A week ago, in a snit, The Tracker posted on a long, narrowly flawed but substantial article at the non-profit, foundation and donor-financed Yale e360 operation in New Haven. The outlet publishes a steady stream of serious environmental journalism stories. This one was about the Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility in Livermore, CA. It focussed entirely, like a laser, on hopes it may lead the world to a fusion energy Valhalla. It did not mention its prime justification is to give nuclear weapons designers a way to understand the physics and materials properties of H-bombs without lighting one off. This story is one of many in recent years: a significant portion of reporters who have written on NIF have done so with the same blind spot. It pushed a button at tracker central.

What’s new is that this morning I noticed a fusion story on the Reuters service. I then noticed it is the very one, with full credit and link, that e360 published. A check with executive editor Roger Cohn at the service’s home, the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, confirmed that this is entirely on the up and up, done with permission.

My criticism of this story’s omission on NIF’s history quite aside, one thus finds a welcome sign that Yale’s flyer at running a non-profit, long form, serious journalism (plus essays and such from non-journalists) site is paying off. That is, except for the paying off part. It charges nothing for its articles, but demands permission and credit. Several well-known science and environmental writers sell articles to it regularly, so somebody gets revenue. It gets millions of visits to its website per month. Last year it won a National Magazine Award for digital media and a Best Specialty Site award from the Online News Association.  In the UK, the Guardian newspaper has a formal agreement to use e360′s stuff frequently as part of its Guardian Environment Network. Right now the Guardian is drawing attention to a piece from e360 and by Dave Levitan on the ability of lots of electric cars that plug into the grid to charge up to also be an important buffering and load management tool for electric companies. Such cars could occasionally receive a signal to slosh some of the juice back the other way in return for an electrical bill deduction. Who knows, maybe car owners will open the garage some day and see a message on their chargers’ vid. displays: “Thank You for Helping Prevent a Blackout! Please wait an hour or walk, bike, thumb, call a cab. Your car is for now dead.”

Much of the problem with traditional mass media is that it has given its stuff away free on the web, a business plan that works well only for non-profits with donated money behind them. And that describes e360. Good fortune.

While we’re at it… Other Recent NIF News;

• NatureNews – Eugenie Samuel Reich: Superlaser fires a blank ; Full context, and mainly about fusion which is much more interesting, not to mention not-secret, than is stockpile stewardship. No blinders here: Reich updates readers on continuing reasons why some critics doubt that NIF will ever work as advertised.  Target date for ignition, it says here, is now 2012. It has moved back several times as workers be sure they don’t cook the hardware when they go for full power with live ammo – a hohlraum and fuel pellet fully loaded with fusion-ready hydrogen isotopes.
• ScienceInsider – Daniel Clery : Superlaser Begins Key Experiments ;
• Wired Science – Dave Mosher: World’s Most Powerful Laser on Target for Awesome Science ; Good story, and link to a neat-o video report from Alexis Madrigal to match. Both blog-story and video provide NIF’s political provenance as an important aside, and both are rather boosterish but accurate enough reports on how this monster machine might do its stuff. For hardware-as-eye-candy devotees, NIF is bliss. In the video, the machine’s polished boss, Ed Moses, says the target hohlraum is about the size of a Tylenol capsule. Nice analogy. Doesn’t say whether this onefixes his headaches or causes them.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) The Spanish language tracker represented the KSJTracker in the “Inter-American Scientific Journalism Seminar”  in Buenos Aires, joining representatives from Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Perú, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia. Main conclusion: Training and professionalization are still the big needs of reporters in countries without strong traditions in science journalism. In places such as Argentina there is already solid group of professionals, but it is concentrated in Buenos Aires. The challenge is to train local reporters that work far from the capital. An interesting discussion showed up: All the initiatives proposed to improve science journalism in the region need public economic support, but to have it might limit independence. Overall, one can perceive a real interest from institutions, scientists, and young journalists in building better science journalism in the region. Now it’s time to move from words and goals to projects and local actions that make a clear impact. Much more in this post inlcuding  opinions from 11 of the reporters at the seminar.

El pasado 13, 14 y 15 de Octubre se celebró en Buenos Aires el “Seminario Interamericano de Periodismo y Comunicación Científica”, organizado por el Ministerio de CyT argentino y la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA). El tracker (Pere Estupinyà) participó representando al Knight Science Journalism Tracker del MIT, y tuvo la oportunidad de conversar con comunicadores de Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador y Colombia. Escuchó críticas, alabanzas, propuestas, dificultades, e ilusiones. He aquí algunas ideas expresadas por los propios protagonistas del evento, que en gran proporción provenían de Argentina.

Argentina: periodismo científico más allá de Buenos Aires + cuidado con las ayudas del gobierno

Empezando por el único no comunicador científico que aparecerá en estas líneas, el tracker habló personalmente con el ministro de ciencia Argentino Lino Barañao y le confesó: “Para acercar el conocimiento a la sociedad e influir en la toma de decisiones políticas nosotros ya tenemos becas de formación, premios, actividades de divulgación como cine científico o arte y ciencia… pero la elaboración de proyectos concretos de mejora del periodismo científico debe partir de los propios profesionales. Nosotros estamos abiertos a financiar iniciativas. Es importante que se hagan propuestas, ya sea a nivel nacional o regional. Somos concientes de la importancia y encontraremos los mecanismos para apoyarlas”.

Esto es algo en que el tracker insistió durante su participación: el la mayoría de países de la región se percibe una verdadera voluntad institucional de potenciar el periodismo científico (a diferentes niveles, dependiendo de la tradición previa del país). El interés de la sociedad por la ciencia también está en claro aumento, y empieza a existir una masa crítica de jóvenes profesionales con ganas de emprender esta tarea. Es momento de desarrollar iniciativas bien trabajadas y buscar apoyos institucionales.

Pero aquí aparece un peligro, como apuntaba la experimentada Valeria Román de Clarín: “el encuentro sirvió para poner en foco la discusión por la relación con las fuentes de información. En los países desarrollados, ya está aceptado que un periodista no debe tener dependencia financiera de sus fuentes de información. Pero en los países de desarrollo por las dificultades para conseguir un trabajo full time o freelance como periodista científico, aún se acepta que la misma persona ejerza el papel de periodista para un medio y el de PR para empresas o instituciones públicas. Aún tenemos mucho por debatir sobre los conflictos de interés de las fuentes y de los propios periodistas“. Valeria hablaba del profesional individual, pero lo mismo podríamos ampliar a cualquier proyecto de periodismo científico que dependa económicamente de ayudas públicas. En muchos países son imprescindibles para sacar adelante nuestras ideas, pero debemos ser muy cuidadosos exigiendo total independencia. Sin duda, un asunto a profundizar en encuentros venideros.

En línea similar, el periodista freelance de Muy Interesante y otras publicaciones, Federico Kukso, opinó que en el seminario no se distinguió suficiente entre los campos del periodismo, la divulgación, y la política científica. “no se deberían mezclar como si todo fuera exactamente lo mismo”, resaltó Federico. Valorando positivamente que se haya realizado este seminario “en un país como la Argentina donde el periodismo y la divulgación científica han sido durante décadas menospreciados tanto por las empresas periodísticas como por el Estado”, Federico se quejó de que “los periodistas fueron minoría entre los asistentes y abundaron, en cambio, integrantes de organismos estatales”, de que “faltó una mesa centrada en las nuevas generaciones del periodismo científico”, de la escasa mención a las redes sociales y al diseño gráfico, y de que se promoviera poco la interacción. Sin duda, críticas constructivas muy a tener en cuenta ante futuros eventos.

Otro aspecto a destacar aparecido en el seminario fue la voz de los periodistas de regiones fuera de Buenos Aires. Victor Augusto García del Diario El Zonda, en San Juán, nos dio una clara lección de su realidad diciendo: “la mayoría de los colegas del interior del país pertenecemos a medios de comunicación medianos o pequeños. En este tipo de estructura es común que el periodista haga de todo y no haya una especialización a la hora de seguir la información. Por ello la formación o perfeccionamiento es muy importante para todos nosotros, ya sea presencial o virtual. Esto permite que cada uno de los periodistas pueda ampliar un poco más su espectro de conocimientos y de ese modo cubrir con mayores competencias lo que tiene frente de si”. Interesantísima aportación de Víctor: en ciertas regiones no podemos pretender tener periodistas científicos especializados, pero sí hacer programas de formación específica a periodistas generalistas para que puedan cubrir las notas de ciencia con mayor propiedad. Muy satisfecho con el congreso, Víctor añade que “te cuento que hay siempre mucho interés por los temas técnicos y en general los colegas los toman a la hora de realizar algún informe especial que luego generalmente se pueda presentar en algún tipo de concursos que existen en el país”.

Desde Córdoba, Yamila Abud también reclama más atención a los periodistas científicos dispersos fuera de Buenos Aires, y en este sentido considera “fundamental que la Red Argentina de Periodismo Científico de Argentina se haya establecido como Asociación Civil a partir de este encuentro. Este estatus legal permitirá trabajar en la organización de actividades y en obtención de financiamiento”. Otra conclusión que Yamila vio reflejada en el seminario fue “la necesidad de incorporar un tratamiento crítico de la información científica que se comunica a través de los medios masivos de comunicación (corriéndonos de la idea de reflejar a los científicos como constructores de verdades perfectas, sin cuestionamientos o reflexiones)”. Sin citar las fuentes, el tracker escuchó que el periodismo científico en Argentina solía ser demasiado benevolente con la ciencia local.

A Laura García Oviedo, periodista científica freelance de San Carlos de Bariloche (Patagonia), le faltó en el encuentro mayor espacio para el diálogo, pero también se mostró optimista frente a la nueva etapa de la asociación, e insiste en que “la realidad es totalmente diferente lejos de una gran ciudad como la Capital Federal. Si bien hay mucho para contar sobre la ciencia y la tecnología de Bariloche y la región patagónica, los medios locales dedican muy poco espacio a las noticias de ciencia. Las razones pueden ser poco presupuesto para contratar personal especializado en cubrir ciencia, poco conocimiento sobre el potencial impacto de contar historias sobre ciencia, y hasta desinterés general en incluir este tipo de contenidos. Es un desafío generar espacios fuera de la Capital, pero soy optimista”. Este optimismo de Laura, y las historias de ciencia que esconden lugares como la Patagonia, son recursos a apoyar.

Principal demanda en otros países: Formación específica y profesionalización

El carismático Eduardo Reyes Frías, presidente de la Asociación Chilena de Periodistas Científicos, valora el seminario con estas palabras: “En mi experiencia a través de encuentros similares en seis países latinoamericanos, el seminario de Buenos Aires ha sido uno de los más dialogantes en registrar informaciones, debilidades y expectativas de desarrollo de la comunicación social de la ciencia y la tecnología. Los contactos personales debieran complementar la web”. Se muestra satisfecho con la presencia casi cotidiana de la ciencia en diarios y revistas chilenas, pero “sin embargo falta desarrollar cursos de postgrado y más actividades de perfeccionamiento. En la televisión abierta los programas de divulgación científica son menos frecuentes y supedidatos al horario de menor sintonía. Las radioemisoras están bastante deficitarias en cubrir esta área informativa, a pesar de ser muy numerosas en el país”.

La demanda de formación específica es una tónica común en el resto de países que participaron en el encuentro.

Ricardo Erst , productor de Canal 5 (Uruguay) dice que el principal reto en su país es “buscar quienes practican el periodismo científico, hacer una Asociación o una red y charlar con los actores de la CYT para que nos faciliten herramientas para contactarnos con los investigadores, científicos, etc.”. Reclama capacitación específica a periodistas que como él, están muy motivados en cubrir información científica (insisto: esta motivación es una gran oportunidad), y opina que “el Congreso se centró demasiado en la discusión interna de Argentina. Y como integrante del medio más masivo según las encuestas que mostraron, la televisión, me hubiera gustado un espacio para el periodismo científico en el medio audiovisual”. Algo muy importante, es que Ricardo regresa del seminario “con la idea de hacer algo al menos”.

En una situación relativamente parecida, Nicolás Cañete representando al ministerio de Paraguay anunció la preparación de un plan específico de comunicación científica, y la organización de un taller para unir a todos los actores y empezar a trabajar de manera decidida.

Ximena Serrano, Presidenta de la Asociación Colombiana de Periodismo Científico, concluyó que “en Latinoamérica se requiere una mayor formación en periodismo científico, pues aunque se están abriendo espacios, las políticas y acciones deben ser más claras y efectivas. Teniendo en cuenta que en Colombia se está creando una estrategia de apropiación pública de la ciencia, el reto más importante es crear un programa formal de especialización en periodismo científico. De esta manera, si llegáramos a obtener un beneficio económico para impulsar el Periodismo Científico en Colombia, crearíamos un postgrado y fortaleceríamos la Agencia de Noticias Colombiana de Ciencia y Tecnología, que da cuenta del quehacer científico del país y aporta a la apropiación social del conocimiento”.

Desde Perú, Yazmín Rojas de prensa del Concytec percibe como principal reto el lograr la profesionalización y especialización del periodismo científico. “Sólo en Lima existen 18 facultades de ciencias de la comunicación, de las cuales tres incluyen en su currícula el curso de periodismo científico. Por ende, no existe un diplomado o maestría de periodismo científico”. Yazmín dice que desde su posición, si tuviera recursos suficientes “crearía primero un Diplomado en Comunicación y Periodismo Científico y Tecnológico, coordinado con una universidad y la Red de Periodistas y Divulgadores Científicos del Concytec. Y segundo, organizaría un grupo de periodistas y divulgadores científicos para realizar una investigación cualitativa y cuantitativa sobre indicadores de CyT en el Perú”. Yazmín se muestra contundente en destacar el rol de los comunicadores en la transmisión del conocimiento científico a la sociedad: “en un país el conocimiento científico, el desarrollo tecnológico y la innovación son la clave para aumentar la productividad y competitividad, reducir la pobreza, conservar el medio ambiente, usar sustentablemente los recursos naturales y mejorar la calidad de vida de la población. Por esto, es importante que por medio del periodismo científico se sensibilice a la sociedad, a los representantes del Estado y sus Gobernantes. Todos los días un nuevo tema relacionado a la CTeI surge en nuestro mundo, siempre hay algo nuevo que se descubre, que se inventa, que se investiga, y lo lleva a ser difundido para que la sociedad conozca los impactos y beneficios que trae a la vida de cada ciudadano y del país; pero difundir temas científicos y tecnológicos requiere especialización para tener un pensamiento y conocimiento base común y convertirse en un verdadero intermediario entre el científico y la sociedad”.

Finalmente, Pablo Jarrín desde Ecuador ofrece la perspectiva del investigador que actúa como comunicador científico “Ya que la difusión de la ciencia es fundamental para el desarrollo de una sociedad consiente, responsable y democrática, pienso que las entidades estatales, encargadas de legislar las políticas en ciencia y tecnología, deben promover y fortalecer la difusión de la ciencia en todos los estratos de la sociedad. Actividades académicas como la celebrada en Buenos Aires son un buen ejemplo. Sin embargo, está en cada persona con amor por la ciencia el hacer un cambio con su ejemplo y esfuerzo. ¡No olvidemos a Giordano Bruno!”

El Seminario del PIPC celebrado en Buenos Aires fue muy beneficioso. Faltaron espacios para promover el diálogo, hubo demasiada presencia institucional, demasiada reflexión sobre la situación Argentina, y se echaron de menos mesas de trabajo para atajar problemas específicos de la práctica periodística. Pero sin duda marcó un impacto entre los asistentes. Ahora falta que estas conversaciones e impacto se traduzcan en iniciativas específicas. El ministro Barañao dijo que los políticos “somos como el ojo de la rana, que sólo vemos lo que se mueve”. Movámoslo!

- Pere Estupinyà

I know I shouldn’t post on an article I haven’t read in its entirety–but I couldn’t get through ProPublica‘s latest investigative project.

The project was a great undertaking, by all accounts–a detailed analysis showing that millions of dollars are flowing from drug companies to doctor-marketers, some of whom have blemished records and limited expertise in the drugs they are promoting.

It is the result of a massive collaboration involving ProPublica and five other big news organizations: NPR, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, Consumer Reports, PBS’s Nightly Business Report. The links go to the stories that each of those news organizations wrote about the docs. I didn’t read those stories, either. And ProPublica’s story, “Docs on Pharma Payroll Have Blemished Records, Limited Credentials,” by Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber, and Dan Nguyen, is only one of multiple stories that it is producing as part of this project. This single story alone weighs in at about 3,600 words, if I copied and pasted correctly into Word.

Megan Garber at Nieman Journalism Lab calls it a “big, important piece — the kind of anger-inducing, broadly affective narrative that is the bread and butter of investigative journalism.” And without having read it, I agree. This is exactly the kind of thing we should all be doing–shining light in dark financial corners.

The ProPublica story begins with three anecdotes concerning doctors who had been subject to investigations or disciplinary proceedings and who were subsequently paid tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars afterwards. It goes on to explain how the data for the story were collected. It then says it “found sanctions against more than 250 speakers, including some of the highest paid.”

That’s 250 out of how many? Only later are we told that the database contained 17,700 individuals. Does that mean 250 out of 17,700 had been subject to sanctions? If so–and please check my math on this–then about 1.4 percent of the individuals in the database had been subject to sanctions.

That’s, uh–not too many. I have no data–and have done no investigation–to support the claim I am about to make, but here it is anyway: If you compiled a database of newspaper reporters showing how many had been subject to sanctions, I bet it would be more than 1.4%. I’m just sayin’…

Including the three anecdotes at the top of the story, I counted about a dozen anecdotes altogether. They followed this form: “Dr A, an expert in B, received C dollars from X Pharmaceutical Company, despite having a record of Y or Z in his past.” Reminds me of an old story in The Onion–It was the 8th subscription card that fell out of the magazine that finally made me subscribe! I don’t need a dozen anecdotes. After the first few, I get it.

Further, I don’t find any of this terribly surprising. Docs who appear to be independent experts, even if they’re paid by a company, are effective advocates. As one authority said in ProPublica’s story, referring to drug makers, “Are any of us surprised they’re trying to maximize their markets in almost any way they can?” No, we’re not.

I’m sorry to be burlesquing this admirable effort. I’m in favor of investigative reporting. Along with many others, I lament its decline. I believe that the press has a critical role to play in keeping an eye on government and corporations.

I hope ProPublica does many more such stories. I hope the stories lead to legal and congressional investigations and help to curb abuses. But, please, don’t expect me to read any of them all the way through.

- Paul Raeburn

How’s this for a happy ending? “…some envision huge tracts of strip-mined Appalachia one day being restored with lovely chestnut forests.” That crops up, after being typed one suspects with tongue a little bit in cheek, by the Washington Post‘s sterling enviro writer Juliet Eilperin. The story ran Monday. It takes readers into the past when stately chestnut trees were lords of many eastern US forests, reminds them of the exotic blight that has rendered them functionally extinct, and now-rising hope that a new hybrid will restore chestnuts as dominant and grand members of the eastern hardwood landscape. They not only looked handsome, but their huge crops of nuts supported wildlife, fed a lot farmers’ hogs and other livestock through the winter, and made for a pretty good cash crop on the side.

She gets into Thoreau, and obsession among chestnut revivalists. But, she warns, while thousands of the new versions are growing in wildlands and gardens alike, it will take a century or more before they retake their natural place. The general topic gets a revisit now and then by reporters. This is a particularly good one.

Who knows? Maybe the chestnut timber industry will revive too. They say it made terrific construction lumber. And maybe the ones being planted on the remains of coal fields really will grow tall, straight, and magnificent.

Other Chestnut Stories:

• WBOY News (W. Va) Jeff Schrock:  Rowlesburg Celebrates Chestnut Festival ; Roasting them over open fires, even.

Grist for the Mill:

US Forest Service, Compass Magazine – Meghan Jordan: The American Chestnut: A Legacy to Come ;

- Charlie Petit

Scanning down the items on the BBC science feed revealed a video story. The promo says “Going cold on climate change claims? /  Press coverage has cast further doubt on climate scientists’ claims that man-made global warming is real and adversely affecting the planet.” I cannot find the name behind the voice-over, but don’t bother. This opening piece is confusing. It has no news at all. It reviews the flubs in behavior and fact-checking that got the Climatic Research Unit and IPCC in trouble, but nothing fresh. A pastiche of policy troubles facing the UK gov’t's green agenda, and done.

On the page are links to a sequence of other mini-reports by BBC’s “Daily Politics”" unit. This one grills a Brit researcher, by a pugnacious reporter, on the collapse of his science’s models due to the recent surprise that a dimming sun may make a warmer Earth surface. Then a second panelist lambastes the researcher further for not realizing there has been no warming lately (!), a falsifiable skeptics’ meme. A second pits two stalwarts of argument, the Telegraph’s arch-guffawer James Delingpole who finds global warming utter nonsense and its science all politics and no rigor, and “climate change guru” George Monbiot, a writer and non-scientist who happens to be worried by global warming – and  who is hectored because nobody believes climate scientists anymore anyway.

One, as a general fan of BBC’s coverage of climate and science (it has a lot of non-fans), had hoped to see an analysis of continuing press coverage and the dimensions of the shifts in public opinion. Instead…pffft. It’s a theme, with somber music, but no substance. Why put this on the air at all?

Elsewhere in the BBC:

• Richard Black, Enviro Correspondent: IPCC aims for clarity and relevance in new report ; A solid, sober account from the most recent IPCC meeting and plans unfolding there, with lessons learned from recent fiascos, on how to write its next global assessment, due out three or four years.
• Guardian Environment Blog – Stefan Rahmstorf: The BBC should report climate change facts rather than political spin . Science reporting that donwplays sober science in favour of the shril shriek of climate dinialists is nohting bug propaganda ; Rahmstorf is a climate scientists, and is not happy with the BBC.

- Charlie Petit

At Reuters this morning one is surprised and considerably impressed to find a wade into higher dimensional physics and the potential of the Large Hadron Collider – out of the news for months now as post-breakdown repairs and thriftiness (electricity is not cheap when you have a machine this big) took it out of the limelight. Work there, it says here, is ramping up.

The service’s Robert Evans filed from Geneva a kind of story we saw a lot of (along with warnings it would make black holes that would eat Earth) when the LHC first swung into operation.  It’s a light brush, with many awesome words, through the new physics that the army of scientists hopes to get during the upcoming year on assumption that the colliding beams collide as planned.

It’s not quite clear what inspired the story. One certainly hopes there are more to come about  great discoveries that could vindicate the money spent, excite scientists, and give reporters a chance to try, just try, to explain to the public what the fuss is all about. Evans focusses on hopes to confirm the existence of extra dimensions into which gravity and perhaps particles may leak from the 4-D universe we know best. One can only hope.

I can find no press release. Evans mentions a recent report in the largely in-house CERN Bulletin. The Tracker can’t find that article either. But a clue is in the magazine Symmetry jointly published in the US by Stanford’s SLAC and the DOE’s Fermilab near Chicago.  It refers to a note from the CERN director on progress with the luminosity of the colliding beams and a goal: achieving an “inverse femtobarn” in performance. Barns have to do with collisional cross sections, and femto often with real short time spans, so one assumes this is a  measure of target shooting performance.

Evans has the word femtobarn in his account, too. It takes boldness to get that past an editor.

Pic source,  Guardian,

- Charlie Petit

Scratch catastrophe from the list of likely Gulf of Mexico outcomes – for now. It is just six months after the Macondo well incinerated and sank BP’s rented Deepwater Horizon rig. The accident killed 11 oil workers and spawned – sensibly – worry of an ecological nightmare that could persist for years. Now, the Associated Press‘s Seth Borenstein and Cain Burdeau report  that  they asked 35 researchers to rate the gulf’s overall health now and before the spill (by the way, if Mr. Burdeau’s not Cajun, he ought’a be with that superb name).

As it was, the reporters say, it was “a beleaguered body of water” but the spill did not drastically change things. On a zero to 100 scale that the newsmen asked their sources to use, its overall health dropped from 71 before spill to 65 now. So it’s gone from maybe a C to a D+?  That’s a significant retreat, more than the “glancing blow” some optimists forecast, but no knockout. One source calls it like a concussion – bad but so far not nearly as bad as many pessimists expected.

The protocol of the survey is not apt to be up to snuff for any refereed journal. But it smells like a sensible if not highly rigorous look at things. Many still worry that seriously bad things could arise and be traceable to BP’s spilt oil. Heavy oil reported to be wiping out life in some deep water sediments could throw benthic ecotones far out of whack, upsetting food chains. Blue fin tuna, in enough trouble as it is, could fail – and they take example from the delayed crash of herring in Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

There is, to these eyes, some new news, and cheering at that. The months-long fishing ban in the area seems to have left behind a surging population of red snapper. NOAA has reopened things, with a recreational red snapper season running through Nov. 21.  One source tells AP’s duo that one could bait a hook with a rock and catch one now.

Related Gulf-sorta-back-to-normal Story:

• Tampa Tribune – Rob Shaw: Feds want to limit Gulf fishing for grouper ; It’s about fisheries management and a big tasty bottom fish, but does not even mention whether the oil spill was a factor in deciding to reduce fishing pressure on this species.

- Charlie Petit

(Oops. This post lingered in the queue for five days, since Oct. 14. Forgot to push the Publish button on a day I had to catch a plane to an assignment. Enjoy! / cp)

Whales are always in the news. Most people love whales. Not many, other than in Japan or Norway one surmises, like to see them bleeding or dead. I’ll give the Inuit, Inupiat, and other indigenous arctic whalers a slide – they tend to include an element of gratitude and even whale worship in their non-commercial, sustenance and ritual driven hunts. Right now we have a number of whale news items to track, and the work of many reporters to recognize.

None of these are particularly tricky stories with investigative angles or ethical conundrums, so analysis will be minimal here.

1. Whale poop, what’s up with that? Fertilizer for the sea, is what.It’s in PLoS ONE.

• NPR All Things Considered – Joe Palca: Whales Help Fertilize Ocean With Floating Dung ;
• Discovery News – Kiernan Mulvaney: SAVE THE WHALES, SAVE THE POOP ;
• LiveScience – Wynne Parry ; Whale poo; Miracle grow for the ocean / It floats to sea surface, helping fertilize important ecosystems ;
• ANI – Whale poop ups productivity of ocean fisheries ; ANI, an India-centric outlet, often rewrites press releases, lightly. But I could not find a press release.

Dept. of Nothing New: An april press release from Australia, which generated same kind of news then.

2. A Humpback Sets Wild-Mammal Non-Human Migration Record. Brazil to the east coast of Africa. A Flickr telltail tail tale. The report is in Biology Letters.

• NYTimes – Sindya Bhanoo: A Whale of a Journey, Captured in Photos ;
• AP – Raphael G. Satter: Whale of a Trip: Humpback makes record migration ;
• The Atlantic – Nicholas Jackson: Flickr Data Miner Uncovers Record-Breaking Whale Migration ;
• Daily Mail – David Derbyshire: World-wide whale: Humpback’s incredible 6,200-miles journey is a record ;
• Telegraph – Richard Alleyne: Whale travels a quarter of the way around the world to find a mate ; Sex always sells. Other outlets say nobody knows what this whale was trying to accomplish. The hed is opportunistic and wild. Story doesn’t back it up.
• BBC – Victoria Gill: Humpback whale swims a quarter of the world.
• Discovery News – Tim Wall: Whale of a Journey: Whale Travels 6,000 Miles ;
• … Many more

3. Whales Jam off Northern California. Ships Hit a Few. Krill’s the reason.

• San Francisco Chronicle – Kelly Zito: Whale deaths blamed on busy ship traffic, krill ; See also Tom Stienstra: Whale of a show at the Farallones ;
• AP – Jump in whale deaths blamed on krill, ship traffic ; A pickup from the Chron.

- Charlie Petit

A pure gee-whiz piece of Earth science writing this morning leaves the mind spinning. At Science News, Alexandra Witze relates the mystery and hypotheses swirling among the few geologists who think hard about the most remote mountain range in the world. It’s remote because first one must get to the ice desert that is East Antarctica, and then see nothing. The Gamburtsev Mountain are underfoot, thousands of feet down, in the ice.

The story jangles the imagination. And Alex is a wonderful reporter, but I sure want to know more. Such as, how high are the mountains? If global warming is all and more it’s cracked up to be and in a few centuries or millennia the ice leaves and there are still geologists in the world to make measurements, how high might they rise, aided by glacial rebound? Have they been under ice for 300 million years, as she suggests? Or just glaciated part of that time? I did look up a map of Pangaea and see that the old supercontinent’s Antarctic portion was indeed pretty far south, but had it a mountain-burying ice sheet even then?

But one learns plenty. Such as that, cold enough, glacier ice does not so much grind across and erode mountains as it freezes fast – essentially extending the mountains by adding a mineral layer of solid H20. So, one gathers, the plastic flow of glaciers may not extend all the way to the ice-rock interface, but be a gradient of deformation that extends well into the ice column before displaying drastic shear motion? The result is these mountains are not just under ice, they may have been preserved long after most of their cohort from Silurian times have eroded down to a cratonic plain. They are cryonically preserved!

And the only way to get samples, it says here, is to go to a bay on the coast of the great white continent and find ancient riverbeds where, long ago, rivers carried boulders from the range.

I wanna know more. But without this, I’d not known a thing.

This is the second post today on a  pub and writer with which I have had personal engagement. Disclosure: Science News employs me occasionally for a story. One that I’m working on right now, and that is blistering my brain, is based on some hints and clues and papers that Witze had accumulated in her doubtlessly immense ball of string – and that she had not the time to get to.

I am quite sure  that no matter where this Antarctic story had run, or by whom, I’d have reacted about the same way.

Image source Penn State U ;

- Charlie Petit

I didn’t want to be sucked into the lead piece, by Jane Brody, Karen Barrow, and two good photographers, on the lives and lessons of old people in their 100th year or beyond. But sucked I was. Fascinating histories, even if one learns no general lesson. Didja know there are nearly three times as many centenarians in the US now as there were 20 years ago? The package includes individual profiles by Karen Barrow, with audio and  photos on a multi-media page and text-only here, plus a Jane Brody intro and column. The story’s topic is more demographics than health writing – a glimpse of how a fast-growing share of the populace, among its higher-functioning members, gets through each day.

Speaking of getting on in years, we’ve all read of aspen groves in the Rocky Mountains, clones spread across many acres with a interlinked root systems, that can be considered to be among Earth’s largest and oldest single organisms. And also that in the last few years aspens have been in decline. Looks like, from an account by Kirk Johnson,  it was mainly the weather that made things rough for them (scroll down for an item on what a drier climate lately, along with the thirst of regional farms and growing cities, has done to one large Colorado basin reservoir).  Beetles got involved too, but says here that sudden drought set things up.

Other headlines to note:

• Agence France-Presse: Cracking the Mystery of How Sloths Got Long Necks ; Hmmm. Don’t see much wire copy getting such prominent play in this section. This is  good choice – AFP really ought to routinely provide bylines. It seems that sloths didn’t so much evolved more vertebra above their ribs and shoulders as the latter retreated down the vertebral columns.
• Genevive Bjorn – Cases: The Night My Liver Started Running My Life ; San Diego-based science writer on a sudden, baffling ailment; her yarns provides a complete surprise most of the way through. It’s the second sloth story of the day.
• Roni Caryn Rabin: Calling In The Family to Combat Anorexia ; Just guessing, but this may be among the more consequential consumer health stories the section has run.
• Henry Fountain: In Studying Haiti, a New Angle on an Earthquake’s Intensity ; No wonder so many Haitians are in NY and elsewhere in the US, most of them doing well once they had a chance. They got out of a once-lovely but for decades  now a crazy place that, at least, compels its people to be resourceful. This piece reinforces a view of that country as practically non-governed. One seismometer in the whole place, and it wasn’t bolted down right? I suppose you all may also have seen yesterday’s NYTimes piece reporting that only now has the nation’s gov’t given green light and contracts for clearing the rubble! Henry’s piece is about geography, geology, and the concentration of seismic power.

As usual, lots more. Whole Section;

- Charlie Petit

A few enviro and science writer-bloggers have been watching avidly the last week or two as Lake Mead, the big artificial pond on the Colorado River just a short drive from Las Vegas, drops slowly due to prolonged drought and the ever-rising thirst of the US Southwest. It reached on Sunday the lowest point it has had since 1937 as it was filling behind the new Hoover Dam. A few outlets ran the news of this hydrological event,  perhaps omen:

• Arizona Republic – Shuan McKinnon: Lake Mead sinks to a new historic low ; Modest piece. The lede is dramatic enough, and the story has lots of numbers. Main news for most readers likely is that low as it is, it has eight more feet to drop before it would trigger water rationing – a year or more off if the trend holds.
• Las Vegas Review-Journal – Henry Brean: Drought-stricken Lake Mead falls to a level not seen since 1937 ; He catches the irony in his lede – the record fell as rain was also falling. Prognosis bleak, he writes. The previous record for low, post-filling water level was in a previous drought in 1956. In 1999, it says here, the water was 130 feet deeper. And the dam’s operators are rushing to add a “third straw”, lower than the two existing intakes for extracting drinking and irrigation water and for driving turbines. Pretty soon the old ones might be left sitting above the water. Four boat ramps and two marinas have been abandoned already. His story focusses on the bother of accommodating to the lower water. After all, it’s still about 225 feet deep and remains the biggest dammed reservoir in America.
• Time Magazine (blog) Bryan Walsh: Water: Lake Mead Is at Record Low Levels. Is the Southwest Drying Up? ;
• NYTimes – Felicity Barringer (blog) : Lake Mead Hits Record Low Level ; This is her blog – she also got a tiny “National Briefing” item in today’s issue.

People have been watching the lake fall for awhile. Among them has been the Albuquerque Journal‘s science and environmental writer John Fleck. He’s on vacation, so nothing in the Journal, which is just as well as most of its stories are behind a registration wall. But he’s blogging away on it. He’s good. To go chronologically, read them from the bottom of this list up.

• River Beat: Another Place there Used To Be A Lake (Oct 18) ; Down at the marina, the received wisdom is that as it’s so low, it must be that it’s due to rise. Fleck asks the authorities what they think of that.
• The Stilling Well (Oct. 18) ; Where he shows us the meter that measures the water level, way way  inside the dam.
• Drought, American Style (Oct. 17) ; IN which he visits with tourists at the dam, most of whom don’t give much of one about the water level.
• Water in the Desert, Kingman, Ariz. Edition (Oct. 16) ; In which he’s beelining across the desert to watch history at Hoover Dam.
• G. K. Gilbert Got It (Oct. 14): Mr. Gilbert being a man who 140 years ago made a log of another lake’s level.

See Also:

CE Journal (Center for Environmental Journalism) – Tom Yulsman: History made: Lake Mead drops to lowest level in history ; Great map. Also, a fine compilation of info and aggregation of reports. But as a reader of Yulsman’s remarks, it’s hard to sort cleanly the causes for Lake Mead’s low water. It is downstream from Lake Powell, and at the tail end of complex water storage schemes throughout the Colorado R. watershed.

- Charlie Petit

Later this morning – and by the time most of you read this it’ll be post or two up-scroll on this site – I’ll look over the NYTimes Science Times with its lead feature on folks who’ve lived to be 100.

At the San Francisco Chronicle the science writing community has a guy who will probably shoot past 100 like a meteor. That’s science editor Dave Perlman. I’ll let you figure his age out – but he always says he’s a newsman because he saw The Front Page in New York when he was 12. That was during its first run, too, in 1929 by my reckoning. He first went as a copy boy to the Chronicle in 1939, fresh from the Columbia Sch. of Journalism. Then off to war. Stayed on over there as a Paris-based freelance and Herald-Tribune foreign correspondent. Rejoined Chron in 1952, I think. Been covering science merely since 1958 or so. I worked alongside him at the Chron from 1972 to 1998, he taught me the business, hence the recurring urge to post on the man’s work.

What’s up now is that he’s back to cranking out copy. He spent weeks getting past the worst of some cracked ribs, a cranked pelvis, and a sproinged muscle or two in one leg. The doc told him he looked like he fell from a second floor window. It was only a trip off his own feet – in the driveway and onto a low, raised garden border made of brick.

Science writers have something else in San Francisco – a professional near-duty to visit the Exploratorium science showcase. It’s moving from its original location at the Palace of Fine Arts in sight of the Golden Gate to a pier nearer the tourist-rich North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf, not far from downtown. Perlman writes an update on its move, front page this morning. Solid, lively copy. Dave was a pal of its founder, the late Frank Oppenheimer, too. Another Chron reporter, architectural writer John King, has a piece on the rapid changes underway at the new locale and takes a second to salute the “matchless David Perlman.”

Here are some other samplings of Perlman’s post-tumble output:

• Unearthing clues to Presidio’s early settlers ; Last year he visited an  archeology site on the former army post. The leader of the project liked it so much she tipped him to another interesting one, 200+ years old.
• Why scientists think life exists on other planets ; A catch-up on the planet news that he missed while stuck at home. He writes of the diversity and tenacity of life.

- Charlie Petit