Dry Delta, by Ronald de Hommel, http://tinyurl.com/3v5n46h

Thank you New York Times for springing an occasional goody from Environment and Energy Publishing’s constellation of private-client newsletters and posting it on line. Today, from Climate Wire, one finds a solid explainer from Julia Pyper on the paradoxes in hydrology to be found between the overflowing, far tributary headwaters of the Colorado River, and the dry, dendritic bed where it once flowed into the Sea of Cortez and provided conduit for hordes of spawn-obsessed fish.

For awhile I saw all the E&E  service’s flow. Even at the excellent rate we got, it was pricier than I could honestly justify for my employers at the Knight Fellowships at MIT – a non-profit place where fiscal care is vital. Anybody with an expense account that can absorb the rates (not hundreds, but typically thousands of $$ yearly) and needs to be ahead of the crowd on water, energy, climate, and related issues ought to sign up.

This is solid, lively, and sober science-enviro journalism.

- Charlie Petit

With a small sigh of relief that nothing went wrong – odds were good after all; less than 2 percent of the time has a shuttle flight gone dreadfully – one sees that the Space Transportation System gracefully concluded major operations early today. Just before 6 a.m. Atlantis  coasted to a stop on the runway at Kennedy Space Center,  its four crew members unbuckled,  got out,  and started a long day of handshakes while their ride cooled off at the Orbiter Processing Facility. Atlantis’s fate: right there at KSC, on museum duty.

While I’m at it, Endeavour will be at the California Science Center in LA, Discovery the Smithsonian’s facility, for things that don’t fit into the original Air and Space Museum,  just outside DC. The Enterprise prototype, which flew but never left the atmosphere, will rest at the Intrepid museum in New York City.

For a heavily detailed account of the orbiter’s last working hours through the landing, almost command by command, subsystem by subsystem, check out the entry at NASA spaceflight.com , by Chris Bergin and Chris Gebhardt. Their’s is a labor born of deep devotion.

A few general outlets are looking back at the science accumulated by 135 shuttle flights in 30 years. There is some.

• AP – Seth Borenstein: Space shuttle’s science brought payoffs to Earth ; Good call, he starts with the eye-popping radar altimetry imagery of Earth from a flight 11 years ago with a side-scan system on board. Also in it are Sam Ting’s cosmic ray detecting and dark-matter seeking spectrometer, recently put on board, the ferrying of the Hubble to orbit, lots of physiology and other human factors research, etc. He debunks Tang and Teflon myths. And first quote is from physicist and debunker-in-chief Bob Park, heir to the late James Van Allen in decrying the manned space program as a colossal waste of money when automated probes do far more science and do it far cheaper.
• Reuters – Irene Klotz : U.S. space shuttle spawned heart pump, fly by wire ; Her first quote is from an insider with things to justify, who described the program as providing “unbelievable benefit and return on the investment of the American taxpayer.” Hmm. That does look like pure boast. Just maybe however it is subject to interpretation, akin to telling a proud mom and pop, “That is the most remarkable looking baby I’ve seen lately.” It has lots of wiggle room. She cites long lists of spin-offs, such as one that may help Ford sell natural gas powered cars.

Two significant UK news outlets commissioned outside space experts to write the shuttle’s legacy. They are poles apart in tone and message.

• BBC – Valerie Neal (Nat’l Air and Space Museum curator): Viewpoint: The space shuttle- ‘magnificent flying machine’ ; It was the world’s first big space truck, it had abilities unmatched before and probably for a very long time to come, and it “made earth orbit a home and workplace.” It succeeded in all major goal – except that of making access to space cheaper.
• Guardian – Lawrence Krauss (Arizona St. University physicist, author): The space shuttle programme has been a multi-billion-dollar failure / Atlantis and the other space shuttles have been a colossal waste of American resources, time and creative energy. The real science done by Nasa has not involved humans ; His most damning remark – one measure of its failure is that it has been boring. Plus, it did launch and thanks to heroic astronaut work, repair the Hubble. But the Hubble’s sublime achievements would have transpired more cheaply and  better, it says here, with help from nobody in a space suit.

And a few asking what’s next:

• Aviation Week – Michael Griffin : Former NASA Chief: Shuttle Was Oversold ; An authoritative review of what the shuttle could and could not do. Plus, a powerful reflection among many old NASA hands – that the US is going forward with no plans at all for a replacement system able to carry the torch forward, toward establishing humankind as a spacefaring civilization. Next bullet has a different p.o.v.
• NYTimes – Kenneth Chang: Race to the Moon Heats Up for Private Firms ; Tightly focussed on one aspect of entrepreneurial rocketeering and thrill rides. But also a firm reminder that some people are trying to build a space age powered by real muscle: Profit.
• Philadelphia Inquirer – Paul Halpern (op ed by a physicist): U.S. science is going the way of the shuttle ; Yes, he writes, without shuttle more money might go to science. But instead, little money is going to anything in space. He also lambastes the space tourism industry as a route to colonization beyond Earth. He sees the shuttle’s end as corollary to the precarious chance that the Webb space telescope will fly, and to the end of operations by the  earthbound Tevatron particle accelerator.
• Montreal Gazette – Max Harrold: Down-to Earth priorities may schuttle future space plans ; Canada has been a solid partner with NASA all along – and worries there about space programs and science generally are a match for those in the US.

ON the breaking news coverage of this morning’s landing, only two reporters were in mission control for its last shuttle duty. Heds suggest they weren’t always looking at the same things at the same time. Here are their reports:

• AP – Seth Borenstein : Applause, but no tears in Mission Control at end ;
• CNN – Ed Levandera and wires, staff : Tears, congratulations as Atlantis lands, shuttle program ends ;

CLARIFICATION: I’m too obtuse by a mile. The heds may not imply as much but the reporters agree. No tears in Mission Control. There were some elsewhere though.

-Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang post) All science sections in Latin America and Spain cover today the landing of the Atlantis and the end of space shuttle flights. NASA is indeed the most admired US agency outside the US, and one can corroborate it with the extensive reporting and warm farewell in the press to its shuttle program. But also with the concerns and uncertainties about the next steps in space exploration. What NASA does is seen (not paid) as a world enterprise. We feel part of NASA, and we care about its future. That’s why reporters that have written more detailed stories review the history of the shuttles but also discuss what are the options to continue the adventure. We find several approaches to the story. We see pessimistic views based on the probable cuts for NASA 2012 budget, and very optimistic ones (or unrealistic) saying that “a new era has just started” and that we’ll have permanent bases in the Moon and Mars in 2035.

Toda la prensa habla del aterrizaje del Atlantis y el fin de la era de los trasbordadores espaciales. Hay notas y series de notas excelentes. Elegir una es subjetivo e injusto, pero en La Nación (Argentina) encontramos un completísimo reportaje de Víctor Ingrassia “El regreso el Atlantis puso fin a una era espacial” sobre la historia de los trasbordadores espaciales desde el Columbia, el Challenger y su accidente, el Discovery y la puesta en órbita del Hubble… el texto de Victor está lleno de perlas, es de facilísima lectura, contiene galería de imágenes, habla de las dudas por las que actualmente pasa el programa espacial, y termina con una amena lista de curiosidades. Buen trabajo.

En cuanto a “paquete” de información, posiblemente El Mundo (Esp) es quien mejor material ofrece. Su corresponsal en EEUU Carlos Fresneda escribe una primera nota con la información básica del fin del Atlantis, y una segunda e interesantísima nota sobre quienes serán los sustitutos del “Shuttle” (C. Fresneda), que pasan en primera instancia por el Soyuz ruso y a medio plazo ver cómo las compañías privadas se incorporan a la exploración espacial. El Mundo ofrece también una muy buena galería de imágenes sobre los trasbordadores, y recupera dos entrevistas recientes sobre el tema realizadas por Teresa Guerrero al director de vuelos tripulados de la ESA (quien dice que nadie duda que EEUU continuará siendo el líder en el espacio a pesar del fin de sus trasbordadores), y al astronauta español Pedro Duque (que ve como un paso lógico y de madurez tecnológica que una vez establecidos los primeros pasos en tecnología espacial –como en cualquier otra- los desarrollos siguiente se trasladen a la empresa privada). El País da información de agencias, y Público también, pero este último cuenta con un pedazo documento informativo y crítico del blogger La Pizarra de Yuri, con las incertidumbres internas dentro de la NASA. Extenso, pero una joya.

Respecto al futuro… hay un tema que los que informamos de ciencia conocemos pero no aplicamos: Los investigadores nos venden promesas exageradas cuando quieren buscar financiación. La NASA lo ha hecho incluso a sus políticos, ofreciéndoles inicialmente maravillas a costes asumibles del programa Constellation o el James Webb Space Telescope, y explicando luego cuando ya han invertido mucho dinero que se van a retrasar y costará más de lo previsto. El programa Constellation ya fue cancelado (y no sólo por la crisis económica), y el JWST puede seguir la misma suerte si el senado aprueba la propuesta de recortes presupuestarios para la NASA en el 2012. No corren buenos tiempos para la NASA. Y a pesar de ello, continúan vendiéndonos que vamos a colonizar Marte. Nosotros sabemos que no es realista, y que ellos lo hacen para ir presionando hacia su campo, pero participamos del juego. Un buen ejemplo es la nota en El Espectador (Colombia) de Alejandra Vanegas Cabrera “En 2035 habrá casas en la Luna y Marte”. El texto de Alejandra es buenísimo, pero la conclusión a modo de titular asusta. No van los tiros por ahí, por mucho que lo defienda el vocero de la NASA en América Latina. Alejandra muestra optimismo con al primera frase “una nueva era espacial comenzará”. Posiblemente es el optimismo que quieren mostrar los representantes de la NASA. Pero no es la realidad. Y se ve en los recortes presupuestarios y la falta de un plan claro para conseguir estos objetivos. No hace falta más que releer las notas anteriores sobre la incertidumbre en el futuro de la era espacial. Insisto: estamos haciendo una crítica constructiva al tono, pero felicidades a Alejandra por la buena redacción y por ir a buscar en exclusiva al vocero de la NASA en América Latina.

En El Universal (México) Renata Sánchez “¿El futuro es la cápsula Orión?” también habla de futuro pero poniendo en interrogantes la que de momento es una de las apuestas más fuertes de la NASA. En este caso, muy adecuado el uso de signos de interrogación. Todos los planes y propuestas pasan por un aumento de presupuestos que la NASA exige y el congreso niega. Esta es la situación real. Todo es posible técnicamente, pero no económicamente. La NASA propone, y el senado dispone. Los presupuestos para el 2012 resolverán los interrogantes.

- Pere Estupinyà

Even with its demotion, Pluto makes news. It has such a swell back story – discovered almost by accident, way overestimated in size at first, and then cast from the list of real planets and given a considerable recompense: Lord of the Kuiper Belt. That’s an exaggeration, but it does have more seniority than it did.

Now astronomers say that, with the aid of the Hubble Space Telescope, they count a fourth tiny moon in its family, big and recently familiar Charon, fairly hefty Nix and Hydra, and now puny P4, yet to have a name from anybody’s mythology.

NASA made the announcement. No sign of a journal article or other event to pin it on.

Stories:

• Reuters – Deborah Zabaranko: Hubble finds a tiny fourth moon around Pluto ;
• AFP - Hubble telescope spots tiny fourth moon near Pluto;
• AP (very short) :New but tiny moon found circling distant Pluto ;
• BBC – Jonathan Amos: Hubble spies fourth moon at Pluto ;
• MSNBC Cosmic Log – Alan Boyle: Scientists spot Pluto’s fourth moon; Well reported, not just regurgitation. And Boyle, author of a book about Pluto,  gets in a final, polite plea for Pluto’s backclassification to planethood.
• USA Today ScienceFair blog – Dan Vergano: Hubble points to Pluto’s fourth moon ;
• New Scientist – David Shiga: Fourth moon discovered around Pluto;
• Astronomy Now – Emily Baldwin: Hubble discovers Pluto’s fourth moon;
• Sky & Telescope – Raphael Rosen: Hubble Spots New Moon Orbiting Pluto ;
• …. could do more, morning’s up.

Grist for the Mill: NASA Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

This is kind of fun, although I’ve only skimmed through it at warp speed (which is speed so fast it warps objectivity and reason).

The BBC, incessantly under scrutiny by its audience, by many critics, and by the government that once held it in tight rein, recently commissioned an academic team to review its science coverage and to draw up some recommendations.

The leader of that project, Professor Steve Jones, an emeritus in genetics at University College London, found much to admire and not a lot of factual errors in the BBC’s radio and TV handling of science, it appears. But his review also found plenty to criticise – seeing for example too little coordination between radio and TV, and a skewed distribution of coverage compared to where the real action is in science. Too much astronomy, anthropology, geosciences, ecology, evolution, he said. Gad, one thinks, those are all  fun ones. Yep, let’s ramp up coverage on mantle plumes in the Archaean, attosecond imagery of metabolic catalysis, and cross-specific mimicry among lyre birds!

It’s a remarkable report, seriously done. Also remarkable is that the BBC presents it upside down. Usually, at least in my impression of the usual, when one releases  the results of an independent report that one has commissioned, the format is to release a preface that says thank you, then the report, and the inhouse rejoinders and reactions added at the end – as appendices perhaps. But the Beeb staples it so that first one sees the rebuttal (and in many places to be sure, concurrence), followed by the argument. So one gets the BBC Trust’s paraphrase and response to the report, then the BBC’s executive department paraphrase and markedly defensive response, and third the report on which the paraphrases and responses turn.

Here it is: BBC Trust review of impartiality and accuracy of the BBC’s coverage of science ;

As I say, I just skimmed. But among other observations by the outside reviewers are that two thirds of the stories concerned news in which press releases were involved (implying a low level of enterprise), that most of the stories concerned news in which a journal publication was involved but unless they were Nature, Lancet, or the British Medical Journal, they weren’t named, and that it is particularly striking how rarely the US  journal Science gets mention. And how come mental disorder in the UK is a far more common burden on people than is cancer, but cancer gets so much more BBC attention?

It asks why so many reports are “cool and emotionless” whereas “Science is as full of hope and despair as any other endeavour.” Hmmm. Maybe I’m wrong, but seems like scientists tend to think their neighborhood’s public scriveners are TOO heavy on hope and despair, and way short of respect for the logic and statistical coolness of science.

There is also, natch, lengthy discussion of due weight and balance when it comes to science and controversial policy predicaments, as with climate change, or genetically modified food. The section seemed a bit murky as it blurred by, but one passage from the professor’s team regarding reporting of diverse points of view jumps out:

Even so, every scientist, perhaps without realising it, accepts Cromwell’s entreaty that “in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken”; they are, when faced with evidence, and however reluctantly, willing to change their minds. That ruling does not apply to many other fields, from politics to the arts or to sport where immovable and contradictory opinion is widespread and even welcome. For science, in contrast, for most of the time, and in most of the subject, there is a wide acceptance of a body of scrutinised fact, interrupted by rare moments when ideas change. Constantly to call in external voices unwilling to accept that principle is not to engage in debate but in meaningless polemic.

That’s on p. 56, should you want to see its context. Who cannot enjoy invocation of Cromwell and the bowels of Christ?

On page 59 is a diverting  passage on the propriety of a scientist remarking, during a BBC program, that astrology is rubbish. Drum roll! When complaints occurred the scientist was asked to respond to those offended. He did:

“I apologize to the Astrology Community for not making myself clear. I should have said that this new age drivel is undermining the very fabric of our civilization.”

Other than that fabric and undermining are not gracefully married in metaphor, that’s a winner.

Serious thinkers on the nature of news and its coverage should read this a lot more carefully than I just did. I know I shall do so.

- Charlie Petit

We’ve posted here on rumblings that the Hubble Telescopes designated successor, the James Webb on which billions already have been spent, may get the ax as the federal government runs short on money. The project is late, the telescope is smaller than originally planned even if it remains rather large, and the bills keep going up and up.

At NatureNews Eric Hand takes a glance at the final week of operation for the space shuttle system, then dissects the depth of money woes at NASA and the directorate centered in the crosshairs: atrophysics, which at NASA mainly means telescopes at shining things for outside our solar system.

Other subagencies within NASA that are doing better do newsworthy things too – such as solar system research and space monitoring of Earth’s environment. But surely no single mission, not even Mars Rovers or Cassini at Saturn, have generated as much news as the Hubble has. Intense media coverage of it has helped to make NASA, as revealed in an opinion poll of myself, the most admired US agency in the world. Maybe it is the only US agency with an  overwhelmingly impressed fan club outside the US.

- Charlie Petit

Sometimes you don’t get what you’re looking for – but do wind up with something just as good, maybe better. We get lots of tips here at the tracker – love’em, and we use them more times than not. One such came in yesterday from a Florida State University public affairs officer,  Browning Brooks, saying hurrah for our local paper . It  wrote up nicely the U’s new, record-breaking magnet system and the research avenues it opens. So I took a look. Here it is, but have your wallet ready. (And by the way p.affairs people, please think thrice before sending “tips” to press releases. But in this case it’s to a media rendering, by a smallish outlet, so it’s more than welcome)

• Tallahassee Democrat – Monica West: Mag Lab shatters records (word file):
• BBC – Katia Moskvitch : Strongest ‘split magnet’ built in the US ; ; This is weird. This link too seems bollixed – not by a pay wall, but I don’t think it has the typography the web designer intended. Perfectly readable nonetheless, with plenty of information and examples not in the release. So, some reporting occurred.
• Next Big Future: 25 Tesla World-record Split Magnet system ; Largely but not entirely an extract of the press release, and neatly presented.
• Electronics Weekly – Steve Bush: See-through magnet breaks field record ;
• Azom.com – Cameron Chai (Azom.com not only sounds fluid and modern it has a sensible root – it means A to Z Of Materials) : New Split Magnet System Could Revolutionize Research ;

Grist for the Mill: Florida St. U. Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

The NYTimes‘s Kim Severson gives the nation’s weathercasters – most on TV, and increasingly stars of the local news – a bouquet today. This is a story of selected heroes wielding some very fancy radar and other tools and, Severson reports,  no longer reduced to riding clown tricycles in parades.

The story of meteorologists rise in stature and skill – and their growing role in steering their communities’ residents to safety when tornado, hurricane, flood, or other calamity approaches -  provides a fresh angle on a story about the seeming increase in violent or otherwise extreme weather across the nation. One telling quote, after a reference to signs of climate change, is from a National Weather Service man: “The weather is more extreme, the floods are wetter and the droughts are drier.” Thus climate change gets an implicit affirmation of its reality, just as the nation’s scientific academies say it merits.

This is good reading and could well have run instead in the ScienceTimes section. As a card-carrying global warming alarmist – it seems to me the sirens are blowing loud and clear – I’d say yeh to that telling quote I just lifted. But a big  question in the public mind is whether this year’s extremes “are global warming.” That is harder to answer. At a simplistic level, the answer is duh! The  dome of hot weather squatted across the nation’s midsection and southeast would not exist, like this right now, without global warming.  But neither would any other spot of meterology on the planet, given that any disturbance changes the exact sequence of events. Global warming has interrupted and rejiggered the parade. It’s not as though some events are those that would have happened without it, and a few extras occur separately as global warming signatures. The deeper question is whether this run of sweltering days has already become more statistically likely due to a change in climate baseline. Is the parade’s mix of mounted equestrian units, floats, and bands different in character, or just different in exact time and order passing the grandstand?

At OurAmazingPlanet staff writer Brett Israel puts the American heat wave of summer 2011 in context. It’s not the worst we’ve had, and nowhere near the worst ever worldwide – which was in Australia 90 years ago. With this story comes, by Joe Rao, a companion piece with the headline question, When Will the Horrible Heat Wave End?

Three very different stories, complementary, and more useful when all are read at one sitting.

- Charlie Petit

One can imagine how it is done while reading the section’s lead story by Lizette Alvarez about 61-year-old Diana Nyad’s incipient plunge into the gulf in Cuba with Key West 103 miles away her goal. Just keep singing pop songs again and again to the rhythm of the swim, watch the white guide streamer, and expect companions to thwart the sharks. For hours. And hours. It might be the best story in the section. It is labeled as a fitness and nutrition health story. It sure hasn’t much science to it. It runs right under the section flag: Science Times. A professor of anesthesiology and exercise research does have something to say. But I with my default expectation to read about evidence and hypotheses and experimental results, believe it belongs relegated to the front page, A1.

Speaking of the front page, there’s a good weather man story up there that could have been swapped with the one about swimming long distances. I’m planning a separate post on the story on media (TV mainly) meteorology.

The whole section this week is largely on health, behavior, sickness, and life sciences. Much of it excellent. My astronomy appetite, needless to say, goes unslaked.

    In a relative rarity John Tierney really pushed my satisfaction button. See this photo to the right?  That’s the 40-foot concrete slide, built back in the early 50s at latest as Mrs. Tracker used to zip down it as a wee one, in Codornices Park, Berkeley. It’s safer than then – the raised bulwark in its lowest and fastest bend was put in when she was still a kid. She says too many people flew off and broke bones and suffered other injury. But I’ve had patches of skin ripped off while taking grandkids down it to break them in to doing it solo. There have been violent collisions when kids climbing the stone terraces instead of the steps decide to cross the slide without looking both ways. Or to just get in the way for the fun of it. No way is this gravitational thrill ride particularly safe. It is merely usually injury free, cross your fingers, even with the raised rim section. Kids rip down it, usually sitting on large pieces of waxed cardboard for extra velocity. It is almost but not quite astonishing, this being anarchic Berkeley, that no worried group has shut it down. It has to be for many youngsters a first encounter with well-founded physical terror and the satisfaction of overcoming it.

Oh yeh, Tierney’s piece. He writes of a steel pipe New York jungle gym that has similarly ancient roots, yet survives. It catalyzes the surmise that today’s new, cushioned playgrounds are so riskless as to rob children of important character lessons. Tierney uses the phrase “may stunt emotional development.” That stretches it.  But the point is sound enough for serious conversation.

Other Headlines to Note:

• Gina Kolata: Add Patience to a Leap of Faith To Discover Cancer Signatures ; A news analysis that ponders the failure so far, in this day of genome-wide studies and vast libraries of correlated markers, for the results to make much dent in cancer statistics. It leaves one thinking only that if there’s a way to conquer it,  such systematic study is the best way to find it. The use of “Patience” in the hed is smart.
• Kenneth Chang: First-Place Sweep by American girls at First Google Science Fair ; This is a few days after the news, covered by several outlets. Here we learn that plenty of boys were in the running. It’s not as though a whole generation XY has punted on science. But good for the young ladies. Tidy, sharp  vignettes on what made them winners.
• Katherine Bouton: The Joy of a Sun Bath, a Snuggle, a Bite of Pâté  ; Book review, light and pop, but satisfying. It’s about animals and their pleasures. Illus top right provides a taste.

As usual, lots more. Whole Section.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) The Spanish Research Center for Energy, Environment and Technology (CIEMAT) has just published a study arguing that air conditioning apparatus might increase by one or two degrees the temperature of the streets in big cities. More research and reporting is needed to verify this data, but the topic and the angle of the story is very original.

Also Today -  changes in El Universal (Mex) website, plus diverse science news on topics  ranging from the genetics taming hot chiles, a way developed to detect disease in retinas of premature babies, and a project to dig up the seabed near the Yucatan 65 million years ago left scarred by the fall of the huge meteorite that reset the Earth’s climate and caused the extinction of many species.

In Spain, the scientific public news service SINC has also significant changes in its website. We took the opportunity to track its stories. It has many topics, including a long story from an ESA’s research center in Holland, rice than can grow with much less water, finer quantum measurements, and studies showing that severe industrial accidents in Spain are more common around the lunch hours.

Antes de todo, un rápido disclaimer, pues quien escribe estas líneas a veces también redacta otras para el servicio de noticias científicas SINC, cuya nueva web y contenidos vamos a anunciar y valorar hoy. Mi alma científica promete objetividad.

SINC es un servicio de noticias científicas que ofrece noticias, reportajes, entrevistas y producción audiovisual de manera gratuita a todos los periodistas y medios de comunicación que deseen utilizar sus contenidos. Es una agencia pública creada por la Fundación Española de Ciencia y Tecnología, que prioriza investigaciones y avances tecnológicos desarrollados en España, pero que incluye una amplia proporción de informaciones de ámbito mundial. De hecho cuenta con corresponsales firmando notas desde diversos puntos del planeta. Es importante destacar que no es un simple agregador de notas de prensa de universidades y centros de investigación. Todos los contenidos son redactados por los periodistas de su plantilla o colaboradores.

Lo damos a conocer hoy en el Tracker por el nuevo y mucho más moderno diseño de su web, cuya portada nos permite distinguir una diversidad de temáticas y enfoques impresionante. Objetivamente: muy variada oferta.

Veamos por ejemplo (y sólo de la portada de hoy): un muy buen reportaje desde Holanda de Patricia Luna acompañando a cinco españoles que trabajan en un centro de investigación de la Agencia Espacial Europea (ESA), y mostrando personalidades, investigaciones, vida cotidiana, y vocación científica. En el ámbito más social un estudio de la Univ. de Zaragoza constatando que los profesores de educación secundaria están más desgatados emocionalmente en la actualidad que hace un par de décadas. Desde Burgos se establece que los accidentes laborales son más graves durante las horas del almuerzo, y un estudio muestra que las empresas españolas redujeron en un 17% su inversión en protección del medioambiente. Yendo a los contenidos más científicos, en  Extremadura plantean un nuevo cultivo de arroz que no requerirá inundar las tierras con agua, investigadores de París diseñan una nueva manera de medir el estado cuántico de un átomo con la menor perturbación posible, desde un telescopio chileno se descubre por primera vez agua oxigenada en el Espacio, y en Tarragona se quejan de que el 80% de los datos existentes sobre el pasado del clima no están todavía digitalizados, y eso limita las investigaciones que se pueden realizar. Si nos fijamos en la nota “Los babuinos con mayor estatus social sufren más estrés” (estudio publicado en Science que apareció la semana pasada en numeros medios de comunicación), vemos que el texto cuenta con declaraciones exclusivas para SINC de la autora principal del trabajo. En definitiva; muy buena labor la que está realizando el equipo de SINC, muy valioso recurso para los periodistas científicos que todavía no lo conocían, y quien sabe; un posible espacio para ofrecer notas desde América Latina.

Hagámonos eco también de la ligera renovación de aspecto de la web de El Universal (México), que desde ahora presenta tres noticias en el encabezado con atractivas fotos que al clicar se giran y nos ofrecen ir a la nota o encontrar información relacionada. Bonito, pero no estamos seguros si supone un clic extra innecesario o no. Lo que sí constatamos es también la presencia de muy buenas y diversas notas, con considerable atención a los trabajos realizados por investigadores mexicanos. Por ejemplo, Guillermo Cárdenas “Impacto profundo en Chicxulub” redacta una amena historia sobre el proyecto de perforar la parte marina del cráter causado por el famoso meteorito que 65 millones de años atrás cayó en Yucatán desestabilizando el clima terrestre y acelerando la extinción de los dinosaurios. Guillermo también nos habla las investigaciones del Cinvestav para crear bioetanol a partir de residuos agrícolas (algo que centenares de grupos están intentando y sería bueno explicar cual es la aproximación original del que estamos hablando), y del banco de datos genéticos del chile creado por esta misma agencia de investigación mexicana. En el caso concreto de esta información, se complementa con una interesante entrevista electrónica a uno de los investigadores responsables. Renata Sánchez “Las anémonas tienen personalidad” nos presenta una curiosa y veraniega nota explicando que diferentes anémonas tienen reacciones individuales ante cierto estímulo, y lo mantienen aunque cambien algunas condiciones del medio. También vemos un estudio de la UNAM que permite detectar enfermedades a partir de análisis de la retina de bebés prematuros, o notas de agencias sobre terapias para el Parkinson, y estudios mostrando que los veteranos de guerra sufren más Alzheimer.

Pero nos despedimos con una nota curiosa y original publicada en El País sobre el posible calentamiento de las ciudades debido a los aparatos de aire acondicionado. Sergio Fanjul en “El aire acondicionado calienta las calles” explica que según un estudio del Ciemat español, como los aparatos que extraen calor del interior de los edificios, pueden llegar a calentar el exterior en 1.5 o 2 grados científicos. La buena nota en seguida pasa a hablar de moderación, consumo energético y alternativas. Nos hubiera gustado un poco más de profundidad en la metodología y fiabilidad del estudio, pues el tema es del todo original.

- Pere Estupinyà

Thanks to an email from Robin Marks of the Exploratorium in SF, distributed among board members of the Northern California Science Writers Ass’n,where I am more of a lurker than participant anymore, I just read a sterling little, critical analysis by one of this generation’s more prolific and smooth science writers. Its subject is a piece by one of this and the last century’s all-time greats at long form science and pretty much any other kind of writing.

• Nieman Storyboard – Carl Zimmer (July 7): “Why’s this so good?” No. 2: McPhee takes on the Mississippi ;

A lot of us are pretty much in thrall and slackjawed amazement at John McPhee’s range and output and deeply layered, Gregorian-chant disciplined, insistent and percussive reporting. So it’s deliciously understandable that when Zimmer finds a relative void in a long piece of several years ago, he concludes that McPhee could only have done it by design, on purpose, a deliberately pulled punch, in order to accentuate a theme in which “people in the story blur into a wall of humanity massed against the river.”

Enjoy.

The homepage of the Nieman storyboard delivers a lot other journalism-style writers on others in the trade, on themselves, or excerpted to serve general illumination.

- Charlie Petit

I guess this makes sense, but who’d a thunk it? Turns out a few people did, years back, imagine that a tsunami racing along at 500 mph, even if in mid-ocean its crest is only an inch or so higher  than the troughs many miles ahead and behind the wave, might deliver a hammer blow to the atmosphere. Enough, the Honolulu Star Advertiser‘s Jim Borg reports, to nearly spall a big chunk of atmosphere right off and to cause the heaving air up here to glow very faintly.

And now some instruments in Hawaii caught the full phenomenon unfolding.

The story includes the still photo of the an image of the wavelike patterns of the glow in the upper atmosphere. They deliniate the broad, nearly flat waves’ pattern in deep waters around the island of Maui and, specifically, the Haleakala Crater where scientists used instruments at a famed Air Force observing station to record them. Borg’s piece links to a video clip too.

Did anybody else have this story? I cannot find evidence they did. The news is no secret – the formal report is, it says here, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Borg’s piece includes a brief video clip of the data, showing the dimly glowing bands moving through the islands shortly after the March 11 quake in Japan.

Again, did anybody else have this story? It’s rather dramatic. The news seems potent enough to inspire creation of a satellite observing system optimized to see this effect.

*UPDATE: ANSWER to the Question is YES.  – Thank you reader Andrea Thompson, see comments.  At Science News Alex Witze, a woman with a reputation for getting ahead of the game, had it.  Hers ran June 16th with the same illus as above, but linked to no video. It took me several stabs at Google’s archive search to turn it up – Andrea saying only that her own Our Amazing Planet site, where she is managing editor (it is associated, in theTechMediaNetwork stable, with Space.com and LiveScience among others), picked it up from SN. Witze’s piece has a source explaining well the potential for using this discovery in the design of eventual space-based detectors and warning systems. I dunno whether Borg knew of Witze’s account, but writing it for his own Hawaiian Islands audience was a good move in any case – with more detail on the research and on the local crew that got the job done.

- Charlie Petit