Uh Oh, worries over the Copenhagen are already rising here at Tracker central. Already it’s impossible to keep up with the voluminous reporting on policy jockeys and grim forecasts all guessing how the effort to bolster and replace the Kyoto Protocol will go. How will we keep up during the actual event?

To keep a toe in the frothing waters here are five that appear on the Reuters wire just today. I’m not singling that service out for praise or brickbat. But their variety does reflect much of what is underway, with heavy attention on India and China. So here’s this lineup, with datelines,  for just this one day in October from one (major) outlet,  well before the two weeks of negotiation are set to start on December 6.

• New Delhi – Krittivas Mukherjee: Poor may need to curb CO2 by 15 percent: U.N. ; I’d appreciate more clarity on the 15 percent, of what and how does it compare to developed nation goals? It appears that while industrial nations are trying to cut absolute emissions in the coming decade or two by 40 percent, such developing, frothing economies as China and India may merely cut 15 percent off their projected growth in emissions by 2020. Seem to be very different metrics.
• London – Peter Griffiths : UK warns of lack of urgency over Copenhagen talks ; Baleful news. Last graf has that newish, and perhaps still potent cliche: tipping point.
• Beijing – Emma Graham-Harrison: China, US leaders push climate change cooperation ; Lots of US bigshots there including Sec’y Clinton and Science Adviser Holdren. Solid reporting and sketch of the predicament, even if no big news.
• New Delhi – Krittivas Mukherjee: India PM seeks global hub for clean-tech research ; Mukherjee’s busy.
• Singapore – Gillian Murdoch: Time to trim Fido’s “eco pawprint,” authors say. Always room for a cute critter yarn. Murdoch reports from China on a book written in New Zealand, but perhaps the dateline evoked this caveat: “We’re not saying it is time to eat the dog…” ; But it does dwell largely on the resources that go into the meat-heavy chow people set before their carnivorous cats and dogs.

One more pertrinent one from yesterday and Monday, in part to salute a toiler in the daily news trade who this week has been churning it out, daily:

• New Delhi – Krittivas Mukherjee: India, China sign climate cooperation deal ;
• New Delhi – Krittivas Mukherjee: Minister seeks unconditional CO2 curbs for India ;

Pic – New Delhi, source ;

- Charlie Petit

China already leads the world in wind turbine construction and solar cell construction. It’s also a smoggy, polluted mess thoroughly addicted, as is the US and India and many other nations, to coal. But through the haze, if this BBC dispatch from Roger Harrabin has it right, is rising the Pearl River Tower of Guangzhou City and with it perhaps the mantle of most fuel efficient high rise anywhere. The link goes to both video and text. The text has more info, but the video is the place to see what this edifice will look like upon completion – its internal, vertical-axis wind turbines flattening the overhead.

- Charlie Petit

In the Guardian in the UK, one of the outlets that covered extensively announcement five months ago of the “This Changes Everything ” old primate fossil named Ida ( genus Darwinius),  a long piece this morning details a thorough discrediting of the exquisite fossil in Nature today. Gorgeous yes. Human ancestor or even closer kin than any other primate – uh, maybe not. One thinks the true answer is NO. The piece by Ian Sample includes several maybes and predictions of an “academic slugging match,” and errs perhaps in describing the dispute as one among equally distinguished scientists. But its first quote from one of the study’s authors is telling. It says in part, these bones represent  “…not an ancestor of monkey, apes, or human, and if anything (it) has more relevance for our understanding of lemur or oris origins.” Ouch.

The Ida extravaganza looks qualified to rank forever high in the annals of unhinged promotion in the world of science and science journalism. The collective gaffe is not so much that a few scientists thought (and think) that the creature was at the stem of a radiation that eventually led to us, a defensible hypothesis. The grand error is to have allowed hyperbolic p.r. complete with a book and television program to take the helm and declare it as sensational or even paradigm-busting fact. Most outlets to the general credit of the press shared profound doubts from the start. In the publicity-mongering trade particularly, long may memory of this episode and its lessons live.

The news arises from a paper focussed on another fossil younger than Ida – and that seems to plunk Ida firmly into a branch of the primate tree distinct from whatever selection pressures led to us. And, her specific twig apparently died out anyway.

Other Stories (and if I find one that seems to defend the publicity campaign’s integrity, I’ll flag it separately):

• Times (UK) Mark Henderson: Fossil hailed as Man’s ancestor is ‘not even close relative’ ; Plus a sidebar Q&A with the lead researcher at Stony Brook University in NY. Even bigger plus: a commentary by paleontologist/blogger Brian Switek, one of those blowing whistles loudest when the publicity storm broke last spring. Switek’s argument: Too late. The damage is done.
• Nature.com – Rex Dalton: Fossil primate challenges Ida’s place ;
• AAAS ScienceNow – Ann Gibbons: New Primate Fossil Poses Further Challenge to Ida: The caption on accompanying illus starts off with this punch: “Dead end.” And her lede: “Pour more rain on Ida’s parade.”
• Daily Mail (UK) Fiona MacRae: Missing link? Ida was not even a close relative say fossil experts ;
• Science News – Bruce Bower: Fossil Find Sparks Debate On Primate Origins ;
• Telegraph (UK) : Lemur fossil casts doubt on missing link claims ; My goodness, another use of ‘missing link,” another fossil (cliche) that ought get buried. Small piece, no byline.
• New Scientist – Colin Barras: ‘Missing link’ Ida lacks evolutionary origins ; Good piece. Hed is hard to figure out. Of course it had evolutionary origins. And it’s just as good as any other missing link, of which there are so many the term has no meaning.
• Prize for best sub-hed in the deck: AP – Malcolm Ritter: Primate Fossil Called Only a Distant Relative / Not even a monkey’s uncle. Analysis calls fossil primate only a distant relative of apes, us.
• Wired News – Brandon Keim: Bone Crunching Debunks “First Monkey” Ida Fossil Hype ;

Why the paucity of US coverage? Maybe the press corps here was bored the first time around. Dunno. .

Grist for the Mill: NSF Press Release; Not bad – it calls old gal Darwinius a mere ‘link’, and it uses the quotation marks to evoke a tincture of doubt even there.

- Charlie Petit

Members of a certain tribe of old timers in the business, this Tracker included, tend to agglomerate once in awhile at larger meetings to tell tales of working for Warren Kornberg. He was editor of an NSF in house magazine, Mosaic, that existed for 22 years. It provided a unique sort of work for science writers to stretch their horizons while sticking mainly to honest, declarative sentences. It remains a remarkable treasury of information. The targeted audience was the community of scientists receiving NSF grants, allowing them to read in plain English but deep detail what others in very different disciplines were doing. The pieces were long. In my case, the six I did remain those, of all that I wrote anywhere, with the least compromise. There were of course a few short-cut metaphors – but mostly  explanation of experiments or phenomena that told readers their natures directly.

Kornberg was a remarkable editor,  generous too but with a caveat. His instruction was to travel wherever necessary in the US and even beyond to report on a field of endeavour from its seminal participants (protagonists did not have to all be NSF grant recipients).  But don’t spend much money. “Shabby, but genteel” was his prescription for the lodgings to be listed on expense accounts. He was mercurial, given to furies and rhapsodies in equal measure. The magazine’s illustrations were often on the crude side, the art budget being small. But the stories remain solid and in many cases fresh and timely. They provide homework for any reporter wanting to glimpse the sweep and the roots of the research avenues that Kornberg’s magazine covered.

Mosaic closed during an NSF budget shakeup in 1992. As explained in this description of the project in the current issue of the Nat’l Assoc. of Science Writers magazine ScienceWriters, selfless friends have transformed Warren’s treasured, and now cut-apart, archive of issues into a pdf posted on line. It lists all the writers who subjected themselves, willingly and repeatedly, to Kornberg’s demands for clarity, completeness, and coherence. Once, he told a writer his piece was the worst thing he’d ever seen but was compelled to use it as he otherwise could not fill the issue. Behind the writer’s back, he then submitted it to a  journalism competition. It won. Surprise!  He said he actually thought it was okay.

Take a look: The Mosaic Archive. It’s impressively well-organized to get you to a piece of interest.

- Charlie Petit

“We don’t want people to panic,” Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the cancer society, tells Gina Kolata of The New York Times in a front-page story. “But I’m admitting that American medicine has overpromised when it comes to screening. The advantages to screening have been exaggerated.”

It’s a bombshell, if true, and that’s presumably why it made the front page. Breast and prostate cancer screening have been over-rated, maybe by a lot.

Kolata, as I’ve noted here before, has made something of a career writing controversial stories on problems with cancer research and treatment. I’m not in a position to assess the accuracy of those stories, but they often generate strong dissent from critics who say the stories did not reflect all prevailing views.

Once again, Kolata has provoked controversy.

Peggy Peck of MedPage Today called it “a firestorm of controversy” in an article on the ABC News website. “The epicenter of the controversy,” she continued, “is [a] statement by Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the ACS [American Cancer Society]. Brawley made the statement in an interview with the New York Times about a Journal of the American Medical Association analysis of breast and prostate cancer screening, which raised questions about claims that screening saves lives.”

J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, Deputy Chief Medical Officer for the national office of the American Cancer Society, likewise calls the reaction “a firestorm” on his Dr. Len’s Cancer Blog. But his view is dramatically different.

Kolata writes, conspiratorially, that the cancer society “is quietly working on a message, to put on its Web site early next year, to emphasize that screening for breast and prostate cancer and certain other cancers can come with a real risk of over-treating many small cancers while missing cancers that are deadly.”

“The American Cancer Society is not working on any stealth project to change commentary on our website to emphasize the shortcomings and risks of screening” says Lichtenfeld, who ought to know. “We don’t have to. You see, we already discuss these issues right there in plain view, including on this blog.“

Sharon Begley of Newsweek picks up Kolata’s theme, paraphrasing the Times. But no firestorm for Begley. Instead, she writes, “We are approaching a perfect storm on the fraught topic of screening.” [Emphasis mine.]

Jacob Goldstein takes a more balanced view in the Wall Street Journal‘s Health Blog.

“As we’ve pointed out before, the jury is still out on PSA testing for prostate cancer,” he writes, mentioning two studies that found mixed results. And regarding breast cancer, he says, “The evidence suggests that mammograms for women over 40 do save lives. Still, mammograms also lead to unnecessary treatment for many women while failing to save others, an analysis published this week in JAMA suggests.” It’s a short item, but a good one.

When I saw the hed on the U.S. News story, I thought I’d found independent confirmation of the cancer society’s stealth policy shift. But no. It is merely, once again, quoting the Times. “The American Cancer Society is shifting its stand on breast and prostate cancer screening, the New York Times reports…”

Maybe Kolata is right, despite what Lichtenfeld says. But maybe some of the others who quoted her could have called the cancer society and done a little reporting themselves.

According to the cancer society’s website, Becky Steinmark Erwin, its national director of media relations, is at  (404) 417-5860.

- Paul Raeburn

The British press is full today of news that GMOs, or genetically engineered organisms, have gotten a hearty endorsement from the Royal Society to enhance crop types already available via selective breeding. The U.S. and some nations may be using GM crops with wide (if hardly complete) public tolerance, but the UK and most of Europe (and other places) find stiff resistance. The GM aspect is just one among many points of a lengthy report declaring Britain’s opportunity and obligation to help lead a global campaign to improve and increase agricultural productivity.

Press reaction is mixed.

At the Telegraph, enviro beat writer Louise Gray calls it a call for “supercrops” that might blunt a global food crisis. She recaps the reports findings for many grafs before introducing a stout NO from an opponent, a rep of Friends of the Earth.

At the tabloid Daily Mail, reporter Sean Poulter knows the public’s mood and writes accordingly under the hed: GM crops: Anger as leading scientists call for push on Frankenfoods ;   (To be even-handed with The Mail, and on another topic entirely, its Niall Firth and Claire Bates provide today a coherent debunking of fears that, as in an incipient movie, the year 2012 will see the Earth destroyed by another planet).

The story’s coverage was propelled in part by a recent advance peek  in the Telegraph by Robert Mendick and Patrick Sawyer, that got people talking. It’s hed: Britain will starve without GM crops, says major report. Look at the story. It’s a bit brash but nowhere says Britain in particular will starve if it keeps its heels set against GM crops (the report’s focus is on overall world supply). The Tracker dunno but suspects that Mendick and Sawyer grumbled over that headline too.

Other stories:

• BBC – Richard Black: UK urged to lead on future food ; GM are prominent along with other more routine measures such as improved irrigation and more efficient cropping systems.
• AAAS ScienceInsider (blog) – John Travis: Royal Society Report Backs GM Crops, Other Measures to Boost Food Production ; filed from London.
• Guardian – David Adam: GM research is needed urgently to avoid food crisis, says Royal Society ;
• Independent – Steve Connor : ‘Double food output to stop world starving,’ say scientists ; This is a somewhat hyperbolic but nonetheless more responsible way to say what the Telegraph overshot with its advance hed.
• Times – Valerie Elliott: Government scientist and Royal Society in double push to promote GM ;
• Yorkshire Post – Chris Benfield: Scientists support GM food production ; A tidy and commendably efficient account.
• Norfolk Eastern Daily Press – Dan Grimmer: Scientists lead drive to head off global food shortages ; Localized piece about the nearby researchers already at work ;

Grist for the Mill: RAS Press Release ;

Pic source ;

- Charlie Petit

Not many daily outlets, save perhaps AP when it can, cover US meetings anymore. Among those that does and with fair regularity is the biweekly Science News – which also files stuff on line as it comes every day. Thus we get a gripping update this week from Sid Perkins on the Johnstown Flood of more than 120 years ago. At the Geological Society of America meeting in Portland, Perkins encountered a Johnstown-based, University of Pittsburgh hydrologist who reported on what happened, how big (as in stupendous) the flow was, and how breakings of not one but two dams concatenated a giant flood into a monstrous one.

- Charlie Petit

We just had news a few weeks ago on a small ancestor of T. rex (previous post) that got a mess of ink worldwide. But not so much today for the smallest dinosaur ever discovered – via museum mining – in North America. It was found in Colorado decades ago. Its significance did not congeal until recently after some paleontologists plucked its stored fossils from the collections in the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum (one of my favorite places as a kid). The T. rex-ancestor thing was news because it was imagined as a template for all the tyrannosaurs including king lizard itself, and T. rex is a knee-jerk winner for news editors looking for something to break the usual news of massacre, corruption, political inanity and celebrity banality.  This one is smaller news, but more interesting, it seems here. An ankle biter of a late Jurassic dino, running about among monstrous Brachiosaurs and toothy Allosaurus, likened in the unsigned AP piece, via quote, to a roadrunner on steroids. It’s name is now Fruitaden haagarorum. That has nothing to do with fruit, or with haggis for that matter. The link goes to a corrected piece – the AP’s first dispatch had it two feet tall rather than long. It scuttled along at about four inches high, they figure.

The formal results are in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. A question – if this is the smallest yet id’d from N. America, what is the smallest in the world we know about? Anybody try to find that out? No sign of it that I see.

Other stories:

• Telegraph (UK) : Tiny dinosaur discovered ; Nope, no global context. But Canadian researcher recently reporter another small one.
• San Francisco Chronicle – David Perlman: North America’s tiniest dinosaur, Fruitadens ; One of the longer, detailed, and personally reported, if still fairly modest, accounts.
• New York Daily News – Michael Sheridan: Tiny dinosaur, Fruitadens haagororum, beieved to be North America’s smallest ; It has a byline plus credits to services and to the SF Chronicle. It’s brief. It’s a rewrite. No intention to demean anybody, but what does it take at the Daily News NOT to get a byline?
• LA Times – David Ng (Blog): Tiny dinosaur makes home at Natural History Museum of L.A. County ;

Other Dinosaur News:

• Grand Junction (Colo) Daily Sentinel – Gary Harmon: 150 million year oldie but a goodie . Sauropod skin far older than typical fossil finds; A skin imprint of some oddly knobby skin, and older than most other such dinosaur skin fossils.

- Charlie Petit

I don’t often plug or skewer or post on a story or show before it comes out. An exception is the broadcast this morning on NPR-affiliated WBUR Boston by its On Point program that John Wihbey produces.  Here’s the link. It runs 10 a.m. to noon Eastern and will have its archived stream up by around 3 p.m. (late addition: with transcript: here it is) .

The reason for advance interest is the set of terrific clips that Wihbey and his crew put together with excerpts of talks by all three guests on the show, find’em here. I listened to parts or all of each. Stewart Brand, Amory Lovins, and Bill McKibben are among the three oldest warhorses of environmentalism  who are still around and kicking up their heels – and who also have distinct views. Each is a compelling speaker. Many Tracker readers know the gists of their natures. But after reviewing these clips of them giving their spiels I can hardly wait for a moment to listen to them all three go at it (watch in particular the one by Brand, and at about the 6:04 minute mark a jaw-dropping scene of accommodation to density in a Bangkok slum. Maybe lots of you have seen this, but I had not).

Nuclear may be high on the agenda – Lovins sees no need for it and high cost, Brand thinks atomic electricity somehow will become affordable. Good line from Brand in a speech he made in Australia for FORA Television – ten percent of America’s electricity is now from dismantled Soviet-era nukes. He calls nukes the greatest tools of nuclear disarmament going. Dunno about that. The format, it appears, is to put Lovins and Brand on for an hour, and then let McKibben go another hour on the brink we may already have passed on this planet.

After getting a chance to listen to the show, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to do much of it live, I may add a comment about it here.

-Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Época (Brazil) has an excellent story that compares the political views of different countries regarding nuclear energy. It opens with Germany’s decision to extend the life of its nuclear power stations, and then extends its analysis to other regions. The conclusion is that nuclear energy is gaining ground worldwide. Another story interviews the UK secretary of climate change, who now favors this source as a transition to renewable. And as for emissions, she says that if Obama doesn’t start doing something EU won’t reduce them significantly either.

La información sobre cambio climático y fuentes de energía nos suele llegar fragmentada. No podemos hacerlo de otra manera; es demasiado complejo. ¿os podéis imaginar una pieza que compare la nuclear con la eólica, la eólica con la solar, introduzca las esperanzas de la captura de carbono, hable también de biocombustibles, de las dudas científicas sobre el efecto relativo de los diferentes gases de efecto invernadero, de los intereses económicos e industriales de los diferentes países, de eficiencia energética, de la ayuda al desarrollo, de coches eléctricos…? Aaaaaahhh… Imposible! Nos toca publicar una pincelada sobre esto, otro sobre aquello, y sacrificar la visión global que ni siquiera los gobernantes tienen.

Sin embargo, en ocasiones encontramos piezas que sí buscan ofrecer al lector este contexto y visión general. Un excelente ejemplo lo encontramos en el brasileño Época, con un buenísimo artículo de José Antonio Lima sobre el auge de la energía nuclear.

Jose Antonio empieza hablando de Copenhague, que es la referencia a cualquier información que pueda aparecer en estos momentos sobre el cambio climático, y en seguida pasa a explicar cómo ciertos países están cambiando políticas y empezando a apostar por la energía nuclear: Alemania modifica su posición antinuclear y extenderá el uso de sus centrales, Bélgica hará lo propio, Italia y Suecia han derogado el veto a la construcción de nucleares, China, Francia, Japón, Canadá y otros países están construyendo nuevas centrales, el partido demócrata de EEUU empieza a abrirse a la nuclear. Hasta los Emiratos Árabes han anunciado un nuevo programa energético nuclear! Si queréis más información, no dudéis en consultar el muy ilustrativo gráfico interactivo al final del artículo de Época.

Pero la nota no se detiene aquí. Jose Antonio Lima explica la posición favorable de los lobbys, especialmente el francés, y los argumentos contrarios de grupos ecologistas como Greenpeace. Habla de gestión de residuos, de transición hacia las renovables, de costes, y del riesgo de proliferación armamentística. Todo ello apoyado con innumerables links.

Sólo un ligero error, que merece la pena comentar porque a menudo es utilizado por diferentes fuentes para confundirnos adrede: El artículo dice que el 77% de la energía de Francia viene de la nuclear. Debería haber dicho el 77% de la electricidad, o energía eléctrica, pues la “energía” incluye transporte, por ejemplo, y el porcentaje es entonces mucho menor. Este “juego de referencias” es utilizado muchas veces para potenciar o minimizar el rol de, por ejemplo, las renovables. Si quieres que la energía solar parezca casi ínfima, la refieres al total de la energía y su aportación queda pobrísima. Si pretendes defenderla entonces la compararás con la producción de energía eléctrica y saldrá mejor parada. Debemos estar alerta de estas “manipulaciones” por grupos de interés.

Relacionada con esta pieza, hoy en Público (Esp.) se ha publicado una entrevista de Manuel Ansede a  Joan Ruddock, Secretaria de Estado de Cambio Climático de Reino Unido, que tras su pasado antinuclear ahora defiende esta energía como lucha frente al cambio climático. Muy recomendable su lectura. Es esta gente a la que queremos escuchar en estos momentos. Los científicos ya han dicho la suya, ahora toca mover ficha a los políticos, que no actúan sólo basados en el razonamiento científico. De la entrevita se pueden rescatar frases como “Esperamos que, tras el proceso político interno, Obama vendrá con una propuesta más ambiciosa. Si no lo hace, la UE no subirá del 20% al 30%”. Este tipo de visiones son las más relevantes en la actualidad.

- Pere Estupinyà

A striking photo fills most of the space above the fold in today’s NYT science section. Two men with impressive hardware are on a steep slope of boulders and scree. Just a few months earlier the spot was fiercely on fire. What is striking is not the story’s topic – debris flows – but how quickly plants, shrubs, and trees are sprouting bright verdant foliage. Nature can be killed – but it’s not easy. The story beneath it by Henry Fountain takes readers along as the men gather data in Southern California that will be useful in understanding when and why such slopes may fail in the rain.

To these eyes a small sentence is a key point: the locale is “..a likely place for a landslide – in this case, more properly called a mudslide, or, even more properly, a debris flow.”  That’s true. It’s a good tale, colorful and exact in most respects. But it should reflect the lesson it just related. He should have switched to the proper term for the rest of the way. The different words dissect key differences among phenomena the public and media often conflate and that this story does not clarify.

The headlines and text several times refer to landslides, but tellingly the experts in their quotes call them debris flows.  And debris flows and mudflows are apparently their prime concern – hazards that start with runoff and dig away at burned slopes from the surface down. They can spawn dangerous torrents of glop, tree trunks, and boulders with enough force to sweep away houses and enough speed to catch a running person. Although such flows are broadly in the landslide category, the classic landslide does not appear to be the study’s concern. These often occur well after the rain stops. They tend to be deep-seated blocks of hillside that begin to move as infiltrating water adds weight and lubricates a contact with still-deeper units. They may move  rather slowly at first. When geomorphologists get together they don’t often say landslide when they mean debris flow. They hardly ever say mudslide. It doesn’t slide. It flows. As I’ve said before, you can slide a turkey but you can’t slide the gravy.

The Tracker is writing this from memory, a dangerous practice, but is pretty sure of it. And it also seems likely that the very process Fountain correctly identifies as a hazard – hydrophobic near-surface layers that intensify runoff and thus the danger of debris and mud flows – might well help prevent genuine landslides later and that are due to deep soaking and loading of hillsides. Fountain is, as one must hasten to say again, a terrific writer – as seen in his pieces written for this week’s collection of Observatory shorts (on whiskers, on fabric and sun damage, and on the taste of carbonation ) .

Oh boy, too much time spent on that picky excursion into usage and definitions.

Other headlines to note:

• Donald G. McNeil: Flu Story: A Pregnant Woman’s Ordeal ; This needed writing. Pregnancy and swine flu are a bad mix. Get the shot if  you’re carrying. The story doesn’t mention comic Bill Maher and his high profile ill-founded insistence the flu is no big deal and that the shots are too dangerous, but it surely was on McNeil’s mind. His story serves to counter paranoid and ideological nonsense on this issue.
• Sean B. Carroll: Remarkable Creatures . For Fish in Coral Reefs, It’s Useful to Be Smart ; Fine piece of escapist (ie no extinctions, sea levels, budget woes, or idiot policy news) science writing by a well known biologist and science popularizer.
• Nicholas Wade: Researchers Create Artificial Memories in the Brain of a Fruitfly ; Illus reproduced here to express condolences to Wade and to the artist who made this image for Nature. The Times put it on a black and white page for the print issue. Alas.
• John Markoff - Rethinking What Leads the Way: Science, or New Technology? ; A review of a book that turns on its head one notion of how science and technology interact.

Also in NYTimes:

• Leslie Kaufman: Nudging Recycling From Less Waste to None ; On line yesterday, p. 1 today; “None” is too strong a term, but some places have found a way to stop filling the conventional trash cans. Towns with landfills near capacity, and their residents, ought to take some notes off this piece.

As usual, much more.  ; Whole Section.

- Charlie Petit

While many of us have been busy with the annual science writers’ meeting, ScienceWriters 2009, in Austin, others have been prospecting in the rich vein known as the Society for Neuroscience meeting, with more research presentations than there are neurons in the human brain. Or at least it has seemed that way when I’ve covered it.

Here’s a quick rundown on some of the news coming out of the meeting, which ends today (Oct. 20) in Chicago:

Science News isn’t afraid to take a lighthearted approach to a serious science story. Researchers, writes Laura Sanders, have found the Halle Berry neuron! Caltech researchers found that certain neurons lit up when subjects were shown pictures of Halle Berry, Michael Jackson, or Marilyn Monroe, among others. Then they found that individuals could activate those neurons. Good story, nicely handled.

Mary Brophy Marcus of USA Today tilts away from the hard news for an entertaining piece on a magic show at the meeting. Magicians actually performed for the neuroscientists, who were then supposed to solve the tricks, more or less. She quotes Thomas Carew, the president of the neuroscience society, who tells her, “There is no better way to see how the mind works than to study how we can be deceived.” Researchers told her that “they hope what they glean from magicians will help them better understand, diagnose and treat certain cognitive illnesses.”

Monifa Thomas of the Chicago Sun-Times weighs in with a study that she says “is one of the first to show that paternal behavior, like maternal behavior, may be passed on from generation to generation through non-genetic means.” The study compared California male mice whose fathers were castrated with those whose fathers weren’t castrated. Ouch.

Karen Hopkin, in a podcast for Scientific American, reports on a UCLA study in which volunteers between the ages of 55 and 78 were given brain scans, sent home to surf the web an hour a day for a week, and then slipped into the scanner again. Their scans now showed “additional activity in regions associated with working memory and decision-making.” This is in a 60-second podcast. Don’t think of it as a really short story; think of it as a relatively long radio news item.

Reuters dilutes its franchise as a news organization by running a story on a new brain-cancer drug and also running a press release from the outfit that makes the drug. The company is called Angiochem. The story, by Julie Steenhuysen, says that the drug “appears to cross a protective barrier in the brain that screens out most chemicals, offering potentially better ways to treat brain tumors.” The press release puts it this way: “ANG1005 is a novel, next-generation taxane derivative, targeting the LRP pathway to cross the blood-brain barrier…” Hey, if Reuters can make money running press releases and use it to hire more reporters, I’m all for it. But do we really trust a story to be an independent account if the publisher is also running the press release?

Neurobloggers: Are blog posts by members of the Society for Neuroscience journalism? I say they are, and you can find a collection of such posts at blogs established by the society especially for its members. Check the directory of them on the society’s website. An interesting idea. Watch for more of this at scientific meetings.

And a shameless plug for the science writers’ meeting: Emily Singer of Technology Review writes, under the headline “Decoding the Brain with Light,” about a novel technology in which “molecular ‘light switches’ can reveal exactly which neurons are involved in creating a memory, allowing scientists to trigger that memory using only light.” The technology was developed by Stanford’s Karl Deisseroth. Singer covers it out of this year’s neuroscience meeting. But Deisseroth presented it a year ago at New Horizons in Science, part of ScienceWriters 2008. (Disclosure: I invited him to speak.)

-Paul Raeburn