The news is simple and an easy choice for news editors looking for a quick, science filler to round out the page or website. A grad student for her thesis looked into the mangy-looking Jurassic mandible on one of the university’s stored specimens. It looked like a degenerative condition much like arthritis. This creature’s head is about six [...]]]> Seen one humongous Mesozoic reptile fossil, seen ‘em all, eh dinosaur fan? A few reporters and editors fell into a trap inadvertently laid by a Bristol University press release (see Grist below) with a headline that says “Ancient sea reptile with gammy jaw suggests dinosaurs got arthritis too.” You all out there who remember school science classes on the vanished age of reptiles, or who have covered these things or just paid attention, know that not all gigantic creatures of dinosaur days were dinosaurs. Major exceptions were the ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs,  pliosaurs and so forth that swam in the sea, and the flying pterosaurs including the iconic pterodactyls that roamed the sky.

The news is simple and an easy choice for news editors looking for a quick, science filler to round out the page or website. A grad student for her thesis looked into the mangy-looking Jurassic mandible on one of the university’s stored specimens. It looked like a degenerative condition much like arthritis. This creature’s head is about six feet long. The teeth look cruel. But it is not a dinosaur. It is a pliosaur, a marine reptile more than 25 feet long. It may have eaten an occasional small dinosaur that happened into its lagoon. The paper is, it says here, in the current issue of the journal Palaentology, although I cannot find it.

A few outlets repeated the press release by implying in their headlines that this is a dinosaur. Some declared it a dinosaur also in their stories’ texts. Some, thank goodness, got it right. Some even appear to have exerted effort on this story beyond what it took to put the press release on their computer screen or desk and merely rewrite what had been handed them. The odd thing is, the headlines and other assertions of arthritic dinosaurs may be to some extent justified. Seems to me this is not the first evidence of arthritis from dinosaur times, including in dinosaurs. But don’t point at a pliosaur for proof.

Stories that say or imply this was a dinosaur:

• Metro (UK) Dinosaurs suffered from painful arthritis, say scientists ;
• Telegraph (UK) Dinosaurs struggled with arthritis just like humans ;
• Daily Mail (UK) Rob Waugh: Fossil shows off that even the DINOSAURS suffered arthritis 150 million years ago ; Surely Waugh knows better. But the lede is “Dinosaurs suffered painful arthritis in their huge joints…” and then cites only the pliosaur as evidence.
• HealthDay News: Dinosaurs may have suffered from arthritis ;
• RedOrbit: Skull of Jurassic Sea Creature Shows That Even Dinosaurs Had Arthritis ;
• ANI (India): Pliosaurs may have suffered painful arthritis ; Hed good, lede not.
• Gather.com – Felicia Floyd: ‘Loch Ness Monster’ Dinosaur, Pliosaur, Suffered From Arthritis in Enormous Jaw ; What a concatenation of errors amplified during rewrite  this is.

Stories that don’t mix their ancient extinct reptile clans:

• LiveScience – Charles Choi: Ancient ‘Loch Ness monster’ suffered from arthritis in jaw ; Choi’s a serious pro. Naturally, he called up one of the authors and took ownership of this story away from the press release. This story runs at several outlets.
• Business Standard/Press Trust of India: Pliosaurs had arthritis: The lede has this inserted by somebody who pays attention; “… not dinosaurs but ancient sea reptiles that lived 150 million years ago..” ;

Grist for the Mill: U. Bristol Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

That last bit may explain how the story got its tag line “The Sun-Times proudly supports Generation Rescue & Autism One.” That’s right, the newspaper is endorsing the flailing anti-vaccine movement and a Memorial Day conference and public rally that McCarthy is leading. It is easy to imagine the embarrassment, dismay, and sense of  betrayal of journalistic standards that is sloshing leadenly around the Sun-Times’s newsroom. I’ve no idea who is covering health science for the paper today (Howard Wolinsky left [...]]]> Oh sigh. Oh my. If you like to raise your blood pressure take a look at the Chicago Sun Times‘s Sunday Q&A by Alisa M. Alexander with actress Jenny McCarthy, the latter of note for vociferously pushing the idea that childhood vaccines cause autism and, more recently, that detoxification, new diet, and other non-standard treatments will make it better. Alexander, incidentally, is not a reporter exactly. She is v.p. for public relations at Wrapports, the company that a few months ago took over the newspaper.

That last bit may explain how the story got its tag line “The Sun-Times proudly supports Generation Rescue & Autism One.” That’s right, the newspaper is endorsing the flailing anti-vaccine movement and a Memorial Day conference and public rally that McCarthy is leading. It is easy to imagine the embarrassment, dismay, and sense of  betrayal of journalistic standards that is sloshing leadenly around the Sun-Times’s newsroom. I’ve no idea who is covering health science for the paper today (Howard Wolinsky left several years ago) but this may be a bad week for him or her.

Want a quick antidote? First, one must recognize an irony in what I’m about to say. Public comments to newspaper articles on scientific topics tend to be forums for crackpots. Not always, many voices, etc., but one sees a lot of malarkey. But this morning when I clicked on this articles comments most of them were scathing in assailing the newspaper for backing McCarthy’s organizations while citing the general research community’s low regard for the so-called science that vaccine opponents tend to cite. What a smart bunch of commenters, I thought. Not all of them, but a lot.

The Sun-Times owner, Wrapports, has as its mission to deliver “essential and customized content to print, online and mobile audiences. We do that by investing in cutting edge technologies, new content portals and other strategic tools and integrating them with traditional media assets. We will be constantly innovating and improving on how we deliver more satisfying content to our readers, while providing more targeted promotional options to our advertising partners.” That’s quite a load.

Other sites have taken notice:

• PLoS Blogs – Seth Mnookin:  More media stupidity: Chicago Sun-Times runs propaganda piece for Jenny McCarthy’s anti-vaccine conference ;
• JimRomenesko: Sun-Times Endorses Jenny McCarthy’s Controversial Organizations;

Thx to Seth Borenstein to sending links with a one-word subject line: ‘eeks’

- Charlie Petit

The topic, now old hat but still fascinating in this rehash, is the late-2010 paper that for a few days had many people, including a few science writers, excited by chances that in a brutally saline and arsenic-rich California desert lake east of Yosemite are bacteria that swap arsenic for phosphorus in their metabolic gears, even in their DNA. There was even talk of a separate genesis for Earth life (a mix-up by some who conflated the discovery and the protocol incentive that led to it).  It was huge news: See earlier posts in 2010 from Dec 2, [...]]]> Take a listen to four very savvy and plain-talking biologists chatting on their business at an inside-the-academy site called This Week in Microbiology, and more specifically at episode TWiM 32. There host and Columbia U. faculty member Vincent Racaniello and two colleagues talk of arsenic and Mono Lake with a famed myth-buster, zoology associate prof and microbiology lab boss Rosie Redfield of the University of British Columbia.

The topic, now old hat but still fascinating in this rehash, is the late-2010 paper that for a few days had many people, including a few science writers, excited by chances that in a brutally saline and arsenic-rich California desert lake east of Yosemite are bacteria that swap arsenic for phosphorus in their metabolic gears, even in their DNA. There was even talk of a separate genesis for Earth life (a mix-up by some who conflated the discovery and the protocol incentive that led to it).  It was huge news: See earlier posts in 2010 from Dec 2, Dec 3, Dec. 4, Dec. 8, and Dec. 13.

I hadn’t the hour-plus to listen to the whole thing but the opening remarks among the four are an absorbing glimpse of collegial sparring and wit. The show’s close has some welcome commentary from Redfield about the quick pivot of most science journalists when the holes in the arsenic-metabolizing bacteria work became evident. Carl Zimmer gets explicit praise. This’d be a good one for the iPod on a long walk or while driving across several counties. Thank you to reader and science writer Stephen Hart for alerting us to this.

Explicitly surprising, as Hart tells us, is something among the links on the show’s site. Redfield and several co-authors (Princeton, HHMI) have laboriously tried to replicate the original results claimed by a NASA-based astrobiology team. This new paper with Redfield et al’s result goes well beyond what she originally published when arsenic and life fever was running high. It has been submitted to Science magazine. But also, apparently with its tolerance, the paper is already on line at a site usually associated with physics-related preprints, the arXiv server at Cornell.

• arXiv q-bio :  Absence of arsenate in DNA from arsenate-grown GFAJ-1 cells ; Click on the PDF or other links at this abstract to read the whole thing.

One does not know whether or how such open sharing and detailed public discussion of the paper affects chances that the embargo-wielding editors at Science will in the end publish it. For one thing, the cat’s been out of the bag for awhile. The paper has already made itself into news earlier this year. One good example is at Science News, by Rachel Ehrenberg. Another is at MSNBC’s Cosmic Log by Alan Boyle. Still – the conversation at TWiM is excellent and yet another example of the myriad 21st century ways by which science information makes its way freely to the interested public.

- Charlie Petit

Turning to Science Times, I saw this: Nicholas Bakalar is reporting on a study that found “a 28 percent greater risk for birth defects in babies conceived with fertility treatment.”

Why wasn’t this on page one, you ask, for the benefit of Times readers who are considering fertility treatment? That’s a huge increase.

Or maybe it isn’t.

How big is a 28 percent increase? If the risk in people who didn’t have fertility treatment is large, then a 28 percent increase is a large increase. If the percentage of problems in the control group is very, very small, then the 28 percent increase is very, very small.

I searched for “percent” in the Times story, and all I saw were three mentions of relative risk in different circumstances.

If my wife and I were considering fertility treatment, this story would have frightened us—and given us no real information to [...]]]> OK, it’s late, I just cleaned up the kitchen, and I turned to The New York Times for a little relaxation reading. And it wasn’t relaxing.

Turning to Science Times, I saw this: Nicholas Bakalar is reporting on a study that found “a 28 percent greater risk for birth defects in babies conceived with fertility treatment.”

Why wasn’t this on page one, you ask, for the benefit of Times readers who are considering fertility treatment? That’s a huge increase.

Or maybe it isn’t.

How big is a 28 percent increase? If the risk in people who didn’t have fertility treatment is large, then a 28 percent increase is a large increase. If the percentage of problems in the control group is very, very small, then the 28 percent increase is very, very small.

I searched for “percent” in the Times story, and all I saw were three mentions of relative risk in different circumstances.

If my wife and I were considering fertility treatment, this story would have frightened us—and given us no real information to assess the risks we faced.

Sigh. I should have played Angry Birds.

- Paul Raeburn

It’s time for a roundup on recent stories on what some say is a fast-moving transition away from human spaceflight as an activity for big government alone. One cannot rule out the possibility that a Russian company won’t start selling rides aboard the most recent version of that venerable R-7 line, too, but the crowd of would be private rocketeers is growing fast. That means that, maybe in a decade or three, scientists who want to study the Valles Marineris or the North Polar Cap of Mars will include in their grant applications the space fare for [...]]]> Look at those pictures. It might as well be Yuri Gagarin heading into the history books aboard Vostok One 51 years ago. Actually, one is. The other is the latest iteration of Soyuz crew-exchange missions on its way to the Int’l Space Station from the same Baikonur launch complex in Kazakhstan. Can you figure out  which one was shot this morning and the other April 12, 1961?  (or cheat* at bottom).

It’s time for a roundup on recent stories on what some say is a fast-moving transition away from human spaceflight as an activity for big government alone. One cannot rule out the possibility that a Russian company won’t start selling rides aboard the most recent version of that venerable R-7 line, too, but the crowd of would be private rocketeers is growing fast. That means that, maybe in a decade or three, scientists who want to study the Valles Marineris or the North Polar Cap of Mars will include in their grant applications the space fare for a ride aboard a commercial space excursion vehicle. NASA can then busy itself with more appropriate things like space telescopes able to spot the mountains of Super Earths or sprinkle Titan with robotic rovers. It’ll be about time for space travel – the kind with people – to start paying for itself. If tourists can go to Antarctica they ought to be able to go to the Moon, or L1, or Mars, or an asteroid…

And then, of course, there are those rich investors and well-known adventurers including Ross Perot, Google co-founder Larry Page, and James Cameron, who last month announced formation of Planetary Resources Inc., to mine asteroids.

We’ve been through this before. Hope springs eternal.

Stories yet again heralding the Birth of a New Private Space Age:

• NYTimes ScienceTimes (today) Kenneth Chang: Private Sector Edges Deeper in Space ; Mostly, but plenty else too, a conversation with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX)  CEO Elon Musk, whose employees are about to try to send their Dragon resupply module on its first trip, via SpaceX Falcon9 rocket, to the space station just like that Soyuz is now doing with three people on board. SpaceX plans a taxicab version of the Dragon as well. And it is thinking of Mars trips. Chang includes a laundry list of other venture capitalists angling toward space, but omits  asteroid mining – perhaps because it would be mostly robotic.
• AP – Peter Leonard: Three-man Soyuz crew departs for space station ;
• MSNBC Cosmic Log – Alan Boyle: SpaceX teams up with Bigelow on space station marketing ; Don’t forget, Las Vegas hotel man Robert Bigelow has already bought some rockets to put test versions of inflatable space stations into orbit. They are still there. He has big plans. He’s a bit eccentric but Bigelow Aerospace is real. The tie-in with SpaceX makes it look a little more believable that a Bigelow Space Hotel (or, rent-a-lab) is on the way. This development, one thinks, merited a place in Chang’s NYT story. Several other outlets ran with this news in the last week, including SpaceDaily, ArsTechnica, and Associated Press.
• LA Times (Business Sect) – W. J. Hennigan: A new frontier for space travel ; Recent activity, he reports, is an early test of NASA’s decision (as ordered by the Obama adminstration) to turn routing space travel to private industry. And he declares Musk to be “cut in the mold of a young Howard Hughes.” One of his sources in Congress, skeptical of this new space age, says that if NASA is buying time and passenger seats on board, then it’s not really private space entrepreneurship – it’s just a change in labeling for the contractors. He also gives a set of cranky ex-astronauts a chance to say, again, that this’ll be the ruin of NASA. A few days Hennigan also wrote up the Bigelow-SpaceX deal.
• Atlantic – Ross Anderson: Robots, Platinum, and Tiny Space Telescopes: The Pitch for Mining Asteroids ; A Q&A with a noted extrasolar planetary astronomer, Sara Seager, who is advising the asteroid mining syndicate, to learn why she believes a thriving private space sector would be a boon to space science. Mass-production industrial spin-offs (think GPS units) are a lot cheaper than customized government one-offs. The same telescopes that might remotely check asteroids for ore could do bold science as well. This is a thoughtful exploration of the ramifications of genuine, profitable off-Earth industries that go far beyond telecom satellites.
• Wired – Jason Paur: Space Industry Veteran (Re)Entering The Commercial Space Race; A Utah company once dependent on NASA to buy its solid-rocket boosters for the retired shuttle system hopes to take spin-off hardware, much of it already roughed out as part of the NASA- canceled Ares launch system,  to market.

* Left pic taken this morning/AP

- Charlie Petit

That it produced a virtual flurry of coverage owes much, I think, to our journalistic love for research extolling the virtues of wine. But in this case, one could also argue, that the hyperbolic press reports that followed also owed much to the hyperbolic press release announcing the study.

How hyperbolic? Well the study is titled  “SIRT1 Is Required for AMPK Activation and the Beneficial Effects of Resveratrol on Mitochondrial Function.” Knowing that, it might surprise you know that the title of the press release suggests something far, far more encompassing: “Study resolves controversy on life-extending red wine ingredient, restores hope for anti-aging pill.”

Wow, you might say, there’s a big difference – not to say a Grand Canyon-sized gap – between those two end points. And that’s exactly what caught the attention of Ivan Oransky over at [...]]]>

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Last week, the journal Cell Metabolism published a study in mice exploring the interactions between the compound resveratrol (which some research indicates may promote health) and genes associated with longevity.

That it produced a virtual flurry of coverage owes much, I think, to our journalistic love for research extolling the virtues of wine. But in this case, one could also argue, that the hyperbolic press reports that followed also owed much to the hyperbolic press release announcing the study.

How hyperbolic? Well the study is titled  “SIRT1 Is Required for AMPK Activation and the Beneficial Effects of Resveratrol on Mitochondrial Function.” Knowing that, it might surprise you know that the title of the press release suggests something far, far more encompassing: “Study resolves controversy on life-extending red wine ingredient, restores hope for anti-aging pill.”

Wow, you might say, there’s a big difference – not to say a Grand Canyon-sized gap – between those two end points. And that’s exactly what caught the attention of Ivan Oransky over at his blog, Embargo Watch. Oransky didn’t mess around with his title either: “A truly appalling press release from Cell Press on “life-extending red wine ingredient.”

As he points out, there’s plenty of remaining controversy surrounding “the compound whose trials Glaxo Smith Kline stopped after paying $720 million for a company developing resveratrol called Sirtis. The release is cagey about why those trials ended (hint: kidney problems). But the release doesn’t stop there.”

Derek Lowe, an organic chemist and blogger at In the Pipeline (mostly about pharmaceuticals) agreed, only more so:  “The EmbargoWatch web site calls it a “truly appalling” press release, and while I can’t disagree with that, I don’t think it particularly stands out: a lot of press releases are appalling.”

Still Lowe notes that although over-hyped, the study itself raises a couple of interesting points about health, aging and epigenetics. Both he and Oransky agree that best story resulting from the paper is this one from Ewen Callaway at Nature News, titled rather neutrally “Row Over Resveratrol Rumbles On.”

But I also liked the straightforward job done by Monica Dybuncio at CBS News, “Study Examines Red Wine’s Anti-Aging Ingredient, Reservatrol” And this one from George Dvorsky at io9 which puts the findings into context of the ongoing anti-aging pharmaceutical quest.

Most of the coverage, unfortunately, was of the let’s-celebrate-at-the-bar variety.  But my thought was that we do the celebrating when we see more reporting of the actual study and less recapitulation of the glowing press release. At that point, promise, I’ll pick up the tab.

— Deborah Blum

- Charlie Petit

So, the initial take was that this will probably set back the progress of recent decades to make a nursing motherhood more routine, with clear health benefits for toddlers and with no particular indecency associated with it. The pic to be sure  doesn’t make one feel particularly good about motherhood on Mother’s Day, what with its heavily posed and emotionless nature. The attachment between mother and son emanates [...]]]> I know I know, me too. The reaction I felt on first seeing the cover on Time Magazine of a young mother and her nursing three year old both standing bolt upright and staring into the camera lens was something like: this can’t be good. That is, by putting a slight weird-o varnish on a rather natural act  – except that the boy’s pretty old, the pose is hardly Madonna and Child – the shot seemed to say “Look, breastfeeding and especially in public is another one of those West Coast elite artsy and anti-establishment indecent things some OTHER people do.”

So, the initial take was that this will probably set back the progress of recent decades to make a nursing motherhood more routine, with clear health benefits for toddlers and with no particular indecency associated with it. The pic to be sure  doesn’t make one feel particularly good about motherhood on Mother’s Day, what with its heavily posed and emotionless nature. The attachment between mother and son emanates about as much love as a preschool kid has feelings about the spigot as he stands at the water fountain in the school hall.

I have not read the story the cover represents and never heard of attachment parenting before, but that’s not my topic.

But wow, the reaction to this admittedly awkward image. That’s what turned me around. The blowback itself is so hyperventilated that it may backfire.  This cover plus similar pics inside and the  general topic are been talked about intensely already.  Talking things through  has a way of sometimes inducing boredom, numbness, and shrugs. Talk, with things that for unclear reasons have been taken as squeam-inducing or just plain odd can  desensitize society about them. Long hair on men. Women umpiring men’s sports. Women in the pulpit. Cross-racial dating and marriage. The “N” word when rap artists say it (hmmm, that one’s not yet desensitized by much).  Gay marriage. Loafers with no socks. Viagra ads on TV. Businessmen who don’t wear neckties. Who cares anymore? Not as many as used to.

Lots of things that once caused embarrassed silences or raised eyebrows in polite company just don’t anymore. And a big reason is that when those who were shocked tried to explain their feelings, the emptiness of their arguments combined with their fervor helped us all to move on.

To wit, here are three of the commentaries that, one hopes, might in the end help more mothers feel that whether and where they nurse or not, it’s nothing to get friends, neighbors, and strangers talking. It’s just one way to be a good mom.

• American Thinker – Marc Hopin: Deconstructing the TIME Breastfeeding Cover ; This must be a parody, mustn’t it? Maybe not. Parodies of right wing demented thinking do not usually run in Movement Conservative magazines. It is inspired – the part about the mother, Jamie Lynne Grumet, wearing blue as code for her symbolizing liberalism and hence big nanny government, and the milk is a stand-in for, um, unemployment insurance. It’s gotta be a parody! Nobody could say with straight face the boy’s pants, in camo, represent the Occupy Wall Street movement. Could they?
• FoxNews.com – Dr. Keith Ablow: Time Magazine cover – forget the breast, what about the boy? : The good doctor says he is worried, deeply worried, that this photograph will haunt the little boy. I dunno, maybe. But Dr. Ablow strikes a great and heavy blow for helping Americans to recognize that nursing is not a sex act and not lewd and is a pretty natural, easy, reliable shortcut to good nutrition for infants and toddlers. He does it by saying, not once but twice, that the photo means that the boy is sucking her nipple. That’s in paragraph 3. In case we missed it, in graf six there it is again, the boy was told to “suck his mother’s nipple in front of a photographer.” That’s just in case we don’t know what nursing is? Ablow regards the whole thing as a grotesque form of pyschological abuse. Uh huh. This is getting dull already. Sigh. Shrug.
• Saturday Night Live Weekend Update – Seth Meyers: Really?! Time Magazine, Really?! – High octane comedy, not a parody at all. I really think Meyers means the outrage.

A few more freak-out episodes like this and we’ll forget the whole thing. Even though the shocked response is mainly to the idea of nursing a child, maybe a couple of them, for years – which I can’t quite get my head around either – the long-term and literally healthy residue of this ruckus might be to help make the regular regimen a non-issue, even  in public.

- Charlie Petit

One example of the extent to which this news has circulated, here on YouTube is a NASA explainer issued last December. It has vivid graphics and an emphatic declaration that Vesta is an intact, fully differentiated miniature version of a rocky planet. But the teleconference’s packaging of the story yesterday made it easy and appropriate for reporters to sum it all up. The news is that Vesta formed very early, at roughly its present size, and hasn’t gotten mix-mastered since then by subsequent collisions. Blasted, but not busted. And in some ways its internal composition instructively resembles that of far larger, officially-recognized planets that were forming at the same time. Six reports in this week’s Science give new detail and are the prompt for [...]]]>

Similar structure, Earth and Vesta (not to scale)

NASA got takers all around the world for its press conference about asteroid Vesta yesterday. The bulk of the news has dribbled out over the last year, ever since its Dawn spacecraft began its orbit. Scroll down or go here to yesterday’s anticipatory post.

One example of the extent to which this news has circulated, here on YouTube is a NASA explainer issued last December. It has vivid graphics and an emphatic declaration that Vesta is an intact, fully differentiated miniature version of a rocky planet. But the teleconference’s packaging of the story yesterday made it easy and appropriate for reporters to sum it all up. The news is that Vesta formed very early, at roughly its present size, and hasn’t gotten mix-mastered since then by subsequent collisions. Blasted, but not busted. And in some ways its internal composition instructively resembles that of far larger, officially-recognized planets that were forming at the same time. Six reports in this week’s Science give new detail and are the prompt for yesterday’s heavily-promoted news teleconference.

To start with non-journalism but an example of excellent public science media, a visceral grasp of how ripped at but not torn up is Vesta is found at the Bad Astronomy site. Its maestro Phil Plait this week posted a terrific NASA-JPL video. It morphs Dawn imagery into a flyover of the ancient terrain, sending one on a virtual thrill ride skimming craters, following strange linear wrinkles, and dodging craggy massifs.

One wonders. Several outlets imply Vesta, by being a nearly intact  protoplanet, is not really an asteroid. But none has evidence that planetary specialists won’t consider it merely a very unusual asteroid.

The lack of nothing startling and entirely new probably damped response. Press in the UK paid little attention (also in Science this week is a report on astronomic observations by ancient Maya, which may have been the better choice for a track…). But it was sizeable. In no particular order, but with attempt to put more notable ones higher and to comment as moved to do so…

Stories:

• NYTimes – Kenneth Chang: Observations of an Asteroid Provide Hints of How the Earth Came Together ; With “dwarf planet” the category Int’l Astronomical Union cubby for the likes of Pluto and larger-asteroid Ceres (next stop for the Dawn probe) Chang dubs Vesta a runt planet. It is, he writes, bright as snow, dark as coal, with a once-warm heart of cold iron. But he declares it to be officially a dwarf planet too. I cannot find evidence that the IAU has recognized it as such. After Dawn, it has to be in the running.
• BBC – Jonathan Amos: Asteroid Vesta is ‘last of a kind’ rock ;
• Dicovery News via ABC (Australia) – Irene Klotz: Vesta a baby planet, not an asteroid ;
• NatureNews (blog) Ron Cowen: Vesta confirmed as venerable planet progenitor ; the ‘confirmed’ in the hed is a good way to say this is not surprise news, but incremental news. Cowen, on constant prowl for news before it is wide news, includes a link to a previous post on Vesta’s topography and what it might mean, from meetings last fall.
• The Telegraph (India) G. S. Mudur: Leap from Bolly stars to baby planet ; We don’t pay enough attention to India’s press, but G (for Ganapati) Mudur, who happens to be a former Knight MIT science journalism fellow, did this with a local angle twist. With the time zone problems, he had to file this feature just before the teleconference – but he got the gist of the news and made a call or two to NASA researchers to nail it down. The story’s graphic is not one you’ll find anywhere else.
• Space.com – Mike Wall :Huge asteroid Vesta is actually an ancient protoplanet ;
• AP – Alicia Chang: Asteroid Vesta pummeled twice by smaller objects ;
• Space Daily: Vesta – a planet-like asteroid ;
• Los Angeles Times -  Amina Khan: NASA mission brings protoplanet Vesta into focus ;
• Christian Science Monitor – Pete Spotts: NASA mission confirms: Ex-asteroid Vesta is a planet that almost was ;
• Houston Chronicle – Eric Berger: Asteroid reveals clues about early solar system;

One wonders. Several outlets imply Vesta, by being a nearly intact  protoplanet, is not really an asteroid. But none has evidence that planetary specialists won’t consider it merely a very unusual asteroid.

Grist for the Mill:

NASA-JPL Press Release ;  UCLA Press Release ; Arizona State U Press Release ; NASA-JPL Dawn Mission ;

- Charlie Petit

But [...]]]> Here is something I did not know for sure and I’ll bet most tracker readers didn’t either, not that one is expected to stop often and wonder about such things. Of all the practical units for everyday life (dimension, time, mass mainly), only one’s definition depends on some physical object or commonly observed phenomenon such as how long it takes for the Earth to turn on its axis. That latter one of course, was too sloppy. Only mass – specifically, the kilogram – remains dependent on such an easy-to-see example. More surprising is how hard it is to pin it to some fundamental, reproducible physics. A meter, for instance, no longer needs to be checked against a standard metal rod of composition that doesn’t shrink or expand much with temperature. A meter was re-defined as a specific number of wavelengths of a narrow, krypton-86 atomic emission line, which in turn was later updated to how far light in a vacuum travels in a teensy, precisely declared time interval.

But the kilogram is that thing in the photo. The cylinder of iridium-platinum alloy inside three nested bell jars is in a vault in Paris, taken out only once in a long while to get polished and checked against copies  kept in few other centers of science and industry. One problem is that it is not constant, what with atoms of metallic alloys prone to wander off no matter how careful one is.

All this in a feature article in a more commonly technical journal.

• IEEE Spectrum – Rachel Courtland: The Kilogram, Reinvented ; Where one learns a concerted effort is underway to get a definition that one could, say, radiogram to alpha centauri’s ETI’s and they could make their kilogram exactly like ours without visiting Paris. Never heard of a Watt balance before? Courtland assures us that it “links mass to quantum-electrical measurement” and that it might be the basis for a new definition. I didn’t quite get it, but did learn that Canada has a good one. Others propose to exactly count the atoms in hunks of, say, silicon of high istopic purity and decree exactly how many make a kilogram (or more handy small exact fraction of one).

Nifty yarn. The process to redefine the kilogram, it says here, is deeply underway. That’s news that’d be of keen enough interest to enough readers out there to merit a circulation in lay media.

- Charlie Petit