Hoo boy, here’s a whopper. At the UK’s Guardian, science writer Ian Sample puts his tongue in his cheek a bit far. He tells readers with straight face that a “NASA-affiliated” scientist and colleagues have written a policy report with a new, unusual reason to stop global warming. If we don’t, an alien police force might, on noticing our atmosphere’s carbon dioxide going out of whack, respond by whacking humanity.

It is highly speculative, he tells us. Yes it is. Highly highly. However. One is unsure that Sample made the story quite as arch as he could have, as deliberately, obviously more in fun than a serious contribution to policy discussions.

We learn of all this, thank you very much,  from US science writer and blogger Keith Kloor, who writes the Collide-a-Scape blog.

We also learn from Kloor that one of the authors’of this report, a post-doc who has worked for NASA but never as a staffer,  wrote a clarification after noticing the Guardian report going viral on the web.The clarification makes clear the ‘report’ from scientists is just a few friends semi-fooling around.

Kloor at his blog wrote, “This is a clear cut case of a respectable newspaper choosing sensationalism over responsible science reporting.” I’m unsure it is a felony. Sample with little effort could have had both. It is a sensational, if intellectually rather flimsy, idea that alien forces might seek to control or eradicate a pestiferous life form that doesn’t even have the sense to maintain its planet in good health, yet has the brains to build rocket ships. It’s been a movie more than once (but with nuclear weapons the trigger for celestial intervention).  A responsible science reporter could write a story about the notion. But it would need to be described as exactly what it is – a paper written largely as a lark, laced with some general concerns, a thought exercise in no way-no how reflective of the policy priorities and recommendations of the world’s foremost space agency.

Have a good weekend everybody. Monday through Wednesday next week I’ll be away, up in the Sierra. Other trackers and reliable ace backup Boyce Rensberger will more than fill the void.

Watch the skies. Watch the skies.

- Charlie Petit

Comma Butterfly, UK

Migration of birds, insects, forest cover, salmon, grizzly bears, and many other species to new locales as climate warms is an accepted aspect of a changing world – but it’s back with a big splash in the news today. In Science is a report that the pace of change is higher than had been reported before – perhaps by  two or three times.

Led by a conservation biologist at the University of York in the UK, the study’s authors say they pulled together data from across much of the globe, reflecting more than 100 earlier studies. One is uncertain how useful they are to wildlife biologists, but the averages they computed from the studies are arresting. Every ten years in recent history, species ranges have moved uphill an average of 36 feet, and more toward the poles about ten miles. That’s considerably faster than a somewhat similar study estimated eight years ago. I extract those numbers from the Washington Post, where Brian Vastag writes it up and includes helpful links to earlier studies and other sources.

Other stories:

• Independent (UK) Steve Connor: Climate change drives animals to higher ground ;
• USA Today – Elizabeth Weise: Temps push animal, plant species to higher elevations ;
• AP – Seth Borenstein: Study: Fauna fleeing north / Animals avoiding global warming ;
• Ars Technica – John Timmer: Climate change causing species to change habitat faster than expected ;
• AFP: Climate change forces species to move fast ;
• CNN: Matt Smith: Warming drives animals to higher ground, latitudes, study finds ;

There is considerably more coverage. The news is handled straight up at major agencies, no evidence seen of  ‘false balance’ of consultation with prominent skeptics. Another sign that while public interest and thus coverage may be down a bit, what coverage that exists seems to have fully recovered from the hysteria of ‘climate gate.”

Grist for the Mill: University of York Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Any time one sees a reference to the dark side of the moon, as one does at the Reuters agency in a dispatch from Russia by Alissa de Carbonnel, one know no science reporter (or science-savvy editor) was involved. But that gaffe aside, this appears to be an accurate summary of Russian hopes to add something new to their spacetravel abilities. They have the Soyuz capsule down cold, but haven’t built much of anything really new in space rocketry since they were the leading Soviet Socialist Republic. Even if the money to pull it off soon is not in evidence, it is of interest that the Russians intend to get into space tourism and compete with US and other private industries in providing the vehicles to get them up there.

And by the way, aviation buffs, one site, something called KVAL.com,  has a big collection of photos from the event – the annual air show at Zhukovsky outside Moscow. Not only the usual acrobatics from high-performance jet fighters, but shots of a large Russian seaplane, of a US B-52 landing, of a Bear bomber, and other historic but still potent and visually-arresting airplanes. Another, overlapping photo album is at the Washington Post.

The image up there portrays an inflatable space hotel idea, from Russian company Orbital Technologies.

Other Air Show Stories:

• Wall St. Journal – Jacob Groholt-Pedersen :  Russian Airshow Displays State Inefficiency ;  A whiny blog piece. Probably accurate too. For the official version of logistics at the show, Moscow Times has that.
• ABC (Australia) Russia unveils new stealth fighter ; It is the Sukhoi T-50.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang post) A few weeks ago the Academy of Medical Sciences in the U.K released a report warning against research that incorporates human genetic material into animal cells. The report discusses a ‘Frankenstein fear’ that creating ‘humanised’ animals might generate ‘monsters’. One of the experts in the study declared to the press that inserting human neurons in apes’ brains might give them capacities such as speech. This is kind of silly, and one wonders how those human brain cells are going to create a place of articulation in chimps’ larynx. The report received some attention in the press when it was released. Now with the opening of “The rise of the Planet of the Apes” it has been referenced again by some science reporters in order to discuss the ethics of the experimentation with non-human primates. The problem of citing the report and the movie is that essential questions about animal experimentation have been totally ignored. There is discussion about what kind of hybrids scientists can create, but the stories barely include issues like the moral status of primates and what their legal rights should be. Only one reporter from ABC has approached the issue in a totally different manner, starting her story talking about the movie but looking for a broad amount of studies and opinions from experts from different fields on neuroscience, primatology, basic research and ethics. When reviewing which features of the apes in the film are more and less likely to happen, a primatologist says “of course, the capacity to speak is maybe the most ridiculous one”.

Utilizar la película “El origen del planeta de los simios” como excusa para discutir los límites de la experimentación con chimpancés es todo un acierto. De verdad; es una manera de acercarte al público y poder exponerle el estado de la cuestión. Pero si lo haces, debes hacerlo bien. No es un asunto trivial. Por muchos motivos. Éticos y de desarrollo de la biomedicina. Puedes partir perfectamente del gancho de la película, pero tu mensaje debe estar muy bien meditado y seleccionar muy bien tus fuentes. Eso es lo que ha hecho Judith de Jorge en “Una inteligencia casi humana” (ABC). Lo comentaremos después, porque primero veremos algunos ejemplos distorsionados a partir de un surrealista informe preparado por la academia de ciencias británica.

No es exageración de los periodistas. Uno de los autores del informe sobre ética de la experimentación animal dice textualmente que deberíamos ir con cuidado insertando neuronas humanas en cerebros de primates porque podrían empezar a hablar. La nota no aclara si dicho experto estaba ebrio en el momento de sus declaraciones. Insisto: no es una exageración. La manera como se presentó el informe al público utiliza expresiones como “crear monstruos”, que “los experimentos con primates no humanos son impredecibles”, o “Frankenstein fear”. Curiosamente, no habla de consideraciones éticas hacia los propios primates; sólo miedos humanos. Cuando apareció dicho informe a finales de julio, reuters hizo una nota y varios medios sacaron la información. Por ejemplo El Espectador (Colombia), La Jornada (México), Terra Perú, o La República (Uruguay). No está mal, porque lo que haces es describir el contenido del informe. Correcto sin más. Y buena nota para BBC Mundo que en “¿Avanzamos hacia un planeta de los simios?” expone un análisis más profundo donde primero deja claras las ventajas de la experimentación animal, y luego los riesgos.

Pero ahora con el estreno de la película, más reporteros han aprovechado para añadir en sus notas conceptos sobre ética de la experimentación con primates. Y aquí viene el problema: por muy cercano que sea, no debes fijarte sólo en este informe, como por ejemplo hace La Razón (Bolivia) en “Planeta de los simios”. El texto está muy bien, pero cuando llega al aspecto ético transmite muchas imprecisiones al lector, como que la posibilidad de un planeta de los simios en la Tierra no es descartable, o que introducirles neuronas les dotaría de conciencia (imaginamos que se refieren a reflexión, pues conciencia ya tienen).

El Espectador va un poquito más lejos, y en la nota de Pablo Correa “Lecciones de los monos para los humanos” cita no sólo el informe británico sino también la legislación estadounidense que está valorando eliminar los experimentos con primates. Buena nota, aunque cortita, que de nuevo quizás se queda coja en el aspecto ético en realidad más relevante: el sufrimiento de los primates y sus derechos. Ésta es la verdadera discusión y no si metiendo células en cerebros de ratones nos llegarán a insultar por tenerles encerrados.

E información al respecto hay infinita. No hay más que mirar la traducción que El Tiempo (Colombia) ha realizado del texto “El dilema ético de usar a los animales en la ciencia y el espectáculo” de Peter Singer, uno de los principales expertos en bioética del mundo. Singer se enrolla demasiado describiendo la película pero va después directo al meollo: la condición moral que como seres autoconscientes, con pensamiento y emociones merecen los simios. Y los derechos que debemos concederles a la vida, la libertad y la protección contra la tortura a la que se ven sometidos por los miembros de nuestra especie. Si planteas los dilemas éticos de la experimentación con primates, ese es el punto clave.

Y es lo que aborda fantásticamente Judith de Jorge en “Una inteligencia casi humana” (ABC). Judith parte también de la película, pero enfoca los asuntos primordiales y va a buscar no sólo opiniones sino también estudios científicos. Por ejemplo, las pruebas que han establecido que primates (aquí se debería haber especificado cuáles) son capaces de aprender y utilizar el lenguaje de los signos, que comparados con niños los chimpancés pueden tener la inteligencia de un infante de 2, 3 o 4 años, o las múltiples que les otorgan capacidades sociales y emocionales como la generosidad o la sensación de injusticia. Nada de esto los convierte en humanos, pero sí nos hace verlos más cercanos y nos fuerza a diluir la frontera entre sus derechos morales y los nuestros. No podemos utilizarlos sin restricción para nuestro beneficio, y las leyes se están adaptando a ello. Judith cita hasta 4 opiniones en su texto y otros tantos estudios científicos. Y además termina con un buen resumen sobre qué es más realista de la película y qué menos. Evidentemente, el primatólogo que responde considera que “el lenguaje hablado es quizás lo más absurdo, pues no tienen aparato fonador”. Algo que no se obtiene insertando unas neuronas en el cerebro…

- Pere Estupinyà

n

Cleveland in Winter (source at post end)

News from the University of Colorado on the kinds and suspected sources of aerial bacteria in certain cities is going to get around. One only hopes that it gets treated with seriousness by reporters, all the way through – even, seriously enough to decide it’s no story. So far, so good, but not good enough. Every effort must be made by reporters to learn if there is reason to try to do anything about bacteria in the air from dog feces. Disgusting sounding, but dogs are so common and have been for millenniums – one supposes we may be well enured to any related miasma. Let’s hope the experts have an answer.

The news is that, after sampling urban air along the Front Range, the Boulder team extended its aerial bacterial count to other cities. It found two cities where the bacterial demographics in winter bear a strong parallel to the microbes found in dog poop – Cleveland and Detroit. Speculation is that winter snow may cover the ground but a dog does its business on top of the snow. The press release is in Grist, below. It is getting wide circulation on EurekAlert! The paper is in a specialty journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The lead author is a graduate student, but that’s not unusual. The paper has a diverse authorship including faculty at CU as well as other institutions.

Among vital questions is whether the scientists have found that these particular bacteria appear in unusually high, absolute numbers when they dominate the air, or might it merely be that bacteria from other sources drop below their usual levels – perhaps because they are snowed under?

So far, mid-morning today, it’s a local story near campus:

• Boulder Daily Camera – Laura Snider: CU-Boulder study: Dog-poop bacteria found in air over Detroit, Cleveland.
• Denver Post: CU researchers: Bacteria found in dog poop dominates in air over Cleveland and Detroit ;

Some outlets gave the news serious thought, and made serious decision. At the AP, Seth Borenstein shares this: “CU pushed this hard. I got five press releases from them, plus added emails. It sounded interesting till I read the paper. I recommend reading the paper. There seem to be no figures about the amount of bacteria found. That’s crucial. Nor does it address in a scientific manner the health effects, except for a comment that seemed unsupported by research. The more I read, the less interested I was. AP passed.” ;

Grist for the Mill: University Colorado, Boulder, Press Release ;

Illus source ;

- Charlie Petit

One supposes, if one is semi-deluded and of a conspiracy-vulnerable bent, the place to start on news that gov’t researchers are tagging Alaskan walruses is to look at a reliably conservative news outlet. There one may find explanation from a reliably conservative, longtime exposer of collusion and confusion among scientists who are promoting what you intuitively suspect is fraudulent  global warming.

• Canada Free Press – Steve Milloy: New global warming scare: Suicidal walrus stampedes ; Rationalists may find this mildly amusing, wholly ridiculous, and gnawingly depressing. Milloy does know how to compose punchy prose. For here we read that with polar bear endangerment supposedly dismissed, alarmists “are prepping a substitute species.” Sigh. Not so punchy: “Polar bear-gate.” Milloy also calls the US Geological Survey the US Geological Service. Sometimes it is possible to get nothing right.

Now for some more steady-eyed science news reporting:

• Reuters – Deborah Zabarenko: Melting Arctic sea ice drives walruses onto land ; Good explanation that walruses, being bottom feeding, cannot use just any sea ice for habitat. It must be over sufficiently shallow continental shelf for them to reach the molluscs and other seabed life on which they feed.
• AP – Dan Joling: As walruses again gather on Alaska’s shore, federal scientists plan tagging for study ; Again, as with the Reuters account, straightforward explanation of recent history and walrus behavior.
• Alaska Dispatch – USGS to radio-tag walruses hauling out near Point Lay;

Grist for the Mill: US Geological Survey Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Just two weeks ago (previous post) came word in Nature that the Moon may have, in a way, formed twice. Most of it as a big blob from the debris left after an even bigger protoplanetary thing smacked early Earth, followed by a major remodeling when a second such re-agglomerating blob splatted into the larger lunar embryo. Among implications was that there may be two distinct peaks in the crystallization age of moon rocks, separated by tens of millions of years. That got decent coverage. Now this week, and in Nature again,  comes news that at least some Apollo moon rocks, presumed remnants of an ancient magma ocean, are an oonch too young to fit standard lunar formation theory.

Nature’s editors may have missed a bet by not running them as twinned papers. Reporters on this week’s news ought to have noted the topical overlap anyway. Are the papers complementary, irreconcilable, a little of each? Yet,  remarkably, most reporters who did this write up the second piece without attention to the resonant news earlier in the same month and in the same journal. One of the first rules I learned in the news biz is this: before writing anything of substance, check the clips. No such thing as news morgues with paper clippings anymore, but web news search engines are far better and easier. The dictum holds. Check the clips!

Most readers may not be able to conjure up the details of the previous story with much fidelity. But anybody who laps up this news may well recall that something like it was just in the news the other day. Reporters should respect them enough to acknowledge that, and to suggest what to make of them together. Just because a press release doesn’t spoon feed reporters with historic context is no reason to assume there is none.

*Amendment: As an important reader notes, some editors and reporters did check the clips (or, in this case, cover both stories) and did decide after reflection that the two reports are not connected enough to compel another mention of the first one. Please see the second comment below, to which I add a further comment in reply./ CP

Stories:

• AP – Seth Borenstein:  What’s the age of the moon? It could be waning ; Borenstein covered both. He consults the lead author of the paper of two weeks ago and gets his skepticism about the new work. It’s a shorty, with no digging into how the two reports work together if at all.
• LA Times – Amina Khan: Moon may be younger than thought, study says ; Good review of the implications: either the Moon is younger, or it didn’t form the way standard theory has it. But not a whisper about the “big splat” Moon news two weeks ago.
• The Australian – Leigh Dayton: Science takes years off the moon; The hed may be right, but Dayton’s story does not take enough off. She or somebody at the paper translated the difference between 4.57 billion and 4.36 billion as abut 2 million rather than the actual 200 million (year) difference between the new paper’s radioisotope age for moon rocks and the canonical time since lunar formation.
• PostMedia via Montreal Gazette – Beatrice Fantoni: Moon could be younger than previously thought, research says ; Nothing on the big splat.
• Xinhua – Mu Xuequan : Study shows Moon younger than previous estimates ;  Straight and slight rewrite of Carnegie press release with no evident enterprise reporting even hinted. Xinhua does a lot of that with science news.
• Nature newsblog – Lee Sweetlove : Time to rethink the Moon’s formation -  ; Naturally, Nature’s own blog compares the two paper’s implications.
• AstronomyNow – Emily Baldwin: The Moon gets a face-lift ; Just the one, recent paper covered.

Grist for the Mill:

Carnegie Institution Press Release ; Lawrence Livermore Nat’l Lab Press Release ; University Copenhagen Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

If one puts arXiv on the tracker site’s search engine, lots of previous posts pop up , 20 just this year. The letters represent a remarkably anomalous web entity,  a place where embargoes don’t exist, nor does peer review, yet a river of what generally look like legitimate drafts of serious papers flows by daily. I’ve never quite understood its stability or its internal quality controls (not that I looked into them). I knew it had something vaguely to do with the Los Alamos Nat’l Lab, and with Cornell University. I also know positively that back when I was covering breaking news it was worth a regular glance, and that a few reporters have systematically kept an eye on its offerings in physics-related fields – the subcategory astro-ph being particularly rich in astronomy and cosmology news . They and their pubs thus had plenty of scoops. Now its founder, a theoretical high-energy physicist,  reveals, if not all, a whole lot.

Strange to read that he, just 20 years ago, was just then getting his own computer at his desk, and drew a blank on seeing the letters WWW. That would be 1991. Thinking further on it — that’s about right. It is nonetheless startling to be reminded how quickly things can change. Also interesting that academic physicists, setting out only to make collegiality and communication easier among themselves, also were the first architects of email, and the web itself around 40 years ago. Remember DARPAnet?

• Nature (Comment): Paul Ginsparg: ArXiv at 20.

See also:

• PhysicsWorld – Tushna Commissariat: arXiv celebrates its 20th birthday ;
• SymmetryBreaking – Glennda Chui: The arXiv turns 20 ;
• Physorg.com – Anne Ju: Paul Ginsparg relfect on arXiv 20th anniversary ;

Grist for the Mill: arXiv home page.

- Charlie Petit

A phrase so evocative no overuse can kill it, “living fossil,” bursts today again across the news. This time it is an eel of distinct, primitive form that has been discovered in the Pacific nation of Palau.

Perhaps “burst” is too strong a term, but so is living fossil. I’ve complained before about the unblinking attachment media has with that phrase  every time a living creature much like ancestors of many millions of years ago turns up. Crocodiles, sturgeons, and of course that type-specimen, the coelacanth, all get hailed as living fossils. It is a handy phrase, evoking exactly the right feeling: I’m looking at something of a sort that would have been right at home in the Devonian, or Miocene, or Cretaceous, and so on.

The video shows a striking animal, sort of like an overlarge Betta or Siamese Fighting Fish,  frilly fins on its hindmost half rippling like a silken pennant.

The BBC‘s Paul Rincon reports that the creature, with its many primitive features, has been dubbed a ‘living fossil.” That is, he didn’t say it first, but some of the researchers are calling it a living fossil. Fair enough. The paper itself, one quickly learns (see Grist) is hard to miss, as it is entitled : “A ‘living fossil/ eel…….”He quotes the scientist, apparently from the paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, that it represents a ‘living fossil: without a known fossil record. Ah. At least with crocs and coelacanths, researchers had old fossils very much like the living creatures. This one has merely details in jaws and other organs that appear to be primitive. Video here.

So living fossil it is. Yawn. AKA Protoanguilla palau.

Other stories:

• Wired – Brandon Keim: Video: ‘Living Fossil’ Eel Swam at Dawn of Dinosaur Age ; This is a good story, explains the taxonomic singularity of this wriggler just fine. Of course, one problem, in the hed. This living fossil did not swim at dawn of dinosaur age. I don’t mean that trivially  – for surely if we did have examples of eels of that time, they might look a little like this one. Odds of being the same genus, much less species: zero.
• Discovery News – Jennifer Viegas: ‘Living Fossil’ Retains Dionsaur-Era Look / A recently discovered eel living in a remote submarine case has evolved out of step with the rest of the world ; Better hed. Out of step or not, it implies the creatures have been evolving all along. Nice job portraying the surprise of scientists who, at first, did not think their odd specimen to be an eel at all. There are, Viegas reports, ~800 eel species in 19 families, none much like this one. She also finds SF’s John McCosker of the Steinhart Aquarium, a man usually consulted about sharks, rhapsodic about this discovery and the paper on it.

Grist for the Mill:

Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper abstract ; Smithsonian Institution Press Release via EurekAlert! ;

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang post) Many scientists in Latin America don’t merely do research to publish papers, but to help the local population. They have different needs and approaches to research. Magazines like Science and Nature, or citation indexes, don’t reflect this reality. So reporters in Latin America must look beyond peer review journals to find local science stories. And they should not feel that a paper in PNAS is more relevant to their readers than something from a local university. We’ve often defended this approach here in the Spanish lang Tracker. Today in La Nación (Costa Rica) we’ve found a great story based on a interview with Unesco’s scientific chief for Latin America. The title is “Science is much more that what’s published in Science and Nature”. It starts by declaring that Latin America is already making a name for itself in science, and a very good one. Its numbers show that the region’s number of researchers and their productivity are growing.  The Unesco’s leader emphasizes that research done in L. Am. is of a different kind, and responds to distinct needs. He gives a few hints about the way by which they are helping scientific research in the region. But there is not a single mention of communication to the public. In such an otherwise complete story, the reporter should have asked him also about it.   

Illustrating the problem is today’s story about a $1 million grant given by Gates Foundation to a Panamanian scientist in order to continue her research i on microwaves to fight malaria. It’s a very important issue for the country, and it appears in all newspapers. But stories have only basic info from wires. Only one reporter, at La Prensa, talked with the Panamanian scientist about her research and the meaning of the grant. Surrealistic enough, not one story explains the basic idea behind fighting malaria with microwaves. The story in La Prensa mentions something about selectively heating infected cells.  But the scientific side of the story is totally ignored by reporters and wires services.

In stories elsewhere with local angles: In Uruguay, a great profile of a spider researcher. In Argentina, orally taken sclerosis medication and engineered bacteria to detect gold particles. A good story in Chile about the importance of non-codifying DNA in cancer. And in Brazil, the scientific director of a Institution says that brazil’s sugar-cane bioethanol is still much more promising, by far and in all aspects, than all other kinds of biofuels. Too bad that the story has only that single source. .  

“En América latina ya se hace ciencia, y de la buena”. Esta es la primera frase del recomendabilísimo artículo de Michelle Soto “La ciencia es más de lo que publican Science y Nature”, en la sección Aldea Global de La Nación (Costa Rica), escrito a partir de una entrevista al director regional de ciencia de la UNESCO para América Latina y Caribe. El mensaje y los datos son contundentes: la proporción mundial de investigadores en AL está aumentando (3.7% vs 2.9% en 2002). La producción científica también (4.9% en 2010 vs 3.8% en ¿?). Y además está la “ciencia que no computa”: la realidad de muchos países de AL es diferente; no deben realizar ciencia en función de publicar en Science or Nature sino en función de las necesidades de su población. Y eso crea una imagen distorsionada de la ciencia a nivel mundial. Se hace más ciencia de la que aparece en las revistas de referencia.

Estas revistas de referencia son libres de seguir los criterios que les da la gana. Pero lo jodido es que demasiado a menudo nos marcan qué es noticia en ciencia y qué no. Nuestra obligación es corregirlo; sacar a relucir la ciencia local como lo hacemos con el fútbol, la economía o la política. No nos van a dictar ellas qué es lo importante esa semana. Y ni mucho menos pensar que la investigación no publicada de un científico de nuestro país es necesariamente menos trascendente que  otra ciencia sí publicada. Indudablemente, en la mayoría de ocasiones lo será (a nivel de conocimiento universal), pero no es éste el criterio que estamos obligados a seguir.

Por eso cuando el director regional de la Unesco expone varias iniciativas a mejorar, echamos en falta una mención a la difusión de la ciencia entre el público. Aquí Michelle quizás debería haber ampliado su buenísima nota.

Veamos un ejemplo: La fundación Gates acaba de dar una beca de 1 millón de dólares a una investigadora panameña para que continúe sus prometedores estudios sobre el uso de microondas para luchar contra la malaria. Y lo va a hacer en Panamá. Es una noticia importantísima para el país. Claro que no está en ninguna revista científica porque no hay ningún resultado todavía, pero es algo que debemos sentirnos obligados a transmitir a nuestra población. Lo hacen medios como El Siglo, Critica, PanamáDigital, La Estrella, Tvn; pero todo a partir de agencias (EFE-DPA). La única nota que vemos que amplia información es en La Prensa, donde la reportera Tamara del Moral en “Microondas contra la Malaria” ha ido a hablar con la investigadora Carmenza Spadafora para que le explicara las fases que han conllevado a la valiosa obtención de fondos, y la base de innovadora propuesta de matar parásitos con microondas, aprovechando diferencias de calentamiento entre las células infectadas y las sanas (muy bien por Tamara, aunque la explicación debería estar mejor detallada en el texto –las notas de agencia tampoco lo hacen). Insistimos: ni una única historia se preocupa de explicar cómo las microondas pueden servir contra la malaria. Sólo Tamara se aproxima. ¿dónde está la ciencia? Después de la noticia en sí del apoyo económico de Gates, es sin duda lo más importante! Un cero para las agencias y su superficialidad.

Terminemos destacando algunas notas que sí buscan este carácter local en la información científica. Desde hace tiempo Prensa Libre (Guatemala) nos ofrece regularmente historias de Lucy Calderón sobre investigadores guatemaltecos como este inventor que diseña un aparato para detectar movimientos sísmicos. No es de primer orden mundial, pero sí aplicado a las necesidades locales y una buena fuente de inspiración. Algo parecido está haciendo en El Observador (Uruguay) Ana Pais con reportajes como “La mujer araña uruguaya” (pdf1, pdf2), que nos ofrece el fantástico perfil personal y profesional de una destacada aracnóloga. Ojalá haya continuidad. Quienes también suelen buscar dentro de los laboratorios y expertos nacionales son los periodistas científicos de La Nación (Argentina). Como ejemplo, la nota de Sebastián Ríos sobre el primer fármaco para la esclerosis múltiple que se puede suministrar vía oral, o una bacteria modificada genéticamente por la Universidad de Rosario para que emita luz fluorescente al contacto con oro. Sin abandonar el Cono Sur, en El Mercurio (Chile) encontramos un reportaje que no es de ciencia local, pero merece la pena destacar. El titular de Sebastián Urbina “Revelan las causas hasta ahora desconocidas del cáncer” es exagerado, y decir que los pseudogenes no codificantes presentes en el ADN antes llamado “basura” representan un cambio de paradigma, arriesgado. Pero el artículo es un excelente repaso a las últimas y más novedosas investigaciones en este campo. Un texto propio de un periodista que conoce de qué está hablando. Yendo a Brasil, nos encontramos en O Globo un alegato al biocombustible de caña de azúcar producido en el país. En “Etanol brasileiro ainda é a mais promissora forma de uso da bioenergia” Cesar Baima entrevista a un director científico de fundación (cargo semi-oficial) brasilera que dice que ni algas, ni maiz, ni desechos… ni nada de nada; que el biocombustible a base de caña de azúcar producido en Brasil (y que sólo en este país se puede conseguir) continúa siendo el líder, con mejor rendimiento, futuro más brillante, sin riesgos medioamientales… “perfecto” lo define en la nota. Lástima que Cesar no contraste sus opiniones con ninguna otra fuente. Para eso podría haber dejado el formato entrevista y ya está. Está bien fomentar lo nuestro, pero sin pasarnos…

- Pere Estupinyà

The last week or so has seen a small wave of stories heralding a revival of the Allen Telescope Array, a set of metal dishes near Lassen Peak in California that the SETI Institute is building to listen for alien civilizations. The media pulse may have crested, but new additions are still popping up. The slow-motion spread of the news may be because a fund-raising drive’s interim success got no big press release announcement – merely a posting at the organization’s website.

The development merits a closer look than it has gotten. The institute – its name derived from Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence – has been a regular in the news for a quarter of a century. It is a serious place that has set a hard job for itself.  It was founded, in part, to manage private donations to the cause after a Congressional resolution to stop spending tax money to hunt for hellos from little green men. That silly edict is long since gone. The institute now soldiers on with grants not only in its core mission, but in general astrobiology studies under NASA and other agenciy grants. The telescope array, still just a pipsqueak compared to its full, hoped-for size, went up at University of California’s Hat Creek facility in the northern Sierra foothills largely via grant from Microsoft co-founded and tech-philanthropist Paul Allen.

Alas, a great deal of the recent ink has focussed on Jodie Foster, the actress in the alien-themed movie Contact with a character inspired in large part by Berkeley-based astronomer and SETI Institute stalwart Jill Tarter. Foster’s donation helped build the small pile of money now permitting the constellation of 42 modest-sized radio telescopes (hundreds are in the long term  plan) to resume scanning the firmament for non-natural signals. Dropping a celebrity’s name is an okay opening angle. But what’s the mood at SETI, is there confidence in their mission still, why don’t more millionaires line up? Is the array really the valuable all-purpose astronomy instrument its designers said, merely a one-trick pony, or what? It is worth much, at just 42 receivers? Enough of light, somewhat giddy reporting  that says, in essence, look at the cute telescopes eavesdropping on the skies. Does this project have a realistic future?

Here are some of the stories, starting with the first I could find – and that hit last Monday, Aug 8.

• MSNBC Cosmic Log – Alan Boyle: Donations revive SETI quest : I have to pull in my horns a little on lack of substantive coverage. First trek through coverage failed to reveal this, apparent pack-leading, account. I’d bulleted several, below, then found and put this one atop the list. Boyle, to no surprise,  provides extensive background for the news and makes clear the recent donations may have revived the effort. But it’s still on life support.
  
• The Telegraph (UK) – Nick Allen : Search for extraterrestrial life back on after Hollywood-backed campaign / A hunt for extraterrestrial life is to resume after astronomers listening for signals form alien worlds raised $200,000 ( £125,000), Filed from Los Angeles. Overline is “UFOs”. That’ll make some on the SETI Inst. crew slap the table.
  
• NatureNewsblog – George Wigmore: Search for ET resumes with public donations ; A word-choice quibble. He writes that the public “flooded” SETI with donations. $200,000 is only enough to buy a few acres and build a  ranch-style house in the sage and mixed conifer country up there. It’ll provide payroll for, what, a couple of technicians and the electricity bill for a year or two? A flood ought to mean a few million bucks at least.
• Discover – Bad Astronomy blog – Phil Plait:  Success: SETI array back on track! ; Here’s where I found a nod to Boyle’s CosmicLog entry.
• Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel – Jacki Loohauis-Bennett: Jodie Foster helps fund E.T. search ; Celebrity column. Links to Telegraph article.
• Daily Mail (UK) Paul Thompson: Actress Jodie Foster has helped re-start the search for ET ; Good enough quick review, but the Mail’s on line strength – lavish illus – hits a bump. Its pic is of the Hat Creek Observatory, but shows the wrong and now-gone array. That’s a gang of big millimeter wave dishes called BIMA, since moved to the Owens Valley.
  
• Bay Citizen (SFBay Area) John Upton: Alien Hunting Season Set to Open ; Shorty. But not bad.
• Reuters – Alex Dobuzinskis (Aug 13) Donors help to reboot US listening post for aliens ; More on the “flooding” with donations.
• Redding Searchlight – Ryan Sabalow: Search for ET intelligence will restart near Hat Creek; funding was cut earlier this year ; Interesting and accidentally appropriate confusion here, it appears. The story calls the telescope system a “satellite array.” One is uncertain what is meant. The dishes do however look a lot like the big old satellite television dishes rural residents used a decade or more ago, before little dishes the size of  pizza pans took over. Ironically, the prototypes for the instruments were real satellite dishes, modified for listening to the static (and perhaps signals) from stars or their planets.
• NPR blog Bill Chappell (Aug 16) : SETI Plans To Resume Listening For Aliens Next Month, Thanks To Donations ; Includes excerpts from an interview by Ira Flatow on ScienceFriday, with Jill Tarter, last April.
• BBC – Judith Burns (Aug 16) : Telescope search for ET revived ;
• The Atlantic – Nicholas Jackson (Aug 16): With Jodie Foster’s Support, SETI to Resume Search for Aliens ; A bit too much heart-warming prattle about people opening their wallets, little analysis. Also overdoes description of the array, referring to “those massive antennas.” As radio telescopes go, they are lightweights. And not very big either.

Grist for the Mill: SETI Institute SETIstars fund raising site ; SETI Institute main site ;

- Charlie Petit

Old NYTimes man George Johnson, whose byline has gotten rare in recent years,  surfaces from his place in New Mexico today with a sweeping review of cancers’ many causes. He settles on a surprising parallel to mankind’s understanding of it (or them, as cancers are distinct) : the roiling of the big bang theory of cosmic birth after discovery of dark matter and dark energy. “Background suddenly becomes foreground,” he writes. In this case the old background now at the forefront is not merely the “junk” DNA of our own genomes but, even more impactful, the collective genome of the myriad microbes that reside in our gut and other tissues. It swaps DNA and sends molecular signals between its metabolisms and our own. Oh, great. Daunting indeed. Story includes links to key backup material. No hint of breakthrough here – but the hope that by facing the full scope  of the challenge mankind will find additional weapons against it.

Other headlines to note:

• Jim Robbins: Grizzlies Return, With Strings Attached ; In and around Yellowstone, the burgeoning brown bears are venturing out of the front range, across the plains. Some wear radio collars. Scientists watch.  Wildlife managers draw up guidelines. Residents are spooked. Cattle and sheep ranchers reach for rifles. A precarious accommodation evolves.
• Donald G. McNeil, Jr.: Pathogens May Change, But the Fear Is the Same ; In this essay McNeil, one of the most dogged reporters of world contagions, steps back a moment and sobs. There are so many epidemics, so little expertise, so many desperate stories, so few to listen, so much to report, so little change to see. But…. somehow, our species did eradicate smallpox.
• Welecia Konrad: Mistakes in Storage Can Alter Medication: Consumer health writing usually is flat and non-newsy, but this surprises. Perhaps some day the well-appointed main bathroom in the house will include a top-opening, hyper-efficient cool box for meds. Just 75 degrees or so, just enough that the racemization of 86 deg F+ won’t kick in.
• Oddball story of the week – Lindsey Hoshaw: Refuse Collects Here, but Visitors and Wildlife Can Breathe Free: On a landfill off the coast of Singapore that is a wildlife sanctuary, children’s nature museum, and wedding chapel too. It also has a serious side, regarding incineration.

As usual, lots more – whole section.

- Charlie Petit