Charlie Petit's Tracker
About a week ago a lively, well-reported article by Ed Struzik ran apparently simultaneously at the Calgary Herald and at Yale's e360 non-profit enviro news sites. He reported in vivid, anecdotal detail a remarkable series of recent sightings. Canadian biologists say they are seeing an upsurge in hybrid bears born of brown (aka grizzly) and polar bears, plus brown bears stalking game incuding seals at the high latitudes where the white bears are the norm but their big inland cousins had been exceedingly rare.
The swift vignettes of the animals are intriguing. Here is a short bio of...
Rumblings of discontent and of an inside review at an essential magazine for lay science fans, Science News, are out in the open. Details of reasons are not clear, not to me anyway, but its respected editor (and a pal of mine) Tom Siegfried recently gave...
Rumblings of discontent and of an inside review at an essential magazine for lay science fans, Science News, are out in the open. Details of reasons are not clear, not to me anyway, but its respected editor (and a pal of mine) Tom Siegfried recently gave notice. Tomorrow is his last day. Word is that longtime editor Eva Emerson is in charge until a permanent replacement is found.
Siegfried, editor in chief of the bi-weekly since 2007, is among the most decorated science journalists in the business. On his wall or perhaps stuffed in a drawer somewhere are the awards in science journalism from the AAAS, Nat'l Association of Science Writers, American Chemical Society, American Geophysical Union, and a bunch more. His short bio is still up at Science News, as is...
The AP's Kevin Begos has on the wire today a discouraging report on the near-absence of reliable research into hazards from hydraulic fracturing for...
The AP's Kevin Begos has on the wire today a discouraging report on the near-absence of reliable research into hazards from hydraulic fracturing for gas recovery. Not even industry is doing very much if any such research and, his story assures readers, few outside the business itself would trust an industry report anyway.
In the third paragraph is a quote from a woman who lives near a Pennsylvania drilling area. He quotes her to say, "There's a lot of people in my neighborhood that have rashes and little red spots."
One is tempted to blast the piece for prominently using such testimony. The expertise of its source is ignored. But its placement so high in the story puts a tilt on the account. It immediately encourages readers to imagine the terrible complexions to be...
Well whoo-eesh. Perhaps a few readers of the news of a giant new Milner Prize in fundamental physics felt momentarily satisfied in a culturally-blinkered sort of way, upon seeing the first name Nima on the list, that at least one woman is included among winners of this giant new theoretical physics freebie. Russian...
Well whoo-eesh. Perhaps a few readers of the news of a giant new Milner Prize in fundamental physics felt momentarily satisfied in a culturally-blinkered sort of way, upon seeing the first name Nima on the list, that at least one woman is included among winners of this giant new theoretical physics freebie. Russian gigajillionaire Yuri Milner this week announced his gift of $3 million each to nine people, many of them publically-hailed rock stars of that brigade. But, as many readers of this here tracker site know, Nima Arkani-Hamed is a fella too.
I am only blogging on this gender angle because while I applaud the winners I am too dim and lazy to comprehend in any real detail what these men do. One tries, but on the work of people such as this my fallback strategy is circumlocution via metaphor and lively quote. Onward - I cannot think off hand of who deserves to be there and lacks a Y chromosome. Lisa Randall comes to mind and I am sure many in the science...
News was barely sinking in (previous post) that controversial laboratory modification of H5N1, or bird flu virus, to make it more contagious ought to have the details published. Now news has broken in the last few days that an extended clamp-down on such work...
News was barely sinking in (previous post) that controversial laboratory modification of H5N1, or bird flu virus, to make it more contagious ought to have the details published. Now news has broken in the last few days that an extended clamp-down on such work is still in play. Many had expected the voluntary suspension of such work, imposed while publication of previous work was in doubt, to be lifted. The re-think, it appears, may stem in part from discovery that already and by itself a different flu virus, H3N8, has developed a variant that jumped from birds and is now infecting seals along New England's shore. Some of its 38 known mutations, say researchers, seem to make it more suitable for mammals. It has killed many of the afflicted seals, especially pups.
Reporters watching events unfold at the annual meeting, in New York, of the Centers of Excellent for Influenza Research and Surveillance, scrambled...
At the BBC science writer Jonathan Amos has a good example of a small story written short, yet large. His topic is a survey of a submarine hill that the UK's National Oceanography Centre has underway. It employs a standard-looking (to me) underwater autonomous vehicle, or submersible, called the autosub6000. If...
At the BBC science writer Jonathan Amos has a good example of a small story written short, yet large. His topic is a survey of a submarine hill that the UK's National Oceanography Centre has underway. It employs a standard-looking (to me) underwater autonomous vehicle, or submersible, called the autosub6000. If it had people on board it would be submarine but as there is nothing but gadgets and motors and batteries etc. inside, it is a submersible.
From a somewhat obscure event Amos produces a portrait of the stuff the machines operators are seeing plus its local and ocean-wide context. That includes changes suspected to be underway in the sea that could change weather across much of the globe and, in the sea itself, have serious impact on fisheries that are in plenty of trouble as it is.
The pic BBC used isn't so good. The one with this post is from an earlier cruise, as presented...
The pre-landing buzz for NASA's next Mars rover, nee Mars Science Laboratory with its newish, friendlier Curiosity moniker is reaching hornet's nest intensity.
The complex series of rocket firings, sashaying heat shield-gauntlet, parachute flutter, and final knuckle-whitening skycrane...
The pre-landing buzz for NASA's next Mars rover, nee Mars Science Laboratory with its newish, friendlier Curiosity moniker is reaching hornet's nest intensity.
The complex series of rocket firings, sashaying heat shield-gauntlet, parachute flutter, and final knuckle-whitening skycrane hover topped by a delicate final winch maneuver. That's just to get to work, from space to red soil. The drama unfolds through the late night and very early morning of August 5-6. Advance stories are piling up.
As a personal aside, as described here before I've resigned from tracking as a member of MIT's staff with my last day Friday. But I will keep on blogging often as an outside (freelance, sort of) contractor. I've also accepted invitation to give a talk Mon. Aug 6 to the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in Tucson that's making me nervous as a cat. I'll do my best to get something in about coverage of the landing (or...
Richard A. Muller of UC Berkeley is an engaging, smart, and maverick physicist who has spent a good part of his career chewing on off-beat but not crazy hypotheses until they either fall apart or gain some credibility. He is good at being realistic about those that don't hold up or stall for lack of more...
Richard A. Muller of UC Berkeley is an engaging, smart, and maverick physicist who has spent a good part of his career chewing on off-beat but not crazy hypotheses until they either fall apart or gain some credibility. He is good at being realistic about those that don't hold up or stall for lack of more data (his hunch never caught on that a distant solar companion, a brown dwarf named Nemesis, occasionally sprays comets into the inner solar system). Perhaps by nature he looked fishy-eyed at global warming science until he took a hard look for himself. Two tempting ways to judge his latest analysis of climate change data are 1) Wow, if even a skeptic of the mainstream's consensus that climate change has us ankle deep in offal with knee- and hip-deep in sight can change his mind, that's a triumph for scientific method and maybe a politically effective tide-turner or, 2) He's a scientist. He had not paid much attention to global warming before. He and...
Here's a surprise and a warning that fully merits press attention - even though one wishes this story had gone through rewrite once more and lingered longer at the art director's desk. It's fascinating but blends in so many ways that geologically prominent or scenic places on Scotland landscape are...
Here's a surprise and a warning that fully merits press attention - even though one wishes this story had gone through rewrite once more and lingered longer at the art director's desk. It's fascinating but blends in so many ways that geologically prominent or scenic places on Scotland landscape are being looted or defaced that the central and surprising theme - sloppy geological sampling - gets blurred.
- BBC - Steven McKenzie: Rock drilling 'threatens' Scotland's geology ;
The piece would be better were readers to be able to see an example of what sources tell McKenzie about damage to scenery by the occasional thoughtless geologist out for a core sample. The photo you see here is not from the Beeb, but from a report at an organization, Scottish Natural Heritage, that prompted the news story. The...
A remarkably cool and removed essay at the Poynter Institute site late last week addressed an issue that appears to be a non-issue for a surprising number of the internet and digital era's "news"...
A remarkably cool and removed essay at the Poynter Institute site late last week addressed an issue that appears to be a non-issue for a surprising number of the internet and digital era's "news" outlets. At stake are practices that have gotten a steady diet of grumping from me among others here at ksjtracker. They stem from the use of information, including supposedly verbatim quotes, straight off press releases.
- Mallory Jean Tenore (Poynter assoc. editor): 6 ways journalists can use press releases effectively
There is much to chew on in Ms. Tenore's rightly link-strewn piece. Speaking of chewing, I'll take a bite out of the article...
Your tracker happened, via the higgledy piggledy of search engine and news alert surprise, upon fodder for our first-ever post that I can recall from the press in Turkey. The first nugget is a short item without byline. I nearly scanned it (not digitally- but orbitally as in eyeball) before going on without sharing...
Your tracker happened, via the higgledy piggledy of search engine and news alert surprise, upon fodder for our first-ever post that I can recall from the press in Turkey. The first nugget is a short item without byline. I nearly scanned it (not digitally- but orbitally as in eyeball) before going on without sharing. It is on further thought unusual however in both topic and ambiguity. Hence intriguing. Thus the post.
- Huriyet Daily News - Nash shares memories of Albert Einstein in discussions ;
Intriguing indeed. In Turkey John Nash is so well-known the hed can refer to him only by last name and mean something to readers? The Huriyet paper says that it is the oldest (about 50 years) English language daily in Turkey. That it has an item from...
For years now Arctic sea ice, which is the ice pack and is not to be confused with an ice cap even though headline writers like to call it that, has been trending down steadily in extent and even more sharply in volume. Global warming is the accepted truth as the reason (not to be confused with 'proof' as...
For years now Arctic sea ice, which is the ice pack and is not to be confused with an ice cap even though headline writers like to call it that, has been trending down steadily in extent and even more sharply in volume. Global warming is the accepted truth as the reason (not to be confused with 'proof' as that's for mathematics and overconfident lawyers) if one gauges by every major national academy of science in the world. Thus the news that a paper in a big journal - Environmental Research Letters - says we done it is no surprise. Perhaps it is the number that catches the eye: 75% to more than 90% likelihood that greenhouse gas forcing has driven the summer ice extent smaller and some are saying we may see an open and navigable late-summer Arctic Ocean within about 20 years. Arctic Multi-decadal Oscillation and other known and natural processes don't easily explain the scale of this trend, the study says. Even flimsy yachts are now making the...
A lot of stories erupted this morning due to NASA satellite analysts' revelation yesterday that they just saw something on Greenland they had never seen before: water everywhere. That is, it's still pretty much white. It is still mostly covered in a glacial mass reaching thousands of feet in thickness. But...
A lot of stories erupted this morning due to NASA satellite analysts' revelation yesterday that they just saw something on Greenland they had never seen before: water everywhere. That is, it's still pretty much white. It is still mostly covered in a glacial mass reaching thousands of feet in thickness. But the sunny part on top was abruptly melting, north to south, east to west. One imagines an unbroken wetness of sheets and rivulets and rivers and probably more noise from the maws of those ice-boring waterfalls called moulins that drain to the bedrock beneath. One supposes it could be an instrument error. But the folks running the multiple satellites at work say they checked. Ergo, the twinned images of ice v. melted-on-top, taken just four days apart earlier this month, are in wide circulation.
It's a peculiar thing and is unavoidable news. It could not last of course. Nobody should think a tipping point or something else drastic-sounding is upon us that...
The last week or so has seen several news outlets reporting not only that space (actually, the insides of space ships and stations) has a distinct odor but that active research is underway on it. Speaking of distinct odors, this one smells a little like a fish. Which means old. And perhaps not entirely true...
The last week or so has seen several news outlets reporting not only that space (actually, the insides of space ships and stations) has a distinct odor but that active research is underway on it. Speaking of distinct odors, this one smells a little like a fish. Which means old. And perhaps not entirely true even when it was fresh.
The gist of the supposed news is that an ozone-tinged, slightly metallic, sort of sweet odor with a tincture of burnt steak is pretty consistently reported by space travelers. Also that NASA has hired a chemist in the UK to duplicate it for use in training.
And here's the problem, first reported to the tracker in an email by the UK's keen-eyed Jonathan Leake at the Sunday Times. The essence of the story, Leake quickly learned as he got curious about it, was first run nearly four years ago in several UK newspapers and spread rapidly from there. Here's...
Not so long ago polar bears were to have diverged as a distinct species from brown bears just 130,000 years ago or so. That got pushed to about 600,000 years by more fossil and gene study. The latest: for more than FOUR MILLION YEARS their genome has been largely distinct from their close, landlubber relatives. But...
Not so long ago polar bears were to have diverged as a distinct species from brown bears just 130,000 years ago or so. That got pushed to about 600,000 years by more fossil and gene study. The latest: for more than FOUR MILLION YEARS their genome has been largely distinct from their close, landlubber relatives. But some cross-species mating recurred over that time, presumably mainly during warm periods that brought polar bears to dry land as ice floes ebbed, and drew brown bears range northward.
That's the news in the Proceedings of the Nat'l Academy of Science. The paper has 26 authors from Penn State U. , USGS, Univ. at Buffalo, and institutes in Norway, Iceland, Denmark, China, and Canada. The paper says it's not yet possible to say how long ice-adapted Arctic bears resembled the white giants of today, but the gene pool that led to them seems to have a long and largely distinct history.
Give the interest in the immediate future of polar bears during the...
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