The WSJournal‘s Gautam Naik ran yesterday a provocative story under a lively hed: A Baby, Please. Blond. Freckles — Hold the Colic. The news is that a clinic in Los Angeles is offering to do a deep genetic diagnosis of preimplantation embryos and come up with, in essence, bespoke sons and daughters. The story says that there isn’t much evidence the clinic has actually made good on its promise, but also says that’s beside the point. And the point is that in principle such things seem quite plausible and perfectly legal and hence more such pitches are sure to come.

The graphic is easy to understand. Ethical misgivings get fair play in the piece. So do polls showing that, while still a minority, a significant number of fertility clinic and genetic counseling customers say that, beyond vigilance against disease genes, they’d by happy to check the boxes to prefer genes that might bestow height, athletic ability, etc.

Such news seems to be in the air. A search finds a smattering of similar dispatches:

• Scotland on Sunday – Kate Foster: Couples offered designer babies ; Different clinic, and focus is on the usual: genes for genetic defects, etc. But she brings up concern about eventual move toward babies with specific, desired traits.
• The Independent (Australia) Danny Rose : Aussie couples sign up for designer baby technology ; Date Jan. 30; same clinic as WSJournal highlights this week.

Grist for the Mill: NYU Langone Med. Ctr. Press Release ;

Pic: From a designer baby story nearly nine years ago, source ;

-CP

Thought this site was done with Darwin Day, eh? Here’s one more from New Scientist‘s Rowan Harper today. It’s a short piece, worth a look, but its highlight is this limerick provided at a Darwin rally by the operators of an enterprise called Darwin Brewery, which has an aptly named libation:

Charles Darwin was deep in reflection
On the fossils within his collection
When you sit down and think
You need a long drink -
Beer is the Natural Selection!

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-CP

The Register‘s science editor Gary Robbins is getting lots of reaction from his readers to a photo one of them sent him and he ran on line. It shows a rainbow running right into the ground – or, actually, into the asphalt of a rainy day road. Some readers, he says, think it was photoshopped. It is remarkable.

The Tracker thinks Robbins, a keen reporter, may have missed a chance in this case to explain some optics. So I’ll take a stab at it.

So, as we all know don’t we?, rainbows are the refracted backscatter of sunlight off raindrops (the actual optics of that, I recall, is very complex). The refraction angles vary with wavelength which in turn provides the nice colorful arc. And, most important to the immediate topic, the bow’s intensity depends on both the brightness of the sun and the number (and sizes?) of raindrops in the appropriate directions. Okay then. In the general sky it usually takes hundreds of yards or even a mile or so worth of raindrops to generate much brightness. So natch one rarely sees a rainbow going all the way to the ground right in front of one. There is just not enough optical action over such a short distance. But one can see such a thing while standing in the garden sprinkler’s spray on a bright day. There are lots of water drops from a nozzle like that. If it ever rains that hard, stay out of the creekbed. Well! A tire’s spray can accomplish the same thing. So, the rainbow above, visible between the photographer and the sky and mountains, would have faded out as normal at its end except for one thing. It gets a boost from the wheel spray right at its bottom. I think, but am not sure, that a harmonic secondary rainbow is above the Mini and that it too brightens at its terminus.

All that longwindedness can’t change the fact. That’s a cool picture. (…god, I hope I’m right about the off the cuff explanation). And while Robbins’s item ran a week ago or so, today’s a good day for it – to counter the bad mojo of a Friday the 13th.

-CP

The Mercury News‘s Paul Rogers indulged in some old-fashioned, grown-up debunking this week. It seems that deep in the attacks and counter-attacks over the economic resuscitation legislation is the allegation of a porky little item assigning $30 million to save a tiny endangered rodent native to San Francisco Bay’s salt marshes.

So Rogers looked into it. He traces it to a CNN assertion, and that in turn to a GOP lawmaker’s press release. He further tracks the various numbers and other such things associated with it. Looks like CNN, or somebody on its staff who might have looked into the facts, whiffed on all counts. In the meantime, he writes, on the internet it has become instant urban legend. Kudos.

-CP

The Tracker rather likes the headline over the LATimes story by Mary Engel today: “Rhinovirus strains’ genome decoded: cold cure-all is unlikely.” No false hopes there for an exit from the most common sniffles. And if the hygiene theory of immune system toughness is right, we’re probably better off. The fully charted genomes have, as one suspects every serious viral contagion specialist could have told you they would, such diversity among their 15 types that they offer few common avenues to treatment. Or, as Engel advises, don’t toss out the chicken soup yet. It’s rather difficult however to avoid another cliche (which Engel does, but the Tracker won’t): the achievement is nothing to sneeze at. Can’t hurt, new research avenues will open, etc. Researchers at the Univ. of Maryland School of Medicine and with the J. Craig Venter Institute led the study and have it this week in the AAAS’s Science magazine.

A second and more broadly intellectually satisfying – if practically near-useless – genome is in the news so we’ll run two lists of stories a bit farther below. It belongs to our distant yet close kin, the Neanderthal. The McClatchy Newspaper chain’s Robert S. Boyd tempts readers in with a little vignette starting “It was an unfortunate accident, but a lucky break for modern science. About 38,000 years ago , a Neanderthal man living in what’s now Croatia broke his left arm…..” At least one other story says it was a woman. Either way, the compensating overgrowth of bone in his/her right arm created enough tissue mass to preserve a smidgen of DNA, it appears. That, combined with smaller samples from other specimens, made the work possible.

The news is that Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Inst. for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and a multinational team presented their draft genome at the AAAS meeting in Chicago, an event accompanied by a AAAS press release issued also in Croation, German, Russian, and Spanish. Plus, press conferences in Chicago and Leipzig. In truth, this is lots of ink for a progress report on a project given heavy, previous coverage. But the two genomes do have an odd resonance. These Homo Neanderthalensis folks could as appropriately be called Homo rhinohumongous. They had big noses. And no Kleenex. Maybe human rhinoviruses evolved some of their biodiversity in their magnificent ice-age schnozzes? Nobody covers that obvious angle!   Below are further samplings of coverage.

RHINOVIRUS STORIES :

• Baltimore Sun – Kelly Brewington :  University of Maryland researchers map genetic codes for cold virus ;
• Best Hed Prize : LiveScience – Andrea Thompson : Common Cold DNA Deciphered, Congestion Continues ;
• NYTimes – Nicholas Wade : Cure for the common cold? Not yet, but possible ; Accurate, tricky word with a wide stance, that “possible.” Means maybe. Are more maybes than actualities. Therefore possible probably means probably not.
• Canwest News Services (via Montreal Gazette) – Sharon Kirkey : Effective cold treatment possible in 5 years: Study ; there it is again – possible.
• Bloomberg – John Lauerman: Cure for Common Cold May Result From Virus DNA Search ; Ah, “may.” Same meaning as possible.
• AP: Lauren Neergaard : Nothing to sneeze at – decoding the common cold ;
• Chicago Tribune – Trine Tsouderos : Researchers crack code of common cold ; Y’know something? If a person with a bad cold reads that aloud it sounds like “…crack code of common code”   !  ;

Grist for the Mill:

J. Craig Venter Inst. Press Release ;  U. Md. Sch. of Medicine Press Release ;

NEANDERTHAL/NEANDERTAL STORIES:

• NPR Morning Edition Christopher Joyce ; Interesting contrast in the on line text story, and the broadcast linked to it. For instance, the text says this partial genetic map me help show why H. Sapiens left its cousin “in the evolutionary dust.” The Tracker heard no such phrase in the audio link.
• Reuters – Julie Steenhuysen : Scientists get first draft of Neanderthal genome ;
• BBC – James Morgan : Neanderthals ‘distinct from us’ ; Focuses on a gene linked to speech, and implications that however different they were, they may have talked.
• New Scientist – Ewen Callaway : First draft of Neanderthal genome is unveiled ;
• Telegraph (UK) Richard Alleyne: AAAS: Neanderthal man takes step closer to roaming the earth after genetic breakthrough ; Oh my. Does this reporter (or his editor) really believe the cloning-of-an-extinct-species angle is the smartest one here? He even throws in the mammoth as a plausibility argument. Oh my. The bulk of the story is well-reported, by the way. And this angle certainly captures a few more eyeballs.
• NYTimes – Nicholas Wade : Scientists in Germany Draft Neanderthal Genome ; Oh. See previous bullet. Wade, too and with the help of a source at Harvard, dives deeply and credulously into the notion of revivifying the species once its eventual, complete genome is done. C’mon, what are the odds of a Neandertal II in our or our children’s lifetimes? Born from a chimp, yet. Getting the epigenetic throttles on gene expression right has to be a tough nut to crack. Or is it just me? Pääbo said it is impossible. The Tracker’s gotta think about this…
• USA Today – Dan Vergano : Draft of Neanderthal’s genetic blueprint revealed ;
• Guardian – Ian Sample : Scientists unravel Neanderthal genome / Extraordinary feat will shed light on what it means to be human ;
• MIT Technology Review – Lauren Gravitz : Nenanderthal Genome Unraveled / Scientists announce the first complete draft of our closest relative’s genome ; No, not complete – about 63 percent the story says. Despite that hed, the story is sober, complete, and clear.
• Deutsche Welle : Scientists Decode Majority of Neanderthal Man’s Genome ; Truly great illus with this one. ;
• Nat’l Geographic News – Mason Inman: Neanderthal Genome “First Draft” Unveiled ;
• Science News – Tina Hesman Saey : First Rough Draft Of Neandertal Genome Released; One of the few to spell it with a t, not a th. And calling it a rough draft is smart. And she says this specimen was female. Very thorough story overall.Grist for the Mill:

AAAS Press Release ; Roche 454 Life Sciences Press Release ;

-CP

It happened over Siberia, so maybe the Russians will clean it up? Probably not. This is too big a mess to clean up. Yesterday Iridium Satellite LLC, the operator of the big fleet of relay stations for satellite telephones, said it had lost one of its birds. It ran into a non-operating Russian Cosmos-2251 military satellite, a big one launched back in 1993. Iridium’s release says it wasn’t its fault. Well, who’s then? Hmmm. Maybe the whole space age’s.

It surely is a bigger debris cloud, and hazard, than that feckless bit of space show-offmanship a few years ago when China deliberately smashed one of its own satellites to bits. The two satellites are in fairly low orbit, about 500 miles, not way up there at geosynchronous altitude. The bad news is that the junk offers some, very slight risk to the International Space Station. The good is that, at such low level, at least the bits ought to reenter the atmosphere before too many years have passed. In the meantime, mankind’s pollution is reaching a new high.

For a look at pretty good breaking news TV reporting, the RussiaToday network, with a rather Brit-sounding anchor and a correspondent, Anastasia Churkina, describe it in great detail. Nice job (One wonders how much CNN misses its erstwhile, laid-off space whiz Miles O’Brien about now).

*UPDATE: Popular Mechanics turned out a passel of good analysis and accounts in a hurry, led by Glenn H. Reynolds on the status of space law regarding space junk, and it links to stunning, archived modeling of what happened to the debris after China bonked its own satellite just to show that it could.

Other Stories:

• Reuters – Luke Baker: Satellite crash poses new political risk ;
• Reuters – Tim Hepher : Scientists aware satellite paths would be close ;
• Xinhua: China alert on U.S.-Russian satellite collision. Two of China’s research satellites conceivably could be imperiled by the debris cloud, it says here. It mentions other such accidents but not China’s own, deliberate satellite demolition.
• Deutsche Welle: EU Seeks New Space Rules After Satellite Collision ;
• BBC – Paul Rincon : Sat collision highlights growing threat ;
• Wall Street Journal – Andy Pasztor : Satellites Destroyed in Orbital Collision ;
• AP – Douglas Birch, Vladimir Isachenkov : Crash of US, Russian satellites a threat in space ;
• NYTimes – William J. Broad : Debris Spews Into Space After Satellites Collide ; With a good interactive graphic ;
• Discovery – Irene Klotz : Crash highlights lack of space traffic control / For privately operated satellites, there’s no Federal Aviation Administration ;
• The Australian – Andy Pasztor : Russian and US satellites in the first mid-orbit collision ;
• Daily Yomiuri (Japan, editorial): Space debris measures must be strengthened ;
• ABC News (US) – Gina Sunseri, Luis Martinez : An Unprecedented Space Collision / Military Monitoring Space Debris Left After Collision to Make Sure It Didn’t Threaten Spacecraft ;
• Guardian (UK) Bobbie Johnson: NASA alert as Russian and US satellites crash in space ;
• could do lots more…

As days go by, more deeply reported stories on the difficulties of crafting and executing a sensible policy against such things will, presumably, emerge.
Pic: Santa Cruz Boardwalk, source ;

-CP

Correction: For several hours this post attributed one of the stories below to the wrong pub, Pop. Science rather than the actual Pop. Mechanics. 

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Only a couple of specialty outlets are carrying what seems to be entertaining and engaging and stimulating news of scientific and engineering adventurism. A gigantic NASA test balloon on Feb. 7  set a record for heavy load-carrying endurance in the stratosphere, floating high over Antarctica for 42 days (and counting). Slung beneath it is a 1,500 pound test payload.

The deal with this one is that it doesn’t change its volume (and hence altitude) from day to night as sunlight cyclically heats its helium floatant. (Actually floatant is goop one puts on fluffy lures for dry fly fishing so they’ll sit high on the water’s surface but it fits here, sort of.) Its material is not stretchy and its helium is at sufficiently high pressure to keep it fully plumped even when very, very cold. It also is relatively impervious to leakage by the tiny atoms of helium. The previous record was set by a balloon that the same program launched. One reason so few outlets paid attention to this record-breaker is here posited: No sign of a press release to mark the record-setting itself, although in Grist is a release on the launch, from the team at New Mexico State University that conducts most of NASA’s high altitude ballooning.

As this is an existing and well-traveled balloon design, the real news will come with launch of a new iteration that will be bigger and should stay in the air for 100 days at a stretch or, more properly given the engineering principle, the non-stretch.

Stories:

• Popular Mechanics – Andrew Moseman : Over Antarctica 44 Days… Balloon-Science Experimenters Break Record ;
• Nature News – Eric Hand: Test balloon breaks endurance record ;

Grist for the Mill:

New Mexico St. Univ. Press Release ; NASA Balloon Program Office ;

-CP