Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.
This week's featured story comes from the Irish Times.
This year's roll of Nobel honour
ORLA TINSLEY
THE NOBEL PRIZE for PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE Awarded "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase" to Elizabeth H Blackburn, ... Carol W Greider ... and Jack W Szostak.
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CHEMISTRY "For studies and structure of unction of the Ribosome" was awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishan, ... Thomas A Steitz, ... and Ada E Yonath.
...
PHYSICS One half went to Charles K Kao – ... – "for ground-breaking achievements concerning the transmission of light fibres for optical communication". Willard S Boyle, ... and George E Smith ... share the other half "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – CCD sensors".
More on this and other science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
DarkSyde: Moonbomb Live
DarkSyde: This Week in Science
louisev: WHEE: Be Your Own Geneticist - Introduction
NellaSelim: This Week In Space: The First White House Star Party with Barack and Michelle Obama
Ryvr: CO2=Miocene Levels: Eye on the Melting Ice
Slideshows/Videos
Discovery Networks: FLASHBACK: IMAGES IN THE NEWS, OCT. 5-OCT. 9
Oct. 9, 2009 -- This week, we looked at volcanoes that defrosted an ice age, A.I. that could be your M.D., and NASA bombing the moon in search of water.
Take a look back at these stories and more in the Discovery News Flashback Slide Show.
Discovery Networks: Could Zombieland REALLY Happen?
Could a single virus destroy humankind as seen in films like Zombieland or shows like The Colony? Why or why not? And if they could, what would such a virus look like? James Williams gets the answers from a virus expert.
L.A. Times: The 20 most-visited national parks in the U.S.
-- Jason La and Deborah Netburn
America's 58 national parks feature some of the country's most amazing views, natural formations and wildlife. These include Yellowstone's world-famous geysers, Olympic's rain forests in Washington and Arches' sweeping rock formations in Utah.
Each year, millions travel to these parks. Here are the 20 most-visited. America's most popular park may surprise you. It's not Yosemite, the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone.
L.A. Times: America's hidden gems: The 20 least-crowded national parks in 2009
-- Kelsey Ramos, Los Angeles Times
Mention Yellowstone or Rocky Mountain national parks, and Americans can quickly conjure images of Old Faithful or Longs Peak. Likewise, Californians can easily picture the desert cactus of Joshua Tree and Half Dome in Yosemite.
But mention secluded Kobuk Valley in Alaska or the remote Channel Islands off the Southern California coast and the mental image may not come as quickly. These 20 least-visited of the 58 national parks in the U.S. offer the same types of natural beauty, exotic wildlife and adventurous outdoor activity as their more popular counter-parks do -- but with smaller crowds and enough adventure to satisfy even the most daring.
Astronomy/Space
Science News: Largest known planetary ring discovered
By Ron Cowen
FAJARDO, Puerto Rico — A newly discovered planetary ring can run circles around all the others. The gossamer band of dust encircles Saturn and has a measured diameter of about 24 million kilometers, or 200 times the diameter of the planet.
This finding makes the band the largest known planetary ring in the solar system, researchers reported October 6 at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences. A billion Earths could fit inside the ring.
Calculations indicate the tenuous ring is probably even more extensive and is likely to have a diameter reaching 36 million kilometers.
Science News: Ice confirmed on an asteroid
By Ron Cowen
FAJARDO, Puerto Rico — Space rocks may be dead as doornails but some contain ingredients that could have given life on Earth a foothold.
Planetary scientists reported October 7 that they have, for the first time, confirmed that an asteroid contains frozen water on its surface. Evidence of water-ice, along with organic compounds, on the surface of the asteroid 24 Themis supports the theory that asteroids brought both water and organic compounds to the early Earth, helping lay the foundation for life on the planet.
Humberto Campins of the University of Central Florida in Orlando and his colleagues recorded spectra of the asteroid 24 Themis over a seven-hour period, corresponding to 84 percent of the rotational period of the spinning rock. The spectra, taken with NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, revealed the consistent presence of frozen water as different parts of the asteroid’s surface came into view, Campins reported at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences.
L.A. Times: NASA craft smacks the moon in quest for water
By John Johnson Jr.
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
MOUNTAIN VIEW — A NASA rocket plowed into a crater on the moon this morning, looking for evidence that water has been lying hidden in the lunar wasteland for billions of years.
Between 500 and a thousand people who had waited all night for a glimpse of the 4:30 a.m. PDT crash into the Cabeus crater watched as an outdoor movie screen projected images of the broken lunar landscape just before the impact.
Four minutes after the rocket hit the surface of the lunar south pole, a following spacecraft was projected to fly through the plume of dust and debris kicked up by the rocket, its suite of nine spectrometers and cameras sniffing and tasting the debris for signs of water ice. But it was hard to see any evidence of a plume.
L.A. Times: NASA's moon crash is no spectacle, but could be a success
By John Johnson Jr.
Reporting from Mountain View, Calif. - As entertainment, NASA's moon punch mission was more "Heaven's Gate" than "Raiders of the Lost Ark." As science, however, it might still qualify for blockbuster status.
Huddled in sleeping bags and tents, hundreds of people had gathered on a chilly Bay Area evening Thursday in front of a big outdoor screen to await what they hoped would be a celestial fireworks display as a NASA rocket plunged into a dark crater in search of ice on the moon. The Friday crash was supposed to send up a debris plume big enough to be seen from some Earth-based telescopes; a following spacecraft was to fly through plume and analyze its contents.
In the end, the plume failed to show on the screen, leaving many in the crowd outside Ames Research Center, along with those watching on NASA television, disappointed. All that appeared when the crash occurred at 4:31 a.m. was a close-up view of the craggy landscape at the moon's south pole. Then the picture went dark as the following spacecraft also crashed, as planned, leaving viewers scratching their heads and wondering what they had seen.
Evolution/Paleontology
Science Daily: Bizarre New Horned Tyrannosaur From Asia: Carnivorous But Smaller T. Rex Relative 'Like Ballerina'
ScienceDaily (Oct. 5, 2009) — Just a few weeks after tiny, early Raptorex kriegsteini was unveiled, a new wrench has been thrown into the family tree of the tyrannosaurs. The new Alioramus altai — a horned, long-snouted, gracile cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex — shared the same environment with larger, predatory relatives.
A paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes this exceptionally well-preserved fossil, shedding light on a previously poorly understood genus of tyrannosaurs and describing a new suite of adaptations for meat eating.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Science News: Fungi thrived during mass extinction
By Sid Perkins
Microfossils that show up in large quantities in ancient rocks deposited during Earth’s largest mass extinction are fungal spores, not algae as some recent studies had proposed, new research suggests.
About 251 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, life on Earth had its closest call: In a geologically short period of time, a mass extinction claimed more than 95 percent of species in the oceans and 70 percent of those on land (SN: 2/1/97, p. 74). But a few species bucked the extinction trend and proliferated at the time — in particular, those in the genus Reduviasporonites, says Mark A. Sephton, a geochemist at Imperial College London. In some cases, 100 percent of the organic matter found in rocks from the end of the Permian comes from Reduviasporonites.
Although researchers originally proposed that the Reduviasporonites spores came from fungi that feasted on the sudden bounty of dead woody plants, some recent studies have suggested that those fossils are the remnants of massive algal blooms, Sephton says. Now, he and his colleagues say in the October Geology, new analyses discount the algal explanation.
L.A. Times: Archaeopteryx may have been more dinosaur than bird
By Thomas H. Maugh II
Archaeopteryx, believed for 150 years to have been the first bird, was probably only a feathered dinosaur that had great difficulty getting off the ground when it lived 150 million years ago, researchers reported this week in the journal PLoS One.
Discovered in 1860, only a year after Charles Darwin published his famous "On the Origin of Species," the raven-sized archaeopteryx was generally assumed to show evolution in action. It had the feathers and wishbones of birds, but it also retained the teeth, tail and three-fingered hands of dinosaurs.
But new studies of its bones and those of other fossils, by a team led by paleontologist Gregory M. Erickson of Florida State University and the American Museum of Natural History, show that it was much less bird and far more dinosaur than had been believed.
Biodiversity
L.A. Times: Trilling stud gets credit for boosting songbird population
By Tony Perry
If the loggerhead shrike ever leaves the endangered species list, major kudos must go to Trampas, the king stud of the songbird community on Navy-owned San Clemente Island.
Hatched in captivity in 2001, at the nadir of the shrike's census, Trampas flew to freedom and began his life's work: repopulating the shrike subspecies that is found only on the island.
In eight breeding seasons, Trampas has sired 62 chicks. From those chicks have come 93 grandchicks, 61 great-grandchicks and 25 great-great-grandchicks.
Where once the population was barely a dozen, now there are 80 breeding pairs in the wild and an additional 63 individual birds in captivity as part of a breeding program run by the San Diego Zoo.
Biotechnology/Health
L.A. Times: 3 U.S. scientists share Nobel Prize in medicine
By Thomas H. Maugh II
Three U.S. scientists who discovered key aspects of how cells and animals age and how cancer cells become immortal have won the 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
Elizabeth Blackburn of UC San Francisco, Carol W. Greider of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Jack W. Szostak of Harvard Medical School will share the $1.4-million award for their discovery of telomeres, small sections of DNA that protect the integrity of cellular DNA as animals and most other organisms age. They also discovered telomerase, the enzyme that manufactures telomeres and gives cancer cells their eternal life.
Ten women have won the Nobel in medicine in the past, but Monday's announcement marked the first time that two have shared the prize in the same year.
L.A. Times: Scientists get closer to making safe patient-specific stem cells
-- Karen Kaplan
Scientists are a big step closer to their long-term of goal of creating patient-specific stem cells that are safe to use and don’t require the destruction of embryos.
Induced pluripotent stem cells – also known as iPS cells – are all the rage in the nascent field of regenerative medicine. Like embryonic stem cells, they have the potential to become any type of cell in the body and could be used to grow replacement parts, such as insulin-producing beta cells for diabetes patients or nerve cells for repairing spinal cord injuries.
Even better, they can be made by reprogramming skin or other cells from the patients who need them. That not only eliminates the need to use embryos, it ensures that the replacement tissues made from iPS cells are genetically matched to patients and won’t be rejected by the body’s immune system.
L.A. Times: Virus discovery called breakthrough in fight against chronic fatigue syndrome
By Thomas H. Maugh II
In what may prove to be the first major breakthrough in the fight against the mysterious and controversial disorder known as chronic fatigue syndrome, researchers reported Thursday that they had found traces of a virus in the vast majority of affected patients.
The same virus has previously been identified in at least a quarter of prostate tumors, particularly those that are very aggressive, and has also been linked to certain types of cancers of the blood.
It remains possible that the virus, known as xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV, is a so-called passenger virus that is simply infecting patients whose immune systems have been suppressed by other causes. But the new findings were sufficiently alarming that the National Cancer Institute called together a group of experts in August to consider its potential effect on public health.
"Murine"? That means it was first identified in mice.
L.A. Times: Warning: DNA test results may not be as reliable as they appear
-- Karen Kaplan
"Understanding of the genetic contribution to human disease is far from complete."
This statement, by DNA decoder J. Craig Venter and three colleagues, is undeniably true. But it probably would come as a surprise to much of the general public.
A host of genetic testing companies have cropped up in recent years that offer to scan your DNA and calculate your risk of developing a host of diseases. It’s no wonder that customers are under the impression that their medical destiny can be read in their genes.
L.A. Times: War injury leads to advances at home
By Melissa Healy
A world away from the roadside bombs and combat injuries of Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are suffering the same type of brain injury seen in troops coming home from those war-torn countries. On American roads, at workplaces and on playing fields, more than 11 million have been hurt since the fighting overseas started.
Almost 1 in 5 of these civilians will struggle with lingering, often subtle symptoms -- headaches, dizziness, concentration difficulties and personality changes -- for a year, and often longer. As their memories falter, their work suffers and their relationships fray, many victims of brain trauma don't realize that their cognitive struggles are related to a blow to the head.
In what has been called a silent epidemic, about 2% of the U.S. population -- 5.3 million people -- cope with long-term disabilities from such accidents.
L.A. Times: Couples prefer preimplantation genetic diagnosis to later testing
-- Shari Roan
People who know they are at high risk for passing on a serious genetic illness to their offspring prefer learning of their risk through preimplantation genetic testing rather than waiting to be tested after a woman becomes pregnant, according to a study published this week in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis is a technique that follows in vitro fertilization in which a single cell is removed from an embryo growing in the lab and is tested for evidence of gene mutations that cause serious illnesses or birth defects. If the test turns up no evidence of a defect, the embryo can be implanted in a woman's uterus with the intention that she will become pregnant.
Climate/Environment
Science Daily: 18th Century Ships' Logs Predict Future Weather Forecast
ScienceDaily (Oct. 6, 2009) — One hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species revolutionised how we view the natural world. Now his voyages on HMS Beagle are influencing modern research on the evolution of our climate.
A ground-breaking partnership between JISC, the University of Sunderland, the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Atmospheric Data Centre sees historical naval logbooks being used for the first time in research into climate change. The logbooks include famous voyages such as the Beagle, Cook’s HMS Discovery and Parry’s polar expedition in HMS Hecla.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
L.A. Times: U.S. companies may look abroad to fight global warming
By Margot Roosevelt
U.S. companies could save tens of billions of dollars by investing in efforts to combat deforestation in developing nations instead of cleaning up their own domestic carbon dioxide emissions, according to a report released Wednesday.
The report, compiled by a high-powered bipartisan group, backs the use of "forest offsets" in the global effort to curb pollution that is heating up the atmosphere. It was released in advance of the upcoming Senate debate on climate legislation and an international meeting on the issue set for December in Copenhagen.
The burning of tropical forests and their conversion to cattle farms and soybean fields is responsible for about 17% of the emissions that are causing global warming -- more than all the world's cars, trucks, trains and planes combined -- scientists say.
L.A. Times: September ties a heat record
By Ann M. Simmons
California this year experienced its warmest temperatures for the month of September in 25 years, as above-average temperatures were registered in the West and across the entire nation for the month, federal weather officials said Friday.
The average California temperature for September was 73.3 degrees, matching the level of warmth experienced in September 1984, said officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The 73.3 reading is the highest average temperature for the month of September in the 115 years that the National Climatic Data Center has been keeping records, officials said.
L.A. Times: Pacific Ocean 'dead zone' in Northwest may be irreversible
By Kim Murphy
Reporting from Corvallis, Ore. - An oxygen-depleted "dead zone" the size of New Jersey is starving sea life off the coast of Oregon and Washington and will probably appear there each summer as a result of climate change, an Oregon State University researcher said Thursday.
The huge area is one of 400 dead zones around the world, most of them caused by fertilizer and sewage dumped into the oceans in river runoff.
But the dead zone off the Northwest is one of the few in the world -- and possibly the only one in North America -- that could be impossible to reverse. That is because evolving wind conditions likely brought on by a changing climate, rather than pollution, are responsible, said Jack Barth, professor of physical oceanography at OSU.
L.A. Times: Oregon dam's demise lets the Rogue River run
By Kim Murphy
Reporting from Grants Pass, Ore. - For years, the water stored by the Savage Rapids Dam has nurtured the green bean fields and grazing pastures of southern Oregon, turning them into a lush region of bounty.
But there has been a price: the death of thousands of fish, which slammed themselves into the concrete wall of the dam in a futile effort to head upstream.
Those scenes from years past now resemble a faded sepia-tone photograph. Many of the big farms have turned into 10-acre hobby ranches; the salmon are in danger of disappearing; and even the federal Bureau of Reclamation, the agency that harnessed rivers and irrigated the West, began saying a few years ago that it would be better to just tear down the dam once and for all.
So they did.
Geology
Discovery Networks: When Quakes Swarm: Are Quakes Contagious?
Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News
Oct. 9, 2009 -- Something seismically remarkable has happened in the South Pacific: In one 24-hour period this week no less than seven major earthquakes have rocked a small area near Vanuatu and the Santa Cruz Islands.
The unusual swarm of four magnitude 6-plus and three magnitude 7-plus events, and many smaller aftershocks, has a lot of people wondering what it means and whether the quakes have any connection to the very recent large quake in Samoa or even the 9.2 Sumatra-Andaman monster earthquake of five years ago.
...
"It's not unprecedented, but getting three events above 7 is unusual," said seismic researcher Susan Hough of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Discovery Networks: Volcanoes Defrosted Ice Age
Michael Reilly, Discovery News
Oct. 6, 2009 -- A little melting ice can touch off a firestorm.
As ice sheets thawed toward the end of the last ice age, Earth responded with a fit of volcanic eruptions that spewed CO2 into the air and created the balmy climate we know today, according to a new study.
No one knows for sure what causes ice ages -- or kicks Earth climate out of them -- but scientists suspect wobbles in planet's orbit change the amount of sunlight hitting the surface enough to affect temperatures every 100,000 years or so.
Psychology/Behavior
L.A. Times: Do therapists know what they're doing? Don't bank on it, 3 psychologists say
-- Rosie Mestel
When we're battling psychological problems and go see a therapist for treatment, we tend to trust that it's doing us good. But should we?
Not according to three clinical psychologists who have written a 145-page document for the November issue of the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest. The three authors contend that far too many therapists are poorly trained and using outdated or unproven methods--while neglecting to use ones that actually work.
Timothy Baker, Richard McFall and Varda Shoham say that a lack of science-based training in many programs is the problem. They fault some PsyD programs and for-profit training centers especially. And they're calling for a reform of clinical psychology training programs and an overhauled accreditation system to deal with the issue.
Archeology/Anthropology
Science Daily: Early Hominid First Walked On Two Legs In The Woods
ScienceDaily (Oct. 8, 2009) — Among the many surprises associated with the discovery of the oldest known, nearly complete skeleton of a hominid is the finding that this species took its first steps toward bipedalism not on the open, grassy savanna, as generations of scientists – going back to Charles Darwin – hypothesized, but in a wooded landscape.
"This species was not a savanna species like Darwin proposed," said University of Illinois anthropology professor Stanley Ambrose, a co-author of two of 11 studies published this week in Science on the hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus. This creature, believed to be an early ancestor of the human lineage, lived in Ethiopia some 4.4 million years ago.
Science Daily: 'Blue Stonehenge' Discovered By UK Archaeologists
ScienceDaily (Oct. 9, 2009) — Archaeologists have released an artist’s impression of what a second stone circle found a mile from Stonehenge might have looked like.
The drawing shows the sensational discovery of "Blue Stonehenge" by a team led by archaeologists from Manchester, Sheffield and Bristol Universities on the West bank of the River Avon last month.
Professor Julian Thomas, from The University of Manchester and a co-director of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, said the monument was a circle of bluestones, dragged from the Welsh Preseli mountains, 150 miles away around 5,000 years ago.
Science Daily: Jewish Priesthood Has Multiple Lineages, New Genetic Research Indicates
ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2009) — Recent research on the Cohen Y chromosome indicates the Jewish priesthood, the Cohanim, was established by several unrelated male lines rather than a single male lineage dating to ancient Hebrew times.
The new research builds on a decade-old study of the Jewish priesthood that traced its patrilineal dynasty and seemed to substantiate the biblical story that Aaron, the first high priest (and brother of Moses), was one of a number of common male ancestors in the Cohanim lineage who lived some 3,200 years ago in the Near East.
Agence France-Presse: Egypt breaks ties with France's Louvre Museum
By Christophe de Roquefeuil (AFP) – 1 day ago
CAIRO — Egypt announced on Wednesday that it has cut all cooperation with France's Louvre Museum until it secures the return of "stolen" Pharaonic antiquities in the latest row involving the exhibits of a major European institution.
"We made the decision to end any cooperation with the Louvre until they return" the works, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told AFP.
He charged that the renowned Paris museum had bought the antiquities in 1980 even though its curators knew they were stolen.
"The purchase of stolen steles is a sign that some museums are prepared to encourage the destruction and theft of Egyptian antiquities," he said.
The BBC has an update on this story.
Louvre to return Egyptian frescos
The Louvre museum in Paris will return five ancient fresco fragments to Egypt within weeks, France's government says.
The announcement comes two days after the head of antiquities in Cairo said he would cease all co-operation with the museum until they were sent back.
Science Daily: Buried Coins May Hold Key To Solving Mystery Of Ancient Roman Population
ScienceDaily (Oct. 6, 2009) — Using a mathematical model to predict population trends based on ancient coin hoards, a UConn biologist and a Stanford University historian have concluded that the population of ancient Rome was smaller than sometimes suggested.
Although the first century BC in Italy has been extensively studied, and much is known about the great figures of the era, including Cicero, Caesar, Virgil, and Horace, some basic facts – such as the approximate population size of the late Roman Republic – remain the subject of intense debate.
The Telegraph (UK): Mystery head could be rare statue of Emperor Nero
By Andy Bloxham
Published: 8:00AM BST 03 Oct 2009
The chunk of stone, which is the right side of a boy's head and his lower face, is to be scanned using sophisticated technology and the remainder generated by computer to suggest what he may have looked like.
Archaeologists suspect the sculpture, which was found at Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex, is of Nero as a young boy.
The only other known statues of Nero are in the Italian National Museum of Antiquities in Parma and the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Red Orbit: The Fall Of The Maya
For 1200 years, the Maya dominated Central America. At their peak around 900 A.D., Maya cities teemed with more than 2,000 people per square mile -- comparable to modern Los Angeles County. Even in rural areas the Maya numbered 200 to 400 people per square mile. But suddenly, all was quiet. And the profound silence testified to one of the greatest demographic disasters in human prehistory -- the demise of the once vibrant Maya society.
What happened? Some NASA-funded researchers think they have a pretty good idea.
"They did it to themselves," says veteran archeologist Tom Sever.
"The Maya are often depicted as people who lived in complete harmony with their environment,' says PhD student Robert Griffin. "But like many other cultures before and after them, they ended up deforesting and destroying their landscape in efforts to eke out a living in hard times."
Reuters via Yahoo! News: Italian scientist reproduces Shroud of Turin
By Philip Pullella Philip Pullella – Mon Oct 5, 11:30 am ET
ROME (Reuters) – An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake.
The shroud, measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches bears the image, eerily reversed like a photographic negative, of a crucified man some believers say is Christ.
"We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud," Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday.
The Telegraph (UK): Archaeological sites face ruin from treasure-hunting 'nighthawkers'
Published: 4:40PM BST 04 Oct 2009
More so-called 'nighthawkers' are taking to the fields under cover of darkness in the hope of finding buried treasure from the past.
Last month the announcement that the largest ever haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure had been found in a field in Staffordshire, shone a rare light on the hobby of metal detecting.
But while most follow the law – including unemployed Terry Herbert, who unearthed the 'Staffordshire hoard' – a minority search for treasure with scant regard for the rules
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
L.A. Times: 1960s architecture: L.A. and the paradox of preservation
Modernism wiped out many historic buildings. Now the newer landmarks are targeted by wrecking balls. Oddly, the green movement could come to the rescue.
By CHRISTOPHER HAWTHORNE
Architecture Critic
Modern architecture is growing old. The groundbreaking designers at Germany's Bauhaus began building nearly a century ago. Many landmarks of midcentury Modernism, while somewhat younger, are also showing their age, their curtain walls taking on water, their cantilevers askew. And now the most recent examples of the style, late-modern buildings from the 1960s, are nearing the half-century mark.
That advancing age, in the simplest terms, means the most significant modern landmarks increasingly need protection from demolition, and even from benign disregard. But as "The Sixties Turn 50," a new Los Angeles Conservancy campaign meant to bring attention to threatened 1960s architecture, makes clear, the effort to round up support for postwar buildings is often far from straightforward -- and can easily prove a minefield of contradiction and irony.
Physics
L.A. Times: 3 Americans win Nobel in physics
By Thomas H. Maugh II
One scientist set the stage for the globe-girdling fiber-optic networks that transmit the bulk of everyday television, telephone and other communications. Two other scientists developed the electronic eye that makes digital photography possible. On Tuesday, all three -- described as "masters of light" -- were awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Charles K. Kao, a naturalized American who did most of his work in Britain and Hong Kong, will share half the $1.4-million prize for demonstrating that highly purified fibers of glass can carry light waves for long distances. Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, also Americans, will share the other half for developing the charge-coupled device, or CCD, which in less than two decades has filled the world with inexpensive digital cameras and camera-equipped cellphones.
The announcement was greeted with acclaim for the impact the men have had on the lives of average people the world over.
Chemistry
L.A. Times: 2 Americans, Israeli share Nobel Prize in chemistry
By Thomas H. Maugh II
Two Americans and an Israeli who mapped the precise structure of the ribosome -- the cell's critical protein-making factory -- won the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday.
Their independent work, published in 2000, provides fundamental information about the workings of cells at the atomic level and is already being exploited by drug companies working to make more effective antibiotics.
The $1.4-million prize will be shared equally by Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University; Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, an Indian-born U.S. citizen; and Ada E. Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.
Yonath is the only one of this year's nine science winners who is not an American citizen, either native or naturalized. She is the first woman to win the chemistry Nobel since Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin of Britain received the 1964 prize. Yonath is also the first Israeli woman to win a Nobel.
Energy
Discovery Networks: Salt and Paper Make Disposable Batteries
Eric Bland, Discovery News
Oct. 7, 2009 -- A piece of wet, salty paper doesn't look impressive, but cut it up, stack it up, and it can hold an impressive amount of energy.
With this in mind, scientists in Sweden have created a salt and paper battery that can hold up to one volt of electricity.
The scientists hope their battery will one day power remote, biodegradable sensors.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
The Commonwealth Fund: Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance, 2009
Author(s): Douglas McCarthy, M.B.A., Sabrina K. H. How, M.P.A. and Cathy Schoen, M.S., The Commonwealth Fund
Joel C. Cantor, Sc.D., and Dina Belloff, M.A., Rutgers University Center for State Health Policy
On behalf of the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System
Focused on identifying opportunities to improve, The Commonwealth Fund's State Scorecard on Health System Performance assesses states’ performance on health care relative to achievable benchmarks for 38 indicators of access, quality, costs, and health outcomes. The 2009 State Scorecard paints a picture of health care systems under stress, with deteriorating health insurance coverage for adults and rising health care costs. On a positive note, there were gains in children's coverage as a result of national reforms, and improvement in some measures of hospital and nursing home care following federal efforts to publicly report quality data. The scorecard highlights persistent wide variation in performance across states and continued evidence of poor care coordination. Increasing cost pressures and deterioration in access across the U.S., together with geographic disparities in performance, underscore the urgent need for comprehensive national reforms to ensure access, change the trajectory of costs, and enhance value.
...
Overall, the 2009 State Scorecard paints a picture of health care systems under stress. Still, improvements made in certain indicators and in certain areas of the U.S. indicate that individual states have the capacity to do much better, especially when their efforts are supported by strong federal policy and national initiatives. In 2009, Vermont, Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Maine, and New Hampshire lead the nation as the top-ranked states (Hawaii and Iowa tied for second place; Maine and New Hampshire tied for fifth). Their performance ranks in the top quartile of states on a majority of scorecard indicators. In particular, the reforms passed by Vermont in 2006 to cover focused on preventing and controlling chronic disease are providing a new model for other states.
Thirteen states—Vermont, Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Nebraska—again rise to the top quartile of the overall performance rankings, outperforming their peers on multiple indicators (Exhibit 1). Conversely, states in the lowest quartile often lag the leaders in multiple areas. The persistent wide geographic variation points to the need for national reforms to ensure high performance across the country.
Note: Eleven of the thirteen are blue states.
L.A. Times: Few Bush-era energy leases are valid, report finds
By Nicholas Riccardi
Reporting from Denver - Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday that only 17 of 77 oil and gas leases on Utah public lands that the Bush administration auctioned off in December were valid and that his agency would prevent development on the remaining parcels, at least in the near future.
Salazar spoke at a Washington news conference to announce the findings of a report he commissioned this year on the parcels, which became the subject of a fierce controversy during the waning days of George W. Bush's presidency.
Environmentalists contended that the auction of drilling rights on 100,000 acres of federal land in southeastern Utah were a last-minute giveaway to the energy industry. The environmentalists won a restraining order from a federal judge halting the sales.
L.A. Times: Wild horse preserves proposed for Midwest and East
From Times Wire Services
Washington - Thousands of mustangs that roam the West would be moved to preserves in the Midwest and East to protect the wild horses and the rangelands that support them, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday.
The plan would not require killing any wild horses, he said. Interior Department officials had warned in recent months that slaughtering some wild horses and burros might be necessary to combat the rising cost of maintaining them.
"We have a huge problem -- out-of-control populations of wild horses and burros on our public lands," Salazar said in a conference call with reporters. "The problem has been growing and simmering over time, and it's time for us to do something about it that protects the horses, the public lands and the taxpayers."
L.A. Times: Protect the Atlantic bluefin tuna
By Joshua Reichert
The Obama administration has indicated that when it comes to international agreements, it's giving high priority to arms control, human rights, law enforcement, investment and maritime law. With respect to the environment, it has listed climate change, plant genetic resources and persistent organic pollutants, among other issues.
Tuna fish haven't been mentioned.
Unfortunately, that omission reveals a sea of trouble, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a rare chance to correct if it acts quickly, and if NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco follows her best scientific instincts.
L.A. Times: U.S. Chamber of Commerce shrugs off defections
By Jim Tankersley
Reporting from Washington - The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday brushed off decisions by a string of high-profile companies to break with the nation's leading business organization over what they considered its backward-looking position on global warming.
The companies, which included Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and computer giant Apple Inc., announced they were leaving the chamber after one of its officials said it planned to stage the environmental equivalent of the "Scopes monkey trial" -- a reference to an early 20th century court case in which prosecutors attacked the scientific foundations of the theory of evolution.
Chamber President Tom Donohue said he was "not particularly worried" about the companies' departure, blaming their actions on an "orchestrated pressure campaign" by environmental groups.
L.A. Times: Vaccinating girls, not boys, against HPV is best bet
-- Melissa Healy
Harvard University researchers have found that public health authorities would do better to extend the vaccination of adolescent girls against human papillomavirus (HPV) than to launch a campaign to get boys and young men vaccinated as well. The study, published in the British Medical Journal, comes as the Food and Drug Administration considers a proposal from Merck, the makers of the HPV vaccine Gardasil, to approve the vaccine for boys between the ages of nine and 15.
Two professors of health decision science considered the cost of two public health campaigns and compared their effectiveness in reducing HPV-related diseases: one would focus on extending HPV vaccination in girls and women nine to 26 years old to three-quarters of the U.S. population; the other would focus on girls and boys nine to 26. In driving down HPV-related cancers and a disease called recurrent respiratory papillomatosis, focusing on girls only won the contest handily, providing far more bang for the buck than routinely giving boys the shot as well.
The latest study comes as the FDA considers approval of a new "indication" for Gardasil -- to protect boys and men ages nine to 26.
L.A. Times: A risky-foods list probably isn't meant as a slam against vegetables
-- Tami Dennis
Alas, "good for you" doesn't mean "safe for you." Perhaps there's no way it could, not completely, but that doesn't stop the Center for Science in the Public Interest from trying to make the terms more similar...
Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nutrition and health advocacy organization has released a report on what it calls the riskiest foods regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.
L.A. Times: State leaders fail to reach water accord
By Michael Rothfeld and Bettina Boxall
Reporting from Los Angeles and Sacramento - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislative leaders broke off talks Friday evening without a deal on upgrading California's water supply and with a looming threat by the governor to veto many of the bills sitting on his desk if there is no agreement by Sunday.
Even as the leaders debated asking voters to approve billions of dollars in new debt to strengthen the state's water resources, a top finance official warned that government revenue is already $1 billion short of the amount needed to balance the budget that was passed in the face of a significant deficit less than three months ago.
Those complications arose as the governor maintained a threat to veto 700 bills that lawmakers approved near the end of the legislative session last month. Schwarzenegger and his aides made the threat in an attempt to use bills as leverage in the water talks.
L.A. Times: Reform of California nursing board's discipline system shows early progress
By Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber
After moving swiftly to replace the leadership of the Board of Registered Nursing, California officials are revamping practices that had allowed errant nurses to work for years after complaints were filed against them.
For the first time, the board is prioritizing complaints, moving first to investigate nurses who pose the greatest threat to the public.
In addition, top officials will this month get subpoena power to gather documents about nurses accused of wrongdoing. Before, some cases sat for months until outside investigators issued such orders.
L.A. Times: L.A.'s NFL stadium bargain
By Tim Rutten
Sometime in the next week or so, the California Senate will decide whether to grant a one-time exemption from provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act to billionaire developer Ed Roski Jr. so that he can proceed with plans to build a new professional football stadium in the City of Industry. Although such a grant would be unprecedented -- and not entirely without risk -- it's something the Senate needs to do.
Industry, which has slightly more than 80 voters, was incorporated years ago out of what was then farmland as a place where manufacturing and other bothersome commercial activities could proceed around the clock without the regulations or business taxes most cities impose. Located in the southeast San Gabriel Valley near the intersection of the 60 and 57 freeways, it would seem to be an ideal site for a stadium and the adjoining 2.6 million feet of office, medical and other commercial space Roski proposes to build. The developer, who put up Staples Center and L.A. Live south of downtown along with Denver-based billionaire Phil Anschutz, has long maintained the headquarters of his Majestic Realty Co. in Industry, which is one of the reasons he obtained rights to the 600-acre site.
It's a project whose environmental implications already have been thoroughly studied. Industry required Majestic to do a full environmental report and then a supplemental study to make sure the project complies with the Environmental Quality Act. However, the adjoining city of Walnut and homeowners groups there demanded an additional environmental review and, when Majestic resisted going through the exercise yet again, sued.
Science Writing and Reporting
L.A. Times: Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments
By Susan Salter Reynolds
Richard Dawkins, best known as the author of "The Selfish Gene" (1976) and "The God Delusion" (2006), is at the Atheist Alliance International Convention in Burbank to discuss his new book, "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution" (Free Press: 470 pp., $30), but he can't get from one banquet hall to the next without someone asking to take a picture with him.
Modest and professorial, Dawkins is mobbed, celebrity-style, no matter which audience he tells there is no God. As for Mother Nature, he adds, she doesn't care either -- natural selection is not a good-natured process, but one that favors mutant efforts to get ahead. The evidence for evolution, he concludes, is irrefutable; all living things evolved from a common ancestor, so grow up and stop whining. There is no master plan. We (our genes, that is) are on our own.
No wonder the creationists want to kill the messenger. Dawkins has been accused of aggression, militancy, arch-adaptationism and even -- don't say it -- reductionism. His critics hurl themselves against him in article after debate after full-length book, peppering him with questions: What about the gaps in the fossil record? How about the possibility of an intelligent designer? Would you believe the Earth is only 10,000 years old?
Science is Cool
Check out the Discovery video about Zombieland in Slideshows and Videos.