The Los Angeles Times has a weekly column called Out There, once the province of one writer but recently attended by a rotating group of reporters. One of the latter is Louis Sahagun who, lately, has given readers two meaty and entertaining natural history lessons.

• July 21: Field notes on Tahquitz Valley’s life forms ; Or, what happens when local museum workers and naturalists inventory a mountainous canyonland to compare what lives there now with what a famed collector reported there a century ago? Sahagun goes along to find out. For one thing, they caught a bat.
• June 1: Flat-tailed horned lizard is between a rock and extinction ; Melancholy, and gripping report from Coachella Valley. It is detailed and well-focused. Sahugun lets readers know it is just one of many such tales he cold tell of vanishing creatures and the precarious environmental regs that help protect them.

Son of a gun dept: The second of those two stories mentions another rare reptile in Coachella: The fringe-toed lizard. And Sahugun lets drop that this animal can swim through loose sand. Swim in sand!? A search finds a tiny bit more on that at the Coachella Valley Nat’l Wildlife Refuge site. So one can’t help but wonder if that fringe-toed lizard shares a parallel-evolved mobility skill with another lizard half way around the world, the Saharan sandfish. It stirred such a big pot of news last week after X-ray studies revealed just how it swims through sand. I bet there are California scientists who study the fringe-toed lizards and who slapped their heads and said, “X-rays! Why didn’t we think of that?” Or maybe they did think of it. But no reporters paid attention.

For Scientific American‘s news service Charles Q. Choi appears on Monday to have been first to spot a pretty good story sitting right out there in public in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It had, however, no prominent press releases to say hey reporter looky here. So for a day anyway, he had to himself news of what looks like an epic event in prehistory. A University of Oxford researcher and colleagues report they started with genetic evidence of a population boom in South Asia about 30,000 years ago. It flew in the face of what looks like a deteriorating environment as temperatures dropped, landscapes fissioned into a mosaic of ecosystems, and glaciers to the north expanded. But archeological signs point to a profound change in stone tools at the same time. Big stone axes, spearheads, and choppers were joined by small, easily-manufactured “microliths.” The small blades plausibly led to much easier hunting and perhaps other vital activities. By standards of the time it was a high-tech fix.

In a region from India to Sri Lanka and presumably much larger, Choi reports, the new microliths appear in an archeological instant. The little blades might have been vital to barbed weapons. One source explains, “you can make hundreds of them quickly and repair your spear or arrow.” Bust a big stone spear head and, the scientists think, you’d need to squat in one place all day long, knapping away, to get a new one.
Other, slightly later stories:

• New Scientist – Ewen Callaway: Stone-age innovation explains ancient population boom ; It was the first nanotechnology sensation, he riffs – and suggests taht microblades “were a game-changing technology.”  Callaway also finds a few experts who say maybe – but maybe it wasnt’ so simple either.
• ANI: Advent of stone microblades set off ancient population boom in Indian subcontinent ;
• PlanetEarth online: Inventions helped pre-historic people to survive ;

Grist for the Mill: PNAS abstract ;

-CP

 Chile lately, with its clear view of the galactic center, high mountains, and dry air, has been getting most of the humongous telescopes. But in perhaps a slight surprise – to The Tracker anyway – Hawaii’s own astronomical mecca of Mauna Kea is to be home to a giant of an eye called the Thirty Meter Telescope. That’s the size (about 100 feet) of its segmented mirror, or about ten times the collecting area of any optical or infrared instrument now. The consortium behind the project, dominated by Caltech, the University of California, and a Canadian university team, made its choice public yesterday.

In Hawaii this is big news economically, politically and, due to sensitivities over the preservation of natural and archeological features on the volcanic summit, environmentally too. The Honolulu Advertiser‘s Mary Vorsino had the story with a dek declaring as the prominent news angle: Native Hawaiians, environmentalists object to use of area. Rumblings of lawsuits are high in her article, before a standard listing of the ways a big telescope advances mankind’s understanding of the universe. Jobs pop up. The $1.2 billion project will mean a burst of construction jobs during a dismal time. If the money and permits come and the lawsuits gain no traction, it could be done in 2018.

At the rival Honolulu Star Bulletin, Helen Altonn leads with a celebratory tone and does not let up. The hed calls it “an astronomical prize.”  The Tracker agrees (disclosure: I did study astronomy once upon a time) that champagne is in order. This piece’s only nod to the significant environmental opposition to the project and its five-acre footprint is to quote a university official’s assurances that research will be balanced with cultural and natural resources factors. A second Star Bulletin piece by Nina Wu delves somewhat deeper into jobs, and into enviro and cultural objections. One such group, she reports, says that project will require “leveling the last pristine plateau on the mountain.” State permits, it appears, may not materialize easily.

Neither local paper provides much context for the TMT – such as, that the European Southern Observatory has a design well-advanced for a 42 meter Extremely Large Telescope to be built in Chile. Its ostensible date of operation: 2018. It won’t take much to throw either project off track.

• AP – Audrey McAvoy : World’s largest telescope to be built in Hawaii ; McAvoy, unlike the town’s newspapers, points out that that the larger European telescope is on roughly the same timeline for completion.
• Universe Today – Anne Minard: Thirty-Meter Telescope Headed for Mauna Kea.

   By the way, as a name, Thirty Meter Telescope is not snazzy. Perhaps it will get another – as with the nearby Keck Observatory that bears the name of the private foundation industrialists who put up much of the money for its twin ten-meter telescopes (the Keck’s designer is chief scientist for the TMT). How’s this?: Mike Wazowski telescope. That’s the spherical character, don’t we all know, voiced by Billy Crystal in Monsters Inc. Mike doesn’t have 492 segments to his eyeball but other than that, quite a resemblance I’d say.

Grist for the Mill: TMT Press Release (with links to more info);

-CP

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) “There is no crisis in science journalism but opportunities”; It might sound weird in US or UK, but it’s a reality in Latin America, where Science Journalism has never been out of crisis.

That crisis is among the topics that Spanish speaking reporters who attended the 6th World Conference of Science Journalism in London explored in their newspapers or blogs. Others refer to the difficulties they still have in the region with new media tools, the big need for professionalization, and the importance of a stable network of collaboration. And of course, doubts about funding are deep. We indeed have a big opportunity in Latin America to train a fresh gang of science journalists, and to boost our profession in a region where there is still plenty of room to grow. But resources are needed. We must learn how and where to ask for them.

Hace un par de semanas el rastreador científico asistió a la 6ª Conferencia Mundial de Periodistas Científicos en Londres, en la que se debatió largo y tendido sobre el estado de salud de nuestra tan querida profesión. Vertió algunas de las opiniones extraídas del congreso en su blog de ElPais.com, pero empecemos repasando las referencias de otros compañeros periodistas científicos de habla hispana.

La Argentina de Clarín Valeria Román participó como ponente, fue elegida vicepresidenta de la federación, y en su blog Ensayo y Error transmitió el mensaje principal de su intervención: todo el mundo habla de crisis en el periodismo científico, pero en Latinoamérica no sería justo a hacerlo, ya que nunca ha llegado a estar desarrollado. Nosotros debemos hablar de oportunidades, y solicitar recursos para aprovecharlas.

Las también argentinas Carla Nowak, Laura García Oviedo, Cecilia Farré y Nora Bär armaron un simpático blog de la conferencia que pretendía ser una simple bitácora donde narrar de manera desenfadada el día a día del congreso, pero del cual se pueden extraer algunas reflexiones: Las nuevas herramientas periodísticas ya están aquí, pero la transición no es fácil especialmente en Latinoamérica. Posiblemente quien se adapte más rápido a ellas será el que marcará la diferencia y agregará un valor a su trabajo que le permitirá defender su posición en la práctica del periodismo, pero… ¿será eso suficiente? ¿terminarán siendo una barrera a la calidad?. Si al tracker se le permite colar su opinión: No necesariamente.

Prensa Libre (Guatemala) publicó una nota escrita por Lucy Calderón, quien en “Es hora de promover la Ciencia” habló del cambio climático como un tema clave para los próximos años que requerirá una cobertura especializada, y reivindicó “el papel vital que tiene la profesión del periodismo científico en informar a millones de personas, sobre todo niños y jóvenes, acerca de los últimos avances y controversias en el campo de la ciencia y la tecnología”. No podemos estar más de acuerdo, y sería bueno que no fuéramos los únicos en estar convencidos de ello.

Por su parte, la periodista española y directora de la Plataforma SINC, Laura Corcuera, publicó una excelente entrevista a Tim Radford (exredactor jefe de “The Guardian” y una referencia mundial en el periodismo científico). Leedla, pero de ella extraemos la frase “Nuestro trabajo consiste en encontrar historias”, y la tremenda pasión que Tim transmite a la hora de justificar la información científica como una ventana para dar a conocer cómo es el mundo. La ciencia es la gran aventura intelectual de nuestra vida, y da pena sólo pensar la gente que se la está perdiendo. Además “la ciencia es más importante que cualquier otra cosa que esté pasando ahora, incluido el deporte”. Y como contrapunto a la actitud que se respiraba en el congreso: ”El reto (del periodista científico) es mantener una actitud positiva”

Pero posiblemente quien más reflexión le haya dedicado al congreso sea Horacio Salazar, periodista de Milenio (México). En las ocho “Notas de Ciencia” que dedicó al congreso recogió las palabras de Deborah Blum diciendo que el periodismo científico “será uno de los ganadores en la lucha por la supervivencia de los más aptos, porque la ciencia está profundamente imbricada en la vida cotidiana”, y destacando la importancia de la colaboración entre los propios periodistas científicos. Esta búsqueda de trabajo en equipo no es algo que Horacio simplemente destaque, lo demuestra siempre que tiene la ocasión. Interesante la reflexión sobre que la ciencia puede permitirse ser a veces ser elitista, pero los periodistas científicos de ninguna manera. Y nos quedamos con ganas de saber más opiniones sobre el papel de los embargos en la información científica. ¿Todas fueron positivas, Horacio?

El rastreador científico por su parte se preguntó quien iba a pagar un trabajo periodístico de calidad, el que requiere muchas horas de trabajo en lugar de rescribir notas de prensa de estudios curiosos que además llegarán a tener más clicks en Internet. Nadie lo sabe, pero una posibilidad nueva que apareció con fuerza en el congreso es la filantropía. No, no… no la descartéis de primeras por ingenua. Especialmente en EEUU, la ciencia recibe mucho dinero privado, y si poco a poco les convencemos que además de hacerla también es importante explicarla de manera cuidadosa al público, seguro que hay quien dedicará recursos propios a apoyarnos. Sin ir más lejos, este Knight Science Journalism Tracker no está financiado por ningún ente público ni entidad con ánimo de lucro.

After posting yesterday on a Wall Street Journal article concerning the rising excitement and ambition among pursuers of synthetic biology, an intern at the Quest science unit at PBS-NPR affiliate KQED in San Francisco let me know it would be broadcasting, on the TV side, a program about that very thing last night. I watched it on line. It is terrific and worth setting aside the time. Producer Sheraz Sadiq takes viewers of Decoding Synthetic Biology into local academic and industrial labs. One looks over their shoulders as researchers scroll through amazingly extensive online catalogs of doohickies and metabolic novelties one can order off the shelf for their yeasts, E. coli, or other tiny wrigglies so that one may convert them into specialized tools. One compendium is called the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. That sounds like a parody of science fiction. Reporters on the beat must know about it, but it’s new on me.  The program provides lots of examples of applications and other convincing evidence this field is accelerating fast as it devises alternate architectures for DNA and non-evolved, semi-mechanical goopy parts for living things. The Tracker for the first time got a gut feel for how different synthetic biology is from earlier-generation, and slower, transgenic gene splicing and “mere” recombinant DNA. One mesmerizing moment shows a commercial gadget that assembles bespoke genes, tubes and gadgetry sliding about like the hands of a chef mixing ingredients at the prep table. The company using it says it is on the alert to refuse orders from potential evildoers asking for the genes of, say, some horrid hemorrhagic fever viral toxins. But I’d think a deep look into how good those precautions are is in order.

One segment, on how to transform microbes into factories for medicinals made naturally by other organisms, seemed like a revisit to old-school recombinant DNA. But mostly it’s a polished look at a non-fiction brave new world. One other note: ‘far as I recall, Craig Venter’s name doesn’t even come up.

Pic – Nothing to do with the KQED program, just clever. It’s from a site for a synthetic biology design product. Source;

-CP

The watchdog role of the press is perhaps its most important quality. But before holding politicians feet to the fire, one ought to just go listen to what ground the newbies say they intend to cover. Then, later, check on how things went and get mean if appropriate. Today the AP‘s Steve LeBlanc performs the important initial step. He sat down with the new boss at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, marine biologist Jane Lubchenco, and took down her thoughts on and strategies for the job. She reveals one talent needed for any high-level adminstrator: the ability to look for categories of tasks and to wonkishly plan a coherent plan in response.

The oceans are subject to more kinds of human interference and exploitations than ever before,she says. Check. Now her agency and others like it need to create something called a “comprehensive planning map” for public waters. Sounds fine. Again: let’s see how this is going in a few years.

-CP

Two in the Wall Street Journal, of very different sorts, worth a look.

• Lab Journal – Jacob Goldstein: Programming Cells to Do the Work/ Synthetic Biology May Eventually Lead to New Treatments for Disease ;  Transgenic recombinant DNA is so 20th century. Now synthetic genes and organelles and other bits of cellular machinery invented by people from scratch are altering microbes and other biological cells. Eventually we may get radically-modified bacteria – hybrids of intelligent design (ie by us) and of evolution – whose entirely unnatural behaviors may quell disease at the scale where it lives. It is still an embryonic field but, Goldstein reports, draws its inspiration as much from the architecture of computer chips as from that of naturally evolved tissue. He calls it “deep tinkering.” And indeed, he reports, it has worrisome connotations.
• Health Journal – Melinda Beck: On Navel Lint and Other Scientific Triumphs ; A silly, but seriously assembled, compendium of off-beat researches that have made it into the scientific literature . Beck offers to edit two new journals (one called Duh! and the other Huh?) for such work. The Tracker is amused. The Tracker also finds his tiresomely stuffy spine stiffening. This sort of fun-poking at daft-sounding science is entertaining but can go astray. It is kin to the dreadful habit among cheap-shot political strategists of showing their anti-waste mettle by ridiculing the taxpayer-supported science of bear DNA, or of fruit fly sex, or of volcano monitoring, or of overhead projectors. So it’s funny enough. But one does not want to legitimize such japery too much.

A nod to the journal’s Lee Hotz, who sent us an email tip on these stories by his colleagues. Hotz and several other regular correspondents knows something that must be acknowledged: The Tracker is a pretty easy touch. Send the link  to darn near anything (via “suggest stories” function at the site’s top is easiest) and it might well get posted. No guarantees of course. It needn’t be Pulitzer quality. Originality and enterprise help. We won’t slobber indiscriminately over such volunteered goods even when we do post on them. But we depend in significant part on such leads in order to provide as diverse a gathering of gen’l science, enviro, and biomedical science reporting as we can.

The A(H1N1) swine flu outbreak may already be pandemic (if not, as earlier feared, a particularly vicious strain of virus) but news outlets are ramping up on news that it could worsen considerably when flu season is back. For the Northern Hemisphere that’s during late fall and winter, now less than six months off. And pressure to manufacture, test, and stockpile vaccinations for a large scale preventive campaign of shots and surveillance is growing.

In The Tracker’s own local daily, the SF Chronicle, medical writer Erin Allday (who works part time, one hears in these times of slashed staffing, at city hall) reports that as a public health effort in the US this one will rank with the huge polio vaccination drives of the 1950s.  She starts her account with local authorities but gathers global context. Also important for readers to know, she stresses that getting two shots – one for the usual sort of seasonal flu and another for swine flu – is important. To get both at once, it says here, could be perilous.

Other swine flu stories:

• Forbes/HealthDay News: Safety of Swine Flu Vaccine to Face Tough Scrutiny ; But tough scrutiny, it says here, is no guarantee of high safety.
• Bloomberg – Joanna Cooney: Australian Swine Flu death Toll Hits 36 as Vaccine to Be Tested ; It’s winter already down there, with more than 13,000 cases reported already (and which puts the 36 deaths in useful context).
• AP: Human trials of swine flu drug start in Australia ;
• AP: WHO says global death toll from swine flu now over 700 ; Here is a headline for news that ought to be comforting but, while true, is instead constructed as a tocsin of hazard. What a difference in tone were it like this: Despite world-wide spread, Who says swine flu death toll well under 1000.

Grist for the Mill: WHO Pandemic (H1N1) general info, CDC H1N1 (Swine Flu)  info ;

Gee, it was less than two weeks ago that The Tracker noted a smattering of stories (Previous post) saying maybe the Sun’s spot drought is breaking – complete with an image showing a handsome little string of magnetically cooled and darkened blots on Sol’s face. Today the Times‘s Kenneth Chang gets deep into the strange, prolonged solar blandness. This lead story, as it happens, also includes evidence this weekly section does not print, and thus retains some flex, until  late in the day – just as a daily newspaper ought. The illus is elaborate and clearly took awhile to put together. But it includes most prominently an image that NASA’s SOHO satellite got just yesterday. It says Monday – that does mean yesterday, no? Anyway – the one upper right is SOHO’s for today. It shows no sunspots at all. That’s on just one side but never mind. Chang’s lede explains the situation well: The Sun is still blank (mostly). It is about time that this lull in solar activity gets a hard look in the nation’s and, one ventures, the world’s premier newspaper science section. It has useful graphics of data going back centuries. Chang deals forthrightly with uncertainties in how to rank, with precision, mankind’s greenhouse gases against solar power variations as modulators of global climate. The evidence, Chang’s A-list sources say, still implies that it’s mostly us tilting the stats on weather. His sources also tell him that the Sun’s variations make it an additional player even if the the precise mechanisms are unclear. Exactly why climate skeptics are for some reason predicting a new Maunder Minimum, which Chang reports is the case, is not clear. But if the Sun does stay on its spot diet for a decade or more and the climate cools off significantly – what a ruckus will follow. Fat chance, sure, but it would be a spectacle.

Other notable headlines:

• Thomas Fuller: Using Scientific Tools in an International War on Fake Drugs ; Mass spectrometry, fast and perhaps some day cheap, is the news nugget for a wide-ranging story.
• John Markoff: New Technology to Make Digital Data Disappear, on Purpose ; This looks important and is intriguing. Markoff writes well but, a confession: The Tracker does not get it.
• Natalie Angier: When ‘What Animals Do’ Doesn’t Seem to Cover It ; For that matter, what does physics, or biothermodynamics, mean way down deep? Or, where’s Wittgenstein when we need him?
• Andrew Pollack: Considering Longer Chemotherapy ; About something that may or may not help but certainly will cost more.
• Sandra Blakeslee : Researchers Train Minds to Move Matter ; The hed carries no hint to the new news here. Which is: an incremental, somewhat arcane, but perhaps signal bit of progress in developing machinery that turns brain activity into digital machine commands.
• Pam Belluck : Withdrawal Method Finds Ally ; Who knew? What she calls the “pullout method” does substantially reduce chances of pregnancy. The underlying theme is that of awkward data, and whether such info should be broadcast anyway.

A gold star ought be awarded an Australian amateur astronomer. The picture, showing a dark spot on Jupiter is worth a post alone. The world’s professional solar system astronomers – who, to be fair, don’t spend much time just staring at planets that hardly ever do anything when they’d rather be studying something mysterious – missed the sudden appearance of a splat in Jupiter’s atmosphere. But the dedicated hobbyist saw it and NASA confirms it and an image gathered by one of Hawaii’s Keck telescopes is pretty good proof. Looks like a comet or other bolide hit near the planet’s south pole. The plunk comes, as it happens, almost exactly 15 years after the disintegrating Comet Shoemaker-Levy left a trail of blemishes – each produced by multi H-bomb equivalent impacts – on Jupiter. So far, most accounts are mere bulletins and in truth that may be all it’s worth. Among the most expansive reports is at AAAS’s site where Science magazine‘s Richard A. Kerr has it on the ScienceNOW daily news feed. Australian outlets are getting some color on the spot’s discoverer.

Other stories:

• USA Today (Science Fair blog) Dan Vergano: Jupiter gets bashed by something from space ;
• AP: NASA images show Jupiter apparently hit by object ;
• The Age (Australia) Richard Macey: Jupiter black spot a red-letter day for astronomer;
• NYTimes (The Lede blog) Robert Mackey : Amateur Find New Earth-Sized Blot on Jupiter;
• Sydney Morning Herald – Asher Moses: Backyard astronomer spots big bang on Jupiter ;

*UPDATES:

• Christian Science Monitor – Pete Spotts: Amateur astronomer finds a hole punched in Jupiter ;
• Phil. Inquirer – Faye Flam: Amateur star-gazer discovers new spot on Jupiter ; Yes, we discover, and he did so between dashes to the TV to watch some golf.
• AP – Alicia Chang: Aussie stargazer spots scar from Jupiter collision;
• Scientific American – John Matson: Amateur Astronomer Sjpiece a Fresh Impact Scar on Jupiter ;
• LA Times – John Johnson Jr: ‘Incredible’ new scar is spreading on Jupiter ;

And a special, late, update salute to:

• Orange County Register “Science Dude” Garry Robbins: Look for fresh ‘scar’ on Jupiter at Midnight ; This filed on July 19, early in this story’s cycle. Robbins cites early reports on Spaceweather.com for this message to the amateur astronomers in his readership to check Jupiter for a new spot.

Grist for the Mill: JPL-NASA Press Release ;

-CP

  Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, and to be both is best of all. This comes to mind upon reading on the AP wire Seth Borenstein‘s story from the White House and the visit there by the Apollo 11 astronauts as the 40th anniversary no-news-except-calendar-numerology-celebration of the first moon landing finally began petering out. There are many more stories out there, of course, that could be tracked on this ritual grip, grin, and talking point occasion. And again, The Tracker recognizes how remiss it is not to have attempted to cover the extensive coverage given the entire Apollo 11 observance by TV news.

Back to this one AP yarn filed yesterday. Among the more delightful things for a reporter scrounging together the day’s events for a breaking news story is to find a way to give it some semblance of architecture. An important brick in such construction is to close it with firm punctuation. So if you haven’t read this widely circulated story from the planet’s major news service, scan on down to its bottom. By what stroke of fortune did this event come along to cap the mood Borenstein was after? Maybe a lot of people got the same irony as in this kicker but I didn’t notice it in a search – not even with Microsoft’s new Bing (a search engine, by the way, that needs, in its news mode, to sort the many pick-ups of identical news service stories in a way that allows quicker identification of independent accounts).

The news, one ought to mention, is that the President remained stoicly mum on his administration’s intentions for gov’t-sponsored, human exploration in space – Moon, Mars, libration point, asteroid?…not a peep. He simply endorsed the spirits of science, of innovation, and of exploration. More specific pronouncement on NASA’s spacesuit brigade presumably hinges in large part on the Augustine commission’s eventual report.

Pic: Moon and Mars, © by Gretchan Grant, source ;

-CP

Late last week USA Today‘s Dan Vergano filed a story with a distinct element of surprise – not surprise so much at the what but at the who of this news. Microsoft megabillionaire Bill Gates and climate scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington want to patent a physically plausible method of hobbling hurricanes by ambushing them with pools of cold surface water. As Vergano reports, hurricanes get their energy from the latent heat carried aloft by warm, evaporating ocean water. They don’t grow in oceans cooler than around 80 deg. Fahrenheit (about 27 C). The idea would be to install some sort of turbines or other machinery near valuable coastlines prone to hurricanes. If one looms, the injection of cold, deep water at the surface could dramatically weaken any cyclone that moves through.

Scientists who Vergano queried agree the plan would work perfectly, if executed. The only hitch is to design a system able to get the requisite amounts of water to the surface and fast. That, and the possibility that man made overturning of the ocean, even on a local scale, may generate problems of similar magnitude as is posed by a natural storm.

USA Today was not the first to spot the patents. One is the patent office monitoring IPWatchdog. Its Gene Quinn had the essential news July 13. The story has links to the individual patent applications – all specificially for the devices purportedly able to move that much water in a jiffy. They include a long list of inventors. Some of the names will interest those who follow high technology and its disparate pursuers. The listed inventors include such as Lowell L. Wood, Jr., the now-retired, longtime Livermore National Lab physicist and far-out idea specialist, and Microsoft’s former technology maven Nathan Myhrvold.

-CP