.

Admission is to the event is free. Bazaar Cafe is located at 5927 California Street at 21st Ave in San Francisco.

This month’s Cafe Scientifique is on a topic close to the hearts of almost every Californian: water:

At the February Café, Stanford Professor Richard Luthy will host a wide ranging discussion on the various facets of California’s water crisis, including:
• Potential solutions
• Supply sources and constraints
• Allocation choices (farmers vs. cities vs. the environment)
• Water pollution, remediation and reclamation.

And…Kepler’s will be giving away a $30 gift card to one lucky attendee! I recommend you spend it on a copy of the late Mark Reisner’s Cadillac Desert ⁽kplr|amzn|bandn|pwls).

If you’re planning to attend, the organizers would like you to help them out with a little survey.

Cafe Scientifique is held at SRI, Middlefield Road at Ringwood Ave in Menlo Park at 6:30pm (doors open at 5:15).

As museum and zoological parks around the country look for ways to appeal to broader (older, hipper, willing to part with discretionary income) audiences, Valentine’s Day provides the perfect opportunity for a community that typically caters to the under-12 set to let down their hair for a little after-hours action, if you know what I mean.

Here’s a list of events around the Bay Area for those looking to mix a little science with pleasure:

Sexplorations
Exploratorium
Thursday, February 4, 6pm

The Pitch:

Join us as we delve into the whys and wherefores of sex, and investigate the ways nature is both conservative and creative in its pursuit of procreation. Explore insect peep shows, collect your DNA, enjoy the latest reproductive dress fashions, and check out a variety of sperm from across the plant and animal kingdoms. See sex-related exhibit prototypes that will one day grace the Life Sciences collection in an Exploratorium greenhouse, films, and much more!

Featuring:

• Mary Roach, author of Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
• Project Inform Evening of Hope: A Night of Life-Saving Fashion
• Condom Couture Fashion Show

Sign me up:
$15/free to members

Nightlife: Romance and Reproduction
California Academy of Sciences
Thursday, February 11, 6pm

The Pitch:

We have a pre-Valentine’s day treat, “Romance and Reproduction”. Throughout the Academy, you can learn about how different plants and animals from many different parts of the natural world reproduce. Among other things, you’ll see baculum (penis bones) from a variety of different mammals, learn about how the invertebrates in the tidepool exhibit reproduce, and find out exciting information about the frequency and duration of lion mating, penguin mating and zebra mating.

Featuring:

Sign me up:
$12/$10 for members

Woo at the San Francisco Zoo
San Francisco Zoo
Saturday February 13, 6pm (Evening Event)
Sunday, February 14, 11am (Brunch Event)
Sunday, February 14, 6pm (Evening Event)

The Pitch:

“Woo At The Zoo – Finally turns 21! Be you penguin, primate or possum you are cordially invited to celebrate a San Francisco Zoo original – the 21st Annual Sex Tour/Woo At The Zoo led by Jane Tollini. Come join us for her exciting presentation full of wild animal facts and kinky information about animal mating. It includes all animals A to Z including U! Heads and Tails above flowers and candles, there is no better way to impress your Valentine. If that isn’t enough, there will be up-close animal encounters from some Zoo residents to top off this unique event.

Featuring:

• Romantic brunch including mimosas, A French toast station, maple sausages, scrambled eggs, pastries, fresh fruits and delicious desserts.
• Evening event dinners of beef tenderloin, herbed couscous, salad, chocolate delights, champagne and more.

Sign me up:
Brunch: $65/$60 for members
Dinner: $75/$70 for members
Reservations recommended

Animal Amore Tour
Oakland Zoo
Saturday, February 13, 9am
Sunday, February 14, 9am

The Pitch:

Ever wonder about the love lives of Animals? Are they Monogamous or Romantic? Do they really fall in Love?

This Valentine’s Day, surprise your sweetie with something unique—an animal encounter you both will never forget! Join us for “Animal Amore” and learn about the courting, mating, and child-rearing habits of some of Oakland Zoo’s most amorous Zoo animals. We’re featuring a special walking tour in honor of Valentine’s Day!

Sign me up:
$11/free to members
Reservations recommended

Valentine’s Day Love Missions
Chabot Space and Science Center
Saturday, February 13, 1:30pm and 3:30pm
Sunday, February 14, 1:30pm and 3:30pm

The Pitch:

Celebrate with your Valentine on a simulated space mission to the Red Planet. This package includes an all access pass to the Center, chocolates, fizzy Martian beverage, and a souvenir of your trip.

Sign me up:
$85 per couple/$80 members
Reservations recommended.

Valentine’s Day comes a little early as the Exploratorium gets Cinemax’d up and becomes the Sexploratorium for this month’s After Dark program.

Join Bonk author Mary Roach for a “droll journey through understandings and misunderstandings about our sexual parts, their relationship to our minds, and scientific techniques for studying them.” Doesn’t everyone want to hear a droll discussion of matters sexual? Come on guys, work with me here!

Here’s the rundown on the night’s events:

• Mary Roach, author of the bestselling Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, who will take us on a droll journey through understandings and misunderstandings about our sexual parts, their relationship to our minds, and scientific techniques for studying them.
• Project Inform Evening of Hope: A Night of Life-Saving Fashion
  Condom Couture Fashion Show
  Models will strut their stuff in fetching dresses fabricated from hundreds of condoms
• Flower dissection
• Sea urchin fertilization
• A discussion about the female feline reproductive system
• Bull testicle dissection
• DNA extraction
• Take-apart sex toysFilms and Projections
  
• Love Life of the Octopus (1965, 12 min.)
  
• Sexual Encounters of the Floral Kind (1983, 55 min.)
• Live sperm
• Sea urchin fertilizationExhibits
• Love Nest: Take a peek inside a dollhouse that’s home to amorous insects
• Pollination Partners: Explore flowers and the pollinators they attract
• Sense Appeal: Tease apart your sense of smell and your sight in terms of attraction
• Sperm to Scale: Discover which organisms have the largest sperm size to body ratio and what impact this has on the organisms
• Blown-Up Sperm: Check out fish, chicken, dog, and, lizard sperm. When these animals grow up they don’t look like humans; why does their sperm look so much like ours?

After Dark opens at 6pm and runs until 10. Cash bar opens at 6pm. Admission is $15 or free to members. The Exploratorium is located in the Palace of Fine Arts, 3601 Lyon Street in San Francisco.

This month at the East Bay Science Cafe, the topic is early man. Henry Gilbert, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley will speaking about recent anthropological discoveries in Ethiopia:

The human fossil record has grown exponentially since the discovery of the first Neanderthal. We now have a continuous record of the last 6 million years, replete with many exceptional sites that offer well preserved hominins, prehistoric habitats, and stone tool troves.
One million years ago a population of Homo erectus lived in a riverine drainage basin in what is now a remote part of Ethiopia. This presentation will provide a detailed introduction to the fossils and stone tools found in this region, and provide a look at paleoanthropology history and the broader human fossil record.

Just for fun, ask him a question about “hominids.”

East Bay Science Cafe is held at 7pm at Cafe Valparaiso in the La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Avenue, in Berkeley.

If you’re in the mood to play with bugs, head on over the California Academy of Sciences this Thursday night for Nightlife:

This installment of NightLife also sees the return of the Insect Discovery Lab, which allows guest to see, feel, and learn about live insect specimens. It is the leading education outreach facility in the San Francisco Bay Area for hands-on learning and the conservation of invertebrates worldwide and has been highlighted on Evening Magazine, Bay TV, and Bay Area Backroads.

Academy entomologists Dave Kavanaugh, Norm Penny, andCharles Griswold join the presentation, showing of specimens of beetles, flies and moths that they have done research on.

The evening’s entertainment will be provided by DJs J-Boogie and Fred Everything.

Nightlife is $12 for adults only ($10 for members), and admission permits entry to the museum as well as the special programming.

The California Academy of Sciences is located at 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

The Holy Grail of earthquake science is the ability to predict with some certainty 3 important characteristics of an anticipated earthquake: its time, place, and magnitude. Earthquake science has made great strides in recognizing earthquake-prone regions, calculating earthquake probabilities and anticipating the potential for damage. In the right hands, this information has proved invaluable in saving lives and property.

The only element lacking for true prediction is the ability to determine the exact time of an earthquake. Due to the chaotic nature of the physics behind rock fracturing, it is unlikely that an earthquake will ever be predicted with precision well in advance. The best that can be hoped for is a short-term warning based upon a signature precursor that heralds the actual earthquake. This kind of warning may be never more than on the order of minutes or seconds, but even that kind of margin may well separate life from death.

For now engineers and planners armed with current earthquake science, building to modern codes and prepared to respond after earthquakes strike, can give earthquake-prone areas a good chance of withstanding all but the strongest earthquakes as well as provide the necessary resiliency to quickly recover from them.

It is in those areas where earthquake awareness is lacking or structures fail to meet minimum safety standards that devastation and tragedy awaits. Haiti is the latest victim, and this poor country has been doubly victimized by both a failure to correctly anticipate the imminent danger, and to mitigate against it.

According to Nature Magazine, at the 2008 Caribbean Geological Conference, Paul Mann of the University of Texas at Austin presented a paper entitled “Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden Strike-Slip Fault Zone: A Major Seismic Hazard Affecting Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica.” The abstract alone was chilling in its prescience:

…Recorded seismicity over the past 40 years is sparse as expected from a fully locked fault plane. GPS-constrained block models with elastic strain accumulation give ~8 mm/year of slip rate on the fault. Since the last major event in south-central Dominican Republic was in 1751, that yields ~2 meters of accumulated strain deficit, or a Mw=7.2 earthquake if all is released in a single event today.
…

It’s important to note that this paper didn’t make a prediction that went unheeded. It presented a scenario that could have occurred the day after the conference or 50 years from now. The sad reality is while the correct response should have been to initiate a multi-billion dollar investment in improving the infrastructure of Haiti, as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, it could hardly feed its own people much less undertake the necessary capital improvements, and certainly not within a two-year window.

But it is also true that neighboring Jamaica and the Dominican Republic dodged a bullet. Our understanding of the EPGFZ was not sophisticated enough to rule out that the 1/12 earthquake wasn’t going to devastate Kingston instead. Billions saved by not taking mitigation measures will hopefully be spent to restore Haiti, and maybe even to improve it.

Looking forward, will we continue to see this pattern replayed again and again:

• 2003: an earthquake levels Bam, Iran killing over 26,000 people.
• 2004: the second-largest earthquake ever recorded generates a tsunami that sweeps across the Indian Ocean and kills 228,000 people.
• 2005: an earthquake destroyed an area the size of Belgium in northern Pakistan and Kashmir, killing 75,000 people.
• 2008: a 7.9 earthquake in the Sichuan Province of China killing 70,000.

We have the ability to determine where earthquakes are likely to occur. We have the ability to determine where buildings and infrastructure are likely to be severely damaged or destroyed. At this point, we still apparently lack the will to devote the necessary expenditures to protect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.

While it may be easy to dismiss these catastrophic disasters as just a fact of life in the developing world, bear in mind that geologists predict a similarly-sized magnitude 7.0 earthquake will eventually strike the midsection of the U.S. along what is known as the New Madrid Fault. Over 1 million people in Memphis, Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri are living in the same kinds of unreinforced masonry structures that have become deathtraps in Haiti.

At 4.27pm PST, a little piece of the Gorda plate some 30 miles west of Ferndale, CA decided to move to the north a little ahead of the rest of its plate.

According to the Eureka Times-Standard, the resulting 30-second earthquake has knocked out power in Eureka and Ferndale, and while the damage is widespread it also appears to be relatively minor. There is no count of injuries or fatalities.

As is typical of a moderate earthquake, the USGS is forecasting a 78% chance of a comparable aftershock. Humboldt County, a part of California better known for making an industry out of helping folks get mellow, is going to be a bit jittery for the next week or so.

In case you’re wondering, the Gorda Plate is actually not a Taco Bell item, but is the southern portion of the Juan de Fuca Plate, vestigial remnants of the long-vanished Farallon Plate.

The Juan de Fuca and Gorda Plates are following the Farallon in a suicide plunge under the North American Plate. The act of one plate diving under another is known as subduction, and this particular area is known to geologists and West Coast disaster planners as the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

Before the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia, the Cascadia Subduction Zone was well understood as the fire underneath such famous volcanic landmarks as Mount Lassen, Mt. St. Helens, and Mount Rainier. Since 2004 however, the idea of a massive tsunami generated by a similar subduction earthquake off the West Coast has a lot of folks worried. An earthquake only a few miles offshore could produce a devastating tsunami that would reach landfall in minutes, leaving little time for an evacuation. This what is known in the business as a “bad day.”

Luckily, this particular earthquake was generated in a vertical fault on the plate itself. Why is that lucky?

As the Gorda plate subducts below the the North American Plate to the east, its rocks bend and stretch, fracturing them into vertical faults in much the same way a brick would if you tried to bend it. Now the Pacific Plate is moving steadily to the northwest and mashing on the plate, so those fractured rocks tend to want to slide to the north and ease that pressure, and so you get earthquakes.

But since the predominant motion in strike-slip earthquakes is horizontal, there isn’t a lot of the vertical thrusting that you need to cause a big tsunami. A look at a seismograph trace recorded here shows that indeed the highest amplitudes are in the N-S (top) and E-W (middle) direction.

Folks are going to be pretty edgy, P.G. & E. will getting the lights back on, and grocery store owners will be picking up a lot of cans, but this was not the Big One. For now, the folks at the Pacific Tsunami Center are breathing a sigh of relief.