(English intro to Spanish lang. post) An NGO from Peru has just won from the World Bank an award to – in theory – paint in white 3000 square km of  Peruvian glacier terrain. The glaciers account for 60% of the country’s water reserves. Their area has decreased a 22% in the last 30 years due to global warming. As the ice recedes, the dark rocks absorb more light and accelerate the process. The idea is that painting the rocks in white will slow its melting. Local people, with paint that doesn’t contaminate, will do the painting.

This is an example of adaptation measures now that mitigation agreements seem further. El País publishes a very critical story entitled “US and China make Copenhagen fail”, in which it denounces the passivity of the two more contaminant-spewing  countries of the world. It says that nobody else is going to reduce emissions if the big actors don’t start first.

La ONG “Glaciares de Perú” acaba de ganar un concurso del Banco Mundial y se le han concedido 200 mil dólares para pintar 3000 km2 de los glaciares de los Andes peruanos, en fuerte recesión debido al cambio climático.

El Comercio (Perú) informa de esta noticia y explica que cuando un glaciar empieza a derretirse, la parte oscura de la roca absorbe más calor y acelera el deshielo. El monte Razuhuillca de 5.200 metros será el primero en pintarse, a mano, y con una pintura que no daña el medio ambiente ni contamina las aguas del glaciar.

En El Mundo (Esp) encontramos una nota más completa desde Lima de Beatriz Jiménez, quien empieza poniendo números a la problemática: la superficie de los glaciares peruanos ha disminuido un 22% en lo últimos 30 años, y esto tiene consecuencias directas en el ciudadano, pues el 60% de las reservas de agua de Perú vienes de sus glaciares. Entrevistando al director de la ONG, no logra profundizar en la que define como “receta secreta” de la pintura. Seguro que el Banco Mundial ya lo habrá analizado antes de aprobar el proyecto, pero esperamos leer opiniones externas sobre su impacto ambiental. Otro dato interesante del artículo es que sitúa a Perú como tercer país más afectado por el cambio climático después de Bangladesh y Honduras, a pesar de ser responsable sólo del 0.4% de las emisiones.

Mientras tanto,  los grandes contaminadores no parecen muy decididos a afrontar el problema. En El País (Esp) encontramos un artículo muy crítico de Antonio Caño, enviado especial a Singapur, que titula su nota “EEUU y China hacen fracasar Copenhague”. Según el texto los líderes de ambos países ya han comunicado al Gobierno de Dinamarca que en los 22 días que faltan para la cumbre no será posible conseguir un acuerdo vinculante que permita la reducción de emisiones de dióxido de carbono.

Este fracaso de los esfuerzos en mitigación (intentar reducir el calentamiento global) podría significar mayor atención a las medidas de adaptación (corregir sus efectos negativos). Aquí deben estar muy alerta los países más afectados por el cambio climático, entre los que hay muchos Latinoamericanos.

- Pere Estupinyà

Lake Titicaca in Bolivia is near a record low level for the last 70 years. A drought gets the main, proximate blame. Most attention to this situation this week internationally  is due to the AP. Its  Carlos Valdez on Friday reported the fact and launches his piece with “Evaporation blamed on global warming…” etc. Nobody specific is credited with pinning the blame on global warming, although one must say it is the sensible default suspect in such cases.

Now, please meet a news outlet of which The Tracker for one had never heard before this morning. It is New Tang Dynasty Television, or NTDTV. It is eight years old, is based in New York and, it declares at its site, is a publicly supported non-profit that delivers news while promoting China’s traditional arts and culture . The audience appears primarily to be people of Chinese ancestry living outside China. Its chairman of the board is a US physicist. Other members of the board tend to be similarly tech and science savvy. Must be a story there. On the Titicaca question, Its story has no byline but, to these eyes, puts a safer and better composed explanation on the same facts. It gets intro, in the video that accompanies the transcript, from an anchor woman (without much evident Chinese ancestry) speaking with a distinct British accent and a possible sign that this network takes itself seriously as a general, international news outlet.  The expert sources in the report itself, interviewed on scene,  list the evident reasons the lake is low in order:  drought in #1, which appears  due to El Niño’s current phase is #2, and #3 is the declaration at the end that #2  “is believed to be aggravated by global warming.” That’s a logical progression from certainty to hypothesis.

*UPDATE: As seen in comments below. once again The Tracker’s habit of parading his innocent ignorance paid off with a gratis nudge from a friend and toward enlightenment. NTDTV, it appears, is an outgrowth of the Falun Gong philosophical and spiritual movement that so disturbs the gov’t in Beijing.

The local press has the story, too:

• Peruvian Times: Lake Titicaca water level drops 2.6 feet this year; Just the facts. It hasn’t rained lately, and the lake is down. It also runs (with no high def on line) the chart above. The Tracker is always content to pin a lot of things on global warming but that set of numbers suggests, to a naive eye, a lot of variation for a long time. It may not provide the best opportunity to invoke the greenhouse.
• Living in Peru (blog) Isabel Guerra : Level of Titicaca dropped 4.5 meters ; She cites reports also in La Prensa in La Paz.

- Charlie Petit

Every Friday one learns from Tabitha M. Powledge, aka to one and all as Tammy, she will endeavour to file at the site of the US’s  National Association of Science Writers a blog on Science Blogs, on science reporting, and on other  related things, starting today and here it is.

Tammy knows the business. It is good, and humbling to see so many excellent material and insights she has gathered into one place and that you won’t have seen here at ksjtracker central.  She reports, for those of us with news readers, that she hasn’t yet gotten an rss feed for it. So remember to check. This first one will, among other things, fill you in on dark doings inside clinical trials, the semi-urban legend (i.e .it may be true) on the latest breakdown at the Large Hadron Collider, and the language gene that is so powerful, that was in the news this week (Tracker’s head hangs in regret for not rounding that one up), and that may be a big, deep reason that such blogs as this exist.

- Charlie Petit

What’s this? Stories spurred by what looks like good news from Brazil’s Amazon about the rate of deforestation? In advance of next month’s post-Kyoto summit meeting in Copenhagen, Brazil’s President Lula and his ministers proclaimed a 45 percent reduction in the rate at which the trees are being felled and burned – or hauled away as timber.

The Christian Science Monitor‘s correspondent Andrew Downie, filing from Sao Paulo, reports that the rate is the lowest in 20 years. Hmmm. Twenty years ago was 1989. That’s the year The Tracker went to the area to cover what was already, then, regarded as an ongoing catastrophe of rainforest destruction. That’s where I first met Andy Revkin, now at the NYTimes, covering the same general news. So, such numbers have to be seen in proportion. Better does not always mean good.  But better is better than the alternative. And Lula’s government has vowed to cut the rate much further. Downie, as one sees by going through the following bullets, had at least two customers for his reporting.

Other Stories:

• BBC – Gary Duffy: from Sao Paulo – Amazon deforestation ‘record low’ ; One source gives credit to the global recession, not Brazilian policy, for the reduction ;
• AP – Marco Sibaja: from Brasilia:  Brazil: Deforestation sees biggest drop in 20 yrs ;
• AFP: Brasilia -  Fewer trees cut down in Amazon ;
• ABC (Australia) Richard Reynolds: info credited to Brazil’s space agency -  Amazon deforestation at record low ;
• Guardian (UK) Tom Phillips, filed from Rio: Brazil celebrates 45%  reduction in Amazon deforestation ;
• Telegraph (UK) Andrew Downie : Brazil deforestation drops to lowest level since 1980s. Mr. Downie, one notes, filed for the CSMonitor too. but good for him – same facts but he wrote distinctly different pieces for the two clients.
• Reuters – Natuza Nery, Ana Paula Paiva: Filed from Brasilia, Brazil say amazon deforestation slowest in 21 years ;

Pic: What it looked like in 1988. Source Guardian ;

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Nature published yesterday an extremely critic editorial about  R&D’s drop in Spain’s 2010 budget. Although the cuts, and scientists’ distress, are real enough,  Nature’s editorial is quite simplistic in several points. Yet, most journalists have reacted as though Nature is, as has been asserted, the “bible of European science.”

Nature publicó ayer un editorial muy crítico con el recorte presupuestario para la ciencia del gobierno español. De manera ligeramente simplista culpó sólo a la Ministra Garmendia, dijo que en los últimos 5 años se habían conseguido maravillas y ahora todo se echaba por tierra, parece ignorar el desequilibrio existente en España entre ciencia básica y aplicada, realiza un juego de palabras innecesario sobre las “edades de plata y bronce” de la ciencia española (con error de fechas incluído), y le dice sin miramientos al gobierno qué debe hacer y a qué países imitar.

Los recortes y el desencanto de los investigadores españoles es real, y ha sido muy bien denunciado por los periodistas científicos durante las últimas semanas. Ahora Nature publica esta crítica, que en realidad no aporta nada nuevo, y parece que es “palabra del Señor”. Por otro lado, el gobierno está esforzándose en explicar que la financiación de la ciencia va más lejos de estos presupuestos, y sus intentos de transformar el sector en algo más productivo que genere riqueza. Nadie parece hacerle caso, cuando es obvio que en España la traducción de conocimiento científico a patentes es una asignatura pendiente que la comunidad científica no ha sabido solucionar. Además de medios, también falta reforma.

El Mundo – La revista ‘Nature’ critica duramente el recorte del Gobierno español en Ciencia. Artículo neutro, que simplemente explica el contenido del editorial. Buena introducción para los recién llegados al tema.

Público – Javier Yanes:  “España se dirige a la Edad del Bronce“. De las críticas de Nature destaca la acusación al gobierno de no flexibilizar el tratamiento funcionarial a científicos. Yanes corrige el error de Nature diciendo que la Edad de Plata de la ciencia española fue a principios del siglo XX y no el XIX.

El Pais – ‘Nature’ culpa de los recortes en I+D a la “inexperiencia” de Garmendia. Sin entrar a valorar el contenido del texto de Nature, El Pais destaca el fuerte ataque a la Ministra. Como si ella fuera la única responsable. Extraña pobre pieza de El Pais, que ha estado cubriendo la información presupuestaria sobre ciencia con muchísima profundidad. Quizás podría esconder la poca importancia que le dan al texto de la “prestigiosa” revista.

ADN – Garmendia: El recorte presupuestario del Ministerio es un esfuerzo solidario. Con información de EFE, busca las palabras del gobierno, que califica el recorte de solidario para cubrir “las necesidades de los que más están sintiendo esta crisis”. La ministra Garmendia dice: “tenemos que abordar el cambio de modelo productivo y ser capaces de traducir nuestro potencial investigador en innovador para conseguir que los resultados de la investigación pasen a productos y servicios y generen riqueza y bienestar. Para ello hay que abordar tres retos con urgencia: dinamizar los sectores tradicionales, consolidar los liderazgos de I+D+i de las pyme y empresas españolas para incentivar la ubicación en España de compañías innovadoras de capital extranjero, y fomentar la creación de empresas en nuevos sectores intensivos de emprendimiento”.

La Vanguardia – Josep Corbella: La revista ´Nature´ reprende a España por los recortes en investigación. Empieza su texto destacando que según Nature, España debería seguir el ejemplo de Alemania y Grecia.

ABC – José Manuel Nieves: Nature arremete en su editorial contra la política científica en España. Califica de “Impresionante” el editorial, y lo traduce entero  “Por su excepcional interés, por lo que significa, por lo que aporta, por lo que enseña y por si acaso sirve para que alguien corrija la actual política científica de nuestro país”. Que fe…

La Razón – M.Carbonell: Rapapolvo de Nature a España por los recortes en I+D. Ataque también al gobierno, aprovechando el editorial de la revista calificada como “la Biblia de la ciencia europea”.

Entran ganas de encontar un trabajo periodístico de fondo buscando qué –además de la crisis económica- ha impulsado al gobierno a modificar su apoyo a la ciencia. Seguro que algunos problemas en la propia comunidad científica española también aparecen.

* Editorial de Nature “No turning back” (English) (Español)

- Pere Estupinyà

The Reuters science feed has today’s top items of climate news of the day stacked on atop of the other. From two of its more stalwart reporters we find Alister Doyle with Greenland ice loss accelerating: study ; and Deborah Zabarenko adds thump to his ker-: Record-high U.S. temps outpace record lows: study ; Before moving on, a brief ponder upon the distinct grammar of headlines. Isn’t it the norm in regular English for the source or cause of an effect to be to the left of the colon? As in Study: reporters do like their free pastries at morning press conferences. And if one cites the source second, wouldn’t parentheses be more apt? Oh well, concision and news first are paramount on the copy desk.

Before we get to more coverage of those two news bites, few outlets covered another one in the last week that draws a direct connection between their general topics: Arctic and US climate shifts. A study of cave stalagmites in California, that  Earth and Planetary Science Letters published, found that over the last many thousand years periods of higher temps and presumably low sea ice in the Arctic tend to align with drought in California. A warmer Arctic, reports UC Davis researchers, apparently pulls climate bands north – drawing the aridity of Southern California across more of the state. The Tracker would put the release down there in Grist but one old-line, if recently shrunken, news outlet, US News & World Report,  put the NSF press release right on its site. At least one local TV station reporter, ABC KGO-TV‘s Wayne Freedman, covered it with its own rewrite and reporting (UC Davis Press Release provided grist for his mill). It’s a story handed to him, but kudos to Freedman anyway: relatively few local TV outlets cover climate with an eye to the science at all, much less with a feature focus on local authorities.

Back on topic: The US temperature study news is via an article in Geophysical Research Letters by US meteorologists at the Nat’l Ctr for Atmospheric Research, the private Climate Central outfit, NOAA, and others. Greenland’s asserted acceleration in ice loss is in Science from a team that a researcher in Holland led, and who had US and British colleagues.

Other Greenland Ice stories:

• BBC – Richard Black: Greenland Ice Loss “Accelerating’ ;
• Times (UK) Hannah Devlin: Greenland’s ice sheet is melting faster than ever, data shows ; Actually the data show things. The story tells readers that two different ways to gauge the change were used: one based on precip and glacial flow measures, the other and more impressive one thinks: gravitational field trends. Concise, true.

Grist for the Mill:

Bristol U. Press Release ; U. Colorado (via ScienceDaily) Press Release ;

Other US Temperature Stories:

• NY Times Dot Earth blog – Andrew C. Revkin: More Record Highs and Far Fewer Lows ;
• AP: Temperature records: More highs than lows.
• MSNBC: Warning Sign: Record Highs are double the lows ;
• Science News – Janet Raloff: Record Chills Are Falling, But Only in Number ; She gets the people story – that is, how the researchers met and decided to look deeper – behind the news. And she tells us that even in 2100, if projections hold and record highs outnumber lows eight to one, there will (natch) still be some places setting cold temperature records every once in awhile.

Grist for the Mill: University Corp. for Atmospheric Research Press Release ;

Grist for the Speaking of Unusual Low Temps Mill: NOAA Press Release on October 2009 as third coolest on record for U.S..

And for the outlier news story of the day:

• Telegraph (UK) Louise Gray: Climate change ‘sceptic’ Ian Plimer argues CO2 is not causing global warming / Carbon dioxide in the atmopshere is a natural phenomenon caused by volcanoes and is not responsible for climate hcange, a scientist has claimed ; Denialists are legitimate topics of news. Ms. Gray is the “Environment Correspondent” so climate change is part of her beat. One would think that, in response to the idea that most of the annual increments of CO2 are from volcanoes, she’d at least fact check it with other authorities. She and her editors let this fellow’s assertion sit there unchallenged, without rejoinder from from the mainstream side of this non-debate (who are limited mainly to saying CO2 is so warming things up). Hmmppppphht. All she had to do was run a search and perhaps come up with this report from the British Geological Survey putting volcanic CO2 emissions at 1 percent of those due to human industry, mainly fossil fuel combustion, and other activity.

- Charlie Petit

In Nature yesterday European researchers reported evidence that stars with planets tend to have levels of lithium in their photospheres that is on the low side. Ergo, stellar spectra with low signatures for this common metal might be one way to pick those best suited to examine closely for planets.

At The Register in the UK science writer Lewis Page gives it a standard, overkill of a lede – saying astro boffins have a simple new method for hunting for alien civilizations or targets for colonization by us. Uh, right, is that what they did? But as is also usual in the UK press, the story settles down after its hyperbolic initial trajectory and gives the news with veteran skill. But most important to The Tracker it included the illus I’ve reproduced here, with its hilarious and penetrating caption.

This is not a brand new discovery, although the data may be the best yet. No stories appear – I may have missed something – to recognize this as a hypothesis that has been around for a bit. For one example showing that point, with an odd twist, see first item in Old Grist below.

Other Stories:

• Space.com – Andrea Thompson: 60-year-old solar mystery finally solved / Element lithium seems to play a key role in whether stars have planets ; Nice, didactic (but not pedantic) explanation how this work fits into the history of astrophysics.
• USA Today – Dan Vergano: Lithium-rich stars less likely to have planets ; Short, sweet.
• BBC - Lithium clue for planet-hunters ;
• Nat’l Geographic – John Roach : To Find New Planets, Look for the Lithium ; Hmm, should’ve said in the hed look away from the lithium; story itself looks just fine.
• Scientific American – John Matson: Planets May Affect Chemistry of Their Stars ;
• Science News – Ron Cowen: Chemical Fingerprint Found for Planet Hunting ;

Grist for the Mill: European Southern Observatory Press Release ;

Old and Striking Grist for the Mill:

The general idea is not new. For one example – one finds this reference, apparently from last year, pointing to the same conclusion by another researcher. Also of interest is that said author is Guillermo Gonzalez. Cognoscenti of science politics will recognize him as the astronomer who got in trouble and lost tenure a year or two ago at Iowa State University over, the U. said, his low publication rate but he said was persecution for his creationist beliefs. For all that, looks like Dr. Gonzales can do astronomy.

Another example showing this conclusion was already in the air.

- Charlie Petit

One thing about evolution and speciation is that every new fossil species discovery, and a few living species discoveries, are links of varying importance from one cladistic twig to another. Hence the new ones were missing, whether or not anybody missed them. Now along comes discovery of the bones in South Africa of a lumbering, occasional bipedal dinosaur that lived about 200 million years ago, and which may fill a gap in dino radiation, and son of a gun if a few outlets aren’t reaching into the barrel where imagination goes to die and pulling out a sober declaration of  Missing Link. Getting rid of this cliché – which dates to hoary ideas that one link connected humans to other primates – would be my Holy Grail of Cliché Clearance if it weren’t that getting rid of Holy Grail weren’t itself my Holy Grail of Cliché Clearance (except for rare emergencies, like Holy Grail lore stories).

The news is that in Johannesberg a paleontology team revealed a collection of fossils recently dug up, with results published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. They included two specimens of a newly known species they have named Aardonyx celestea. It appears, they say, to shed light (ack!! another cliché!) on how sauropods first began to evolve toward fulltime four-footedness and toward the behemoth end of the scale. Its first name means earth claw, because it has big claws. As for the species second name I was hoping for Celeste, of Babar fame, but it’s still nice as it honors a woman who prepared the fossil for study and display (and it can’t hurt that she is married to the team leader).

Stories:

• LA Times - Robyn Dixon: New dinosaur species may be a missing link ; Filed from Joberg, and m.l. or no m.l., a good, atmospheric story with a feature lede and lots of color. It addresses the use and misuse of m.l. too. But The Tracker doesn’t quite get the ref. to The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
• ABC (Australia) Andrew Goeghegan: Dinosaur discovery the missing link ;
• Independent (S. Afr) Shaun Smilie – Dinosaurs lived in lush oasis ;  Published in the affiliated Johannesburg Star (couldn’t get full text there to link), it leaves one confused over the connection to the shadowy “Predator X.”
• The Times (S.Afr) – Judy Lelliott: New dinosaur discovered in SA plus   Wits student finds new dinosaur ; She has the facts, including that A. Celeste‘s eponym worked on these bones through two pregnancies.
• Reuters – Alison Raymond: South African find gives clue to dinosaur evolution ;
• AP – Celean Jacobson : Scientists: New dinosaur species found in SAfrica ;
• Telegraph (UK) Sebastien Berger : New Aardonyx celestae dinosaur discovered in South Africa / Scientists in South Africa have hailed the discovery of a huge new dinosaur..that predates the giants of the Jurassic period ; Except this one is not THAT huge.
• Discovery News – Jennifer Viegas: Dinos Evolved by Fattening Up ;  Nice, and looks as though Ms. Viegas made a long distance call to S. Africa to bolster what’s in the journal and press release.
• BBC: Missing link dinosaur discovered ;

Grist for the Mill:

Journal article full text ; Univ. of the Witwatersrand Press Release ;

Western Illinois University Press Release ;

Wired – Betsy Mason: 5 Atrocious Science Clichés to Throw Down a Black Hole ; Tracker’s not alone in this campaign….

- Charlie Petit

Now don’t go thinking you can go shoot at them, net them, deliberately try to hook them with your fishing lures, kick their nests apart, or anything else likely to make them rarer. Such predations are still illegal.  But brown pelicans, among icons of the battle decades ago against pollution and its impacts on wildlife, is on the shortlist to be delisted quick from the protections of the U.S. Endangered Species Act, says the Department of the Interior.  They’d been on there since 1970 when DDT accumulating in their prey rendered most of their eggs too thin-shelled to survive (as it did to several other birds too). Some opponents of government meddling in business have blamed Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring for stirring hysteria over DDT and other pesticides, perhaps spurring a rise in malaria. The book also was seminal in making the environmental beat a prominent one at big news outlets.  And the sharp restrictions on DDTs use, enacted in part under public pressure, do seem to have rendered a service to ecosystems and to people who need them around the world. The Tracker sure missed the big birds when they were rare, loves to see so many now. White pelicans seem prettier, but these are cooler.  They always look to me, as they glide resolutely along in precise formations low over the waves with their huge bills to the fore, like pterosaurs.

The Interior Secretary got on the phone to tell reporters all about it, one reason this is getting plenty of coverage.

Stories:

• AP – Dina Cappiello : Gov’t says brown pelicans are endangered no longer;
• Reuters – Deborah Zabarenko: Brown pelican no longer endangered: US ;
• AFP – Karin Zeitvogel: US takes brown pelican off endangered species list ;
• LA Times – Jim Tankersely: Brown Pelican removed from endangered species list / A century-long effort to protect the bird is no longer necessary, federal officials say.
• Wall St. Journal – Kristina Peterson : Brown Pelican Removed From Endangered List ;
• New Orleans Times-Picayune – Christine Harvey : Brown pelican no longer an endangered species ; For her, a local story. She lives in the Pelican state, and the formal announcement was at a nearby wildlife refuge. See story also for great pictures.
• Environment News Service: Brown Pelican Soars Off U.S. Endangered Species List ;
• Santa Cruz Sentinel – Shanna McCord (+ AP) : Brown pelican bounces back from brink of extinction ;

Grist for the Mill: Dept. of Interior Press Release ;

Pic source ;

- Charlie Petit

A friend of the Tracker’s, whom I shall call Lynne, is voraciously interested in anything about Mount Wilson, having grown up in its morning shadow (as did I). She worried terribly when the big Station Fire threatened the observatory and the forest of broadcast towers on its peak. At stake were research, history, and mass communication: topics rather central to science journalists’ souls.  Two days ago she tipped me to a catch-up story on the fire’s aftermath – which is that we are not quite to the after part at all. It covers a topic that I bet few of us knew or thought about: when is a wildfire really out? I’ve been neglectful in not putting up a post right off, but here it finally goes.

It turns out, reports the Los Angeles Times‘s Baxter Holmes, that conflagrations in high, heavily vegetated terrain have been known apparently to go out – sometimes with the help of firefighters – in fall or early winter, then in the following year after the snows have melted, to return.  And why such things happen is his topic with Mount Wilson and its surroundings an example . Contained, in fireman’s lingo, is not controlled, cold,  or dead. It’s not a long story, but is an illuminating one.

Pic – San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

- Charlie Petit

The fight over regulating Bisphenol A and perhaps its estrogen-mimicking co-suspects, phthalates, is sure to heat up now. A U.S. federally-funded study reports this week in the journal Human Reproduction that at a factory in China where workers get unusually high exposure to BPA, male workers have strikingly high rates of erectile disfunction and impairment of ejaculation.

At the Washington Post, Lyndsey Layton runs through those findings fast and gets immediately to the point: such compounds are in thousands of consumer products and BPA is “so ubiquitous it has been detected in the urine of 93 percent of the U.S. population.” Deeper she reports a source reflecting on doubters unimpressed by previous studies of animals where effects including impaired sexual development in the young seem apparent. The source observes that they said, “Show us the human studies…Now we have a human study, and this can’t be dismissed.”

It’s just the latest in a saga of enviro worriers v. industry reassurances that, at its beginning a few years ago, was hard to pick as something that would rise above other such fade-outs as fear of cancer from power lines or (among the sane) suspicion that autism’s rise is due to vaccinations. This one looks like it’s not going to fade any time soon. Not only is it in a refereed journal, but the authors are with the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute, a place well-regarded for its epidemiological savvy. Some news outfits have pursued the issue stubbornly. Their diligence looks closer now to vindication.

Exposures were high – much higher than what American’s typically endure. But high exposures are the mother lode of epidemiologists looking for a way to peg some hard points in a plot of sensitivity to a compound or other environmental factor.

Other stories:

• Web MD – Salynn Boyles: Study: High BPA Linked to Sex Problems in Men ; Includes a segment from an industry man who calls the data “interesting…but of little relevance to the average consumer using products with trace levels…” Perhaps true, one supposes. But the EPA, OSHA, etc. may find it more than interesting.
• NPR – Scott Hensley: BPA at Work Raises Risk of Impotence, Sexual Problems ;
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Meg Kissinger: BPA, sexual problems may be linked. This paper may have investigated BPA and phthalates more aggressively than any other as part of its Chemical Fallout special report.
• AP – Malcolm Ritter: Chemical BPA in workers linked to sex problems ;
• SF Chronicle – Victoria Colliver: Bisphenol A linked to sexual disfunction ;
• *UPDATE addition: US News – Ford Vox: Sex and BPA Don’t Mix, Say Researchers ; Rather complete, balanced, and well-reported review of why this is a good study but perhaps not yet ready to be declared highly pertinent to men generally, by a physician-journalist.

Much more, but in the On-the-Other-Hand Dept:

• Toronto Globe and Mail (Opinion) Margaret Wente: Does BPA give you the willies? It shouldn’t. This ran a few days ago. Too bad it didn’t wait a week so she could re-tune her skepticism – perhaps there’s a way to pooh pooh the new study too. She writes that BPA and Phthalate worries are not shared in other countries and that they are “driven by a few North American environmental groups and a small number of scientists.” She could get the last laugh. But again, this right now is unfortunate timing.

Grist for the Mill: Journal study full text ; Kaiser Permanente Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Television programs showing autopsies, DNA analyses, and corpses got some real-life reinforcement – and  clarification – in the Cleveland Plain Dealer today. Science writer John Mangels pinned down one investigator, a natural history worker during normal times, to explain how his work helps to sort through the town’s recent horror. This was, of course, discovery of a serial killer and his house full of victims’ bodies.

It’s a circumspect story. The protagonist could not tell Mangels anything specific about what he’s found so far – other than that it involved insects and their maggots. One wonders if some readers turned away from the story in dismay and perhaps repulsion. It could be just too evocative to look at the blowfly life cycle graphic seen here above right and to envision how that plays out when the subject is forensics.Wait’ll you get to the part about what cocaine in a body does to the six-legged, flying first responders. And then there’s the timing of the checkered beetles a-swarm on old bones…

This is good, vivid, enterprise science writing that may not do all that much to build circulation. Nice job, and Mangels got decent room to tell the tale.

- Charlie Petit