(English intro to Spanish lang post) A Spanish reporter accuses NASA’s communications office of distorting the data published in Nature about the existence of ice in Shackleton’s Moon crater. Here is the situation: Nasa’s...
Tracker: June 2012
(English intro to Spanish lang post) A Spanish reporter accuses NASA’s communications office of distorting the data published in Nature about the existence of ice in Shackleton’s Moon crater. Here is the situation: Nasa’s press release was titled “NASA Spacecraft Reveals Ice Content in Moon Crater”, and started by saying “NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has returned data that indicate ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in a crater located on the moon's south pole”. By contrast a press release Nature sent to science journalists was entitled “Planetary science: A relatively dry lunar south pole”, and explained that “Shackleton has been a target of numerous Earth-based and spacecraft analyses because of the possibility that the shadowy environment may contain frozen water. Data in this week’s Nature suggest that the crater does not contain...
What with space photographs...
What with space photographs by astronauts, the always-present questions about the role of climate change, ongoing convulsion and revision in America's western landscape, plus wildlife ecology aspects, the colossal wildfires in Colorado can easily be fitted in to the science beat. But what prompts a post is this photo from Reuters's wire with credit to the US Air Force's p.r. people at its academy. Is that real? It looks sculptural, or like an architect's rendition. What chance such convergence of parallel lineaments in the smoke-filled sky, walkway, and the campus chapel? For higher res, click it or go...
Venture capital space missions...
Venture capital space missions are in the news a lot lately so why not this latest news from the B612 Foundation? Yesterday, as promised, it officially declared a goal to raise a few hundred million dollars for a space telescope. From solar orbit it would search for smallish asteroids, tens to a few hundred meters wide, with orbits that make it a bad bet to assume they won't hit Earth in the near or nearly near future. Such things could take out cities, lay waste to big counties, make trouble for much of a continent, maybe launch tsunamis if they splash into ocean, but not end or derail civilization. NASA and other agencies already have a handle on big bruisers a half mile or several miles and see...
Here is some essentially arcane, minor news that nonetheless received considerable attention from reporters. The news is that analysis of fragments of the Allende Meteor, whose pieces scattered across Mexico in 1969, revealed a mineral not in the catalogs. One reason is catches the eye is its common name, Panguite, and the press release from Caltech explaining that it derives from Pan Gu, a Chinese mythological giant who, the tale goes, swung an ax and smote yin from yang to make sky. Ancient mythologies - doesn't matter whether Chinese, Biblical, Greek, Kwakiutl, Hawaiian, Eyptian, Roman, Norse, Maya, whatever - add depth and...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Lonesome George died last Sunday in the Galapagos National Park. He was the last giant turtle of the species Geochelone abingdoni, and probably the most esteemed animal in the Galapagos Island. He was found dead in the morning by his 40 years caretaker Fausto Llerena....
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Lonesome George died last Sunday in the Galapagos National Park. He was the last giant turtle of the species Geochelone abingdoni, and probably the most esteemed animal in the Galapagos Island. He was found dead in the morning by his 40 years caretaker Fausto Llerena. Lonesome George was estimated to have more than 100 years, but he hadn’t suffered health complications in the last months. Biologists in the Park said that his death was unexpected. Maybe because of that the stories in the main Ecuadorian newspapers have been growing since Monday, covering different aspects of Lonesome George's life. We must say that the stories have been really elaborate. They described the reaction of visitors, social networks and personalities. They explained George’s death was due to natural causes and that his body will be preserved and on display in a local museum. They interviewed his caretaker and biologists in the park. But the stories talk also about...
At his The Loom blog get a...
At his The Loom blog get a kick out of uber-science journo Carl Zimmer's opinion of TV uber-producer and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's new HBO series The Newsroom. He aims at its first episode, devoted to an outbreak of serious journalism at a previously schlocky TV news operation. I suppose I ought to watch the program too. As he says, it's easy even for cheapskates like me (no HBO around here) via YouTube. But I'll take his word for it that these camera-toting newshounds figure out what went wrong during the gulf oil...
This is sort of creepy,...
This is sort of creepy, evoking slightly images from that recent movie I didn't see but I saw the trailers: Rise of the Planet of the Apes. You know, virus-vectored, genetically altered chimps and gorillas planning a takeover. Its imagery of primate skullduggery came to mind while reading on the AP Seth Borenstein's review of recent research on the differences and similarities between how people and apes think. It covers such fundamentals as ability to consider themselves as individuals and to empathize or somehow recognize similar volitional intellects...
Did a...
Did a scribe in Britain during the Dark Ages record a supernova? Maybe. At Nature News Richard A. (Rick) Lovett reports this week the story of a Nature podcast over a puzzling spike in carbon-14 in the eighth century. It is recorded in tree rings and suggests that a wave of high energy radiation hit the upper atmosphere back then. Listening was an undergrad in biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz. He used his familiarity with ancient texts to search for any reference to anything at the time consistent with a supernova or other cosmic...
The...
The highest temperature anywhere on Earth ever, anywhere in today's universe for all I know, has been briefly inferred in the teeny fireballs of colliding particles at the US's Brookhaven National Laboratory. The Guinness World Record people are in agreement. To set the mark, the physicists banged gold nuclei into each another at near-light speed. They have a whole program devoted to smashing gold that way. This record is just a footnote. But superlatives are natural stories. They grab eyeballs (Fastest! Smallest! Densest! Farthest! Anythingest! will do). Hottest makes the A-list.
But this has the advantage of not only being cutting edge science (quark gluon soup comes...
Without being a lawyer it is hard to figure out why this...
Without being a lawyer it is hard to figure out why this is still in play legally after the Supreme Court several years ago ruled that CO2 can be regulated as an air pollutant, same as sulfurous gases and (at a guess) foul smells from a stockyard, but it is. Such thoughts occur on learning of the news this week that in DC a US Court of Appeals rejected a multi-industry and red-state suit arguing against EPA regulations of the sort to which the top court already gave a green light.
The issues here are frequent elements in environment and science journalism. But a federal court ruling falls naturally to those on the legal beat at news organizations big enough to have clearly defined beats. Good thing too. Most science and...
For three years now it has been illegal for hunters or anybody else shooting at wildlife within sanctuaries for California condors to use ammunition that contains lead. Steel, tungsten, copper, depleted uranium for all I know, are ok . But a new study in the Proceedings of the Nat'l Academy of Sciences finds that many of the carrion-eating birds are still carrying chronic, dangerous quantities in their blood streams. Maybe it's old bullets still finding their way into the environment (pehaps in animals that got shot but lived on..) and more likely the inevitable poachers, land-owners, or others who didn't get the word on lead or don't care. Nobody...
Today's Science Times, while heavy on life...
Today's Science Times, while heavy on life and medical sciences, has remarkably diverse and thought provoking items all over.
But enough about things not me. The lead story resonated deeply in yours truly mainly because it is about getting on, going on, and other adjustments that come with age. Not long ago, I sent to the Knight program director Phil Hilts a letter of resignation. (One result being Phil's post, scroll one spot up). Don't go celebrating or lamenting or sending me notes of the melancholy, false-cheer sort. It's merely that starting in August I'm cutting back a bit so as not to have to be up at 5 a.m. every morning here in CA and to be able to take long weekends whenever we like. Plus, this...
Tracker notice
...
Tracker notice
Head Tracker Charlie Petit will be semi-retiring from the KSJ Tracker beginning August 3, completing more than six years at the helm. From the beginning, the Tracker has been a hit with science writers. Its substantial overall readership increases year by year.
Much of the success of the Tracker, I think, comes from Charlie’s unusual abilities as a blogger. He has a sharp eye for interesting material, a sense of skepticism, a light touch as a writer and a continuously-present sense of humor. To my mind, this combination of traits goes a long way to defining the essentials needed for a good blog. Unlike more formal journalism, blogs have a personal voice. But it must...
26Jun 2012
Cows grazing in Tifton 85 grass/Source: UGA
On Saturday, a CBS news reporter, Alix Bryan, posted a story out of Elgin, Texas about a herd of cattle poisoned by cyanide. The source of the poison, according to the story, was a "genetically-modified" form of Bermuda grass that was apparently generating the poison.
The problem was that the story was...
Millions of...
Millions of US beach residents better put taller foundations on their houses no matter whether they see sunrises or sunsets beyond the surf. Two reports put sea level rise in the news. One addresses the US Atlantic coast, the other the Pacific. Both see long stretches of shoreline where the rise appears destined to exceed a global average that itself is sizeable. One of the extrapolative analyses is from a report published Friday directly by the National Research Council on request of West Coast state agencies. It reports not only that California's rise will be above par, but that the global forecast that the IPCC issued five years ago is short of the present scientific consensus...
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