New York City Michael Bloomberg is all over the news this morning in the wake of a...
Tracker: May 2012
New York City Michael Bloomberg is all over the news this morning in the wake of a press conference yesterday at which he proposed a ban on large soft drinks, sugary fruit drinks and sweetened coffee, in an effort to help curb obesity. The proposed ban would cover any sugary drink larger than 16 ounces. (For those of you who guzzle diet sodas by the quart, there's no reason for concern. Diet drinks are excluded, as are milkshakes and those sickeningly sweet blue alcoholic concoctions with little umbrellas.)
Bloomberg described the ban as an example of "doing something" about the nationwide obesity problem, not merely wringing hands.
The New York City Beverage Association raised the question that I'd like to consider here. Protesting the...
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Earlier this month, the Slate science writer Dan Engber noticed a story circulating in the British media regarding the so-called "five second rule" - the idea that if dropped food is only on the floor for a few seconds, bacteria don't have a chance to swarm it.
Wait, he thought, hasn't that whole idea been discredited? But then he noticed that the...
After North...
After North Carolina collected hardly any laughs and a heap of scorn (plus, yes and alas in our fractious nation, noddings in agreement) for outlawing marriage of couples that don't comprise a man and a woman, soon it may do something equally brick-headed but at least it has a giggle factor. This one more directly concerns and defies science. It thus may give those of us heading to Research Triangle in October for the NASW and CASW conjoined ScienceWriters2012 meeting something more on which to commiserate with the fact-influenced residents who richly...
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On only its second flight to orbit and first chance to extend its legs for useful work, the privately-developed SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher did its job and, more important, its Dragon space capsule just parachuted into the Pacific Ocean with a load of trash and used, return cargo from the Int'l Space Station. As this site followed the runup to its ISS-bound launch and its rather reassuringly routine-looking...
Just a shorty here to mark a no-news story, if...
Just a shorty here to mark a no-news story, if one defines news as surprises that depart from the norm. But it's news because it has a big round and previously unseen number in its context: 400. The AP's Seth Borenstein reports on data gathered at the Nat'l Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Boulder, Colo labs (and elsewhere) that show, over the Arctic, ambient CO2 concentrations are now running at...
30May 2012
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About ten days ago, the University of Buffalo released a peer-reviewed study - or so it described it at that moment - which seemed to cast a positive light on the way regulators were able to managing the risks of the controversial method of gas extraction known as fracking.
The researchers at Buffalo's Shale Resources and Society Institute had...
One is accustomed to reading of the...
One is accustomed to reading of the tinderboxes partly attributable to overactive fire suppression in the drier Rocky Mountains and Far West of the US. At Environment & Energy Daily's Greenwire public feed yesterday reporter Paul Voosen takes readers for a vivid visit with foresters in the east who see the same thing. He starts off with and 11-word, 13-syllable lede: "It was a rare patch of sunlight in a dark forest" then relates how the Ozark National Forest, one example among many, has radically changed its character over the past century.
Climate change is one factor pushing the...
Several members of an email group discussion among...
Several members of an email group discussion among science writers and bloggers with interest in enviro matters for the last two days have gone into full obsession, fulmination, and a dash of meditation on a letter to this week's Nature Climate Change. The paper is in Grist below. It's roughly about stupidity not being why many people deny that human-caused global warming is important to everyday life and gov't policy.. Several news outlets also have relayed the basics of the NSF-funded study, if not the vindication, consternation, and other emotions rattling around among people who write a lot about global warming as science and as an urgent reason for difficult policy decisions.
The news is not...
A bait-and-shrug piece by Natalie Angier leads...
A bait-and-shrug piece by Natalie Angier leads the section, more on that in a moment, but below the fold is the real mystery that goes unaddressed in the article that brings the topic up. Rony Caryn Rabin goes on at considerable length in a vignette-led feature about the costs to patients for routine colonoscopy screenings. If you are past age 50 or so and reading this blog (meaning you probably take serious things seriously), you've almost surely had a colonoscopy or two and can commiserate among age peers over the purging and fasting ahead one must do in advance. Rabin's topic is a...
I thought for awhile this morning how to write...
I thought for awhile this morning how to write an accurate but not unduly frightening headline for the must-do news in a front-ranked journal. It reveals that bluefin tuna are showing up off California carrying radioactive isotopes spewed by last year's reactor meltdowns in Japan. A certain family member may nonetheless be asking soon, "Okay, Charlie, I guess I should stop eating tuna, huh? I hear they're radioactive from that Japanese thing." It's not easy to write the story in a way that doesn't start off by startling readers into an assumption of risk. I gave it a try for this post but it's still not punchy as a hed should be.
The news is in wide circulation. Bluefin tuna themselves are in wide circulation...
Curiosity drove me into a flashback, imagining myself...
Curiosity drove me into a flashback, imagining myself on a story. Early this morning I checked the media channel at NASA TV and grabbed from the screen this striking image of the SpaceX Dragon resupply module as its operators systematically, cautiously proceeded to maneuver it toward the International Space Station's Harmony Node docking port. Even on HDTV mode the resolution isn't so hot but the sunlit vehicle against sunny streamers of clouds below, which looks like up in this rendering, is pretty cool. One can see the Canadian-built telerobotic grappling arm lower left by which astronaut Don Pettit waited to use it to guide the craft to air-tighthookup.
A slew of outlets are following things more or less as they...
(English intro to Spanish Lang post) “In one year I’d like “Materia” to be consolidated as the reference in high quality scientific information for the hundreds of thousands of Spanish-speaking readers that miss this kind of information in the big media”. That’s what Patricia Fernández de Lis (editor of “...
(English intro to Spanish Lang post) “In one year I’d like “Materia” to be consolidated as the reference in high quality scientific information for the hundreds of thousands of Spanish-speaking readers that miss this kind of information in the big media”. That’s what Patricia Fernández de Lis (editor of “Materia”) told this tracker after yesterday’s big announcement of the platform’s intentions. Materia’s team includes several former reporters of the awarded science section in Público that folded a few months ago when the newspaper closed down its print edition. Publico’s science and environmental section was the most extensive of all Spanish speaking daily press. It’s great news for science journalism to see that the team remains at work this on ambitious project. In this Q&A post she explains how they expect to be funded, what will make Materia very different from blog aggregators and newspapers’ daily sections, its big interest in Latin America, how professional...
Manufacturers of jet engines have nothing to worry about but a no-combustion, solar powered airplane and its pilot - plus about half a ton of lithium-polymer batteries for night flying - are making their way toward Morocco after takeoff from Switzerland. So far, they've gotten to Spain and have landed for a rest stop. The pilot is Bertrand Piccard, a 3rd generation member of a family that practically has the flag of NY's Explorer's Club sewn into their undergarments. He's also President of the Solar Impulse Project, with the airplane designated the HB-SIA but usually itself called the Solar Impulse. Eventually, he wants to fly it around the world in another year or two...
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Once upon a time, centuries ago, it was big news among scientists - even though they didn't call themselves scientists yet - to be able to predict when the planet Venus would cross the face of the Sun as seen from Earth. The first was predicted, for the event of 1631, by Johannes Kepler, namesake to NASA's exo-planet hunting Kepler telescope, They are rare events. They became even more enticing...
(Note...
(Note added late - This post was expected to be brief, but took all morning. It takes too slow to develop, sure, but bear with it. It has a twist. The latter pertains to press releases and some of the authors' efforts to head off what they see in errors in coverage, yet appear to have roots in their own institutions. It remains in the sequence written, with elements arising in the order they arose during composition. / cp)
Suppose you're an obedient little krill, minding your own business in the school's swirlings when O! MY GOODNESS!! a great darkness arrives from seemingly nowhere. The ocean sweeps you and your pals into it. Lights out and adios. If it is a...
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