At the first sign of schizophrenia in young people some researchers are experimenting with prescribing anty-psychotic drugs. The Times's Benedict Carey reports that tests of one such drug, Zyprexa, showed it seems to help quite a bit, but so many patients dropped out, mainly because they gained so...
At the first sign of schizophrenia in young people some researchers are experimenting with prescribing anty-psychotic drugs. The Times's Benedict Carey reports that tests of one such drug, Zyprexa, showed it seems to help quite a bit, but so many patients dropped out, mainly because they gained so much weight, that its overall usefulness is not clear.
Jaguars in the US? Yes and we're talking cats, not cars. For years a few researchers and hunters have reported the occasional jaguar roaming mountains near the Mexican border in Arizona and New Mexico. The Daily...
Jaguars in the US? Yes and we're talking cats, not cars. For years a few researchers and hunters have reported the occasional jaguar roaming mountains near the Mexican border in Arizona and New Mexico. The Daily Star's Tony Davis now reports on a team of government scientists that recommends tracking one down to radio-collar it and learn more about the habits of the big, powerful, spotted cat. Davis wrote a colorful sidebar on a hunter in southwesterm New Mexico who while mountain lion hunting earlier this year discovered his dogs had cornered a jaguar instead. He and his hunting party let the cat go. It loped off after roughing up several dogs. Whether jaguars breed in the US or only occasionally roam across the border from a primary, Mexican habitat is not known. Davis reports on some skeptics of the collaring plan, and mentions concern that the proposed...
The Chronicle's Carl T. Hall takes a hard look at the Bush administration's embrace of hydrogen as a vehicle fuel and as a way to wean us from oil addiction. The story focusses on the views of energy experts who point out that with no infrastructure to deliver the hydrogen to service stations, no...
The Chronicle's Carl T. Hall takes a hard look at the Bush administration's embrace of hydrogen as a vehicle fuel and as a way to wean us from oil addiction. The story focusses on the views of energy experts who point out that with no infrastructure to deliver the hydrogen to service stations, no simple way to stuff it in fuel tanks, and no carbon-free way available any time soon to purify it on a large scale, the idea offers no quick solution to climate change and oil-shortage woes. It's a useful piece, especially in California where Gov. Schwarzenegger is a big fan of hydrogen, even in Hummers. The Tracker would like to see some exploration into whether, even if we could make scads of green hydrogen, it makes any sense at all to put it with great effort into cars right off the bat rather than into something easy such as power plants converted from coal or natural gas.
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AP's Paul Elias provides an update, with a good dose of scientific detail, on the multitude of gene-mapping and genetic engineering efforts aimed at farm animals, pegged to a program focussed on pigs but with plenty of context. Full results are unlikely for another year or so, he reports, but big...
AP's Paul Elias provides an update, with a good dose of scientific detail, on the multitude of gene-mapping and genetic engineering efforts aimed at farm animals, pegged to a program focussed on pigs but with plenty of context. Full results are unlikely for another year or so, he reports, but big companies are using preliminary results already to screen for such things as genes associated with tastier pork chops. The story sticks to industry and academic sources, with no effort to check with people leery of genetically-engineered food.
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US environmental writers, should they need reminding of the greater passion that swirls on the other side of the pond around genetically-modified organisms, might take a look at this piece by Geoffrey Lean, environmental editor at The Independent in the UK. In violation of the "precautionary...
US environmental writers, should they need reminding of the greater passion that swirls on the other side of the pond around genetically-modified organisms, might take a look at this piece by Geoffrey Lean, environmental editor at The Independent in the UK. In violation of the "precautionary principle," he reports, university scientists are growing, somewhere in Dundee, Scotland, elm trees genetically jiggered to resist Dutch elm disease. Not only is the location being kept secret lest terrorists strike, but he reports that the government has recently been forced to admit that modified poplar, apple, and eucalyptus trees have been cultivated outdoors in Berkshire, Derbyshire, and Kent.
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A few days ago The Tracker expressed surprise that in the US daily media only the NYTimes covered a pointed National Academy report on consequences for American civilization if we don't stay in the high energy physics game, namely by working hard to host a big, international project to build a particle-smashing...
A few days ago The Tracker expressed surprise that in the US daily media only the NYTimes covered a pointed National Academy report on consequences for American civilization if we don't stay in the high energy physics game, namely by working hard to host a big, international project to build a particle-smashing linear collider. Now, the Monitor's Peter N. Spotts chimes in, too, with a deft phrase in his lede: "as labs overseas begin to overshadow facilities here, researchers are trying to find ways to keep the US program free of cobwebs."
Here's Dennis Overby's earlier NYTimes story again...
With nearby Harvard all in a lather over evidence that an undergraduate's novel bears tremendous resemblance to other published books--the embarassed author says she did it unconsciously-- the Globe's Carey Goldberg went and found plenty of research evidence that writers and others really can, on...
With nearby Harvard all in a lather over evidence that an undergraduate's novel bears tremendous resemblance to other published books--the embarassed author says she did it unconsciously-- the Globe's Carey Goldberg went and found plenty of research evidence that writers and others really can, on occasion, lift passages from others' work without being aware of it. It must be science. It even has a fancy word for it: cryptomnesia. Well, to coin a phrase: to err is human.
Neat sidebar: the Globe reprints a 1903 letter from Mark Twain to Helen Keller...
In a long Sunday feature the Times's...
In a long Sunday feature the Times's Celia W. Dugger reports from Nepal on that country's rapid progress toward defeating measles, a disease that still kills 450,000 children a year, she writes, yet can be beaten. It has been virtually eradicated from the Western Hemisphere by vaccination campaigns. More of today's deaths are in India than anywhere else, she writes. There, public health programs focus on polio. But in neighboring Nepal an anti-measles program pushed largely by volunteer teams of village women is working wonders. The story is mostly human interest, with plenty of vivid reporting from the countryside, but it carries a solid core describing how public health campaigns can...
In a piece with a good sense of how weather scientists adjust their computer models to cleave closer to reality, The Sun's longtime weather writer Frank D. Roylance reports...
In a piece with a good sense of how weather scientists adjust their computer models to cleave closer to reality, The Sun's longtime weather writer Frank D. Roylance reports on recent modeling runs with a National Weather Service program called SLOSH that show how, if everything goes just wrong, a large hurricane making landfall near Maryland could send an 18-foot storm surge into Baltimore. The story describes well how weather researchers recalibrated and updated the model's algorithms, or whatever its guts are called, in light of surprising high runups of water from smaller remnants of a recent hurricane that brushed the area a few years back.
Also, for a bonus,...
The Washington Post's Guy Gugliotta, on Fri and Sat, has two updates on that headache called the Space Transportation System, or shuttle. The first is about the jam NASA is in with the program. It is hemorrhaging...
The Washington Post's Guy Gugliotta, on Fri and Sat, has two updates on that headache called the Space Transportation System, or shuttle. The first is about the jam NASA is in with the program. It is hemorrhaging money but it is NASA's unavoidable political burden to fix it so that the under-performing space station can be completed before it, too, is abandoned; and breaking news about the agency's determination that, flawed or not, it is still aiming to fly the shuttle Discovery in July. Not really much science in these, The Tracker thinks, but the space program is after all on the science beat. Actually, people in space suits are inspiring, but they also achieve inverse science, if you will. Even NASA's boss is conceding that as shuttle costs rise, money drains from real science programs such as probes to far off planets.
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The Sacramento Bee's Chris Bowman and Elizabeth Hume report a new American Lung Association report that ranks the nation's bad air...
The Sacramento Bee's Chris Bowman and Elizabeth Hume report a new American Lung Association report that ranks the nation's bad air regions and says the San Joaquin Valley-it is the southern half of the state's big central valley and its main cities include Bakersfield and Fresno-has for the first time beaten the Los Angeles basin to the south as the nation's smoggiest place. Prominent sources of pollution are the region's flatulent, belching dairy cows. The local smog board is working on regulations, they report. However, a glance at the lung assoc. report itself gives the impression, counting ozone and particulates, that LA and the San Joaquin Valley are pretty much nip and tuck for the foulest air.
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By deleting about 15 percent of the genes from E. Coli bacteria, a University of Wisconsin-Madison geneticist and his colleagues have produced a variant that is more easily manipulated in the lab and may find wide uses in the biotech industry, reports the Journal Sentinel's Susanne Rust. Possible...
By deleting about 15 percent of the genes from E. Coli bacteria, a University of Wisconsin-Madison geneticist and his colleagues have produced a variant that is more easily manipulated in the lab and may find wide uses in the biotech industry, reports the Journal Sentinel's Susanne Rust. Possible payoffs, she writes, could include new vaccines or other therapies. It is an informative story but may have mentioned higher than the very last sentence the commercial side: the university's alumni research foundation holds the patent, and has licensed its use to the lead researcher's company. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it is intriguing.
UW-Madison Press Release
The Journal Sentinel's Don Behn and Katharine Goodloe not only report the nesting of two eagles along the Milwaukee River in a region where none have...
The Journal Sentinel's Don Behn and Katharine Goodloe not only report the nesting of two eagles along the Milwaukee River in a region where none have been seen in a long time, they provide a pretty good summary of the drastic decline, and recent return, of eagles across much of Wisconsin.
A small comet with the hefty name 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, and which is breaking into pieces and appears near demise, will pass within about 5.5 million miles of Earth May 12, reports the LA Times's...
A small comet with the hefty name 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, and which is breaking into pieces and appears near demise, will pass within about 5.5 million miles of Earth May 12, reports the LA Times's John Johnson Jr, or 20 times farther away than the moon. But a press release from Johns Hopkins Univ's Applied Physics Lab says the distance will be 7.3 million miles, or 30 times the moon's distance, as does a second from the European Space Agency (although it gives it metrically, as 11.7 million km). Johnson is outnumbered, The Tracker thinks. Either way, the distance, while posing no threat, is relatively close as comet passages go.
Johns Hopkins Univ...
After a week of delays for weather and technical glitches, a Boeing Delta II rocket roared up from the California coast early Friday morning to deliver two sophisticated satellites into orbit to...
After a week of delays for weather and technical glitches, a Boeing Delta II rocket roared up from the California coast early Friday morning to deliver two sophisticated satellites into orbit to start giving clouds an examination more thorough inside and out than ever before possible. The satellites, a NASA probe called CloudSat and a French-American companion named Calipso, become the fourth and fifth members of the so-called A-Train, a caravan of satellites that follow one another almost nose to tail in a path crossing the north and south poles. They are expected to fill many holes in theories of the exact physics governing weather and climate.
Stories: AP; Washington Post...
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