A neighbor, a numbers-savvy fellow who reads this site regularly and perhaps merely to humor HIS neighbor, tips us off to a serious story in an on line trade pub that got off course. Blame that malady best known as the brain cramp, numeracy division, and it struck an experienced reporter. I’ll leave the name off for the sake of googleness, even though it’s right there on the story. That is, we’re not singling anybody out for character flaw or habitual carelessness. Rather, the goal is to remind all reporters (and readers) to be on the alert for things that seem sensible, sort of, are certainly remarkable, and to keep in mind that they just might be plainly wrong.

And boy if I’m the one wrong about this, I’m in deep trouble.

• TechWorld / PC World : Space junk to fall – but don’t panic, says NASA.

Did you read it? Do you see what I’m talking about? Ok, it’s an odds error. Here it is. The story, short and written in a light tone, clearly says that NASA puts at one chance in 3,200 that a person will be hit with debris from a specific satellite. It is in a low orbit that is due to decay itself right into the atmosphere in the next few days. The story then says the odds are one in 280,000 that one will be hit by lightning. So it concludes that chances of being hit by this satellite’s debris are higher than being hit by lightning. (I checked around, odds for lightning during ones lifetime are given across a broad range, but this number is in it).

Maybe it is just the phrasing that I don’t get, and the reporter knows full well what those numbers mean. I dunno. But taken at face value, the 1/3,200 odds for this satellite’s remnant hitting a person pertain to its affecting just one person out of the 6 billion or so on Earth. So, per person – ie to get the risk to YOU – divide it by 6 X 10⁹ . That makes the 1/280,000 chance of lightning hitting specifically you a lot higher, not lower, than your being clonked by a chip off this defunct Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite.

Here’s one that gets it right:

• Space.com – Natalie Wolchover: What Are the Odds You’ll Get Struck by NASA’s Falling Satellite? ;

- Charlie Petit

Every year the UC Santa Cruz science communications program – among the most successful formal, pedagogic producers of career science journalists in the country, with its specialty the conversion of researchers into reporters – publishes its fellows’ magazine-scale features. The result is Science Notes. This year’s issue is pretty good and in several places truly outstanding. No surprise there. They always are, and kudos to program director Rob Irion for keeping things rolling along.

Because our yard is full of bees, only minority being domestic honeybees, my faves include one I could identify with. It is on wild bees (it’s source of the illus, produced as are all the pubs’ arty pictures by students in science illustration at nearby California State University – Monterey Bay).  Another is  on something I’d never even thought to think about. That is, the ecosystems of São Tomé and Príncipe, an island nation straddling the equator in the Gulf of Guinea off west Africa. Turns out, I read, it is still teeming with weird fungus and toads and sea urchins and other creatures not cataloged, or hardly at all, yet it’s not some remote corner of New Guinea on the other side of the world or something like that but a couple of well-populated, big islands. And chances are it has oil, big money will flow in, and the whole little eden will get turned into crud and money. Or with planning and luck, not. It’s a fine story on discovery and a precarious landscape.

Whole lot of other  good reading here on on  tracking pumas, and on fixing glitches in a combat video game (appropriately, by a woman who used to fly combat helicopters as a US Marine), and on lizard family life and Peruvian gold and mysticism through traditional chemistry and salmon-snatching sea lions and slough management and on apps to help the blind know what’s in front of them. Take a look at the videos too. Listen carefully to the one on the bees. An almond farmer describes his new garden experiment, aimed at putting some wild bees among the domestic ones that pollinate his trees. He says, in proper San Joaquin Valley farmer fashion, he grows AMM-enz. The narrator reporter goes on calling them ALL-monds. If you ever wind up near Merced and meet a farmer with a mess of largeish trees in long rows blooming pink and white, ask him or her how the am’nz are doing. You’ll feel right at home.

The whole package is here, and  to give the budding science journos specific recognition here are links straight to their works.

Stories:

• Jane J. Lee: Documenting Eden ;
• Nadia Drake: Walking with Pumas ;
• Catherine Meyers: Peru’s Mountains of Gold ;
• Sandeep Ravindran: Lizard Family Ties ;
• Keith Rozendal: Meet Mother Ayahuasca ;
• Donna Hesterman: Fixing Glitchy Games ;
• Danielle Venton: Give Bees a Chance ;
• Melissae Fellet: Meeting of the Waters ;
• Susan Young: New Tools for the Blind ;
• Sascha Zubryd: The Salmon Snatchers ;

Grist for the Mill

: UCSC Science Communication Program ; CSUMB Science Illustration Program ;

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang post). Pedro Cáceres from El Mundo has won the $4.000 award for the best science story published in the Spanish press. He describes a cliff on the northern coast of Spain. In it geologists are able to identify clean layers of sediments that reflect the last 65 million years of the history of the Earth. The two-page story focuses on the 2-3 millimeters layer with iridium and deposits of the cloud generated by the meteorite that contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs. But it also describes inversions of the magnetic poles, significant changes in sea level, signs of extinctions, “rapid” warming of the planet (5 degrees in 50.000 years 60Ma), and it has marvelous infographics. What a coincidence that the award has been announced the same day that NASA suggests that the meteorite that caused the extinction of dinosaurs had not the origin planetary scientists previously supposed.

From Latin America we track today stories in about physiology of smell and fabrication of perfumes in Perú. The quest for artificial intelligence by Mexican robotic engineers. A story about how aluminum and other materials affected 20th century in Puerto Rico. And a nice discussion in Chile about who was the first scientist in history. A new book by an Italian author proposes Anaximander, even though he didn’t perform experiments.

Excelentísimo el reportaje de Pedro Cáceres “La playa Vasca donde se puede tocar el meteorito que mató a los dinosaurios” (suplemento Eureka – El Mundo) que se llevó los 3.000 euros del primer premio en la categoría  de prensa escrita del Certamen de Comunicación Científica convocado por la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT). Felicidades sinceras a Pedro, porque de verdad el reportaje lo tiene todo: Pedro acompaña a un geólogo hasta un acantilado de la costa Vasca donde se puede reconstruir la historia de los últimos 65 millones de años de la Tierra a través de las diferentes capas de estratos que los accidentes geológicos han dejado a la luz. Quizás el más llamativo de estos estratos es la fina capa de 2 o 3 milímetros de grosor con los materiales que se depositaron por toda la superficie del planeta tras la inmensa nube generada por el impacto de un gigante meteorito que causaría un cambio en las temperaturas globales y extinguiría a los dinosaurios. El artículo describe muy bien la abundancia del iridio propio de meteoritos encontrado en esa capa, analiza el rechazo inicial a esta teoría por el gradualismo imperante en la época, y ve restos de la extinción del 75% de animales marinos en capas inmediatamente posteriores. Pero también describe otras pruebas de la inversión de polos magnéticos de la Tierra, de bajadas del nivel del mar, del “rápido” calentamiento hace 56 millones de años que subió la temperatura del planeta 5 grados en 50.000 años (bien matizado que sólo en el siglo XX ha subido un grado), y cuenta con una magnífica infografía de Adolfo Arranz sobre las 5 grandes extinciones y los diferentes eventos durante y después de la caída del meteorito. Justo merecedor del premio.

Un meteorito que… ¡no es de donde nos pensábamos! Justo la NASA acaba de anunciar que posiblemente vino de una procedencia diferente a la sospechada (familia Baptistina). ABC presenta una buena nota sobre el tema, pero con una presentación engañosa. Judit de Jorge titula “el culpable de matar a los dinosaurios fue otro”, y subtitula “La NASA cree imposible que un asteroide Baptistina causara la gran extinción del Cretácico hace 65 millones de años y reconoce que el misterio sigue sin resolver”. ¿Qué entendéis leyendo esto? Que lo que está en entredicho es que la extinción de los dinosaurios fuera causada por un meteorito. Cierto que el texto completo de Judith deja muy claro que no hay duda sobre eso, y sólo se refiere a la procedencia del meteorito. Pero quizás el titulardebería haber sido menos ambiguo.

Destacando algunas otras notas desde América Latina, en El Comercio (Perú) el carismático Tomás Unger nos vuelve a ilustrar con “Olfato, olores y perfumes”, mostrando su impresionante capacidad para introducir en una docena de cortos párrafos tanta información sobre la fisiología del olfato, la historia de los olores y la fabricación de perfumes; un sentido que solemos decir la sociedad moderna ha atrofiado en nuestra especie pero que despierta de repente al mínimo indicio de olor a quemado o comida podrida. Nuestra carga evolutiva todavía sabe distinguir lo importante de lo superfluo.

El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico) continúa ofreciendo buenos textos de científicos locales, en este caso de Francisco Echegaray sobre “El aluminio, un material multiusos”. Más allá de la información presentada, una buena declaración de principios sobre la importancia de la química en la elaboración de nuevos materiales que han transformado el mundo. Algo a lo que quizás los más jóvenes ya están acostumbrados y no suelen valorar. Buena y merecida lanza a favor de la química.

Un pelín confuso pero buen texto en El Universal “Golem II+, robot mexicano que aprende” sobre las reflexiones técnico-filosóficas de expertos en inteligencia artificial para ir más allá de poner una cámara en un robot para que “vea”, sensores para que “oiga”, o un sistema de navegación para que se desplace. Quieren que “piense”, y saber cómo y en qué piensa. Muchos paralelismos a Asimos y datos históricos que enriquecen la lectura, pero que quizás diluyen el mensaje principal del artículo.

Y para terminar con toque filosófico una reflexión que cautivó la mente dispersa del tracker: Aristóteles fue quizás el filósofo más influyente de la historia. Un naturalista que observaba la naturaleza y seguía a la lógica para entenderla sin necesidad de recurrir a fenómenos paranormales. Toda una revolución. Pero a esta observación le faltaba algo: la experimentación. Por lógica podía creer que la función del cerebro era refrigerar el cuerpo, que la materia era continua y se podía dividir sin límite, que existía la generación espontánea de insectos, y que el Sol daba vueltas alrededor de la Tierra. Eso era lo lógico al utilizar sólo la observación. La experimentación mucho tiempo después le rebatiría. Por eso a pesar de su fabulosa filosofía natural no puede considerarse todavía un científico. Esa categoría aparecería siglos más tarde con Copérnico, Galileo, la duda metódica de Descartes, Francis Bacon… Pero en La Tercera (Chile) encontramos esta semana un bonito texto de Jennifer Abate “El primer científico de la historia no fue Pitágoras” en el que nos presenta un (para mi desconocido) Anaximandro como primer científico de la historia. La tesis viene del libro de un físico italiano que asegura que Anaximandro se sirvió de escepticismo y observación analítica para interpretar el funcionamiento del clima y deducir ya 600 años a. C. que todos los animales procedían de un ancestro común. Además, Jennifer explica que utilizaba una varilla para medir sombras en diferentes épocas del año (recuerda la manera como posteriormente Eratóstenes midió el radio de la Tierra). Por lo que se intuye en el texto, tampoco utilizaba la experimentación, y no entraría dentro de la categoría más estricta de científico. Es opinable. Pero interesante texto sin duda que logra ampliar las barreras espacio tiempo de nuestra mente.

- Pere Estupinyà

Seattle Times Graphic / Mark Knowlin

So, how DOES one knock down a tall dam in a narrow notch of a canyon without all the water going splooshing down the valley, wrecking sandbars full of willows and riverside bars full of tourists and causing other mayhem, all so salmon can have a part of their historic spawning grounds back? Yes, very carefully, of course. The first think I looked at after a tip to this news (thank you reader Roger Pettibone), was the graphical animation of the teardown process, stage by stage, atop the LA Times story by Kim Murphy on the start of long-awaited demolition of two dams on Washington State’s Elwha River. It is not the first but it is the largest dam removal project, it says here, in US history.

The river meanders (Correx – it’s more like a straight flume. See comments) through the Olympic Peninsula’s gorges and heavy timber. Until about 100 years ago it ran thick with spawning salmon. The dams pretty well put a stop to that. In return, lumber mills got electricity. That’s an environmental un-twofer, now being undone.

The LATimes did the story fairly aggressively and with commendable breadth of detail on all the politicians on hand to try to get a share of credit, the technical details, and the history of things  with maps and the interactive graphic. One astounding fact – it will take 30 years for the old river bed to get back to normal. One reason: accumulated silt that, if all piled on a football field, would rise taller than the Empire State Building … eleven times. That’s a lot of muck to wash away by what this says is a glacier-fed river. It might not even have any glaciers left in its headwaters (just guessing here) when it gets done.

The more local Seattle Times  has a reporter who has been covering this aggressively:

• Lynda V. Mapes (sept.15) Elwha dams’ historic removal begins ; A prelude to the next story. It’s not clear exactly when removal started – maybe this story concerns some preparatory smashing before the serious big smashing. Nice bit on a fellow who hiked in to see the first concrete fly, and found himself alone on a beach watching the key moment.
  
• Lynda V. Mapes (sept.17) With an excavator and a prayer, Elwha Dam removal begins/It was a century in the waiting, but on Saturday history was made here as, with speeches, song, prayer – and an excavator bucked painted gold – a National Park Service contractor took the first bite out of Elwha Dam ; That’s a lot of hed and dek, but it scans nicely. The story gets a load of good quote from the audience, to mix with history and color. This package has an overtly celebratory tone. It probably speaks for the bulk of the community up there. One wonders – would it be better to get some grouching in from somebody, some wish that the dams and their lakes could have remained? Ambitious Graphic Package.
• Ah ha – Letter to Editor: Dams created a unique environment for animals ; A reader tells the Times that two wrongs don’t make a right. The next letter calls the removal “enviro-religious voodoo.” Grouching, indeed.
• Lynda V. Mapes (sept.19) Big kings return to reign in Elwha ; The reporter on the beat watches as an 80-year-old national park volunteer releases four grown chinook salmon into the river upstream of the taller and more upstream of the crumbling barriers Glines Canyon Dam. Ten in all were released, carrying radio tags, so biologists can keep tabs on how well they navigate farther upstream. She should write a book.

*UPDATE:

• High Country News – Kim Todd: Rebuilding a river as Washington’s Elwha dams come down ; The best piece I’ve found – sensitive to history, and determined to explain how hard this job is. (The link will probably take you to a pay and subscriber barrier. I’m trying to spring it into the clear.)  Did anybody else mention that the silt pouring from the drained siltponds where the reservoirs were will kill most of the fish downstream? That it may go, first, from few salmon to almost none at all? And why it’s worth the risk – the original drainage was among the most fecund salmon habitats anywhere. Todd did her homework. She calls the project “a perfect test case for restoration science, a chance to see and document exactly what happens when a big dam comes down.” She owns the story – explaining things not through the quotes and statements of others, but using such things as decor on the narrative and lessons she carefully constructs. We learn about the budget problems, the bull trout that now live in the lake, the fear an invasion of weeds will spoil the restoration sequence. Climate change and the prospect of warmer, slower water means the old watershed cannot be expected to come back.  Good piece.

Other stories:

• AP – Ted Warren: Ceremony marks start of Elwha Dam removal project ;
• NYTimes / Green blog – Sean Patrick Farrell: Farewell, Dams. Hello, Salmon? ;
• Peninsula Daily – Rob Olikainen: Older Elwha Dam starts becoming rubble ; With embedded video of demolition’s start.

- Charlie Petit

Congratulations to the winners of this years Science-in-Society Awards from the National Association of Science Writers, and the Victor Cohn Award in Medical Science Reporting from the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, a set of prizes distinguished for being awarded directly by colleagues.

NASW Science in Society 2011 Awards:

• Books: Maryn McKenna for Superbug:The Fatal Menace of MRSA ;
• Science Reporting: Katy Butler for My Father’s Broken Heart, NYTimes Magazine.
• Science Reporting (local or regional) Barbara Moran, Power Politics, Boston Globe Magazine.
• Commentary/Opinion, Charles Homan, Hot Air, Columbia Journalism Review ;

CASW Victor Cohn Medical Science Reporting Prize:

• Ron Winslow , Wall Street Journal, for a body of work over the last five years.

Further Information: NASW Press Release ; CASW Press Release ;

PLUG! To Congratulate them in Person Dept:

Science Journalists in the tracker’s readership, in the US or anywhere, who have not already done so, might well consider Oct. 14-18 in Flagstaff, Arizona,  near the rim of the Grand Canyon and if you’ve never been there this is a sterling chance to see it and even ride down it on a raft while trying to hear expert commentary. The Prizes will be presented during ScienceWriters2011, this year’s edition of the annual workshops program that NASW presents, followed instantly by the New Horizons in Science Program that  CASW and this year’s host, Northern Arizona University, organize and sponsor and that features a parade of distinguished professors and other PhDs and their like from far and wide to peek into the near and far futures of scientific research.

That’s a plug for good reason hereby disclosed. I am on the CASW board, was once on the NASW board, and thus have keen emotional interest in the turnout for this year’s ScienceWriters. It’s gonna be terrific.

- Charlie Petit

One must confess to having enjoyed reading Stephen Jay Gould more than reading Richard Dawkins. But it is more fun to read about the  evolutionary biologist named Dawkins than about the late one named  Gould, with whom the former sparred bitterly, and particularly easy to imagine having more fun in a long conversation with Dawkins. Gould was baldly self-satisfied at his being, usually, the smartest one in the room – a feeling he exuded particularly with reporters. When he sniffed at you, it was a roundhouse. Dawkins, I’d wager, does a better job being congenial (at least, when the other party is not confusing scriptural verses with rhetorical gotchas).

This is all by way of endorsing the long “Profile in Science” on Dawkins, by Michael Powell, that leads the section. Dawkins is profiled a lot, so there is probably no big news in it. But it is enjoyable to find yet another example of his ability to be original, vicious, and yet charming while attacking dogma with verbal daggers (enforced faith in  religion,  he tells Powell, “is a sort of crime against childhood.”). Look at the video;  best parts include remarks on Darwin’s deep seriousness and his appreciation of language, and on the standing ovations he himself gets in places one might expect to find that evolutionary oddity the flying tomato. One last thing: I still think he was too rough on Martin Rees.

Also up front is a story that is a small surprise for the science section. Under the overline Political Science Denise Grady takes Representative Michele Bachman’s reprehensibly ignorant remark about the HPV vaccine, rips it to pieces, and examines the public health wreckage that such recklessness by celebrities in public can leave in its trail. It’s an easy target, but also an opportunity to make larger points. God knows – gadzooks  that’s an inapt figure of speech – what Richard Dawkins has to say about Bachman’s rise toward prominence in American political and medical science.

One other small part of the section jumps out: the letter column. Last week the section included a skeptical analysis by Abigail Zuger of the new movie Contagion (earlier post). While the jargon and other overtly science-y aspects are well researched to ring true to experts, Zuger attacked the plot as an exaggerated potboiler version of how a true pandemic is likely to unfold. I didn’t think to write this last week, but hmmmpphhhhttt! The successful TV shows The Big Bang Theory and Numb3rs have preposterous plots. But much of their charm arises from the educated deployment of the right kinds of diagrams and the right kinds of references in conversation to allow scientific theory and discovery to provide a smart atmosphere for the other nonsense.

The letters column includes two that right the ship a bit, providing deftly the stance that for goodness sake it was not a documentary, but the movie is socially useful. That one of a few years ago on global warming, The Day After Tomorrow, would have been so much better, if still absurd in arc, if advisers had at least given educated viewers an easier path toward suspension of disbelief. But what gets thoughts turning is the list of authors who wrote on behalf of the movie’s own production team. One is the screenwriter, the other three “scientific consultants.” For brevity’s sake, that last category is okay. It includes perhaps the wisest adviser of the lot, science writer and author Laurie Garrett. I mentioned her in last week’s post, too, but here’s more. Scientific adviser? I’d say as journalists we are better described as reality advisers, narrative advisers, drama advisers, nitty gritty advisers. We find facts and explain theories, but we aren’t their originators. We talk to scientists, read their stuff, dig through musty files and register FOIA requests and go to exotic places and try to ask tough questions. Laurie’s a driven reporter, and on an epic scale. She’s better’n a scientific adviser. I bet she doesn’t hang all her plaques on one wall. It’d need to be huge and reinforced with steel and besides, that’d be showing off.

Other headlines to note:

• Gina Kolata: A Little Deception Helps Push Athletes to the Limit: No surprise here, really. You let some sweating person go along thinking he or she is already at the limit running along – and put a lion on their tail, bingo, they step it up (or, alas and in an experimental lapse in ethics, they die). This one is fun, however, showing just what wusses most of us are and suggesting a bit of what champion athletes believe: one can always do better.
• Deborah Weisberg: Can the Paddlefish Sustain Itself? ; A blog post that just popped up at the NYT ScienceTimes site this morning. It’s mostly a feel-good yarn, well-reported, about restoration ecology and a fabulous, big fish that with help may soon enough reoccupy a big part of former range. I also highlight it as a symbolic retort by a reader of the Houston Chronicle, who commented on a  piece in yesterday’s post about saving some minnows in the drought-shrunken (and irrigation and drinking water depleted too) Brazos River in Texas. Scroll up to that post and go to the story. You’ll see the comment I mean (or just go here). It  salutes evolution, of all things, as reason to just let the fish die out. The reader is probably not that ignorant, but likes to pull the chains of enviros just to hear them squawk. And I squawked. Dawkins likely would blanch.
• Erik Olsen – How Far Will Dolphins Go to Relate to Humans? ; There are some topics that just don’t seem to lose their news appeal – water on Mars, feathers on dinosaurs, farthest darned quasar or pulsar or whatevar, genes linked to terrible diseases, a whisper of the Higgs or  other non-standard particle, a test of relativity – but how did dolphin brains get on the list? No quarrel with the reporting or with the style, but with the judgment that this sappy story of research that could not even get an NSF grant and about things John Lilly besmirched with sentiment decades ago deserves a place in the news hole. Soon as a dolphin does a dance or squeaks or whistles a message that channels Julia Childs about why one ought prefers mackerel to sardines, or explains why those battered porpoise corpses deserved it, or describes how sperm whales finish off giant squid and offers to take a camera down there to show us, let me know. But this story seems formulaic, unsurprising, and premature. One supposes the same could be said about yet another story on R. Dawkins. I concede I’m a bigger fan of Dawkins than of dolphins.

As usual, lots more: Whole Section ;

- Charlie Petit

The AP science feed includes a concise piece of reporting from a muddy stretch of drought-strangled Brazos River in Texas. It captures a side of that state’s long hot and dry summer that has not gotten a lot of ink. The bulk of the news, naturally, is on the stress on farmers and city dwellers alike as they bake, month after month, with neither respite nor any rain to speak of. But wildlife is having no picnic.

Reporters Angela K. Brown and Betsy Blaney – or at least one of them – took notes while wildlife biologists from the state Parks and Wildife, federal Fish and Game, and a Texas Tech group netted shiny minnows from the dwindled waterway. These  particular shiners are native only to the Brazos and, it says here, were already on a list for possible inclusion as officially endangered even before the present predicament hit them. This version of the story, picked up off the wire by the Houston Chronicle, is dated Saturday, Sept. 17. One also finds, from a clip at the Austin Statesman, that Blaney has had her eye on the operation, and filed for the service about three weeks ago on plans to carry out just such a rescue.

The vignette reflects a vital aspect of the larger drought story. Both the Houston and Austin papers carried a wire story on it. Perhaps they and other regional outlets, broadcast and print, have covered the general issue with their own staffs. But this rescue effort on the Brazos, dramatic and reported well by the AP, seems not to have gotten attention from other general news outlets. There may be interesting, inside-news-business details we don’t have. How did these two AP reporters come across the news? Did some of the agencies involved try to get media interest more broadly? Were there, as seems there ought to have been, a few other reporters and TV crews out by the Brazos’s puddles?

The news plays a part in an Environmental Defense Fund blog by Amy Hardberger on wildife and the Texas drought. She cites the AP for part of her post (and that is what led The Tracker to Blaney’s earlier piece).

Other Brazos River, Texas Drought, or Texas Wildife Stories:

• Brenham Banner-Press: Brazos River Authority issues drought emergency for lake ;
• MSNBC: Texas drought worsens from ‘abysmal’ ;
• Fort worth Star-Telegram – Sarah Bahari: Drought proves mixed blessing for Texas wineries: You like wizened grapes the size of berries and rich in flavor, Texas is the place to get a vintage that’ll be long remembered.

Plus in the public war over climate change, far from the arena of science where this science has for quite awhile been  well settled down to a consensus:

• FirstThings / Secondhand Smoke – Wesley J. Smith: Global Warming Hysteria: No, Texas Drought Not Climate Change ; Where one learns that part of the problem is the power of the science-technological elite. One supposes that is code for out-of-touch intellectuals and other lefties who don’t do “sound” science. One supposes that the use of the word ‘elite’ is meant to be sardonic. The choice of terms is nonetheless revealing. Why even suggest that it is a bad idea to turn for advice to elite members of scientific and technology societies?

And now, for much needed balance, two blogs sourced largely in the land of the science-technological elite:

• OnEarth – Alyson Kenward: Global Warming Amplifying Texas Drought and Wildfires ; The first source is the Texas state climatologist, who one hears is not consulted, or hardly ever, by Governor Rick Perry.
• Houston Chronicle / Baker Institute Blog (Rice Univ) – Ronald L. Sass: Texas Wildfires: More evidence of climate change ;

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang post) This Thur and Fri Madrid will host the Global Alzheimer’s Research Summit. El Pais help open public discussion with two interesting stories. One is about a study conducted in the north of Spain that will search for early indicators of the disease within a large volunteer population. No doubt that the study will be tremendously useful, but there is confusion here regarding the translation of its results into immediate improvement of patient health. The story seems to imply that detecting early  predisposition to it will be beneficial. This is not clear in a disease that has no treatment yet  and so many uncertainties in general. In fact, the title of the second story is clear and brave: “we don’t treat the disease but the patient”. This article explains the limited effects of pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies, the stagnation of the field, and the doubts about the convenience of measuring early predisposition. We expect clearer answers from reporters attending the Research Summit. Just a small observation for editors who ought to assure consistency: In El Pais one article says that in Spain there are 600.000 people affected by Alzheimer’s. The other says 3.5 million. 

El hijo de un expolítico español que en el 2009 falleció de Alzheimer decía literalmente: “Que nadie me diga que dentro de 10 años voy a tener la enfermedad y que, de momento, solo puedo hacer ejercicios de memoria”. En el gran reportaje de Emilio de Benito “No se trata el alzhéimer, se trata al enfermo” (El País) el científico Pablo Martínez añade “Si se informa a una persona de que sus probabilidades son del 88% y luego está en el otro 12%, le habremos dado una mala noticia porque sí”.

Éste es uno de los aspectos clave en esta terrible enfermedad, directamente relacionado con otro fundamental: ¿sirve de mucho saber que tienes altas posibilidades de padecer alzhéimer? Los expertos suelen darnos respuestas ambiguas. Quizás es el momento de empecemos a exigir mayor claridad. ¿en qué grado funcionan las terapias farmacológicas y cognitivas? El reportaje de Emilio de Benito ofrece la respuesta en el título y en la frase “Aunque la enfermedad no tenga tratamiento, los pacientes siempre lo tienen”. Otras conclusiones: No hay cura a la vista para el alzheimer, desde hace 15 años no hay novedades farmacológicas (y son de efecto muy limitado porque “Nos equivocamos de planteamiento. Se quiso tratar el alzhéimer como el déficit de dopamina que genera el párkinson, pero la enfermedad es mucho más compleja. Con estas sustancias se intenta compensar la pérdida de memoria, pero el alzhéimer va mucho más allá. Afecta a todas las capacidades del individuo, y se las va despojando de una en una“), la evolución de la enfermedad es muy diferente entre pacientes, y las terapias no farmacológicas tienen una utilidad relativa. Con todo ello, la pregunta básica que se puede hacer una persona de 55 años con antecedentes familiares de alzhéimer es: “¿Querría saber mi grado de riesgo, y tomar alguna medida preventiva?”. Es aquí donde sí querríamos obtener una respuesta clara, obtenida no sólo de opiniones de expertos sino de bibliografía científica. El Global Alzheimer’s Research Summit que se celebrará esta semana en Madrid puede ser una buena ocasión para ello.

Demasiado a menudo vemos noticias puntuales sobre algo tan peliagudo como el alzhéimer, con visiones más o menos favorables a terapias cognitivas, que nos pueden llegar a confundir. El reportaje de E. de Benito es excelente y aborda otros aspectos como el rol de los cuidadores, pero echamos de menos alguna cita bibliográfica a la última revisión del tema. Insistimos: El País se adelantó con esta y un par de notas que ahora comentaremos, pero la cita en Madrid puede ser un buen momento para afrontar de cara las difíciles preguntas que rodean esta enfermedad que afecta ya a 35 millones de personas en el mundo y según The Lancet en 10 años duplicará su incidencia.

Las dos notas que mencionábamos en El País son el artículo de Isabel Landa “El alzhéimer 10 años antes”, y la entrevista al especialista en enfermedades neurodegenerativas que está desarrollando un estudio para el diagnóstico precoz: Isabel Landa “Un cerebro entrenado afronta mejor el alzhéimer”. ¿Cuánto mejor? Es la pregunta del millón, que parecemos no atrevernos a plantear. En el artículo Isabel describe el prometedor proyecto que ya ha reclutado a 500 voluntarios para intentar identificar poblaciones de riesgo. Independientemente del baile de cifras (el artículo de Isabel dice que en España hay 600.000 afectados y el de Emilio de Benito 3.5 millones), y que la frase “identificar marcadores genéticos a través de uno de los más avanzados sistemas en neuroimagen” nos suena fatal, leyendo la nota nos quedamos con la idea de que es tremendamente importante identificar pequeños cambios en el cerebro que se manifiestan incluso diez años antes de los primeros síntomas de la enfermedad. En la entrevista, el director del estudio dice “Si somos capaces de detectar esas anomalías años antes de que aparezcan los síntomas, habremos dado un grandísimo paso”, y al mismo tiempo reconoce tajantemente que “Al día de hoy no se puede prevenir el alzhéimer. Por muchas cosas que uno haga, la genética o factores que se nos escapan pueden más que lo que nosotros podemos hacer para prevenir”. Nosotros intuimos que su investigación será importantísima para conocer mejor el desarrollo de la enfermedad y comparar con controles sanos, pero de nuevo queda un poco confuso para el público general. Necesitamos incorporar qué nos dicen las principales revisiones científicas sobre estos aspectos.

Lo que uno intuye es que si tus neuronas están programadas para sufrir alzhéimer, el proceso se desarrollará por mucho que hayas ejercitado más la memoria o lleves una alimentación más sana. Quizás como mucho logres que el proceso empiece un poco más tarde, se desarrolle más lento, o algún aspecto como la pérdida de memoria se atenúe, pero no vemos ningún dato científico defendiendo que el impacto es muy significativo. Hay otros aspectos a analizar en la ciencia del alzhéimer, como si los modelos animales utilizados en investigación son adecuados o no, pero en cuanto a utilidad social, el enfoque “no se trata la enfermedad sino al paciente” de E. de Benito nos parece un mensaje importante a confirmar. Estaremos atentos a las informaciones en el encuentro en Madrid el 22 y 23 de esta semana.

- Pere Estupinyà

The Bay Citizen is a non-profit and mostly on line news agency in the SF Bay Area, where its reporter John Upton recently turned out an eye-opening review of labor problems at, and a lawsuit against, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It is on the other side of the East Bay hills as one takes the highway from Oakland toward the Central Valley. Once known widely almost exclusively for designing and testing a large part of the US nuclear arsenal (Los Alamos does  the rest), its recent public attention has been mostly on the gigantic National Ignition Facility that the Dept. of Energy built to mimic thermonuclear explosions without having to light any of them off (plus, perhaps, open a door to commercial fusion energy).

I missed this piece when it came out, about a week ago. It ran in the Bay Area edition of the NYTimes, which uses the Bay Citizen’s material extensively but only regionally. It is worth wider circulation, especially by those who follow national securitys  and the DOE’s overlaps with scientific research. What stands out, to me, is not the labor problems so much -  a result of layoffs and of an apparent failure to get hoped-for savings from letting private industry to most of the management (with hefty fees to do it). Nope, it’s that the once enormous flow of peer reviewed journal articles that the thousands of engineers and physicists and chemists and others once churned out is now a merely large flow. In 2005, it says here, the count was about 1400 articles. Last year: 800. That’s a cliff. The article reads, to the extent I still follow lab news, to be a fair summary of its problems of mission and budget. It raises the issue: are DOE’s and other national labs all suffering similar constriction in scientific publication output? Is it all due to the smaller staff at Livermore? Is privatization part of the problem?

Disclosure: My first real newspaper job, after I got out of the army, was at the Livermore Herald & News. It was a part of the old Floyd Sparks newspaper empire-ito that was based in Hayward, and that has now long-since been absorbed into the much larger MediaNews Group that newspaper mogul Dean Singleton founded.  MediaNews by the way has my second newspaper employer, the SF Chronicle, surrounded now except on the west but only because there are no newspapers in the sea. The Livermore lab was on my beat at both papers. Beyond that, while I never met physicist and cyclotron-inventor Ernest Orlando Lawrence, who died when I was in junior high, I did 43 years ago marry a daughter of his (just celebrated our anniversary).  Thus, via my late and feisty mother-in-law came thorough immersion in Livermore Lab history – including her profound, dying regret that the Livermore facility’s Cold War profile overshadowed as EOL’s legacy at the “real” Lawrence lab, the one in Berkeley that does no classified work. She wanted the Livermore stepchild renamed for somebody more in keeping with its hydrogen bomb identity: Edward Teller. I told her I’d do all I could to minimize recurring media confusion over which Lawrence lab does what. So listen up: there are two of them. Don’t mix them up.

- Charlie Petit

Note: Strange but All Too True. This was meant to be posted Friday. This morning it was discovered, languishing, in the queue / cp

Long ago the press kits from Nature routinely, in robust HP Lovecroft mode, proclaimed some stories thus: “From the Stygian Depths a tale of Eldritch horror…,” or something like that. It about sums up my impression of the births of Kimberlite pipes. Long ago, when the mantle was hotter and continents were younger, lava and other volcanic stuff had one rather dramatic way of getting to the surface. So I’ve heard. Rather than gronching along in dacitic or basaltic or as whatever mineral they were, diking and fracturing away for months or centuries before kaboom, they just rared back and like the fist of Hades himself, blasted their last everal miles in one grand battering ram punch to the surface, blowing through the final meters at hundreds of miles per hour. So some dinosaur was walking along, the ground shook, and blammo, instant Pinatubo where there hadn’t even been so much as a cinder cone. Something like that. Maybe nothing like that. I’m working on memory here. But such rocketing plumes heralded arrival of cratonic basement bits including diamonds – in regions that today host diamond mines – delivered from the depths (yes, Stygian ones) so fast they didn’t have time to decompose into lesser minerals along the way.

And in Science this week is a report that summons such imagery. Brazilian diamond mines include some lousy diamonds, full of impurities. That hurts market value, but also lets geophysicists estimate the conditions of their formation. The conclusion is that some of the diamonds were born in old, chilled oceanic tectonic plates sinking into the mantle. They formed deep, even deeper than the keels of continental cratons where most diamonds gestate. Every once in awhile, some sort of phase change instability created a pocket of kimberlite magma that rose rather fast from 400 miles or so down and carried with it telltale baggage. Some were diamonds, their carbon derived from ancient organic seabed oozes, and inside some of them were perovskite proofs of great depth.

Nobody wrote it quite that way, though, distracted like me by the violence of kimberlite pipes. The grandeur of the global carbon cycle got most attention from reporters, And few took time to notice that some of the tell-tale mantle minerals included in these deep-gestated diamonds are various kinds of perovskite. That’s a mineral class, its name derived from the geometry of the crystal’s planes. Hardly anybody sees such things but they are the most common mineral class in the Earth. Not on Earth but way down there IN it. A Berkeley geophysicist, Raymond Jeanloz, told me about that many years ago and I never forgot it. He forged some of it, a magnesium perosvskite I believe, in his lab in an anvil heated by lasers and able to withstand pressures sufficient to make the mineral and confirm its phase diagram and genesis. His anvil’s jaws were of diamond. It is the only substance able to take such pressure and let the laser heatlamp shine through. Now, some of nature’s perovskite is being found scattered about on Earth. Inside diamonds. So appropriate.

STORIES:

• NYTimes – Nicholas Wade: In Diamonds’ Flaws, Finding Clues to Earth’s Carbon Cycle ; Nice job, but it mentions that these diamonds formed more than 435 miles down. Really. 435. Hmm. That comes to 700 km. Which is some scientist’s very loose estimate of a characteristic depth. One significant figure. I should think rounding was in order in translating it. Such as 400-45o miles, or well over 400, something fuzzy.
• Our Amazing Planet – Charles Q. Choi : ‘Superdeep’ Diamonds Hint at Depth of Carbon Cycle ;
• Cosmos (Australia) Emma Brennand: Diamonds’ deep origins unearthed ;
• Discovery News – Tim Wall: Diamonds Journey To The Center Of The Earth ; Well, within a few thousand miles of it. Headline writers! Hmm, no. Looks like the writer means it literally.

Is lots more.

Grist for the Mill: University of Bristol Press Release ; AAAS Press Release ; Carnegie Institution Press Release;

- Charlie Petit

The National Academies announced this week the latest winners of its instantly-prestigious prize (not just that it’s NAS, but enough money to buy a not-bad car). Congratulations all around, particularly for the award’s first repeat winner, Andy Revkin of the NYTimes’s Dot Earth blog. He is not only a wise writer and a working musician but a long time tap dancer on the fault lines among the parties of the crazies – and occasional islands of sanity – in the climate change wars. He’s a soldier for science, with all its twists and nuance. He also won in the prize’s first year, 2003. A few other familiar names here too:

• Book: Rebecca Skloot , for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks ;
• Film/Radio/TV: Alexa Elliott and WPBT2 Production – Public Television, for Changing Seas.
• Magazine/Newspaper: Amy Harmon, New York Times, for Target:Cancer.
• Online: Andrew Revkin, for NYT  DotEarth Blog.

For details: NAS Press Release ;

As astronomers hoped and analysts of the ways of Washington expected, the Senate Science Appropriations sub-Committee has penciled in enough money to keep the long-delayed, grotesquely more expensive than promised, yet paramount James Webb Space Telescope project moving toward launch…eventually. The new target date is 2018. This drama isn’t over, but Washington reporters have news that may give some solace to those feeling gloomy about continued US excellence in space science and astronomy. The House science committee still, preumably, proposes to axe the Webb. Eventually a conference committee will make the call.

Stories:

• Florida Today – Ledyard King: Senate panel OKs $18B for NASA ;
• AP: Mikulski says Senate committee bill includes funding for Webb space telescope ;
• Space News – Dan Leone: Senate Panel Restores James Webb Space Telescope Funding ; The hed says restores, but the text says this still falls short of what NASA’s analysts say it will take. The story is not nearly as cheerful as the headline.
• Wired – Mark Brown: Senate moves to save James Webb Space Telescope ;
• Discovery News – Ian O’Neill: James Webb Space Telescope Saved? ;

Related News: Sometimes the news aggregators that put a little coat of varnish on press releases  and pass them on, while passing themselves off as news agencies, do come in handy. Here is one to provide a look at what’s up with the Webb right now.

• PhysOrg.com – James Webb telescope completes mirror-coating milestone ;

On the other hand news:

AAAS Science Insider – Jeffrey Mervis: Senate Panel Cuts NSF Budget by $162 Million ;

- Charlie Petit

Grist for the Mill: US Senate Appropriations Committee Press Release (summary of whole proposed science support)