On the pad, cleared for takeoff tomorrow if the weather is okay, is a skinny and enormously, almost Saturn V-class high if not powerful rocket. The bulbous top is only a well-instrumented dummy stand-in for a second stage and the bottom is a lightly rebuilt solid rocket booster from the shuttle program. The Ares 1-X is however the first dramatic and tangible fruit of the Constellation Program, NASA’s currently-approved means for continuing to keep Americans in space on US vehicles once the shuttle program evaporates – probably next year. NASA says Ares 1 will be ready in 2015, others say it will be longer.

The curtain raisers for the launch just about all note the uncertain stakes in the launch. Either the rocket’s success is critical to continued development of a new family of human-rated boosters able to go to the space station or leap much farther – to the Moon, even Mars. Or, it does not matter a whole lot should the current administration order a different strategy – as strongly suggested by last week’s report to the White House from the Norman Augustine-chaired, independent review commission. It has spent many months pondering NASA’s wisest course forward and the financial implications of trying to stay on its current plan. Its guess for Ares 1′s operation start: 2017. Until then, US hitchhikes with Russians or, barely conceivably, on a rocket from a second-party vender.

We’ll catch up a bit below with some examples of coverage of the report. As for the rocket test, its ties to past policies, are seen in a lede at ABC News from reporter Gina Sunseri: This isn’t your daddy’s space ship – but it is something your grandfather might recognize. The really old part is the conical, Apollo-reminiscent capsule sitting on top (with nobody in it for this test, of course.)

A bit harsher assessment, at Canada’s National Post, includes a “news service” compilation saying the rocket’s future is in doubt, along with a notable graphic and caption by Shane Dingman with the hed: New Ares 1 Nasa rocket already obsolete, report suggests.

At the NY Times, Kenneth Chang gives the launch a solid description, rich with its context of an agency in a policy and budget limbo. Could be a pathbreaker, he reports, or it “could also be a swan song.”

Other Ares 1-X test-launch stories:

• Cleveland Plain Dealer – John Mangels:  Weather remains iffy for Tuesday liftoff – Arex 1-X launch ; This follows his piece over the weekend: Cleveland’s NASA Glenn Research Center wins praise for its work – Ares 1-X launch ; The paper is giving this a major push as a local story, covering the launch directly. Another Mangels story recently described in detail with extensive illus the Glenn center’s construction of the upper stage mockup.
• Christian Science Monitor – Peter Spotts: The NASA Ares 1-X rocket is set for launch – but watch those clouds!,” post today follows his piece last week: Move over space shuttle; here comes the NASA Ares 1-X ;
• Florida Today – John Kelly: Ares 1 rocket close, yet so far / Test gets ‘go,’ but rocket’s future is muddier than ever ;

Catch up: Examples of coverage of Augustine report released Thursday:

• Washington Post – Joel Achenbach: Manned NASA trips at ‘tipping point’ on funds;
• Chr. Science Monitor – Peter N. Spotts:  Augustine report: tough choices ahead on human spaceflight ;
• Science News – Ron Cowen: Panel Says Planned NASA Rocket Won’t Do The Job / ..too expensive and won’t be ready in time… ;
• Hearst Newspapers – Stewart M. Powell, Eric Berger: Panel: NASA’s ambitious goals need more money ;
• AP – Seth Borenstein: Panel says NASA should skip moon, fly elsewhere ; Unsure if it said flatly to SKIP the moon – but it does say don’t build rockets that can’t do that job or anything else even farther off.
• New Scientist – David Shiga: White House panel sees little point to new NASA rocket ;
• Register (UK) Lester Haines: Ares 1: What’s the Point? Waster of cash, says spaceflight review chairman ;

Grist for the Mill:

Augustine Commission final report ;

NASA/Constellation News Site ;

Tracker says: Here’s my entirely unresearched roadmap for NASA. Keep sending robots all over the solar system, and maybe a few astronauts to Libration points or asteroids if they are really really better there than automated probes would be. And if China or ESA or India or anybody else sends a human expedition to the Moon or Mars or wherever, NASA keep on hand a few all-purpose, go-anywhere autonomous machine landers to sneak into the landing zone first and show the touchdown on live TV and with virtual reality capabilities so that anybody on Earth can witness it as though first hand. Maybe for the space-suited ones who step off the expensive tourist ship it could hold up a sign : Humanity’s emissary  is already here, courtesy of the USA. Welcome!

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Big controversy has spread in Mexico due to the government’s decision to allow cultivation of the first genetically modified corn in the country. Environmentalists say it could ruin the nation’s native crop. It’s difficult to balance risks and opportunities in this issue. And here is where good journalism could have something to say. “La Jornada” is the newspaper with the most coverage. Yet none of the multiple stories it published explains a single positive side of this decision.

Menuda polémica en México sobre la reciente aprobación de 15 permisos para la siembra experimental de maíz transgénico. El gobierno asegura que todo está bajo control, mientras que grupos ambientalistas y académicos aseguran que dicha decisión pone en riesgo a la rica variedad de especies nativas mexicanas.

Sin duda es un asunto complejo que esconde riesgos y oportunidades. La labor del periodismo científico crítico en un asunto como éste no es apostar por un bando u otro, sino buscar el equilibrio a partir de las fuentes más fiables.

La Jornada es el periódico que más está publicando –y con diferencia- sobre esta temática. Muy loable y extensa cobertura, aunque a tenor de lo leído, parece inclinado a reportar exclusivamente sobre la cara más amarga de los transgénicos.

Angélica Enciso L dice que el maíz genéticamente modificado no será útil para México, porque una de las variedades estudiadas es contra plagas que sólo existen en EEUU, y la otra contra maleza terminará resultando más costosa que la variedad actual. La información viene apoyada por la opinión de un experto de la Universidad de Texas. En una segunda nota, Angélica Enciso cita un estudio según el cual es importantísimo averiguar la dispersión del maíz transgénico porque podría entrar el la cadena alimentaria humana y causar efectos nocivos en la salud. Una infromación así, que puede generar alarma en la población, debe por fuerza ser contrastada con estudios científicos

También en La Jornada, Matilde Pérez U refleja las quejas de la organización Semillas de Vida, diciendo que la decisión del gobierno responde a los intereses económicos de Monsanto, y que las autoridades no han escuchado las voces contrarias. En otro artículo, Matilde Pérez vuelve a dar voz a las organizaciones ecologistas e integrantes de la comunidad artística que piden al presidente Calderón no poner en riesgo la alimentación de los mexicanos.

Es necesario el espíritu combativo de La Jornada, pero estaría bien equilibrar las afirmaciones de Greenpeace con alguna nota que explicara cuál es la cara positiva de los transgénicos que los gobernantes pretenden aprovechar para el beneficio de sus ciudadanos. Alguna debe existir…

En un posicionamiento opuesto, CNNexpansión presenta un artículo de Juliana Fragoso en el que los transgénicos son descritos como una tremenda oportunidad económica para México, que por las características de su clima y suelo podría convertirse en uno de los grandes exportadores de este tipo de semillas,e ingresar con ellas un buen puñado de millones de dólares al año. Ni siquiera se citan controversias ni posibles riesgos medioambientales.  Tampoco parece muy neutral el tratamiento…

- Pere Estupinyà

Out a bit ahead of the pack on the Dept. of Energy’s portfolio of far-out research inquiries into a speeded up saving of the planet is the NY Times‘s Matthew M. Wald. Over the weekend he revealed – in advance of an announcement due today – a few of the projects that a new agency within DOE will tackle. His lede hits some highlights – bacteria that make gasoline, cheap and efficient batteries to allow solar power plants to feed their output to the grid night or day as needed, and maybe ways to sequester CO2 that is grabbed right out of the atmosphere.

He makes a realistic prediction about the radical efforts to jump ahead of the CO2 curve: “Most … will probably fail.” He got his info, and that sentiment, straight from DOE Sec’y Steven Chu in an interview Friday. Chu’s formal announcement will be today at Google Hq. in Northern California. Interesting venue.

The grants seem to be the first concrete action by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, modeled by Chu on the Pentagon’s DARPA. This interview and story look like one of the many payoffs to the Times’s establishment early this year of a specialized cross-section team or pod of environmental reporters.

This morning a few more stories are already surfacing. Tomorrow, if there is much further action on the announcement, we’ll update this post.

Other stories:

• CNET news – Martin LaMonica: DOE places bets on ‘transformative’ energy tech ;
• DOW Jones Newswires – Siobhan Hughes: US DOE Awards $151 Million In Grant For Technological Breakthroughs ; His top example: another effort to tap the geothermal energy of hot, dry rock – a better drill bit.  And, he says, the overall effort is realization of a vow by Chu to set up a DOE equivalent to the Pentagon’s DARPA.
• blogosphere entry, two pieces from one source: earth2tech – Josie Garthwaite: DOE Awards $151M for Early-Stage Green Tech, and a follow-up by Katie Fehrenbacher: @Google This Morn: DOE Secretary Chu, for An Announcement.: These two blogger-reporters appear to be quite informed and perceptive.

Grist for the Mill: DOE Press Release ; DOE List of Awardee Projects ;

Pic: This might be off-topic. I went looking for one project on the DOE list that might lead to illus and spotted the “wave disc engine” for super efficient electricity generation from gasoline – apparently a gas turbine that might fit in a plug-in hybrid car to extend its range wonderfully. This appears to be a component of what it’s talking about, from a Michigan State U.-authored paper on line. Looks far-out. Like a flying saucer

- Charlie Petit

The Tracker wonders if non-Canadian non-science reporters who suddenly have an assignment on, oh, the relative merits of biofuels made from krill or algae, or a giant comet aimed straight at our Moon, or a finding that tuna are fully sentient, can call up something called the Science Media Centre of Canada for a tip on what to do and what’s this about anyway. It just had its announcement luncheon. As inspiration it has somewhat similar operations in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. Most phone plans in the US include Canada in their affordable rate structures, so will there be a passport check if some journo on deadline calls from Omaha and yelps “Help!”?

Just wondering. Either way, it can’t hurt. The outfit, to start formal operation next summer, is aimed mainly at people not on the regular science beat.

A write-up may be found at the Canadian higher education trade pub University Affairs in a report by Peggy Berkowitz , and the new service’s own site: Welcome to the SMCC.   The key sentence in its welcome is “structural changes in the mass media mean there are fewer and fewer specialized medical and science journalists. The burden is falling instead on general assignment reporters….” In that sense it differs somewhat from the old and once quite useful US-based Scientists’ Institute for Public Information and its successor Media Resource Service, now either defunct or hibernating, the Tracker being unsure which. It clientele was in large part the regulars on the beat.

The list of members – meaning financiers – of the new service appears to include plenty of foundations, other non-profits, universities, and such who are presumably not terribly determined to skew the service’s advice and info too far or too often. Nobody can be regarded as pure even if the FBI does a full background check but this bunch looks quite respectable.

- Charlie Petit

The current issue of The Atlantic features an investigative story calling into question the effectiveness of flu vaccines and antivirals such as Tamiflu. It argues that we have been given a false sense of confidence by a government and research establishment that accept the vaccine’s effectiveness on faith–rather than evidence.

The article is by investigative reporters Shannon Brownlee of the New American Foundation and Jeanne Lenzer, a frequent contributor to the British medical journal BMJ.

They acknowledge that people who get the flu vaccine are less likely to die, but question whether that’s because healthier people get the vaccine–the “healthy user effect.” It might be most effective in the young, who don’t need it as badly, and least effective in the elderly, who do, they say. And they quote a researcher, Tom Jefferson, who has called for extensive placebo-controlled trials to resolve the issue. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH, told the reporters such a trial would be unethical, because it would deny control subjects access to a treatment known to be effective.

It’s a strong, well-argued story. That does not, however, mean it’s right.

A Facebook post by Ivan Oransky of Reuters Health alerted me to an equally impressive critique of the story in the blog Effect Measure, a blog run by anonymous writers who describe themselves as “senior public health scientists and practitioners.” They sign their articles “revere,” after Paul Revere who, when he wasn’t midnight riding, was a member of the first local board of health in the U.S., in Boston.

I don’t like to use anonymous sources unless absolutely necessary. But the critique is so strong–and raises so many interesting issues–that I thought I should call attention to it here.

The Atlantic article relies heavily on the arguments of Jefferson. But Effect Measure, unlike The Atlantic, links to some of Jefferson’s papers, which seem to contradict what he tells Brownlee and Lenzer.

In one review cited by Effect Measure, Jefferson and his colleagues wrote, “Inactivated parenteral vaccines were 30% effective (95% CI 17% to 41%) against influenza-like illness, and 80% (95% CI 56% to 91%) efficacious against influenza when the vaccine matched the circulating strain and circulation was high, but decreased to 50% (95% CI 27% to 65%) when it did not.”

That’s quite different from what he evidently told The Atlantic. After looking at many flu vaccine studies, he concluded, according to Brownlee and Lenzer, that “only four studies were properly designed to pin down the effectiveness of flu vaccine…and two of those showed that it might be effective in certain groups of patients…The other two showed equivocal results or no benefit.” (The words quoted are the writers’, not Jefferson’s.)

That’s as far as I’m going to go in this debate. To go further, I’d have to do some reporting myself to resolve the apparent contradictions here.

Brownlee and Lenzer have, at least, provoked us to take a closer look at the effectiveness of flu vaccines. And they’ve done it on scientific grounds, not by quoting misinformed consumers who say they’re refusing vaccines to protect their children from a government conspiracy.

The anonymous authors of Effect Measure would have a stronger case if they had identified themselves, in this instance, and personally stood behind what they were reporting. I’ve avoided quoting their critical remarks, because I don’t think such criticism should be made anonymously. I’ve said only enough, I hope, to encourage you to take a look at both pieces for yourselves.

Once you’ve done that, please come back and let us know, in the comments, what you think.

- Paul Raeburn

Maybe somebody should rename Archaeopteryx. Perhaps sub in  Alterarchaeopteryx, for just another original bird. Today Robert Lee Hotz has in the Wall Street Journal a thoughtful analysis of a recent report that this icon of links, one supposedly at or near the root of radiation from the dinosaur clade that led to today’s birds, was actually on a dead-end sidebranch well after the key break to such things as plumage occurred, and irrelevant to the rise of many derived characteristic essential to birdness. Feathered yes, able to fly probably, interesting too. But not particularly distinctive. That is, the bones and details were still more dino than junco, and certainly it was not the ancestor of your yard’s robins.

Having had this brought to The Tracker’s attention led promptly to discovery that we – er, I – missed entirely a flock of stories on the same basic news about two weeks ago. Lee Hotz does a fine job essaying on the discovery’s overall lessons about evolution and our perceptions of its details. Thus, it’s a good follow. The news, from a Univ. of Florida man and colleagues, was in PLoS One.

Other, Earlier Stories:

• Scientific American – Katherine Harmon : Bye-Bye Birdie: New Look at Archaeopteryx Shows It Was More Dinosaur Than Bird ;
• LA Times – Thomas H. Maugh II: Archaeopteryx may have been more dinosaur than bird ;
• NYTimes – John Noble Wilford: Paper Challenges Ideas About ‘Early Bird’ Dinosaur ;
• USA Today – Dan Vergano: First bird was actually a dinosaur

Grist for the Mill: PLoS One Article ;

- Charlie Petit

From the sort of silly side of the science spectrum came this week word of a study at Duke University on testosterone levels among Americans during the last Presidential balloting and then again quickly after the results became known. The impact, which apparently is akin to what happens as sports team fortunes rise and fall, had on men a distinctly partisan divide. Or, as The Register‘s Lewis Page put it in the UK, Republican men suffered a (presumably temporary) impact on what he obliquely calls their “wedding-tackle.” They also felt weak and submissive. So it says. Women, whose testosterone levels have somewhat different impacts on physiology, showed no such response.

The study is in PloS-One.

A tip of the hat here to Charles Q. Choi, who did his own rendition of the story for Scientific American. Thank you very much. He tipped The Tracker off and even gathered up urls to several others who wrote it. His sources surmise that the effect may persist, at some level, as long as Obama’s in charge.

The hed at Wired‘s website, where Brandon Keim wrote it : Obama Win Turned Male Republicans Into Girlie Men ; Perhaps not the wisest hed; funny anyway. Good riff on Schwarzenegger’s famous line, but the key phrase, one understands, is insensitive to some (Girls, for example).

Now, somebody has to look closely at birth stats in GOP-heavy counties vs. DEM-rich ones at about the nine-month post-election mark.

Other stories:

• AFP (via The Australian): John McCain leaves voters limp ;
• Fox News: Presidential Election Outcome Affected Male Voters’ Testosterone Levels, Study Finds;

And if your sense of humor runs to the totally juvenile, Brit-style:

• The Spoof! – Bunsen Burner: Obama Voters Masturbated a Lot ; Wrecked a few ballots, maybe, too.

Grist for the Mill: Duke U. Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

The U.S. population of polar bears, unlike its kin for example well to the east among cold Canadian islands, seems distinctly threatened and endangered and otherwise in trouble, as legally defined under the law. So to designate its habitat under the Endangered Species Act, as the Obama administration formally proposed this week, merits a mention in the press. Most accounts also report, correctly, that the move is a rebuff of the Bush team’s reluctance to give the white bear specific local protection if the danger it faces is as diffuse and global as, uh, global warming.

But one has to have some sympathy for the previous administration’s stance in this case, no matter how benighted one might believe so many of its other environmental policies were. If shrinking sea ice is the main problem – along with disappearance of the seals on that ice on which polar bears so depend – what possible measures within US habitat could fix that?

The Los Angeles Times‘s Kim Murphy takes on that conundrum explicitly, while finding no sources that have an easy solution to it (same Kim M, I presume, who won a Pulitzer four years ago for foreign affairs coverage. ADDENDUM – I learn from herself that that is indeed she – now the paper’s Northwest correspondent). The first segment of the story quotes a Fish and Wildlife Service man as saying the ESA is “not the tool to directly address carbon emission, which are the root cause of climate change.” And she found some enviros whose law suit helped goad the feds into the habitat designation, saying better to do something than nothing, basically – and who are griping that oil and gas companies still can get federal permits to work in the area. The piece, as do most of those below, leaves readers asking at the end, so?

This daily news seems to be invitation to reporters – those few with travel budgets – to spend some quality time with the scientists and Alaska residents who really know those big, confident (Even on drill rigs, people don’t seem to spook the bears much), thoroughly dangerous yet endangered carnivores. AP’s Dan Joling comes to mind. The pic, above, which the LAT credits to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, is an inspired choice. Today’s News-Miner, or the Juneau Empire or the  bigger Anchorage Daily News, do not at last look have any stories on this by their staffs.

But at Alaska Public Radio Network, Annie Feidt does have it.

Other Stories:

• NY Times – John Broder : Polar Bear Habitat Proposed for Alaska ;
• AP – Matthew Daly: Feds designate polar bear habitat in Alaska ;
• Reuters – Yareth Rosen: U.S. maps protected Alaska habitat for polar bears ;
• MSNBC.com: U.S. drafts protected areas for polar bears ;

Grist for the Mill: US Fish & Wildlife Service Press Release;

- Charlie Petit

One day after New York Times reporter Gina Kolata created a “firestorm” of controversy with a front-page story saying the benefits of cancer screening “have been overstated,” the Times is back with another story–by another reporter–trying to clarify the issue.

The second story has a decidely different tone. “Most people believe that finding cancer early is a certain way to save lives,” writes Tara Parker-Pope. “But the reality of cancer screening is far more complicated.”

Ah–complicated. It’s those complications that so often trip us up.

The two stories cover the same ground, and say roughly the same things. But note the difference in approach. The first story prompted a headline writer to write, “Cancer Society, in Shift, Has Concerns on Screenings.” (This and other quotes are from the online versions of these stories.)

Concern. A “shift.” Something’s up, and it sounds slightly conspiratorial. Especially when Kolata writes in the second graf, (as I noted here earlier) that the American Cancer Society “is quietly working” on a message saying that screening for breast and prostate cancer  “can come with a real risk…”

Parker-Pope describes the cancer society’s action in much more benign terms that suggest vigilance and responsibility, not conspiracy: “The cancer society says it will continue to revise its public messages about cancer screening as new information becomes available,” she writes.

The headline on her story was, “Benefits and Risks of Cancer Screening Are Not Always Clear, Experts Say.” It doesn’t have the spine of the hed on Kolata’s story, but it’s not as frightening, either.

The cancer society itself was even clearer in a statement it released in response to Kolata’s story: “American Cancer Society Stands by Its Screening Guidelines; Women Encouraged to Continue Getting Mammograms,” the headline read.

So did Kolata have a scoop? Or did she hype it?

Her story hangs chiefly on one particularly inflammatory quote by Dr. Otis Brawley, the cancer society’s chief medical officer, in the third paragraph:

“But I’m admitting that American medicine has overpromised when it comes to screening.”

Did Kolata’s aggressive reporting force Brawley to “admit” that American medicine had exaggerated its claims for screening? We can imagine how Kolata might have pursued it. “Yes, Dr. Brawley, I know that’s what you said before, but you have to admit that you’ve overpromised. You have to admit it! Don’t you? DON’T YOU?” And an aggravated Brawley finally spits out, “But I’m admitting it!”

Maybe this is what he really thinks, and Kolata nailed him. Maybe the reaction to her story forced him to back down, concealing his real feelings behind more considered opinions.

That’s a possibility; often what sources say in frustration or in the face of determined questioning is closer to what they believe than what they say when they are asked to politely give a statement.

On the other hand, this is not an admission akin to, say, a ball player admitting he’s used steroids.

Screening has generated controversy for years, and scores of researchers have “admitted” that its claims have been exaggerated.

Both Kolata’s and Parker-Pope’s stories mention the report that triggered these stories, an analysis of breast and prostate cancer screening published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That paper, too, is far more temperate. It’s entitled “Rethinking Screening for Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer.” And after a detailed analysis of the risks and benefits, it concludes that what’s needed is not less screening, but better screening.

A view from afar: Way over on the other coast, meanwhile, Karen Kaplan of the Los Angeles Times does a nice dissection of Kolata’s story on the Times’s Booster Shots blog. She notes that Brawley has said the same thing before, including in a 2008 published report. And she notes other instances in which published reports or researchers have taken similar positions.

Enough said; it’s time to cast your vote: Kolata, or Parker-Pope?

I cast my lot with Parker-Pope. (And Kaplan.)

- Paul Raeburn

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) On the prowl for  original stories, the Spanish language tracker  found a severe critique of mathematics education in Colombia, a great story in Puerto Rico about the origin of language,  a suspicious new anti-aging therapy based on nanocapsules filled with antioxidants in México, a south-south collaboration on biodiversity between Peru and Ethiopia, and a distinctly presented story about nutrition in Brazil.

El Rastreador científico ha estado buscando notas científicas en los periódicos latinoamericanos que se alejen de la rigurosa noticia, y encontró algunos ejemplos a compartir con vosotros

El Espectador (Colombia) -  José Fernando Isaza “¿Fracasó la enseñanza de las matemáticas?”. Interesante pieza que reflexiona sobre por qué profundo del fracaso en la educación matemática. El autor expone que hay dos maneras de concebir las mátemáticas; como algo que existe en la naturaleza y, como el lenguaje, nacemos predispuestos a captarlo (visión platonista), o como una construcción artificial inventada en la época moderna por nuestro tan evolucionado cerebro (formalistas). Según el autor, el sistema educativo enseña las matemáticas como si fueran un lenguaje, y esto es un error pues hay experimentos demostrando que los niños no nacen predispuestos a comprender las matemáticas (por algo aprenden tan fácilmente palabras pero les cuesta horrores memorizar las tablas de multiplicar). La evolución no nos ha diseñado para calcular matemáticamente, y eso debe considerarse a la hora de diseñar planes de estudio.

El nuevo Día (Puerto Rico) – Fernando L Renaud “El lenguaje humano y sus orígen”. No es un tema novedoso en absoluto, pero resulta impresionante la capacidad del autor de incluir tantos conceptos en un texto tan corto. Empieza diferenciando el lenguaje humano de otras formas de comunicación animal, pasa a citar uno de los genes implicados en la sofisticación del habla. Explica la gramática universal de Chomski y su módulo del lenguaje, para luego exponer las controversias de su importantísima teoría. Avanza en las hipótesis cada vez más afianzadas del origen común entre música y lenguaje. Le sigue la explicación sobre la relevancia de la disposición de la laringe y la fisiología del aparato vocal. Ésta muestra grandes diferencias con los Neandertales, que sugieren al homo sapiens como único homínido con lenguaje hablado tan complejo. La apretada nota termina con el salto cualitativo que otorgó a nuestra especie la posibilidad de acumular y transmitir experiencias a siguientes generaciones de manera escrita.

SciDev – Zoraida Portillo “Perú y Etiopía cooperarán para defender biodiversidad”. Anuncio de cooperación Sur-Sur entre Perú y Etiopía, y buena reivindicación de las soluciones locales para proteger el conocimiento tradicional.

Época (Brazil) Laura Lopes “O que sua geladeira diz sobre você”. Tremendamente original la manera en que se enfoca este artículo sobre nutrición: abres la nevera de dos personas normales y corrientes junto con una experta, y le pides que empiece a evaluar los pros y contras de su contenido. Muy buen y cercano trabajo, que podría inspirar otros de parecidos. Sólo una curiosidad. Las dos personas de 34 y 30 años eran un DJ y una chef ¿qué nevera contenía alimentos más sanos? La del DJ, desde luego…

El Universal (México) Guillermo Cárdenas Guzmán “Usan nanocápsulas para administrar antioxidantes “. Curiosa pieza. Tiene un punto extraño. Parece más bien un anuncio farmacéutico sobre un producto antienvejecimiento generado a partir de extracto de sandía. El tracker duda que nanocápsulas repletas de antioxidantes puedan ser efectivas ya a escala comercial, pero la nota está muy bien contextualizada, y sirve para exponer un hecho que raramente se menciona en las informaciones sobre los milagrosos antioxidantes: ingeridos por la dieta, no consiguen llegar a las mitocondrias del interior celular, que es donde serían de verdad efectivos contra el envejecimiento, aniquilando los radicales libres generados durante el proceso oxidativo de generación de energía. El artículo termina con un sospechoso: “Ambos productos ya se encuentran disponibles; son para consumo directo y no se clasifican como medicamentos, por lo cual ninguno de ellos requiere de prescripción médica para su venta, comentó Javier Morales, director de comercialización de Ninapharm México”. Si queremos un tratamiento periodístico, deberíamos haber incluido opiniones de científicos independientes al este producto.

BBC Mundo – Alberto Nájar “Polémica por maíz transgénico en México”. Esto sí es noticia, y el tracker promete escudriñar la prensa loca para ver cómo se ha tratado la polémica sobre la luz verde del gobierno mexicano a 15 solicitudes para sembrar maíz genéticamente modificado, y el efecto que podría tener en las variedades nativas. Alberto contextualiza muy bien la situación para el lector recién llegado a la noticia, pero sin duda el asunto merece un post específico. Llegará.

- Pere Estupinyà

Fans of big telescopes and of civil but intense scientific rivalries – and of tales that include personality sketches of the protagonists – need to read on the news pages of AAAS’s Science Magazine the feature story by science writer Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. He focusses readers attention on two projects – with a sidebar on one of those giant gorillas in the room that a lot of people don’t want to talk about so much. The projects are the Thirty Meter Telescope and the Giant Magellan Telescope. Each is mainly North-American based and is dependent largely on private money. Each will cost well over half a billion dollars (TMT’s official estimate is about $1B , GMT’s a bit less). Each is to be much larger than any telescope now in harness.

Giving it a Promethean flavor, two time-annealed legends in design of big primary mirrors are involved. Jerry Nelson, the California physicist who beat down skeptics and showed one can make a single giant optical surface with tilings of slightly flexible hexagons, and UK-transplant Roger Angel of the Univ. of Arizona with his spin-cast monoliths that surpass 8 meters in diameter apiece, are going at it. Nelson is doing the mirror for the thirty meter one, to be built like his pathbreaking Keck ten-meter telescope design but with lots more littlish pieces. Angel is determined to bolt seven 8.4 meter, circular jobs into one big framework (equivalent to a 24 meter ‘scope in resolution) for the Magellan. Nelson’s would be in Hawaii. Angel’s in Chile, each surveying a different hemisphere of sky.

Anyway, fine yarn with plenty of detail about which institutions are backing what. The Tracker is a bit antsy about its portrayal of Angel as the conventional, implicitly stodgier, safer-minded of the two men. He’s a brilliant innovator in his own right. And I’d also like to have known a bit more about how the Angel-designed GMT with its seven big mirrors combines their images into one. The middle mirror seems simple enough but the other six must be shaped askew – no axial symmetry. Yet their spin-cast blanks are presumably like-parabolic in every cross section – so how to polish them to their odd shapes? And how does the secondary with its own seven sectors send them to a common focal plane to make pictures or feed spectrographs? Gotta be complicated. That’d take many grafs to explain and the story is long for Science already. Something always has to go in such a circumstance.

Still….The piece might also have mentioned more pointedly one aspect of the even-bigger project lurking in computer-aided designs across the Atlantic, the European Extremely Large Telescope. Handled in the sidebar, it would be considerably larger. It’d use a Nelson-style array of hexagons for its proposed primary mirror. So if this is a rivalry, Nelson has two intellectual offspring in the running to Angel’s one.

Bhattacharjee is smart to have built it around two rivals. But the structural problems posed by what is really a three-way jostle among projects surely made the assembly of the feature a challenge.

Grist for the Mill:

Thirty Meter Telescope ; Giant Magellan Telescope, European Extremely Large Telescope ;

- Charlie Petit

A few days ago, to consternation by some of Andrew C. Revkin‘s friends and especially those within the blogosphere, radio talkmeister and conservative lightning rod Rush Limbaugh said on the air that the New York Times reporter ought, if he really thinks mankind is capable to destroying life on Earth, to just go kill himself. The video of Limbaugh’s proposal is on Media Matters.

Among the blowbacks among bloggers was  at CEJournal, by Tom Yulsman at the Univ. of Colorado’s School of Journalism. Andy Revkin’s reaction on line is here. The attack, vicious even if not meant literally, was prompted by comments by Revkin on the role of overpopulation in climate change and similar environmental worries.

And now this particularly rabid – even by radio talk standards – attack has made it into the mainstream. NPR‘s David Folkenflik reports it today on Morning Edition.

Folkenflik uses the episode as a news lede on a broader report on Revkin’s distinct mix of conventional news reporting, largely on climate change related topics, and his blog where he participates extensively in the policy discussions about that same topic. The piece is at heart an exploration of the changing roles of major media reporters, with Revkin example A, as the categories within the journalism trade go through the internet mixmaster. It also includes reminder that Revkin gets attacked from the left, too, although not as often as from the right.

And the piece notes a particular irony. While Limbaugh compared many enviros and other “wackos” worried over climate change to murderous, suicide-bombing “jihadists,” Revkin’s 19-year-old son recently signed up with the Israeli Self-Defense Forces to perhaps face the very so-called jihadists with which Limbaugh has compared the young man’s father. The senior Revkin wants Limbaugh to apologize to him and to his family.

- Charlie Petit