Stories that run against presumption often make for good learning experiences. The prevailing sentiment in conservation circles that the grazing of cattle in wide open areas of near-wilderness is a fine way to degrade an ecosystem gets a countervailing example in a recent issue of the biweekly, non-profit repository of old-fashioned high-caliber outdoors news writing, High Country News. Writer Madeleine Nash, best known for her years of work at Time Magazine, acknowledges that cattle trampling through streambeds, woodlands, and grassy knolls may deserve some scorn – but there are exceptions. She finds as example a region in Northern California. There the survival of an endangered butterfly appears to depend heavily on the well-managed herds of cattle that are regularly rotated through their fragile habitat. The story comes with fine pictures that her physicist husband, Tom,  took. The story also gets into considerable eco-geochemistry. It includes the nitrogen cascade and its influence on soil fertility, grass cover, and the fate of native forbs and other low-lying vegetation. It’s an all-around good read – the sort of expansive walk into nature that newspaper enviro writers used to provide regularly, back when there was plenty of newsprint to put it on.

-CP

A coalition of private marine conservation advocacy groups filed suit this week in federal court demanding the US agencies do more to protect loggerhead and Pacific leatherback sea turtles’ nesting sites and to reduce commercial fishing practices that kill many of them. A few outlets picked it up – mainly by reporting what the environmental groups told them.

The Orlando Sentinel‘s Ludi Lelis blogged on it briefly, quoting nobody and reporting only that the Natonal Marine Fisheries Services had no comment.

On the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle‘s local news section, environmental writer Jane Kay covered the event at a bit more length, with a focus on the huge western, or Pacific, leatherback turtles that are frequently seen locally in Monterey Bay. She includes pertinent info on efforts by commercial swordfishing boat owners to get an okay to expand their techniques – now including spears and drift nets – to long line fishing. Her story cites one rep. of the federal fisherines service and environmental group representatives as sources.

One thinks that both reporters could have called a marine biology professor or two for a more disinterested view. The plaintiffs may be solid organizations doing good things for the environment but as neutral sources of info they are inherently suspect. Also, while it’s a different subspecies of leatherback, and while room for a fuller story is hard to find, one thinks that the recent discovery of tens of thousands of nesting eastern (or Atlantic) leatherbacks on one restricted stretch of coast in West Africa would flesh the news out (many outlets had that – here are the Guardian‘s David Adam and  NYTimes Andrew C. Revkin from May 18).

Grist for the Mill:  Sea Turtle Restoration Project Press Release ;

-CP

 Hey, Congress didn’t plan on anybody making an actually sort of efficient incandenscent light bulb. But researchers at the University of Rochester may have done it. To back up: Congress recently voted to require a phase-out of ordinary, electricity-gulping incandescent bulbs starting with a ban on manufacture of 100-watt ones in three years and working down to smaller ones. The bill says all bulbs must use at least 30 percent less electricity than the old Edison-type filament bulbs do, leaving the market to fluorescent, LED, and other bulbs. Don’t write the obits for these venerable bulbs quite yet.

This is just out so not much pickup yet, but some. In the NYTimes Green Inc. Blog,  writer Leora Broydo Vestel uses this development to lead a wrap-up of efforts to radically increase incandescent bulb efficiency. She says the dark horse in the race to replace old fashioned incandescent light bulb is…new fashioned ones.

In a paper coming out in Physical Research Letters, a U. of R. optics lab team reports they used a laser beam to nano-etch a far more efficient light-emitting surface on the tungsten filaments of regular bulbs. They just shot the laser right through a standard bulbs glass for a femtosecond or so and voila!, the spot on the filament that they hit glowed about twice as bright at no extra power. That, if it proves practical, should keep the iconic old bulbs we’ve all known legal for awhile. And, it says here, they might even have a better overall color. Or not. One wonders what it costs in time and energy to resurface a whole filament, and what it does to the filament’s lifespan before burning out.

Grist for the Mill: Univ. Rochester Press Release ;

-CP

A day after posting some blue whale news from New Zealand and Alaska (earlier post), another spate arose in New York. Bioacousticians at Cornell University report, via the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, the first known visit near state waters by these immense creatures. Nobody reports seeing them go by but, apparently, their calls are unmistakable and can be heard over great distances with the right equipment.

These whales are seen often, close to shore, farther north in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, one must note.

Stories:

• AP - Blue whales found near NY, off their usual path ;
• Ithaca Journal – David Hill: Cornell experts identify singing blue whale / Mammal found about 70 miles off Long Island coast ;
• Newsday – Jennifer Smith: Blue whale’s mating song recorded 70 miles off LI coast ;
• NY Post – Andy Geller: SINGIN’ ‘Blues’ OFF LI ; A light hearted story but Geller slips in some real acoustics info: the wavelength of a typical blue whale song note is the size of a football field. That’s one low note. He also includes worry over recent loss of money by the bioacoustics people at Cornell to keep their hydrophone array working (see earlier post). But he also – as noted from another story in yesterday’s post – uses what appears to be an erroneous and low estimate for world blue whale population.

Grist for the Mill:

Cornell U. Press Release ; Cornell Bioiacoustics Research Program ;  NY Dept of Env. Conservation Blue Whale fact sheet ;

-CP

  A little wisp of a question turned this morning into a whole ball of geopolitical, environmental, and resource-rivalry yarn.

The Tracker glanced this morning at the NSF’s daily Science360 site (press releases in Grist below) – highlighting its own news via, essentially, its releases. One thing caught the eye right off. The agency’s first splash in the sea of economic stimulus money will go to buy a new, American made, ice hardened (though not quite full bore ice breaking) research vessel dubbed the ARRV that’s been in the proposal stage for some time now.  The grant’s eventual size, says its projected operator, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, will be $123 million more or less. (LATE ADDITION: The NSF release has nothing but a press officer there, Dana Topousis, relays word it comes to $200 million.) The 242 foot long ship project will, they say, generate 750 jobs for construction and another 3,600 in the “broader economy.” The letters stand for Alaska Region Research Vessel. It will no doubt bear some famous oceanographer or other such person’s name on its bow by the time it launches in 2011 or so. Back when I had a real job, at USNews five years ago an assignment put me aboard the Coast Guard icebreaker Healy in the Arctic as university scientists on board studied marine systems and climate change. The ship was a good but hardly ideal science platform. So this seems to be notable news. The question occurred: Wonder who covered this?

The release is just out. So far, one taker on the NSF grant is to be easily spotted: the Fairbanks Daily Miner‘s Dermot Cole has a brief post. Beyond the science infrastructure angle the story surely ought to get a bit more coverage for business and national security reasons. The Coast Guard may not have time for hosting many more science expeditions. It is going to need its icebreakers (while trying to find money to build some more of them) for coast guard duties as commercial activity up there rises. Plus the jobs angle is worth a close look. Interesting is that reporter Cole at the Miner refers readers directly to the NSF press release for further info.

As for broader context as to why the US seems likely to pursue more marine science ability and more uniformed armed patrol ships in the region, I noticed another Alaska paper provides a glimpse of the resources undersea land rush and claim-staking frenzy that looks likely. The Anchorage Daily News, in a story knit from wire and staff reporting, tells readers that a new US Geological Survey study estimates that enormous natural gas reserves are under the Arctic’s dwindling seasonal pack ice – and most of it is on the continental shelf controlled by Russia. The wire story involved, presumably, is this from the AP‘s Randolph E. Schmid, based in turn on a report out today in Science Magazine. Schmid’s story inspired a roundup:

Other stories on USGS Arctic oil and gas estimate:

• Toronto Globe & Mail – Shawn McCarthy: Arctic holds 13 percent of world’s undiscovered oil / Figures come as Canada and its polar neighbours pursue competing claims to vast areas of continental shelf ;
• Bloomberg – Torrey Clark:  Arctic May Hold 30% of Undiscovered Gas, Strengthening Russia ;
• LA Times – Margot Roosevelt: World’s undiscovered gas and oil is largely north of Arctic Circle, geologists say ;
• Guardian (UK) Alok Jha: New survey of Arctic’s mineral riches could stoke international strife ;

Finally, for an over-the-top rendition of the upcoming turmoil in the Arctic, check the usually celebrity-besotted Daily Mail in the UK. In a piece with the breathless tech-savvy feel of a Tom Clancy fiction, the paper’s  Owen Matthews earlier this year reported the Arctic’s looming “devastating new cold war” for resources. Terrific illus, too: take a look at its image of a minisub the Russian Academy of Sciences operates. For a more expert and sober analysis of US military attitudes toward the new Arctic and its technical and defense challenges, a long piece lay them out in the February issue of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings Magazine, by Rear Admiral David Gove . The article may be a good one to show anybody who really believes that the thawing far north is some kind of fantasy restricted to lefty scientists and eco-goofball seal and polar bear huggers.

Whew.

Grist for the Mill:

New ship: NSF Press Release ;  Univ. Alaska-Fairbanks Press Release ; US Arctic Research Commission Press Release (Aug 2007) ;

Arctic Oil and Gas Resources: No press release on the new estimates apparent (!) other than the materials AAAS, publisher of Science, sent directly to reporters. One wonders. Why has USGS’s press room nothing, or at least nothing easily spotted? If I missed it, let me know via the contact us or suggest story function at this website’s top.

-CP

A baleful story on climate change, but with a twist,  gives reporters and headline writers a small challenge today. The news is that a team from the University of Florida has studied boreal and tundra permafrost and now reports in Nature that as it thaws one can expect two, sequential effects. The first is that as plants in the newly wet – rather than rock hard frozen – soil prosper they will add biomass and thus soak up more CO2 than the newly-rotting ground releases. But then, in a decade or two, the plant cover will hit equilibrium and the fossil carbon in the soil will race ahead on the balance sheet. This greenhouse two step, in the long run, ought to mean a massive positive feedback to the atmosphere’s growing burden of fossil carbon.

Thus one has two contrary elements to report – the short term flourishing of an ecosystem (in bioproductivity terms) and a longer term backfire on climate change.

At Scientific American in an unbylined story the hed squeezes it all in:  Permafrost Meltdown May Bog Down Global Warming–For Awhile / Thawing permafrost may soak up greenhouse gas before it begins to spew it out ; That’s a lot of words, yet still leaves ambiguity. One thinks a time element could have been shoehorned in – the reversal is expected to take only 15 years, maybe a little longer.

Other stories:

• AP – Seth Borenstein: Study cites ‘slow-motion’ threat from permafrost ; Still ambiguous hed on time scale, but smart to have peril as the prevailing meaning.
• AFP: Permafrost melt poses long-term threat, says study ; If one considers a few decades before a major and unstoppable positive feedback kicks in to be a “long term” threat, ok. Readers might assume the term means never-mind. The story itself explains the essentials clearly.
• Canadian Press – Bob Weber: Tundra to become greenhouse gas source despite Arctic plant growth: report ; High marks on all accounts. Good hed, good body.

Grist for the Mill: NSF Press Release ; U. Fla. Press Release ;

Pic hi res

Here’s an astronomical curiosity, and technical achievement, that a few outlets picked up this week. Astronomers using the CoRoT satellite a little more than two years ago discovered another example of the now-commonly-known “hot jupiter” class planet, this one circling its star about 1,600 light years away and soon dubbed dCoRoT-1b. Now further study of its signal’s variation in both infrared and optical wavelengths, and from several instruments, has led a Dutch team to deduce its phases – equivalent to its full moon, crescent, gibbous, etc. presentations as seen from Earth.The report is in today’s Nature.

Space.com‘s Andrea Thompson has it and notes that the value of the study is that the contrast between the starlit and shadowed sides’ radiations in visible light and infrared glow provides a hint to the faroff world’s heat distribution and atmospheric motions. The heat transfer might even provide clues to the atmosphere’s chemistry, it says here. At Nat’l Geographic News Kate Ravelius carries that latter point a jot further: could be there’s titanium oxide in there. Now there’s some astro-geek news with a fine grain to it. At Australia’s ABC science unit,, Dani Cooper gives the story a historic lede, evoking Galileo’s observation of the changing phases of Venus at the dawn of telescope-aided astronomy in the early 17th century. Seeing this one even has, she reports (alas), a hint of the holy grail to it. More interesting is that this star, she reports, is a “known freak.”

Best account these eyes saw is at AAAS‘s ScienceNow, from veteran astro writer Govert Schilling – including detail on the various sources of data that the new study exploited.

-CP

New Zealand press reported, and wires have picked up, word that beached on the northern tip of South Island in New Zealand is the shark-nibbled carcass of a blue whale. At about 70 feet long, it is the largest whale anybody there can remember finding on a beach. The best, local account The Tracker can find is in the Nelson Mail by Hayley Gale, which has the names of the people who first spotted it and what they think. Nice job on what is essentially a local curiosity.

What caught Tracker’s attention are stories on AP and another at the New Zealand Herald credited to the New Zealand news service. Each reports correctly that the whales are now scarce following their immense slaughter in the last century, especially in waters around Antarctica. Then each reports only 2000 remain. Perhaps that is a confused rendering of how many still frequent the Southern Ocean. The Tracker suspects at least that many live off California and North America’s West Coast.

A much larger figure is found in another recent blue whale news report. From Alaska a few weeks ago the AP‘s experienced regional reporter Mary Pemberton reported a small rise in sightings of blue whales in that state’s waters – and while citing several highly respected blue whale researchers and organizations, she puts the surviving population worldwide at 8000 to 14,000. Still not so many – but much more reassuring than 2,000.

-CP

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) In Montevideo (Uruguay) one of the biggest meetings of Science communicators in Latin America is underway. SciDev has a live blog where one can follow the contributions of the different speakers. The words “democratization”, “popularization”, and “professionalization” appear quiet often. But we don’t hear much about “journalism”.

En Montevideo (Uruguay) se está celebrando el XI encuentro de la Red Pop, que aglutina centros y programas de popularización de la ciencia y la tecnología de Latinoamérica. SciDev ha alojado un blog donde se pueden ir siguiendo las contribuciones más destacadas.

La Coordinadora regional de SciDev.Net para América Latina y el Caribe, Luisa Massarani, abrió el blog exlicando que los 180 representantes abordarán temas de Museología y Museografía, Educación no formal, Periodismo científico, Profesionalización de la popularización de la CyT y Producción de materiales.

En un segundo post utiliza un hormiguero presente en el museo de la ciencia de Uruguay como metáfora para ilustrar el trabajo de hormigas que representa la divulgació científica en Latinoamérica, y como si no perdiera de vista las características de estos insectos sociales, en su tercer post refleja las palabras de la presidenta de Red Pop sobre la importancia del trabajo colectivo y la colaboración en red para alimentar sinergias y avanzar en la divulgación científica en la región. Un muy acertado símil, sin duda.

Catarina Chagas abre con un tema trascendental y que debemos explotar mucho más: “ la comunicación científica como “una herramienta preciosa para promocionar la democracia”.

En el siguiente post expone la invitación de Wellcome Trust a que más países de Latinoamérica presenten proyectos a sus premios de implicación pública en ciencia y salud, y reproduce:”para la democratización de la ciencia es muy importante que la investigación y el compromiso público vayan juntos”

Daniela Hirschfeld incide de nuevo en el estrecho vínculo entre democracia y ciencia, explicando cómo a lo largo de la historia las revoluciones científicas no sólo han transformado conocimientos y posibilidades tecnológicas, sino también la distribución de poderes en nuestras sociedades. Cada vez más, el poder quedará supeditado al conocimiento científico. Y si queremos sociedades de alto contenido democrático, tenemos que distribuirlo. Esta es nuestra gran oportunidad como comunicadores.

En el último post publicado hasta el momento, repite Luisa Massarani con el espinoso asunto de la profesionalización de la divulgación científica. La investigadora y divulgadora Julia Tagueña propone la creación de un sistema de evaluación de las actividades de divulgación, advierte de los riesgos de emprenderlas como un hobby, y sugiere mecanismos de capacitación. El rastreador científico opina que la capacitación de verdaderos profesionales es una de las principales líneas de trabajo a abordar. Suministrando nociones de comunicación a los científicos, pero también –y sobre todo- formación científica de calidad a los periodistas y profesionales cuyo trabajo principal es transmitir conocimiento.

Esperamos del encuentro conclusiones todavía más provocadoras, y análisis de cómo incrementar y mejorar la presencia de la ciencia en los medios de comunicación masivos, que al fin y al cabo son a quienes recurre el público en busca de información contrastada.

Let us first consider a silly, and rather harmlessly so, rendition in the UK of the news from Japan on a new tribe of gene-shuffled laboratory marmosets carrying the jellyfish green flourescent protein gene in its germinal and somatic cells alike. The formal report is in Nature. In a paroxysm of boffinistics The Register‘s Lewis Page reports it as achievement of “one of humanity’s most important scientific goals – namely the creation of small monkeys which glow green when exposed to ultraviolet light.” Earlier but “unsatisfactory one-off fluorescent primates,”  he continues, pale next to the new ones – these “cutting-edge fluoro-monkeys’ abilities are heredity.”

He tops it off by noting – à la “But wait!, there’s more!” – that the tiny “transgenic marmoset are also handier and more portable than ordinary experimental monkeys.” He calls them “pocket monkeys.”

He does, by the way and rather incidentally, briefly mention the real reason for excitement. Glowing monkeys mean nothing – the gene’s presence in offspring of altered animals is simply easy to check. They will glow. Application may include the occasional glowing gene, as markers, but more important will be additional genes whose activities are crucial to understanding inherited diseases. Most stories put the fluorescence up top anyway, but a few calmer heads brought it in deeper. One reporter who shall remain nameless, and his immediate editor, tried to keep them out of the lede. Senior suits, Tracker has learned, yelped that glowing monkeys is a story. Heritable recombinant transgenic traits is a shrug. Green monkeys climbed to the top.

The ethical ramifications of creating deliberately diseased primates figured large in several accounts.

Other stories:

• Washington Post – Rob Stein: Glowing Green Monkeys Illustrate Important but Controversial Advance ; It’s in the hed, but the story smartly leaves out the fluorescence aspect until the second graf. He also plays prominently the worries by some that such work in monkeys may provide tools for installing similar, heritable mods in people.
• Financial Times – Clive Cookson: Glowing marmosets raise genetic hopes and fears ;
• Guardian (UK) Ian Sample: Genetically modified monkeys give birth to designer babies ; Solid job, explicitly calls the fluorescence aspect a “proof of principle experiment.”
• Independent (UK) Steve Connor: Creation of “GM” monkey heralds health revolution; Gene breakthrough offers hope of treatments for ‘incurable’ Parkinson’s disease and MS ; He gets well ahead of the science, but to the point of it, writing of a technique “to create genetically modified monkeys that suffer from human illnesses.” Other than unqualified hyperbole at the top, it’s a solid piece – and the glow in the dark feature doesn’t appear till the fifth graf.
• Times (UK) Mark Henderson : GM monkeys with glowing feet could help research into Parkinson’s ; Gad, but isn’t it something that after a researcher provides a few examples of how such work might maybe perhaps pay off, those bruited conjectures get treated as though they are written right into the experiment’s formal protocol?
• Daily Mail – Fiona Macrae: Glowing monkeys spark genetic engineering debate ;
• AP – Malcolm Ritter: Gene for glowing passed along to monkey offspring ;
• Reuters – Maggie Fox: Green-glowing monkeys have green-glowing babies ;
• AAAS ScienceNOW – Dennis Normile: Marmosets Report for Lab Duty ;

Grist for the Mill: Nature Publishing Press Release (via ScienceDaily); Keio Univ. Press Release ;

Since early this year the Arizona Daily Star, in coverage led by reporter Tony Davis, has followed an up and down, back and forth adventure in wildlife biology, conservation law, and in human interaction with nature. It began with the inadvertent capture of a rare U.S.-roaming, male jaguar dubbed Macho B in February in a state fish and game dept. snare meant for mountains lions and bears. The animal was already well known, having been spotted over recent years by residents and by remotely operated cameras.  Following its discovery in a trap, a  series of stories have recounted the cat’s collaring with a radio beacon, subsequent illness, recapture, its death at the Phoenix zoo, and a continuing struggle to learn whether the capture was lawful, if permits were in place, and whether further jaguar captures ought be attempted. That last may be problematic in any case. Mr. B, it appears, could well have been the only jaguar then making the US its home – perhaps the last. As best the Tracker recalls, there is little evidence of a breeding population of US jaguars for the last many decades – those seen here were likely all born south of the border.

Most recently Davis and staffer Tim Steller report (May 24) results of a successful Freedom of Information Act request to get inside emails and documents among state officials. They hoped to learn whether, as claimed, the original capture of the cat occurred with valid permit. The answer, their story suggests, is ambiguous at best and most likely no.

The paper also has put together a full compendium, by headline, of its staff’s devotion to the issue (including at least one from AP). This is enterprising, resourceful, and diligently persistent beat reporting. Kudos to Davis and his colleagues at the Star. And a tip of the hat to blogger Jodi Peterson, at High Country News, for a post bringing our attention to the Star’s file of Macho B stories.

Grist for the Mill: Arizona F&G Macho B site ;  Center for Biological Diversity Press Release;

-CP

Old timers remember the Sinclair oil company logo, with a Brontosaurus (also a word recalled by old timers) or maybe another sauropod with its head held high. Recent decades have featured, however, such longnecked dinos with their necks and tails much closer to parallel to the ground.

So wouldn’t you know it – a British-led research team has reanalyzed some of the vertebra and done other analytic things with the bones and muscle dynamics etc., with particular attention to how living animals today hold their necks. It concludes that fully or nearly erect necks may, as with giraffes, been a fully comfortable and common posture back in the Mesozoic.

The Brit press in particular jumped on this.  At The Guardian science correspondent Ian Sample stormed out with “The staid and scholarly world of palaeontology was thrown into rare turmoil yesterday” at argument “that dates back to Jurassic times” flared. He may be right about the controversy and the flyings of sparks, but to call palaeontology “staid and scholarly” besmirches the reputation of a field on which reporters have always relied for powerful rivalries and flashy personalities. In the Telegraph Richard Alleyne declares that iconic mounted specimens at the Natural History Museum London may be anatomically wrong (and he also gets word not to expect any change in the exhibit’s stance any time soon).

Lots of fun, this.

Other stories:

• The Australian – Peter Wilson : Dinosaur walked with head held high ; so “throw away those plastic dinosaurs and forget what we saw in Jurassic Park ;
• Independent – Steve Connor: Dinosaurs, the giraffes of their day ;
• Times – Hannah Devlin: Long-necked dinosaurs were not the slouches we thought, says study ;
• BBC – Victoria Gill: Giant dinosaurs ‘held heads high’ ;

Grist for the Mill:

Univ. Portsmouth Press Release ;  Acta Palaeontologica Polonica Paper abstract with link to full text;

-CP