Asiatic Clam

ORIGIN
Its origin is in eastern Asia and Africa. Exactly when and how is arrived in the United States is unknown.
HABITAT
The Asian clam does well in estuarine habitats and river beds and is found in fresh waters throughout the United States. It has colonized areas of the Delaware and Ohio River basins, and is found in all five Gulf states and northern Mexico. Populations have been reported for the San Francisco Bay, California and Chesapeake Bay, Virginia.
IDENTIFICATION
Adults can reach 50 mm in length. The shell has distinct rings and is a yellow-brown color.
SPREAD
Immature Asian clams are free-floating and difficult to see, two factors that have contributed to their rapid spread across the United States. The clams have a higher tolerance to pollutants than native species, allowing for colonization in areas that would most likely not be inhabited by native species.
IMPACT
Much like the zebra and quagga mussels, the Asian clam is known to clog intake pipes, damage industrial water systems, alter aquatic habitat, and disrupt irrigation canals. There is also concern that Asian clams compete for food with native mussels and clams.
PREVENTION AND CONTROL
In open systems such as the Ohio River, careful maintenance of boat and other watercraft should be observed. All watercraft should be washed thoroughly with HOT water. Bait buckets should never be transferred between bodies of water. Control methods are similar to those of zebra and quagga mussels. In closed environments, such as power plants, mechanical or chemical control methods are used to eradicate the species.

Spanish Flu Outbreak

In the fall of 1918 the Great War in Europe was winding down and peace was on the horizon. The Americans had joined in the fight, bringing the Allies closer to victory against the Germans. Deep within the trenches these men lived through some of the most brutal conditions of life, which it seemed could not be any worse. Then, in pockets across the globe, something erupted that seemed as benign as the common cold. The influenza of that season, however, was far more than a cold. In the two years that this scourge ravaged the earth, a fifth of the world's population was infected. The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza which is usually a killer of the elderly and young children. It infected 28% of all Americans (Tice). An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during the pandemic, ten times as many as in the world war. Of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, half of them fell to the influenza virus and not to the enemy (Deseret News). An estimated 43,000 servicemen mobilized for WWI died of influenza (Crosby). 1918 would go down as unforgettable year of suffering and death and yet of peace. As noted in the Journal of the American Medical Association final edition of 1918: (12/28/1918).

"The 1918 has gone: a year momentous as the termination of the most cruel war in the annals of the human race; a year which marked, the end at least for a time, of man's destruction of man; unfortunately a year in which developed a most fatal infectious disease causing the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings. Medical science for four and one-half years devoted itself to putting men on the firing line and keeping them there. Now it must turn with its whole might to combating the greatest enemy of all--infectious disease,"

The effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years. The influenza virus had a profound virulence, with a mortality rate at 2.5% compared to the previous influenza epidemics, which were less than 0.1%. The death rate for 15 to 34-year-olds of influenza and pneumonia were 20 times higher in 1918 than in previous years (Taubenberger). People were struck with illness on the street and died rapid deaths. One anectode shared of 1918 was of four women playing bridge together late into the night. Overnight, three of the women died from influenza (Hoagg). Others told stories of people on their way to work suddenly developing the flu and dying within hours (Henig). One physician writes that patients with seemingly ordinary influenza would rapidly "develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen" and later when cyanosis appeared in the patients, "it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate," (Grist, 1979). Another physician recalls that the influenza patients "died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth," (Starr, 1976). The physicians of the time were helpless against this powerful agent of influenza. In 1918 children would skip rope to the rhyme (Crawford):
 

I had a little bird,

Its name was Enza.

I opened the window,

And in-flu-enza.

Hitichi

Since i wasnt able to attend most labs this was my first and only off campus lab and i was quite grateful to be able to attend this one.  The walk was a real trek but it was worth it being able to see the river even after most of the group dispersed.  The various forms of plants and foliage was quite pretty and unique.  I did not know middle georgia had bamboo plants that was really cool to discover.  I really enjoyed the expedition and the class overrall.

Nature Galore!!!

Burgess Shale



The Burgess Shale is found in an area of the Canadian Rocky Mountains known as the Burgess Pass, and is located in British Columbia's Yoho National Park. Part of the ancient landmass called Laurentia, centered in Hudson Bay, the Burgess Shale represents one of the most diverse and well-preserved fossil localities in the world. These fossils have been gathered from shales of the Stephen Formation in two quarries opened between Mount Wapta and Mount Field. The upper quarry is known as Walcott's quarry and contains the most famous fossil-collecting site, the Phyllopod Bed. The lower quarry is known as Raymond's quarry, named after Professor Piercy Raymond of Harvard, a visitor of the site who opened the quarry in 1924. It is now appreciated that the Burgess Shale is a site of exceptional fossil preservation, and records a diversity of animals found nowhere else. In 1981, to protect the site from overgathering, UNESCO designated the Burgess Shale as a world heritage site.
The Burgess Shale contains the best record we have of Cambrian animal fossils. The locality reveals the presence of creatures originating from the Cambrian explosion, an evolutionary burst of animal origins dating 545 to 525 million years ago. During this period, life was restricted to the world's oceans. The land was barren, uninhabited, and subject to erosion; these geologic conditions led to mudslides, where sediment periodically rolled into the seas and buried marine organisms. At the Burgess locality, sediment was deposited in a deep-water basin adjacent to an enormous algal reef with a vertical escarpment several hundred meters high.

The Black Hole- The Glory Whole

Part of the Monticello Dam, this giant funnel drains overflow water from Lake Berryessa past the dam to the river below.

Lake Berryessa is the largest lake in Napa County, California. This reservoir is formed by the Monticello Dam, which provides water and hydroelectricity to the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area.
The lake was named for the first European settlers in the Berryessa Valley, José Jesús and Sexto "Sisto" Berrelleza (a Basque surname, Anglicized to Berreyesa then later respelled Berryessa), who were granted Rancho Las Putas in 1843.
Prior to its inundation, the valley was an agricultural region, whose soils were considered among the finest in the country. The main town in the valley, Monticello, was abandoned in order to construct the reservoir. This abandonment was chronicled by the photographers Dorothea Lange and Pirkle Jones in their book Death of a Valley. Construction of Monticello Dam was begun in 1953,^[3] and the reservoir filled by 1963, creating what at the time was the second-largest reservoir in California after Shasta Lake.
The lake is heavily used for recreational purposes and encompases over 20,000 acres (80 km²) when full. The reservoir is approximately 15.5 miles (25 km) long, but only 3 miles (5 km) wide. It has approximately 165 miles (265 km) of shoreline. It has a seaplane landing area that is open to the public. One of the larger islands supported a small plane landing area, but was closed down in the early 1970s after the FAA issued a safety report.
The area was also the site of one of the infamous Zodiac Killer's murders.

Rocks Rocks Rocks

Igneous
The oldest type of all rocks is the igneous rock (IG nee us). The word "igneous" comes from a Greek word for fire. Deep inside the earth, the temperature is very high and the minerals there are in liquid form called magma. As the magma pushes towards the earth's surface, it starts to cool and turns into solid igneous rock.

Sedimentary
The earth's surface is constantly being eroded. This means that rocks are broken up into smaller pieces by weathering agents such as wind, water, and ice. These small pieces of rock turn into pebbles, gravel, sand, and clay. They tumble down rivers and streams. These pieces settle in a new place and begin to pile up and the sediments form flat layers. Over a long period of time, the pieces become pressed together and form solid rock called sedimentary rock. Most sedimentary rocks form under water. Most of the earth has been covered by water some time in the past. 70% of the earth is covered by water now. So sedimentary rocks are common all over the world. Sedimentary rocks are often rich in fossils.

Metamorphic
Heat and pressure can change many things. They can even change rocks. The name for rocks that has been changed is metamorphic (met uh MOR fik) rocks. Metamorphic comes from Greek words meaning "change" and "form".
Metamorphic rocks form deep in the earth where high temperature, great pressure, and chemical reactions cause one type of rock to change into another type of rock. Metamorphic rocks begin to form at 12-16 kilometers beneath the earth's surface. They begin changing at temperatures of 100 degrees Celsius to 800 degrees Celsius. If you squeeze and heat a rock for a few million years, it can turn into a new kind of rock.

All igneous rocks do not cool the same way. That is why they do not look all the same. Some cool slowly, deep under the earth's surface. These are called intrusive igneous rocks. The slow cooling formed rocks with large crystals. Granite is an example of a rock that cooled slowly and has large crystals.