The Associated Press, presumably seeing an opening due to public interest in the shuttle on its last flight, under Louise Watt‘s byline filed a story from Beijing this week. It is on China’s far smaller, but growing and stable-funded, space exploration program. The decent-sized  the piece got run by client outlets in different lengths, often with no signer.

But that’s just the versions that got credited primarily as AP products. Aside from pure rip-off aggregators, a number of other outlets, of varying prominence, ran the news but often with only oblique credit to AP (how many paid AP anything for the raw material, I don’t know. Of course, one must concede, ksjtracker pays news outlets nothing for their info that we summarize in posts while linking directly to the their full stories.)

Other versions with roots in AP’s copy:

• China Digital Times: China’s Space Program Eyes the Moon, Mars, Venus … and Earth ; A mashup (with credit) of AP and the Financial Times. China Digital Times’s founder and editor is a UC Berkeley information and journalism professor, Xiao Qiang. Read his history at that link. Rather distinctive and distinguished. I did not know any of that till just now.
• Red Orbit – China Making New Strides in Space Exploration; This one’s credits are quite opaque. The end-story tagline says only “Staff and wire reports.” The lede very closely parallels the one at AP.
• Wired (UK) Mark Brown: China’s space programme flourishes while the Unites States flounders ; A little essay, really. Its tip to the AP is a one word, unbold link in the next to last graf.
• TG Daily – Lydia Leavitt : China want (cq)  to explore the Moon, Venus and Mars ; Lightly rewritten, tag line credit to AP. I do not know what TG Daily is. The site lacks an ‘about us’ link anywhere in plain view.  Looks like a techindustry-oriented, hive user-generated wiki thing. Again, is this fair use, did AP get a nickel, what…???

Independent and Related Stories:

• Forbes – Ray Kwong : US Boldly Goes No More as China’s Space Program Takes Off ; Hold it. Most reports of this ilk at least say they are talking about the human exploration programs of various countries. This reports says the sapce program, period, is now effectively shutting down. One Word: Cassini. Another word: Mars Curiosity rover. Lots more too.
• Fast Company – Greg Lindsay : The End Of The Shuttle Program Could Mean A Hotel On The Moon, Space Mines, And A Lot Of Pollution ; Caution! There may be something wrong with this site. Not spammy, but the thing keeps jumping to the stories next section, unbidden by the reader or, at least, it does that on my Firefox. So I can’t judge its merit.
• Deutsche Welle- Shivani Mathur: End of space shuttle program paves the way for China and India ;
• Cosmos (Australia) Steven M. Shaker: Robot race to the Moon ;

And another kind of post-shuttle vision, more bracing:

• Miami Herald – Douglas Hanks: New space race: Orbital outsourcing to fill shuttle void ; Runs down some of the companies trying to build rockets which, although not carrying any people for at least a few years, could deliver goods to the station and elsewhere out there.

- Charlie Petit

An unpleasant and awkward event  that was a big buzz – but on which no one seems to have filed at the time – during the World Conference of Science Journalists in Doha, Qatar, is getting play at an important journal.

• AAAS-ScienceMag ScienceInsider – Eli Kintisch: At Science Journalism Confab, Arab-Israeli Tensions Caused Disruptions ; An American reporter, Anna Wexler, who also has an Israeli passport was removed from a panel  by meeting overseers after an Egyptian reporter refused to share the speaker’s table with her, it says here. Then when she got put on a panel with no Arab speakers, two Jordanian reporters boycotted the meeting. At a higher diplomatic  level of nonsense, Israel told an Palestinian professor (in occupied territories?) he couldn’t go to the meeting, asserting a tie to Hamas.

People have snubbed and shunned one another since there were people for political and sectarian reasons, so this cannot be a surprise. It’s amazing the meeting came off pretty well at all, and I assume it is so because most reports say it did. But still. Predictable as it may be, almost inevitable given it’s odd resonance with how South Africans during apartheid days were treated internationally( just as one recent parallel) it is a bummer nonetheless. The question has to be asked – what did she do, this reporter who got shuttled around like a pariah? How did her absence improve a the panel’s impact? Ditto for Israel’s closing of the border to the Arab professor’s exit. You know the answer. Zilch. This is regrettable even though it is likely that some of the Arab reporters who shunned the one with double citizenship did so because they feared professional hot water otherwise (one said she was quite proud of her decision). . The  honorable Deb Blum, Pulitzer winner and  tiger journalist, was chief among organizers who who got out the magic marker and shuffled the panels to satisfy politics, so it says. She says it pissed her off to do so, too. Wotta mess.

Meanwhile, there are many other bits from the meeting that merit attention. Here are some.

•   SciDev.net meeting blog. This has been touted before. This essential news service, a non-profit devoted to illuminating the connection between good science and a nation’s ability to develop and prosper, had a big corps there. None of the items, far as I can tell, got into what Kintisch’s story does. But they do review a wide range of other events and issues.
• Columbia Journalism Review, The Observatory – Curtis Brainard, Cristine Russell ; Arab Spring to Arab Summer; Upbeat, but sober reflection on the meeting’s size, sessions, and significance. It does invert the usual rule for writing about ranges, saying its 700 participants were from all over, “Nepal to Norway.” That’s funny. But I can’t help thinking this is one way to avoid even implying Israel might have had a citizen taking part (Agreed – that’s probably not the reason to phrase it that way). It has an odd correction/clarification at the end. First, it says rightly that this is not, as an earlier version declared, the first WCSJ in the developing world. Brazil has hosted one (although it is fast leaving ‘developing’ behind). Then it adds that several of its recent meetings were not in Western countries. One: Hungary. Hmmm. It’s been in NATO for a dozen years, it’s place in European history is rather distinctive. And is Australia a ‘Western” country? Just wondering if, with no iron curtain,  the term retains much meaning.
• CJR The Observatory – James Fahn: Growing Science in the Desert; Middle Eastern science is getting serious investment. But will the seed money take root?
• Washington Post – Bran Vastag: Qatari sheik takes endangered bird species under his wing ; Good reporters in far-off places ought to look for news outside their immediate assignment. Such bonuses, if nothing else, look great on the resume, impress editors, and often are useful. This is probably all three. Plus, while temps exceeding 110F kept most people in cars, hotels, and restaurants, Vastag found himself in a rich man’s zoological garden 20 miles outside Doha and presumably in the blistering sun to report on a program for breeding rare creatures. He also reports that messiness of this operation’s origins – in buying animals from  traders and markets that violated bans on trade in endangered species – and its recent embrace of noble work. Hmmm – maybe this was a meet-and-greet field trip organized by WCSJ itself? Maybe Brian wasn’t even there for WCSJ? Can’t tell from here. I’ll ask Vastag and get back to you. ANSWER: Yes, there for WCSJ. No, had heard of this place years ago and finally got to visit. Surprise: A Washington Post reporter, and the only way he could get there was by travel grant from NASW and the conference. I thought those were reserved for reporters from little outlets with no travel budgets. Now just about nobody has much travel budget.
• *UPDATE – and finally, the topper of all toppers: Improbable Research – Marc Abrahams: A peculiar science awards dinner in Doha ...  To think, with a little effort I too could have been at that affair. What a missed chance.

- Charlie Petit

I just spend a few moments looking around the web for the writings of Keith Schneider, a former national correspondent for the New York Times and still a regular freelance contributor. A crusading journalist, his crusade is in large part, I infer from recent stuff he’s written, to tell the public about consequences of how we get natural resources and energy for factories and home, cars and airplanes. He seems to be a good illustration of the scramble among serious and purpose-driven investigative journalists to find outlets for their work. Yes, there still is the occasional newspaper job, and a lot more at genuine (old school)  magazines and their equivalents on line. But they are fewer. But other avenues are in play.

What set me off was to receive an email from a  magazine, carrying a link:

• OnEarth – Keith Schneider: Across America, the Fossil Fuel Industry Digs In for a Massive Expansion.

It appears fairly and extensively researched and is well-written. The topic is a river town in Ohio and its pursuit of plant to convert coal into aviation fuel and diesel. That is not the sort of thing that reduces greenhouse gases.  It’s the sort of reporting I admire.  But OnEarth is published by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a serious minded outfit but nonetheless an activist organization with clear aims to strengthen public policy protections for the natural environment. And several of the story’s bold-faced links are to pertinent NRDC activities and people. So this is, overtly, not a disinterested story. Is it journalism without need of qualification?  I’d say no, but with little vehemence. It is hard to wag a finger at this piece.

One finds that Schneider is moving his stuff where he can. Earlier this year, one finds an extensive piece, datelined Inner Mongolia, at The Energy Collective site on water scarcity in China. The web page links to more of his pieces for this agency.

Plus, he is senior editor at another news-with-a-purpose site called Circle of Blue. On line there is yet another heavily reported enviro story’s Schneider co-wrote, Tar Sands Oil Production, An Industrial Bonanza, Poses Major Water Use Challenges. Circle of Blue is a new one on me, but a look at its staff page shows another familiar names – Peter Gleick, an important authority on water use, and also a politically active player in setting pertinent policy.

So, it looks like Schneider – whom I don’t recall ever meeting but don’t trust my recall, ever – has composed himself a busy and satisfying reporting career, complete with ability to send dispatches from remote places. AGain, is this  journalism of the old school, non-partisan sort? I don’t think so but am ambivalent. More important, I don’t know that it matters in these shape- and career-shifting times. One can say that the stories reflect talent and devotion, and that this is just one example of the way by which able people are making their way in the new and nascent press.  Whatever that is.

- Charlie Petit

Robots are cool in the movies – Transformers both good and evil, those legions of identical servants and one that Will Smith had to try to arrest in I Robot, and Wall-E beeping across a post-apocalyptic Earth. Smarties, all of them. Then there are non-movie robots: Strong, obedient, almost untiring. But thick as turnips, less imaginative than ants. John Markoff may break no big news here – which is that artificial intelligence is not yet intelligent enough to trust with the laundry -  but he visits a lot of people in the know and who are trying hard to figure out how to make robots that can figure things out too. We learn that a Cal team calls its laundry folding (very slow) robot Brett, for Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks. When they invent a robot brain that can read such a name tag and get the giggles, that’ll be something won’t it? The uber-story is not so much about the failings of human-crafted robots, but the incredible job that evolution has done on us and other living things. Plus, one thinks that a whole other story is hinted in a lone, unexplored sentence that notes, someday, robots may be able to mimic the non-rote things that humans do on the assembly line, adding “(albeit with fewer workers)”. Ones does wonder how an economy would work if manufacturing of mass consumer goods etc. were essentially all automated, where plenty of money flowed, but people’s jobs were mostly cerebral, or white-collar, or occupied by people waiting on one another. There’d be capacity for  just as much commerce and as many goods and services, but how would the wealth get meted out satisfactorily?

Other headlines to note:

• Andrew Pollack – In Midwest, Flutters May Be Far Fewer ; Why fewer butterflies? You mean it’s not just that Mexico’s montane forest redoubts are getting cut down?  It’s in good part the bleepin’ Roundup, © , and attendant weed-erasure in US cropland? Crap, where’s a cop, meaning the EPA, when you need one? I happened this morning to have seen on EurekAlert a Press Release on a topic that complements this yarn. Somebody’s gotta make those farmers set aside slivers of land to plant in natives, including milkweed. That’s right, big oppressive federal and local gov’t gotta start jackbooting its way around our American family (and corporate) farms, enforcing rules. Says me.
• Most unexpected story by category – Thomas Lin: Scientists Turn to Crowds on the Web to Finance Their Projects. The cloud has money. Ask it. Some researchers are going public rather than waiting on NIH, NSF, or other grant-providing institutions. This reminds me of environmental reporter Stephen Leahy who, a little tired of pinning assignments on the ability to get front money from editors, turned to what he calls Community Supported Journalism. Whether this works effectively may be like asking whether one can teach elephants to dance. The answer is yes, but not well.
• Theresa Brown, RN: When Nurses Make Mistakes ; A writer- nurse tells a gripping and sad tale, and relates a trying episode. This should be read in conjunction with Roni Caryn Rabin‘s little item on hospital reliability in the month of July.
  

As usual, lots more. Whole Section.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Nature has just published the potato genome sequence; a tool that can help researchers to get more nutritious and resistant varieties. The potato genome has been sequenced by an international consortium with scientists from 14 different countries, including Chile, Perú, Argentina and Brazil. Again; lots of coverage in South America, but the local newspapers make no reference to its scientists and research centers. Only the Chileans Mercurio and La Tercera are doing a good job acknowledging the contribution of Chilean scientists. It’s kind of frustrating. One wonders if the local institutions are doing enough outreach to promote the dissemination of their science. 

(*) Update 7/15: El Comercio in Perú and Clarín in Argentina have published good stories about the genome of the potato that includes their local researchers.

The other story that is omnipresent in all the Spanish and Latin American press is the first ever transplant of two legs, that has been achieved in Valencia by a well known Spanish surgeon. The patient is a young man with injuries so high on the legs that he can not use prosthesis. The surgeon explains that it will take at least one year to see if the nerves and muscles innervate properly and the patient is able to walk again with the two legs of a donor. The contents of the stories we’ve read are very similar, with the exception of El Mundo, that has designed great graphics to explain the process of such a complex transplant.  

La revista Nature publicó ayer la secuencia del genoma de la patata. Es un avance importante que ayudará a los científicos a diseñar especies con mejores propiedades alimenticias y que crezcan en condiciones medioambientales menos favorables. La importancia que la patata tiene en la dieta de gran parte de la población mundial es enorme. El genoma de la patata ha sido secuenciado por un consorcio internacional de diez países, entre los que se encuentran Chile, Perú, Argentina y Brasil. En los 4 países hay científicos aportando a esta investigación, pero revisando los principales medios escritos de estos países, de momento sólo Chile resalta la labor de sus investigadores. Notas genéricas en el resto (actualizaremos si aparece algo nuevo), con sólo los nombres de los líderes del estudio. Genera un punto de frustración. Intuimos que en este caso en que los científicos latinoamericanos no son los principales autores y la nota de prensa de nature no los refleja, la responsabilidad mayor pasa por los directores de comunicación de los centros participantes que quizás no han hecho difusión suficiente. Dan ganas de investigar más. Pero destaquemos lo bueno; la nota en Chile de El Mercurio donde Jose Manuel Olivares explica que “Científicos chilenos trabajaron cinco años para descifrar el genoma de la papa”, o en La Tercera de Patricio Lazcano entrevistando a un chileno que participó en el estudio internacional. Tampoco es que sean grandes historias. Y para ser francos, el anuncio oficial de la publicación del genoma de la patata tampoco da tanto juego. Pero sí es una buena excusa para acercar los científicos locales a la población. En otro países, por ejemplo  O’Globo (Brasil) no hace ninguna referencia. En periódicos Peruanos y Argentinos, misterioso silencio. Breves notas en medios como El Universal (Renata Sánchez), o El Comercio (Ecuador), con información del servicio de noticias ANSA que sí prepara una nota haciendo referencia explícita a la investigación latinoamericana.

(*) Actualización viernes 7/15: Clarín (Argentina) – Valeria Román “Decodifican el genoma de la papa” y El Comercio (Perú) – Bruno Ortiz “El Perú está en la escena mundial de la ciencia” presentan muy buenas notas sobre el genoma de la papa con entrevistas a científicos locales que han participado en las investigaciones. Perfecto!

La otra noticia que ha aparecido en prácticamente todas las secciones de ciencia o salud de los medios españoles y latinoamericanos es el primer trasplante de dos piernas a un mismo paciente que se ha realizado en el hospital español Santa Fe de Valencia. El paciente es una persona joven (entre 20 y 30años) con una lesión a una altura de la pierna que no le permitía la adaptación de prótesis. Tardará todavía un año como mínimo en ver si nervios y músculos consiguen enervarse de manera que el chico vuelva a caminar con las piernas de un donante. El cirujano no hizo inicialmente declaraciones, y agencias de noticias como AFP o EFE…) buscaron opiniones de expertos como el presidente de la sociedad de trasplantes. La noticia es interesante, sin duda un hito de la medicina, pero en realidad tampoco da tanto juego. Por eso apareció en todas las secciones pero con información más o menos idéntica. Salvo en El Mundo, que añadió una magnífica infografía en la que explicaba cómo se llevó a cabo la operación. Curiosamente, La Nación (Costa Rica) también diseñó una muy buena infografía en la nota de Irene Rodríguez. Pedro Cavadas ya ha aparecido en nota de prensa, diciendo que el paciente está bien y contento “como Dios”, y dando más detalles de la compleja operación. Es un cirujano que ya ha realizado importantes logros como transplante de cara, y que está muy vinculado con la ayuda a África. Sin duda es un personaje heterodoxo, y los medios le empiezan a ensalzar. Ejemplos: ABC- Isaac Blasco “Magia en las manos”. El Mundo – Rafael Matesanz “Un nuevo hito en la Medicina mundial” lo califica de irrepetible (no es periodista sino presidente de as. trnsplantes). O La voz de Galicia “Un médico estrella nada convencional”. Valoración muy diferente a la recibida por los genetistas que colaboraron en la secuenciación del genoma de la patata.

- Pere Estupìnyà

“Dogged reporter” is a phrase any journalist likes to see applied to his or her self. It sure does to Eugenie Samuel Reich. I mean, talk about sticking to a trail come hell, high water, or bureaucratic self-protection, and you should remember this example.

Way back in 2006 when this site was taking baby steps, I posted on a story of hers at the Boston Globe which, amazingly, still has its link to her piece live if, however, also now behind an archival pay wall. I was such a newbie at blogging, I hot-linked the illus (meaning the source server got a spike in traffic, which small sites really don’t like, sometimes). But I just now, after the Globe’s system has been holding that pic for us all these years, replaced it with a copy on the ksjtracker data base.

Her story was about a whistle-blower at Oak Ridge Nat’l Lab who complained that a prominent research team there had been sloppy at best and perhaps knowingly fabricated published data. In NatureNews last week she let another shoe drop with a long account of the fate of her Freedom of Information Act request to see the government’s report on its inquiry. The answer was no. So she sued, a brassy move for a freelancer (she did eventually get lawyer pro bono help). In defending its action, the DOE had to reveal how the report was handled. Or better stated, mishandled. It is gone. Nobody kept a copy. Not only that, but back when it was circulated the officers who were supposed to read it, didn’t and they didn’t even file it. So she wrote up a story that alludes to the possibility that fraud did occur, but it is hard to tell because the DOE’s rules for documenting such investigations – and preserving the paper trail, which does seem basic – appear to be lax. Ditto for paying attention to the report in the first place. And this includes by comparison to what other US agencies do with such cases.

I confess to not have much visceral interest in scientific fraud. I’m a cheerleader at heart – just give me a discovery, some gob-smacked scientists only too happy to say how they made it, and the satisfaction of explaining it reasonably well in plain English, and my career goals oonch along. But one must salute the reporters on this or any beat who, smelling something that may be foul, roll up their sleeves. Reich didn’t get the story she went after. But she got a serious, different one that may have more revelation to it than if she’d been able to learn for sure whether the Oak Ridge boys merely took a few sloppy shortcuts but got the basic science right, or did something worse.

She has not given up getting the original report on the accusation of scientific misconduct. Copies do, presumably, exist. But they are not neatly on file at an appropriate office as they ought to be.

- Charlie Petit

This won’t get much clapping or laughing: Now among us is a bullet- and cephalosporin-scoffing, so-called H041variant of gonorrhea, a disease that I and most of us heard described years ago  in half-amused tones as the clap. In the day a hefty syringe of penicillin did the trick. The new news, long expected, is not welcome at all except perhaps a little bit from those who believe in evolution – micro and macro alike – and who have been futilely trying to get the world’s doctors and pharmacists to stop distributing antibiotics with abandon. This’ll show us.

It’s breaking news for now, from a meeting in Canada. Deeper pieces will follow. One fears this will be a regular topic of news items  for a long time.

A Few Initial News Reports:

• AFP – Loic Venance:  First drug-resistant gonorrhea strain emerges ; From meeting in Quebec City, Canada, of the Int’l Soc’y for Sexually Transmitted Disease Research.
• Montreal Gazette – Charlie Fidelman: Mutant strain of gonorrhea discovered in Japan / Has developed into ‘superbug’; doesn’t respond to known treatments ;  Says here east Asia including Japan and Korea are often the radiation point for new strains of the disease. Really? That merits further reporting to explain why.
• Reuters – Kate Kelland: Scientists find first superbug strain of gonorrhea ;
• BBC – Gonorrheoea strain found to be “resistant to antibiotics’ ; The news aside, look at that hed. Should not copy editors have asked themselves what added value those quote marks deliver? (Answer: zero).
• Slate – Stephen Spencer David: Scientists Discover Gonorrhea “Superbug” ;
• Canadian Press – Scientists discover first gonorrhea strain resistant to all antibiotics ;
• MSNBC- Brian Alexander: Bad bug: Gonorrhea strain resists all antibiotics / Long-feared development has occurred; only question is whether it will spread.
• The Atlantic Wire – Rebecca Greenfield: Study: Superbug Gonorrhea Strain Has No Known Cure .  Mostly a rewrite of acknowledged media reports  and mostly Reuters – and source of the public health  illus top right.
• Los Angeles Times (Booster Shots Blog) Thomas H. Maugh II: New ‘superbug’ strain of gonorrhea resistant to all available antibiotics; researchers fear global outbreak ; Clever illus: strewn, opened from the pack but unused condoms.
• Washington Post (blog Post) Elizabeth Flock: Gonorrhea strain resistant to antibiotics discovered ;

Grist for the Mill: Laval University (Quebec City conference host)  Press Release via EurekAlert! ; CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report ;

- Charlie Petit

Image courtesy Mark A. Garlick / space-art.co.uk (live link, bottom of post). No unauthorized usage.

NUMBER ONE: Writing a feature story on a topic that has already made a big splash – even if it is a splash of hydrocarbons from dark lakes on a frigid world where asphalt is a dominant mineral – is a challenge. One must make the story come alive, and deepen, even for the readers who kept up with the relevant daily news headlines.

We’ve all read about and some of us have written about Saturn’s moon Titan, the landing there of the European probe Huygens parachuting down from NASA’s Cassini probe, and Cassini’s relentless mapping of its murky atmosphere and the terrain beneath it. In New Scientist one of its US freelancing regulars, Jeff Hecht – after a slightly, and it pains me to say this re an old pro, leaden lede – finds new sights and insights to keep his readers fascinated and to tell them new things.

My favorite is the short aside on a pharmacology industry organic chemist who volunteers time analyzing Cassini’s data from Titan fly-bys (or are those flies by?). He got a new kind of exo-terrain out there officially recognized by NASA’s space PhDs, and recognized a previously unappreciated kinship between the Mississippi and channels of liquid methane-rich goop on Titan.  I got an extra thrill from following the link to this man’s NASA bio and finding that this guy “enjoys black-water kayaking.” At first I thought ooh,sounds dangerous, till I realized it’s the inverse of white-water. Pretty clever (ie new to me) term. As most people write their own bios for uses like this, it’s probably this fellow’s writing I’m appreciating

NUMBER TWO: Speaking of methane splashing or wafting up in New Scientist, another US freelancer, Phil McKenna,  has summed up and moved the ball forward on suspicion that when one counts the greenhouse forcing of leaking methane, gas flaring, and other climate impacts of natural gas, its carbon-equivalent footprint may be larger than that of coal. Ergo, all the hydrofracturable reserves now being opened up may be worse, as a climate changer, than the coal-fired plants that it could render unneeded. The accusation has been made in print before. Looks now like it’s gaining heft. At least a pile of coal, if nothing lights it on fire, rarely lurches into the air all by itself.

Image Source Link: Mark A. Garlick Space Art. , Image

   - Charlie Petit

Several accounts of the last shuttle flight, putting Atlantis at the moment in the ISS’s biggest parking stall, took fliers at the total bill for the program since its inception. Official NASA figures are just a bit more than $100 billion. This led to remark on this site that media are using a variety of numbers, some considerably higher than NASA’s, but with little consistency among them.

Presto, (Robert) aka Lee Hotz of the Wall Street Journal alerts us that the newspaper’s numbers guy, who may also on the side be calculating how much the Murdoch empire has at stake in the mobile hacking scandal and the closing of the hyper-relentless News of the World tabloid  but I am just freely speculating there, really did make a serious run at the shuttle’s cost. He cannot pin it down exactly. But the piece is convincing. It is a lot.

• Wall Street Journal – Carl Bialik: As Shuttle Sails Through Space, Costs Are Tough to Pin Down ;  Best estimate: $193 billion, plus a lot of fuzz from the opaque contribution from the Pentagon’s budget.

This just in (See Comments): At AAAS-Science Magazine, we learn that in his roundup Dan Charles also used the same primary source as did the WSJ (Roger Pielke Jr.) and came up with $193 billion. It’s behind a subscriber wall, unfortunately.

Other shuttle bits: Just because Ed Yong, @edyong209,  tweeted that this is the best account he’s seen of the Atlantis launch (and it assuredly is solid first-person, you-are-there reporting):

• Guardian (UK) Karen James: “I feel the percussive roar on the skin of my face.”

- Charlie Petit

Yes, the space shuttle Atlantis just rode its tail of fire for its last time, and the last for any of these winged wonders that may have broken a lot of hearts with their tragedies, and a lot of NASA’s budget, but we’ll never see their like again (not me, not in my lifetime, I fear).

Meanwhile, back at NASA, what many regard as the real, lasting, and still healthy NASA space science effort, healthy enough anyway given the money hemorrhage that is the the human spaceflight directorate, moves toward its next extravaganza. That is Curiosity, aka the Mars Science Laboratory. The result of a $2.5 billion project, it is a heavily equipped machine the size of a small car that can get along on isotopes rather than solar panels. It will kick the hunt for evidence that Mars may have been habitable, may have evolved life and even may have it still,  to a much more focussed level.  It dwarfs the expired Spirit and its twin, still gasping along, Opportunity. The agency has it at the cape. Scientists and engineers are sorting out the best place to put her down.

Stories:

• Space.com – Mike Wall: Choices for Mars rover landing site down to 2 ;
• Nature Newsblog – Eric Hand: Mars Curiosity rover: targets narrowed to two ;
• SF Chronicle – David Perlman: Possibility for life on Mars found by scientists ; A feature angle – from the California desert -  to explain one of the things that Curiosity will, it it to be hoped, get done on the dry sands of Mars.
• Universe Today – Nancy Atkinson: Landing Site for Next Mars Rover Narrowed to Two;
• Astronomy Now – Emily Baldwin: River delta or mountain stack for Mars Science Laboratory ;
• AP – Mountain or former river delta? NASA to choose between 2 landing sites for next Mars rover ;

Grist for the Mill: NASA Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Geez Mareeze, I missed it. The Atlantis launch went off and I was so persuaded by weather gloominess news I didn’t put the desk TV on, muted, just in case. Anyway, it’s in orbit, as you all know. You know too the kind of verbiage such things get.

I’ll give myself some solace by sharing one reporter’s lookback at decades of covering these flawed but, my goodness, magnificent things -  written on the eve of their final countdown.

• AP – Marcia Dunn: One reporter’s look back at the space shuttle era ; The shuttles have flown 135 times now, 133 times with few flaws and two just awful. She’s seen 98 of them, including the last flight of Columbia. Now she’s watched the finale – with years to wait before the next astronaut leaves US soil for orbit (at least, for orbit on a government vehicle).

and just to dot the i, here’s her account:

• AP – Marcia Dunn (+ Mitch Stacy, Seth Borenstein) : Shuttle lifts off for last time; ‘Light this fire’ ;

* UPDATE : I missed this one in a roundup on shuttle advancers, but a friend and neighbor one town over who wrote it, sent me the pdf and I tracked down the link:

• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitunge – Horst Rademacher: Wir müssen drunten bleiben ; Yes, in German.

I once read German badly, now hardly at all, but I can see he spelled my name right. If your German is serviceable, let me know how my pal did. I’m in it to say something about the old Journalist in Space program to put a news reporter on the shuttle back before there was even a space station. I was in the running till its cancellation, and my actual aim was to finish second but, by knocking on the door, serve notice that I was available to open a news bureau in space after the ISS opened for business. I was so sure that was the inevitable and logical sequence….

One More, randomly selected, NOT:

• KTVU-TV (Oakland, CA) – John Fowler: Atlantis: Science Writer Charlie Petit Tells KTVU Robots Are The Future Of Space ;

- Charlie Petit

Thanks to a curator at a West Orange, New Jersey museum housing much of Thomas Edison’s historic artifacts, one may now listen to the oldest surviving commercial recording in the world, perhaps the first one, period. It is the metal ring on which were scratchings that drove a little speaker in a doll. Turn its cranks, and the doll recited in a young woman’s voice, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The ring was a mess, but the curator knew whom to call for technical assistance.

Two days ago Science Magazines ScienceNow service got the story out first, by Ron Cowen who details the extraordinary work it took to put the record in shape to be played again. He apparently learned of or perhaps spotted himself the announcement pop up on the National Park Service’s website. Kudos to Cowen for jumping on this diverting bit of technology history news.

The original recording medium was a small bracelet-like, circular band of tin incised with a stylus that followed the voice vibrations of the woman who recorded it. But it was dented, and too fragile merely to force back into a circular shape. So technologists at the Lawrence Berkeley Nat’l Lab ran it through microscopes and digital wizardry to map the grooves and render their mini-topography into a data file that a computer could turn into sound.

I do have a question. How soft is tin? I can understand that wax cylinders, another popular medium that came along about that time, and thin metal foil might be easily incised by a good stylus with a carborundum or diamond or some other hard, sharp tip. Cowens’ story implies the cylinder is bulk tin. Is tin soft enough to incise with the energy available in the sound waves of a person’s voice?  Or is some sort of casting mold made from wax? Or what? Just curious.

A feature writer who dug deeply into this might also discover how many of these little dolls Thomas Edison’s business sold. What did they cost? Did they sound as good (or better) than the digitally-rendered data file?

Other Stories:

• CBS News – 123 year-old talking doll record speaks again ;
• NewJerseyNewsroom.com – Tom Hester Sr., Sound of an Edison talking doll heard for first time since 1888 ; And check out the “did you know” box at the bottom. It is how easy it is to pull the leg of a gullible reporter and have media go nuts with it.

Grist for the Mill: Nat’l Park Service Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit