(English intro to Spanish lang post) Spanish reporters are in love with the LHC at CERN and its search for the Higgs Boson. Yesterday’s non-announcement has been covered with great joy. “We are closer to it!” exclaimed some as if these were big news. Even when the accident at LHC, and the rumors that LHC costs compromised the budget for other scientific projects of the EU, there’s never been critical angles towards this unquestionably fabulous scientific enterprise. The positive consequence is that Spanish readers are in love with LHC too. The story about the conference at CERN explaining that Higgs should be -if it exists- in the range on 115-130 GeV, it’s been for several hours the most read story in the online edition of El País. ABC wrote 4 different online stories, and all of them were in the top ten. Similar in other newspapers, like El Mundo. One interesting observation is that when several stories are published, the ones explaining the fundamentals about what is the Higgs boson and why it is important have many more clicks than the ones covering the news about the conference. That’s significant. Another observation is that comparing to old stories about Higgs, little by little the expression “God’s particle” seems to be less used in favor of “Higgs boson”

Recuerdo conocer hace casi 3 años en Washington DC a un alto responsable de la investigación científica de la Unión Europea, y confesarme que estaban preocupados por el LHC. El accidente había retrasado proyectos y aumentado un ya enorme presupuesto que estaba perjudicando la investigación en otras áreas. Entendían la importancia de un gran proyecto como el LHC, pero eran conscientes de la descomunal inversión de dinero público que suponía, y sobre todo, que comprometía el presupuesto de la UE y implicaba aplazar otros proyectos en áreas con quizás retorno más directo a la sociedad. Y encima lo del accidente. Preocupados estaban. Pero este ángulo crítico en ningún momento se ve en la cobertura de ciencia que hacemos del LHC. Cuando el Real Madrid empata decimos que jugó mal. Si la ultima película de Almodóvar no gusta la criticamos. Pero si el LHC tarda un huevo en encontrar el que decía iba a ser su primer gran hallazgo, le damos palmaditas en la espalda y decimos “tranquilo, tranquilo… que te entendemos… la ciencia es así…”. Y lo es. Pero el periodismo debe ser más malpensado e inquisitivo. Las notas que ayer y hoy se han publicado sobre el no hallazgo todavía del Higgs son geniales. Muy bien trabajadas. Y el lector reacciona de manera fantástica. La excelente nota en El País que ahora comentaremos de Alicia Rivera “Los físicos se acercan a la partícula de Higgs” lleva varias horas como noticia más leída de toda la web del periódico (y eso que no hubo noticia!!!). Pero en general echamos en falta un tono un pelín más crítico o impaciente con lo que rodea al LHC. Sólo un pelín. Al menos cuestionar un poco algunos principios.

Como hemos dicho, la nota de Alicia merece ser contemplada por la riqueza de los datos que expone, la explicación sobre las medidas estadísticas, y la originalidad de los ejemplos utilizados. Utilizar expresiones como “los científicos creen que lo están rozando con la punta de los dedos” demuestra que Alicia domina sobremanera el asunto y habla de él de manera relajada. Pero no intuimos hastío de que tras tantos anuncios y hypes sobre el bosón, ahora nos digan que están un poquito más cerca, y dentro de un año confirmaremos su existencia, o su no existencia. Claro que ha habido progreso, pero no parece muy diferente de lo que podríamos haber oído hace un año. Veamos más notas.

En El Mundo, Miguel Corral “El bosón de Higgs aún no está pero se le espera” presenta una muy concisa nota con la información básica que dio de sí la tan esperada conferencia en el CERN: si el bosón existe, debe tener una masa de entre 115 y 130 GeV. Esto son resultados muy interesantes, pero no rompedores. Es que buscar el Higgs es difícil… nos dicen los científicos. Pero para dentro de un año ya tendremos datos más concluyentes. Continuad pagando, please.

Pero lo más interesante es que la nota que se cuela como 4ª en el top ten de más leídas es “¿Qué supondría el hallazgo de la partícula de Dios?” (M. Corral). ¿Qué demuestra el éxito de una nota ton dicho titular? (y muy clara también, por cierto): Que en ciencia al lector también le interesa comprender, no sólo saber el resultado del partido de fútbol. O eso, o que poner Dios en lugar de Higgs vende más. Una expresión que poco a poco ha ido cayendo en desuso. Antes se utilizaba mucho más la expresión “partícula de Dios” que “bosón de Higgs”. Indicativo también.

ABC ha cubierto de manera muy amplia la noticia. Varias notas con diferentes ángulos. Judit de Jorge en “Físicos hallan las primeras señales del bosón de Higgs” aporta la información básica, Jose Manuel Nieves en “El bosón de Higgs, la partícula clave de la física, ya no tiene dónde esconderse” hace lo propio con un tono bastante más positivo, y añadiendo una divulgativa tercera nota “Las cinco preguntas sobre el bosón de Higgs” (J.M. Nieves). Y todavía encontramos una cuarta nota de título peculiar:  José Grau “El bosón de Higgs no explica la materia oscura, ni mucho menos la energía oscura”. El contenido sale de una entrevista a un cosmólogo, y buena redirección del tema hacia el Higgs. Sí resulta curioso que este bosón que explica el origen de la masa, lo hará sólo del 4,6% del Universo. La fuerza repulsiva de la energía oscura o la misteriosa materia oscura en principio no tendrán nada que ver con él. Bueno; pero hecho destacable es que las 3 primeras notas están dentro del top ten de las más leídas hoy de ABC online. Significativo.

Público presenta una única nota que aglutina lo anunciado en la conferencia con las claves para entender la importancia del Higgs. Con un título poco certero, la firma Nuño Domínguez “El LHC encuentra evidencias de la partícula de Dios”

La Vanguardia también se lo ha tomado en serio, y Josep Corbella firma dos notas. Un poco aséptica, pero con muy buen grado de detalle: “Cada vez más cerca de la partícula de Dios” (J. Corbella), y una “Guía rápida para entender el bosón”, que se ha colado como tercera noticia más leída de la web de la vanguardia. Josep Fita “El bosón de Higgs, la pieza que falta para cuadrar el puzzle” también presenta una nota básica donde entrevista a un catedrático de física.

No me dio tiempo a revisar lo aparecido en América Latina. Grave error no empezar por allí. Prometo buscar notas a destacar, y volver de una vez a priorizar el análisis del periodismo de ciencia en la región.

- Pere Estupinyà

Last week while covering the annual American Geophysics Union meeting in San Francisco, award-winner (this year’s David Perlman breaking news sci journalism prize) Steve Connor leaned over to a companion and said “hey, I got a great story today.” He’d escaped the confines of the (fine) AGU press room to scout a posters session in a vast room on the other side of the big Moscone Convention Center’s multi-building complex, there ran into some Russian researchers he’d talked with for previous news, and bingo. They had something, and he had it exclusively. He said it’d be up this week, and the nice graphic map with it shows the time was well spent. Just goes to show, again, that sitting in by distant digital link on press conferences is better than nothing, but being at a meeting via one’s corporeal self is even better.

•  Independent (UK) Steve Connor: Shock as retreat of arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gases ; Plus op-ed: Leading Article: Arctic methane: a risk it would be unwise to ignore ;

A few other outlets picked up Connor’s piece, or spring-boarded their own stories from it.

• New Zealand Herald: Rapid rise in Arctic methane shocks scientists;
• Yale e360: Huge Methane Plumes Are Discovered in Arctic Ocean ;

Speaking of bubbling methane, I am bubbling with methane questions that this story raises. This is methane from the sea floor, it says here, from continental shelves. Recently we’ve seen news on Arctic methane due to permafrost melt – but mainly up on the dry land’s tundra. That methane is being,as far as I know, created metabolically as microbial decomposition of plant-remains generates it, as well as CO2. Connor’s latest story’s methane, one presumes, arises from decomposition of a different sort. That would be the chemical dissociation of methane clathrates or hydrates, ice-like matrices of CH4 and H2O common in cold seabeds. A scoop is a scoop and Connor has a good one. One or two sentences on what this methane is and whether it is distinct from the kind feared from thawing, terrestrial permafrost would have anwered the question. Another small one: Connor’s source refers to the methane plumes as torch-like structures. That evokes images of flames (most of the story’s terms, such as plumes and bubbles, inspire correct visions). One may assume that this methane is not on fire, at least not usually. Plus methane is not, one suspects, a particularly deadly greenhouse gas – not as in fall-over gasping and turning blue at the concentrations as issue here. Reporters seldom write the headlines on newspaper stories. That is likely the case here.

- Charlie Petit

After yesterday’s post on hyped magazine cover language on cancer vaccines, it’s nice to take note of a very good piece on cancer vaccines by the able Sharon Begley of Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

Begley begins in the usual way, with an anecdote about a patient who tried an experimental cancer vaccine in 2006 and is still alive five years later, a highly unlikely outcome. The vaccine’s creator, Begley writes, “dares to envision a future in which vaccines ‘control or even eliminate cancer.’”

Begley, writing in anticipation of the 40th anniversary of President Nixon’s declaration of a war on cancer on Dec. 23rd, paints an unusually optimistic view of the future of cancer treatment. Here’s the nut graf, in which she summarizes what she’s about to tell us:

After four decades of largely unfulfilled hopes—Dec. 23 marks 40 years since President Nixon declared war on cancer—scientists have hit on a potential cure that few thought possible a few years ago: vaccines. If they succeed, cancer vaccines would revolutionize treatment. They could spell the end of chemotherapy and radiation, which can have horrific side effects, which tumor cells often become resistant to, and which often make so little difference it would be laughable were it not so tragic: last week, for instance, headlines touted two new drugs for metastatic breast cancer even though studies failed to show that they extend survival by a single day. Vaccines could make such “advances” a thing of the past. And they could make cancer as preventable, with a few jabs, as measles.

She follows that immediately by noting that “could” is the key word. Vaccines could spell the end of chemotherapy and radiation, and even eliminate cancer. We’veheard such promises before; still, it’s nice to see a story that defies the common media wisdom that the war on cancer was a failure. (The New York Times has mostly pursued the idea that we’ve lost the war on cancer, but now and then contradicts itself by finding new hope.)

Begley continues with a very clear explanation of what cancer vaccines are and what they can do, and she runs through various cancer vaccines in different stages of development, letting us know that many researchers are working on these things, and the results from many different labs are promising.

She notes, as she should, that cancer cures have come and gone, but that the number of believers in cancer vaccines is growing, and so is the money to fund their research. After many years, a researcher tells Begley, “we’re finally getting it right.”

- Paul Raeburn

The Higgs boson, if it exists, remains in hiding.

After weeks of hype suggesting that physicists at the Large Hadron Collider had found solid evidence of the existence of the fabled particle, the long-awaited announcement Tuesday morning produced these characterizations:

–”tantalizing hints” Dennis Overbye in the New York Times

–”intriguing hints” John Heilprin of AP in the Washington Post

–”closer than ever” Clara Moskowitz of Live Science at MSNBC.com

–”no conclusive proof” Robert Evans and Tom Miles at Reuters

–”do not have enough data yet” Heilprin again

You get the picture. Bottom line: If the Higgs particle exists, the LHC teams are gaining confidence that they might be able to find it. As some of them say, wait ’till next year.

-Boyce Rensberger

The Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains. Click for enlargement. Credit: Abdulhakim Abdi

Coolest thing in Science Times this morning is an image of a huge mountain range, more rugged than the Alps, that lies beneath two miles of Antarctic ice. That’s it in the picture at the right. (The image is a few years old but, as far as the Tracker can tell, not widely seen. More about it here.) It goes with John Noble Wilford‘s piece on the last continent. Wilford uses the centennial of Roald Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole to peg a fascinating history of Antarctic research over the last hundred years.

Also fronted:

Roni Caryn Rabin‘s rather alarming consumer column reporting that many proven, valuable drugs are becoming scarce or unavailable because manufacturers are having problems or shutting down. Regrettably Rabin doesn’t say much more about the causes and, perhaps rightly for a consumer column, focuses on telling readers how to cope.

Henry Fountain‘s report that hydrofracturing is causing minor earthquakes in Ohio.

The section’s Health pages also offer these “duh” heds:

Shoveling snow raises the risk of a heart attack.

Headers may be hard on soccer players’ brains The online version has a different but similar hed.

When care is worth it, even if end is death

And let’s not ignore the ever popular story linking coffee and cancer: Nicholas Bakalar weighs in.

-Boyce Rensberger

The Washington Post‘s Fact Checker column by Glenn Kessler regularly examines claims by Republican candidates for the presidency, awarding anywhere from zero to four Pinnocchios. Rarely does science figure in the mix. Sunday’s column did visit a science topic.

Rick Perry has accused climate scientists of manipulating data to attract federal funding. He has claimed that “almost weekly, or even daily” a growing number of scientists are coming out against climate change as caused by human activity.

Kessler easily explains the facts, including a petition drive that Perry’s campaign says has signatures of more than 30,000 scientists (about 9,000 of them with doctorates) saying they are climate skeptics. Kessler observes that the number of signers has barely budged since 2008. He also tells the politics mavens who read his column that the flap over e-mails from the University of East Anglia (on which Perry based his allegation of data fudging) was no evidence of data manipulation, that the scientists have been exonerated by no fewer than five investigations.

Now if Kessler would check the candidates’ statements on evolution …

-Boyce Rensberger

artwork: CERN

Physics watchers are all atwitter about a news conference set for 8 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday. That’s when two teams of researchers at the Large Hadron Collider are to announce findings that are widely rumored to point to the existence of the Higgs boson. That, in turn, is the long hypothesized particle whose existence would confirm the existence of another hypothetical thing called the Higgs field. That field is predicted by the Standard Model, the theory that explains the web of particles and forces that underlie everything that exists.

Astonishingly for this kind of advance billing, the secret seems to be holding. This Tracker could find no instance of an online news source claiming that it knew the actual findings for sure. Whoever’s orchestrating this thing could get a job in Washington.

Among the many curtain raisers online as of Monday morning, one of the most helpful–meaning well explained–was Dennis Overbye‘s Q&A with Lisa Randall, the Harvard particle physicist in the New York Times. It’s a good primer on particle theory and the putative role of the Higgs field.

Jeff Forshaw, a theoretical physicist writing in the UK’s Guardian, has another helpful take. He says that the LHC looks at events and objects on the very smallest of scales:  ”At these femtoscopically small distances, we have very good reason to expect great things: either we will see a Higgs particle or we will see something else. Seeing nothing new is simply not an option.” Forshaw writes that he is hoping there is no Higgs particle at all.

At the Los Angeles Times, Eryn Brown wrote on Saturday: “Scientists are quivering with anticipation — flying halfway around the world for a close-up view of the action and devouring the latest updates from the blogosphere the way some girls track the doings of Justin Bieber.” How’s that for broadening the readership of a story?

Robert Evans of Reuters, as published in the Chicago Tribune, cites scientists in one of the two LHC groups as telling him that they have found signals that look very much like the Higgs. Evans cites “informed bloggers” whom he does not name as saying that the certainty of the results, though tantalizing, falls short of the statistical significance required for a solid identification.

Another voice of caution is that of Pallab Ghosh at BBC News. He says the discovery of the Higgs might well be the biggest news in science since Watson & Crick in 1953. But he adds that it is certain the announcements Tuesday won’t have all the evidence needed to nail down a Higgs claim for sure: “in the best-case scenario they may come very close.”

The Beeb’s science editor, Paul Rincon, is in Geneva for the announcement. In his curtain raiser, he quotes a senior scientist on one of the two teams to report on Tuesday: “It is a fantastic time at the moment, you can feel people are enthusiastic.” That’s not exactly lowering expectations.

Stay tuned.

-Boyce Rensberger

Clotted blood, red cells caught in fibrous tangle. Artificially colored.

The concept behind gene therapy has always had great appeal. You have a disease caused by a bad gene? Install a good version of the gene and it might well compensate. Nothing succeeds in medicine like a quick fix. If it works.

Of course, it turned out that genes work in far more complex ways than once imagined. And there’s the pesky little matter of putting the genes into the cells where they are needed. Oh, and not killing your patient.

As Nicholas Wade writes in Saturday’s New York Times, gene therapy is “a technique with a 20-year record of almost unbroken failure.” But, in the same story, Wade reports that British gene therapists have “successfully” treated six patients with hemophilia B, which afflicts about 20 percent of hemophiliacs. He cites figures in a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine, to the effect that a single $30,000 gene treatment may replace a cost of $300,000 a year over a lifetime for repeated doses of clotting factors.

A close read of Wade’s piece reveals that only four of the six patients were better enough to forego conventional treatment entirely. The other two got some benefit but still needed injections of clotting factor. He also doesn’t help readers recognize that six patients is a very small study though, of course, when you get a dramatic result in even a few patients, that’s pretty intriguing.

Deena Beasley‘s story for Reuters devotes a good bit of space to the economic consequences not for patients or the health care system but for manufacturers of the clotting factors. If this thing works, it could be bad for business.

The AP‘s story, by Mike Stobbe, took care in the second graf to say the study was “preliminary” and involved “only six patients” and that earlier promising attempts with gene therapy “ultimately failed.” Excellent context. Unlike most other accounts, Stobbe also gave the actual results: Patients saw their clotting factor levels increase from less than 1 percent of normal to at least 2 percent and, in one case, to 11 percent. Good tempering of irrational exuberance. USA Today picked up Stobbe’s story.

-Boyce Rensberger

Unembargoed news

If this one hadn’t appeared in The Huffington Post (albeit the UK edition), we probably would have ignored it. But since a fair number of intelligent but young people read THP, they might well think David Whitehouse has disclosed a dirty little secret of science and medical journalism–the embargo.

As the primary clientele of this site know, embargoes are agreements between journalists and sources to delay publication of a story until a specified time and date. They’ve been a fixture of many areas of journalism for generations–not just science and medical news but financial, political, military, police and other areas. They date back at least to the mid-20th century and were often advocated by science journalists because they gave us more time to work on a story (and get it right) than if we each felt driven to rush into print as soon as we got the journal or news release or interviewed a scientist.

Often blamed for weakening enterprise journalism, embargoes need not do any such thing. The system can’t stop a reporter from chasing a story, writing it and publishing it at any time. Unless the reporter who has agreed to the system gets wind of it because of impending publication. Reporters who cover their beats well are usually way ahead of the publication curve and find nothing embargoed. But, admittedly, the embargo system has made it too easy for former enterprise reporters to wait to be spoon fed by embargoed news releases.

Nonetheless, astronomer Whitehouse, whose byline includes his academic title of “Dr,” ledes his piece with this sentence: “I will let you in on a secret.” He goes on to describe the system as some dark conspiracy and labels the goal of time to get the science right as “poppycock and patronizing.”

He also confuse something known as the Ingelfinger rule (though he doesn’t call it that) with the embargo system. (Ingelfinger, a long-ago editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, ruled that if a piece of research had been covered in the lay press, he would not publish it in his journal.)

I am not a huge fan of the embargo system, but I think it has its place. Journalists throughout the newsroom work by it every day, and I believe in the poppycock that reporters who have more time usually turn out stories that serve readers, listeners and viewers better.

-Boyce Rensberger

The ever-vigilant Gary Schwitzer at HealthNewsReview.org points out one of the worst uses of the word “breakthrough” on record. There should be some sort of award for this.

Schwitzer is fuming over cover language in the current issue of Prevention magazine. I don’t have a copy of the magazine, but the cover (which appears on Prevention’s website), sports the following: “Cancer Vaccine Breakthrough.”

“So I started flipping through the pages of tips for ‘jiggle-proof arms and abs’ and such,” Schwitzer writes, “and….voila…on page 13 I found the big story under another ‘Cancer Breakthrough’ heading. In 16 words in that little box, I learned that a vaccine was “moving into the testing phase.”

Reasonable people, Schwitzer continues, might “wait until we’ve moved out of the testing phase” before declaring a breakthrough.

It’s a solid critique, but Schwitzer, from what I can see, lets Prevention off easy.

I searched several different ways to find this tiny story on Prevention’s website, and I couldn’t find it.

So I looked at the screen shot of the article that Schwitzer posted, and he didn’t say this, but it appears to be a recruiting ad from the Mayo Clinic. That might explain why I couldn’t find it on the web–it might be an ad that appears only in the print edition. Here is the print item in its entirety, in a little yellow box, from Schwitzer’s screen shot (left):

A Cancer Breakthrough: A vaccine that could prevent breast or ovarian cancer recurrence is moving into the testing phase. Want to learn about how to participate? Call the Mayo Clinic’s clinical trials line at (507) 538-7623.

(If you click on the image, you should be able to read this yourself.)

Schwitzer is on the mark when he says the cover language (“Cancer Vaccine Breakthrough”) wildly overstated the news. But the “news” was apparently not even news–the cover language seems intended to recruit patients for a Mayo Clinic cancer vaccine study, maybe the one for which it got federal approval last August.

If this was an ad, Prevention gets a dart for making it look like editorial copy. If it was editorial copy, Prevention gets a dart for promoting the Mayo Clinic without saying anything about other vaccine trials that might be under way.

Prevention, in either case, has set a new standard for blatant misuse of the word “breakthrough.” In a crowded field, Prevention takes home the statuette.

- Paul Raeburn

(English intro to Spanish lang post) Different levels of skepticism in the Spanish speaking press, regarding the success in Durban. In El Universal (Mexico) we read that “it is an historical agreement”, in El Espectador (Colombia) that “Kyoto’s survival is assured”, and in El Nacional (Venezuela) that “this is no way a renewal of Kyoto Protocol”. Argentinean “La Nación” says that “the conference has been saved”, Hoy (Ecuador) that “the conference saved UN’s image but not the Earth”, and La Razón (Bolivia) that “US is the only country that can leave happy”.

In Spain (coincidence or not) newspapers considered leftist are a bit more critical that the right ones. And they have paid more attention to the conference too. From the main newspapers, only El Pais and Público have sent reporters to South Africa. They have done an excellent job. None of the two is happy with the result: they welcome the agreement to work towards a new treaty, but both emphasize that tough decisions continue being postponed until 2015. 

No merece hacer introducción sobre lo ocurrido en Durban (acuerdo para planificar reducción de emisiones, pero ningún compromiso ni medidas para empezar a hacerlo). Vamos directos a las notas, empezando por periodistas que han estado siguiendo la cumbre desde Sudáfrica. Si queréis leer un buen resumen y valoración de los resultados, el de Rafael Méndez “La cumbre del clima se deja lo difícil para 2015” como enviado especial de El País es posiblemente el más completo, y trabajado bajo un gran dominio del tema. Lo más destacable es que Rafael modera su habitual tono crítico para empezar diciendo “al final hubo acuerdo”. Curioso matiz diciendo que la separación ya no es entre ricos y pobres, sino entre países con intereses comunes, y que la hoja de ruta pactada recuerda la que se aprobó en Bali 2007 y fracasó en Copenhague 2009. Buenos despieces también “una ciudad convertida en ratonera”, y “Una semana de palabras”

Público – Desde Durban, Manuel Asende: “Durban desborda a los ministros de Medio Ambiente”. Interesante enfoque: “a los ministros de medio ambiente la cumbre les viene grande”. Quiere decir que lo decisivo son las luchas de poder entre potencias. Manuel dice: “Sobre la mesa no está la reducción de emisiones de CO2, sino el dominio económico del planeta”. Buen artículo, con mucho énfasis en la decepción de los países en desarrollo, y explicando al final que el sábado se fueron muchas delegaciones, y un portavoz latinoamericano dijo que “nos vamos a quedar cuatro pelagatos”. El artículo final-resumen de Manuel Asende se titula “Durban se cierra con un acuerdo para salvar la cara”

La Vanguardia también tiene un corresponsal, Xavier Aldekoa que en el muy elocuente “¡Hasta el 2020!” relata interioridades de las últimas horas del encuentro. Con noticias de EFE, La Vanguardia dice que “China e India impiden un acuerdo global en la cumbre de Durban”. Simplista. Y pobre nota resumen “La cumbre de Durban llega a un acuerdo in extremis”

En El Periódico, buen texto desde Durban de Julia Badenes “El clima deberá esperar”, que califica de “mísero” el acuerdo, y dice que “EEUU jugaba a la confusión”. Julia ha sido crítica en otras notas publicadas en varios medios como “La pugna entre potencias eterniza la cumbre del clima” (J. Badenes)

El Mundo sólo parece haber utilizado noticias de agencia, sin que ningún reportero haga un análisis global. Explica el resultado de la cumbre, dice que “La UE celebra Durban como un hito frente a las críticas de países en desarrollo”, y dice que “hasta China lamentó la falta de voluntad”. Básico.

ABC: desde Madrid Araceli Acosta escribió alguna nota como “La cumbre de Durban se prorroga ante la falta de consensos”, pero van y al final transmiten una breve nota titulada “Acuerdo para prorrogar el protocolo de Kyoto”, como si fuera un pequeño éxito.

Curioso que en España, El País y Público se lo han tomado considerablemente más en serio que El Mundo y ABC. ¿Casualidad?

En Los Tiempos (Bolivia), como comentamos en el último post, Mónica Oblitas ha estado siguiendo la cumbre desde Durban. Su último texto “Las delegaciones ya se van” (M. Oblitas), explica que según el negociador boliviano “el último borrador estaba lleno de injusticias (…) y pasa la responsabilidad a los países en desarrollo”. Gracioso el título de otra nota publicada por Los Tiempos, con información de EFE: “Presidenta de la COP17 destaca sintonía entre países tras acuerdo en Durban”. Sin dejar Bolivia, La Razón elige “Durban debate un borrador que sólo satisface a EEUU”

Venezuela muestra el enfado de su delegación en la nota de El Nacional “Venezuela califica como gravísimo para el planeta que potencias no reduzcan emisiones”, y que los acuerdos firmados no implican una extensión del protocolo de Kyoto como se ha anunciado.

Desde Ecuador, el diario Hoy titula “La cumbre de Durban salva los muebles pero no el planeta”. Resalta que el acuerdo es una hoja de ruta hacia un pacto global sobre reducción de emisiones, pero que no se ha establecido ninguna medida para frenar el calentamiento.

Flipando con el titular de El Universal (México): “Acuerdo histórico en Durban”. Es lo que pasa si tu nota se limita a hacer caso de lo que dice la presidenta de la conferencia. Anda que…

En Argentina, La Nación también muestra poco espíritu crítico. El título “Logran salvar la cumbre mundial de cambio climático”, de Víctor Ingrassia, es muy conformista, dando por buenas las medidas acordadas. Interesante acierto que Víctor recurra a ver qué publican medios chinos, y escoja la frase: “A los países desarrollados les falta voluntad política para reducir las emisiones y para poner a disposición de los países en vías de desarrollo la transferencia tecnológica y económica”

Chile: Aparente poco interés. La Tercera publica una corta nota/resumen “ONU extiende validez de Protocolo de Kyoto” y aprueba cronograma de negociación”, y otra reflejando el punto de vista de Greenpeace. Lo que online destaca la diminuta nota de El Mercurio es que la cumbre se alargó un día.

En Colombia, una buena nota de El Espectador dice que está “Asegurada la supervivencia del protocolo de Kyoto” (que obliga a reducir emisiones; algo que no está tan claro). Lo más gracioso es que El Tiempo titula “La Cumbre de Durban llega a un acuerdo tras maratonianas negociaciones”, y subtitula “Luego de dos semanas en la Conferencia de la ONU, no hubo acuerdo tras negociaciones infructuosas. Niiiice. En una mejor interpretación, publica que “Cumbre climática pospuso decisión clave para el 2015”.

- Pere Estupinyà

It’s been way too long – weeks maybe – since a dinosuar was in the news. High time. Maybe some day some paleontologists will find a new dinosaur with some sort of way to distinguish it from other dinos, and it won’t make the news. That will be the end of the world as we know it. These beasts are evergreen.

This time it is a two-fer from one journal.

   First up, a fringed, horned dinosaur of the general sort as famed triceratops whose bones have been in human custody for nearly 100 years. That makes for good story telling. They were dug from the ground in southern Alberta, a time of frenzied dinosaur foraging. They and the stones encasing them were so scrappy compared to the big intact skulls, femurs, and vertebra of other ones from the busy bone quarries of North America that the London Natural History Museum’s triage system  pronounced them a near-junk fit for nought but immediate, deep storage.

Somebody finally got around to taking a second look. So, meet Spinops sternbergergorum, or Sternberg’s spine face, named for the naturalist Charles Sternberg who, with his son Levi, dug them up in the first place and, suspecting a new type of horned dinosaur left them behind, shipped the fossiliferous rock off to London. It is, it says here, a whole new species and even better, a new genus.

The news arises from a paper in the open access journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica (see Grist below). It received a push from a press release from the Natural History Museum and, perhaps, a few from other institutions.

Stories:

• Cleveland Plain Dealer – John Mangels: Cleveland researcher, international team, identify new type of horned dinosaur ; Mangels has some inside dope on the resurrection of this sleeping treasure in the museum’s catacomb, spun out in a narrative of persistence and savvy.
• PostMedia News – Randy Boswell : Long-ignored fossil determined to be new species of horned dinosaur ;
• Telegraph (UK) Nick Collins: New dinosaur species discovered in Natural History Museum after nearly a century ;
• CBC (audio) Introducing the Spinops sternbergorum ;

Second, a humongous pair of neck vertebra, implying a the largest sauropod in North America, reported in the same journal. It’s taken the better part of a decade, but a team of researchers  analyzing the neck bones and a femur uncovered in New Mexico, says they belonged to a whopper. It is believed to be an alamosaurus, close cousin of the Argentinosaurus, which presently gives South America the crown as home of world’s largest dinosaur. This new member of the titanosaur clan is about as large, belongs to the same general group, and reveals to paleontologists that some smaller samples already known, and thus seen as evidence that the northern wing of the family just ran small, may have been partly-grown juveniles. Our big ones matched their big ones.

Stories:

• MSNBC Cosmic Log – Alan Boyle: Meet America’s biggest dinosaur ;
• Register – Anna Leach: North America makes entry into dino fatty league ;
• NBC Montana – Lauren Maschmedt: MSU Researcher Uncovers Bone From North America’s Largest Dinosaur;

Grist for the Mill:

Museum of Natural History Press Release, Raymond M. Alf Museum Press Release ; journal paper on S. sternbergorum ;

Montana State U Press Release ; paper on humongous titanosaur.

Acta Palaeontological Polonica 56 (4) 2011 Article list ; (rather interesting, with another one on a giant Brazilian bird )

 

- Charlie Petit