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 Discovery News.
Flashback: Images From the Week's News
From the relics of Joan of Arc to an asteroid collision in outer space, Discovery News looks at the top stories of the past week.
More on these and other science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
blue jersey mom: Archaeology in Egypt: the Night Bus to Dakhleh (photos)
DarkSyde: This Week in Science
don mikulecky: More on Dorion Sagan's book "Sex": The Beautiful, the Dangerous, and the Confused
NellaSelim: NASA is having a garage sale. Anyone want a space shuttle?
wade norris: global warming deniers, you will be denied.
Slideshows/Videos
National Geographic: Photos: Queen's Cat Goddess Temple Found in Egypt
An ancient temple filled with about 600 cat statues was built for the goddess Bastet by Queen Berenike II, say archaeologists who found the ruins under modern-day Alexandria.
National Geographic: New Species Photos: Slug-Sucking Snake, Mini-Gecko, More
A see-through frog and a gecko the size of a pencil eraser are among rare and new species spotted in Ecuador.
National Geographic: Pictures: "Energy Oases" to Green the World's Deserts?
A high-tech energy complex designed for the desert could be a "game changer," one expert says, creating water, food, and jobs while restoring ecosystems lost to climate change and deforestation.
National Geographic: First Detailed Pictures: Antarctica's "Ghost Mountains"
Hidden under miles of ice, a mountain range in the middle of Antarctica is finally coming into view–thanks to radar data revealing a surprisingly spiky underworld.
National Geographic: Space Photos This Week: Cat's Paw, Dwarf Galaxy, More
A nebula creates a paw print in the cosmos, NASA surveys Haiti earthquake damage, a star-making "party" ends, and more in the week's best space pictures.
National Geographic: Pictures: Dinosaur "Death Pits" May Be Fossil Footprints
Following in a giant dinosaur's footsteps could be fatal—but not for the reasons you might suspect. A new study suggests that death traps filled with rare raptor fossils may have been created when a behemoth strolled across ashy mud.
Astronomy/Space
Science News: New-star shine wearing off in nearby galaxy
By Ron Cowen
The star party is almost over in a tiny galaxy 12 million light-years from Earth.
The bluish light emitted by young stars is flickering out in the dwarf galaxy, dubbed NGC 2976. The galaxy’s outer layers have already stopped making new stars, and star birth at the galaxy’s core will come to a halt in the relatively near future when its supply of star-forming gas is completely extinguished.
Orlando Sentinel via the L.A. Times: Cocaine discovery prompts investigation by NASA
By Robert Block
Reporting from Kennedy Space Center, Fla. - The people who work on the space shuttle don't fly on the orbiters they maintain -- but it appears at least one of them may have been getting high.
A shuttle worker employed by United Space Alliance found a plastic bag with a white powder residue -- later confirmed to be cocaine -- in a shuttle processing hangar at Kennedy Space Center last week.
The worker gave it to NASA security, and about 200 workers were given drug tests.
There was no indication that any of the workers were impaired, NASA said.
Evolution/Paleontology
Science News: MRSA bacteria mutates quickly as it spreads
By Tina Hesman Saey
An antibiotic-resistant strain of staph bacteria began its globetrotting adventures in Europe and can mutate quickly as it spreads, a new study suggests. Scientists acting as molecular historians used a new technology to decode the bacteria’s genome and follow its movements, an approach that could one day help health care workers pinpoint the origins of outbreaks and prevent further infections.
The marauding bacterium, known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, changes its genetic makeup faster than previously thought by altering at least one letter in its genetic handbook about every six weeks, a new study in the Jan. 22 Science shows.
More of those mutations fall in genes involved in antibiotic resistance than would be expected if the changes had occurred randomly, "illustrating that there is an immense selective pressure from antibiotic use worldwide," says Simon Harris, a bacterial phylogeneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England. Bacteria that get mutations creating resistance to antibiotics are more likely to survive than are bacteria that remain sensitive to drugs.
National Geographic: Dinosaur "Death Pits" Created by Giant's Footprints?
Brian Handwerk
Following in a giant dinosaur's footsteps could be fatal—but not for the reasons you might suspect.
Mysterious "death pits" holding the fossil skeletons of nearly two dozen small dinosaur species may actually be the 160-million-year-old footprints of an ancient behemoth, a new study suggests.
Biodiversity
L.A. Times: NOAA may prohibit Navy sonar testing at marine mammal 'hot spots'
By Louis Sahagun
Marine mammal "hot spots" in areas including Southern California's coastal waters may become off limits to testing of a type of Navy sonar linked to the deaths of whales under a plan announced this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NOAA also called for development of a system for estimating the "comprehensive sound budget for the oceans," which could help reduce human sources of noise -- vessel traffic, sonar and construction activities -- that degrade the environment in which sound-sensitive species communicate.
The plans were revealed in a letter from NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In the letter, Lubchenco said her goal is to reduce adverse effects on marine mammals resulting from the Navy's training exercises.
L.A. Times: Fish nets snaring false killer whales in Hawaii
-- Kim Murphy
They look like killer whales but are actually dolphins -- 1,500 pounds worth, in the case of adult males. Many of these "false killer whales" have long populated the waters off of Hawaii, some animals for as long as 20 years. But their numbers in the waters off the islands have been dwindling.
Among the culprits are the commercial operations that, while fishing for tuna and swordfish, trail up to 60 miles of fishing line behind their vessels, threaded with as many as 1,000 baited hooks -- some of which inadvertently snare false killer whales in the process.
The National Marine Fisheries Service announced that it is establishing a "take reduction team" that will consider ways to reduce harm to false killer whales, whose numbers around the Hawaiian shores may now number only a little more than 120. About 480 others live in Hawaiian waters farther offshore. (Others can be found elsewhere on both U.S. coasts and in temperate waters around the world.)
L.A. Times: Displaced Santa Ana sucker fish are a problem for wildlife authorities
By Louis Sahagun
Just weeks after the Station fire ravaged Big Tujunga Canyon, state and federal biologists raced to salvage hundreds of rare Santa Ana suckers from the canyon creek before an advancing storm could inundate the small fish's last outpost in Los Angeles County with mud and debris.
On Oct. 15, 290 of the federally threatened suckers were stunned with electric currents, scooped from the water with nets and taken to a temporary holding facility in downtown Riverside. Wildlife authorities planned to return the fish to their old haunts this summer.
But it may not be that easy. The hastily arranged rescue effort has presented wildlife authorities with daunting challenges that could leave the suckers marooned indefinitely in an artificial stream at the holding facility.
Science News: Jiminy Cricket! Pollinator caught in the act
By Rachel Ehrenberg
Birds do it, bees do it, and apparently crickets do it too. Using night-vision cameras, scientists have documented cricket pollination of an orchid on the island of Réunion. The sighting is the first report of flower pollination by an orthopteran insect, a member of the order that includes katydids, grasshoppers and locusts, researchers report online January 11 and in an upcoming issue of the Annals of Botany. And the cricket itself — a species of raspy cricket — is new to science.
"This was very unexpected," says study coauthor Claire Micheneau, a doctoral student at CIRAD–Université de La Réunion who collaborated with researchers from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in England. The find has left the scientists wondering if cricket pollination may be more widespread, yet was unseen because researchers hadn’t been looking for it. "The answer to a question brings us further questions," Micheneau says.
Science News: Snail in shining armor
By Lisa Grossman
A deep-sea snail wears a multi-layered suit of armor, complete with iron, new research shows. Dissecting details of the shell’s structure could inspire tough new materials for use in everything from body armor to scratch-free paint.
"If you look at the individual properties of the bits and pieces that go into making this shell, they’re not very impressive," comments Robert Ritchie of the University of California, Berkeley. "But the overall thing is."
The snail, called the scaly-foot gastropod, was discovered nearly a decade ago living in a hydrothermal vent field in the Indian Ocean. In its daily life, the snail encounters extreme temperatures, high pressures and high acidity levels that threaten to dissolve its protective shell. Worse, it is hunted by crabs that try to crush the mollusk between strong claws.
Science News: Slime mold is master network engineer
By Laura Sanders
Talented and dedicated engineers spent countless hours designing Japan’s rail system to be one of the world’s most efficient. Could have just asked a slime mold.
When presented with oat flakes arranged in the pattern of Japanese cities around Tokyo, brainless, single-celled slime molds construct networks of nutrient-channeling tubes that are strikingly similar to the layout of the Japanese rail system, researchers from Japan and England report January 22 in Science. A new model based on the simple rules of the slime mold’s behavior may lead to the design of more efficient, adaptable networks, the team contends.
Every day, the rail network around Tokyo has to meet the demands of mass transport, ferrying millions of people between distant points quickly and reliably, notes study coauthor Mark Fricker of the University of Oxford. "In contrast, the slime mold has no central brain or indeed any awareness of the overall problem it is trying to solve, but manages to produce a structure with similar properties to the real rail network."
Biotechnology/Health
Science News: Protein may be new target for obesity, diabetes therapies
By Tina Hesman Saey
A little bit of stress might be just what the doctor ordered to combat obesity and diabetes.
A new study in mice finds that a protein that plays a role in responding to certain kinds of stress may help regulate a metabolic pathway important for controlling blood sugar, burning fat and even making tumors grow. The study shows that the protein, known to play a role in aging (SN: 1/31/09, p. 13), is part of a protein family that has its finger on the pulse of both major pathways cells use to make energy, says Leonard Guarente, a molecular biologist at MIT who was not involved in the research.
The study indicates that the protein, known as sirtuin 6, or SIRT6, is what’s known as a master regulator, in this case helping cells switch between oxidative metabolism, the major form of energy production in cells; and anaerobic glycolysis, a less efficient way of making energy and can be tapped when oxygen or nutrients are in short supply. The anaerobic form of glycolysis needs more glucose to generate the same amount of energy as oxidative processes. The study, which appears in the Jan. 22 Cell, could lead the way to new therapies for diabetes and obesity.
L.A. Times: U.S. newborns are weighing less, study finds
By Jeannine Stein
Birth weights in the United States are on the decline, a study has found. The report, released Thursday, found a small but significant decrease in average birth weights from 1990 to 2005, for reasons that scientists say are unclear.
The numbers, published in the February issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, mark a shift from earlier reports that noted a rise in birth weights in the latter part of the 20th century.
They also seem to go against conventional wisdom, experts said. In recent years, women have gotten larger, are smoking less and are older when they have children, all factors that contribute to higher birth weight in offspring.
Science News: Benefits of omega-3 fatty acids tally up
By Nathan Seppa
Promising news about omega-3 fatty acids just keeps rolling in. A new study bolsters previous data suggesting that fish oil supplements high in omega-3s may benefit critically ill people in intensive care units by quelling inflammation. Meanwhile, another study finds that robust omega-3 levels protect the ends of chromosomes from damage, which suggests a benefit against age-related diseases.
Omega-3s are found naturally in fish, walnuts, certain vegetable oils and many other foods.
In a study in Critical Care posted online January 19, a team of British and Portuguese scientists tested the value of fish oil supplements in 23 people admitted to Padre Américo Hospital in Penafiel, Portugal. The patients were critically ill with sepsis, a life-threatening overreaction to a microbial infection spread in the blood. Although doctors use a host of drugs and around-the-clock care to treat sepsis, the death rate is still shockingly high, up to 35 percent.
Science News: Common stain repellent linked to thyroid disease
By Rachel Ehrenberg
Stain-repelling chemicals help keep carpets, upholstery and clothing clean — but the compounds may be messing up the body. Higher blood levels of the synthetic chemical perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, are linked to thyroid diseases, scientists report online in Environmental Health Perspectives. It is the first report of such a connection between the widely used chemical and thyroid diseases in people and should prompt further studies, scientists say.
"We’re looking at a moment in time," says study coauthor Tamara Galloway of the University of Exeter in England. The researchers analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. It provides a snapshot of the health of a representative sample of the U.S. population, but it can’t speak to cause and effect, she cautions. "These studies are very valuable if you are trying to look for subtle interactions," which give clues that may warrant further investigation, says Galloway.
The researchers analyzed data from nearly 4,000 adults taken for NHANES from 1999 to 2006 and looked at blood levels of PFOA. The chemical is both a by-product and a building block of the coatings that make firefighter gear heat-resistant and that keep microwave popcorn bags from seeping grease and carpets from absorbing spills. The team looked for associations between blood levels of PFOA and each of several diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, asthma and liver disease, but only one stood out: thyroid disease. People with the higher PFOA levels were more than twice as likely to have thyroid diseases, which are characterized by an under- or overactive thyroid gland as well as metabolic and immune system problems.
Climate/Environment
Science News: IPCC admits Himalayan glacier error
By Janet Raloff
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledged today that it had erred in projecting the rate and impacts of retreating Himalayan glaciers in a 2007 report. The faulty information appears in one paragraph of a 900-plus page Working Group II report. "In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly," the group explained in a prepared statement.
The paragraph in question had claimed that: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."
In fact, glaciologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University said this afternoon, Himalayan glaciers are thinning and retreating at a rapid pace, but not at a demonstrably faster rate than in many other parts of the world.
Science News: How better weather models can save peanut farmers money
By Sid Perkins
ATLANTA — In the near future, weather models could save North Carolina’s peanut farmers a total of more than $1 million dollars each year by letting them know when spraying fungicide on their crops isn’t necessary.
In 2008, the peanut crop in North Carolina was worth about $90 million. But a fungal disease known as peanut leaf spot can take as much as half of a farmer’s yield, says John McGuire, an environmental meteorologist at the State Climate Office of North Carolina in Raleigh. The risk of that disease developing is high when humidity exceeds 95 percent and the temperature remains between 60° and 90° Fahrenheit for more than 48 hours in any 96-hour period, he notes.
Now, farmers who have signed up with the State Climate Office receive e-mails when data collected at the research weather station nearest their home indicate that the crop is at risk. But sometimes farmers don’t wait for such warnings: During some hot, humid spells, they preemptively spray fungicide on their crops — a treatment for which the chemical alone can cost between $7 and $20 per acre.
L.A. Times: Winds carry Asian smog component to Western U.S., study finds
By Margot Roosevelt
Ozone from Asia is wafting across the Pacific on springtime winds and boosting the amount of the smog-producing gas found in the skies above the Western United States, researchers said in a study released Wednesday.
The study, published in the journal Nature, looks at a phenomenon that has puzzled scientists in the last decade: Ground-level ozone has dropped in cities thanks to tighter pollution controls; but it has risen in rural areas in the Western U.S., where there is little industry or automobile traffic.
The study, led by Owen R. Cooper, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, examined nearly 100,000 observations two to five miles above ground -- in a region known as the free troposphere -- gathered from aircraft, balloons and ground-based lasers.
It found that baseline ozone -- the amount of gas not produced by local vehicles and industries -- has increased in springtime months by 29% since 1984.
L.A. Times: Water conservation? The sky's the limit
By Susan Carpenter
It isn't often that it rains in L.A. for six days running, as it did this week. The inches Mother Nature dumped on us may not have cured the drought, but they did more than just wash our cars for free. They offered proof of what many water sustainability experts believe: that much of the water we need at home already falls from the sky and can reduce our dependence on ever-dwindling and expensive-to-import supplies.
If only we could catch it.
L.A. Times: Colombian blacks' gold-dredging victory comes at a price
By Chris Kraul
Reporting from Paimado, Colombia - When something goes bump in the night, Benedesmo Palacios not only jumps but also reaches for his revolver.
Who could blame him? The Afro-Colombian father of eight led his riverfront community's successful effort to remove a fleet of polluting vessels that dredged for gold, and now he fears he's a marked man.
"My nerves are on edge. I'm afraid of people following me and I trust no one," said Palacios, who is Paimado's community council leader. "I've heard there are two contracts out to kill me. But I've left it in the hands of God."
L.A. Times: Climate change camp experiencing a cooling-off period
By Meghan Daum
Climate change just isn't what it used to be. Case in point: The number of otherwise intelligent people who are saying that all the cold weather (in the East) and rain (here at home) are causing them to lose faith in the gospel of global warming.
To their way of thinking, it's fine and good to be bellyaching about rising sea levels when it's 100 degrees outside. It's easy to remember to carry around your reusable tote bag when drought begets parched hillsides, which beget wildfires, which beget air that smells like rotisserie chicken minus the chicken.
But guess what? It's been pouring all week. In Florida, the oranges are perishing under frost. The temperature bottomed out at minus 52 in North Dakota earlier this month, and Beijing recently had its biggest snowfall since 1951.
L.A. Times: The city's first municipal green roof -- and it's in South L.A.
-- Scott Gold
For months, pedestrians have peered around the construction fence lining an acre-sized lot on South Central Avenue -- curious about the Space Age-looking building rising in the heart of the city's inner core. But the Central Avenue Constituent Services Center is more than a curiosity and more than a mouthful -- it's also got the first green roof on any municipal building in Los Angeles.
The 9,000-square-foot, $14.7-million complex at Central and East 43rd Street, a neighborhood City Hall and a field office for City Councilwoman Jan Perry, will open to the public Jan. 28. The Times got an early peek -- and discovered ice plants, rye grass, aloe and cacti growing on the roof, and a huge metal halo of sorts that will soon be draped with grape vines, forming a natural canopy.
Geology
Science News: Tsunamis could telegraph their imminent arrival
By Lisa Grossman
WARNING STOP. INCOMING TSUNAMI STOP. Giant waves might one day send scientists such an underwater telegram via telecommunication cables on the ocean floor.
Ocean water interacting with Earth’s magnetic field could create strong enough signals in the underwater cables to alert scientists that a tsunami is on the way, a paper in the February Earth, Planets and Space argues.
"This is a very good supplementary, augmentative system to the existing tsunami warning," says Manoj Nair, a geophysicist at NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colo., and a coauthor of the study. "It can be information in places where we don’t have any information."
Psychology/Behavior
University of Illinois: Driven to distraction: New study shows driving hinders talking
Diana Yates, Life Sciences Editor
CHAMPAIGN, lll. — It is well known that having a conversation (for example on a cell phone) impairs one’s driving. A new study indicates the reverse is also true: Driving reduces one’s ability to comprehend and use language.
The findings, from researchers at the University of Illinois, appear in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
This is the first study to find that driving impairs language skills, said Gary Dell, a psycholinguist in the department of psychology at Illinois and corresponding author on the study. Two previous studies had reported that driving did not impair the accuracy and comprehension of speech.
Science News: Children grasp time with distance in mind
By Bruce Bower
Although 4-year-olds’ concept of time often seems to consist solely of what they want right now, the passage of time still moves them. By that age, kids already mark time by referring to physical distances, say psychologist Daniel Casasanto of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and his colleagues.
Abstract concepts such as how time works stem from youngsters’ real-world perceptions and behaviors, not from cultural rules or metaphorical language used in speech, Casasanto’s group proposes in an upcoming Cognitive Science.
"We find that time representations depend on space just as strongly in 4-year-olds as in 10-year-olds, even though 4-year-olds have very little experience using space-time metaphors in language," Casasanto says.
Archeology/Anthropology
National Geographic: Viking Shipwrecks Face Ruin as Odd "Worms" Invade
James Owen
The dreaded wood-eating shipworm is invading northern Europe's Baltic Sea. The animal threatens to munch through thousands of Viking vessels and other historic shipwrecks, scientists warn.
The sea's cool, brackish waters have for centuries protected the wrecks from the wormlike mollusks. But now global warming is making the Baltic Sea (map) more comfortable for the critters, a new study speculates.
Shipworms, which can obliterate a wreck in ten years, have already attacked about a hundred sunken vessels dating back to the 13th century in Baltic waters off Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, reported study co-author Christin Appelqvist.
Physics
Science News: Quantum computer simulates hydrogen molecule just right
By Charles Petit
Almost three decades ago, Richard Feynman — known popularly as much for his bongo drumming and pranks as for his brilliant insights into physics — told an electrified audience at MIT how to build a computer so powerful that its simulations "will do exactly the same as nature."
Not approximately, as digital computers tend to do when facing complex physical problems that must be addressed via mathematical shortcuts — such as forecasting orbits of many moons whose gravities constantly readjust their trajectories. Computer models of climate and other processes come close to nature but hardly imitate it. Feynman meant exactly, as in down to the last jot.
Now, finally, groups at Harvard and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, have designed and built a computer that hews closely to these specs. It is a quantum computer, as Feynman forecast. And it is the first quantum computer to simulate and calculate the behavior of an atomic, quantum system.
Chemistry
Science News: Breakup doesn't keep hydrogel down
By Rachel Ehrenberg
Pulling yourself back together after a breakup can be tough to do. But a new hydrogel has no trouble. Using little more than water, clay and a new, designer compound, scientists have created a moldable gel that is both strong and can heal itself in seconds when split in two. The gel may advance efforts in tissue engineering and environmentally friendly chemistry.
The new hydrogel is more than 50 times stronger than comparable squishy self-healing materials, researchers led by Takuzo Aida of the University of Tokyo report in the Jan. 21 Nature. Such substances are well suited for the body; they are 95 percent water. Hydrogels may one day serve as scaffolding for growing new tissue, as matrices for keeping drugs in their targeted area or as replacements for damaged cartilage. The new gel, unlike similar materials, is quick and relatively simple to make.
The work adds to a "growing field of materials with exceptional properties that really could not be imagined" before, comments chemical engineer J. Zach Hilt of the University of Kentucky in Lexington.
Energy
L.A. Times: Can the eastern U.S. get a fifth of its power from wind by 2024?
-- Tiffany Hsu
Major upgrades to the transmission infrastructure and a sizable chunk of cash from private investors and the government are necessary for the Midwest and East Coast to move to 20% wind power by 2024, according to a new study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
The federal lab, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, released its Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study after more than two years of analyzing the economic, operational and technical implications of different scenarios.The research focused on shifting 20% of the electrical load from the Eastern Interconnection, one of the country’s two major power grids, using land-based wind from the Midwest, offshore wind from the East and a variety of other combinations.
L.A. Times: Air Force goes solar; New Mexico ventures into solar; SolarWorld donates to Haiti
-- Tiffany Hsu
The United States Air Force today announced a partnership with Fotowatio Renewable Ventures of San Francisco to lease part of a base for a potential massive solar array. For an undisclosed sum, the Air Force Real Property Agency agreed to lease 3,288 acres of land at Edwards Air Force Base in the Antelope Valley for Fotowatio to develop an installation producing up to 500 megawatts.
The deal, called an Enhanced Use Lease, gives Fotowatio exclusive access to the site initially to conduct environmental and transmission studies. The company’s worldwide portfolio includes projects producing more than 130 megawatts and more than 1,000 megawatts in development across the U.S. and Europe. Construction will not begin until 2013. More than 30 Enhanced Use Leases are in development around the country.
L.A. Times: Wal-Mart completes a megawatt solar project in Apple Valley
-- Tiffany Hsu
Earlier this month, Wal-Mart completed three other solar projects in Paramount, Baldwin Park and San Bernardino.
This time, the mega-corporation has wrapped up the installation of more than 5,300 solar panels across nearly 7 acres at its Apple Valley distribution center. The setup will generate 1 megawatt of power, the equivalent of the supply needed by 175 homes.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
L.A. Times: Murkowski hopes to block EPA greenhouse gas regulations
-- Kim Murphy
Alaska is on the front line of climate change: Glaciers are melting, shoreline communities such as Shishmaref are eroding away, shrinking Arctic ice floes are driving polar bears toward shoreline communities. It's also home to some of the nation's biggest oil and gas reserves, which may be why U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is leading the charge to keep greenhouse gas emissions from being regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Murkowski's staff says she is poised to act this week on a proposed amendment (download Murkowski's amendment here) to bar the EPA in the coming year from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide. The Alaska senator's staff says she will either introduce the amendment on Wednesday or take a different tack and on Thursday introduce a "disapproval resolution" -- essentially seeking to invoke a congressional veto of the EPA's proposed finding that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere threaten public health.
The so-called endangerment finding, announced last April, is a cornerstone of the Obama administration's attack on climate change.
Science News: Feds propose banning giant snakes
By Janet Raloff
Today, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced plans to ban the importation and interstate transport of nine species of giant snakes. It’s a good idea, but a little like closing the barn door after the horse — or in this case, the pythons and anacondas — got loose.
Over the past 30 years, about a million of these menacing snakes have been imported into the United States. Today, domestic breeders of some of the species currently produce more of the animals than move through the import trade.
Of course, even five-meter-long anacondas wouldn’t be a problem if pet owners kept their serpents caged. But invariably, over the years, some slithered loose — or were released by owners who found their reptile more than they could handle. Today, many thousands nest wild in Florida’s suburban yards, parks and the Everglades.
Science News: BPA is regulated . . . sort of
By Janet Raloff
Food and Drug Administration officials "say they are powerless to regulate BPA" because of a quirk in their rules, according to a story that ran Sunday in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It comes from a reporter who has made an award-winning habit of documenting the politics that have helped make the hormone-mimicking bisphenol-A a chemical of choice for many manufacturers.
Meg Kissinger’s latest followup on BPA politics comes on the heels of a turnabout in FDA policy, last Friday, on the safety of this chemical, which is used widely as the basis of polycarbonate plastics, of food-can liners and of dental sealants. Oh yes, and let’s not forget: Handling cash-register receipts may prove the biggest source of BPA exposure.
Back in 1963, FDA’s regulators classified BPA as an indirect food additive that is GRAS — "generally regarded as safe." Manufacturers get a bye when using a GRAS substance. They don’t even have to report its use in food-contact applications.
L.A. Times: Fisker Automotive raises $115.3 million
By Jerry Hirsch
Fisker Automotive Inc., the Irvine developer of electric cars, said it had raised an additional $115.3 million in private equity funding to develop plug-in hybrid cars.
The money from three firms allows Fisker, founded by Danish design guru Henrik Fisker, to satisfy a U.S. Department of Energy condition to gain access to $528.7 million in federal loans. The agency's money is part of a $25-billion fund approved by Congress in 2007 to spur automakers to build electric and fuel-efficient vehicles.
The funds will help Fisker develop its Karma, the company's first plug-in hybrid.
L.A. Times: California OKs $350 million in rebates for installing solar water heaters
By Tiffany Hsu
Utility regulators have approved $350 million in rebates to encourage Californians to install water-heating systems powered by solar energy.
The state Public Utilities Commission on Thursday established the California Solar Initiative Thermal Program, which will be funded using $250 million to replace natural-gas-powered water heaters, with $25 million set aside for low-income customers. An additional $100.8 million will be used to swap out water heaters powered by electricity.
The rebates could reduce the cost of a solar water heater by 15% to 25%, industry experts said. The federal government also offers a 30% tax credit.
L.A. Times: Sierra Club names new executive director
By Bettina Boxall
The Sierra Club, the nation's largest and oldest environmental advocacy group, has named Michael Brune its next executive director.
A longtime environmental organizer who has headed the Rainforest Action Network for the last seven years, Brune will succeed Carl Pope in March.
Pope, the organization's executive director since 1992, will stay on as executive chairman and devote himself to climate change issues.
Science News: Minor air traffic delays add up to big costs
By Sid Perkins
ATLANTA — Air traffic delays are more than just annoying: On average, they probably cost the U.S. economy more than hurricanes do.
Most media reports focus on extended delays that leave passengers stranded in airports for days or trapped on the tarmac for hours, said Bob Maxson, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Aviation Weather Center in Kansas City, Mo. But the vast majority of delays are relatively minor and stem from localized weather events such as heavy rain, limited visibility or strong crosswinds, he reported January 19 at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society. These small delays nevertheless add up to big costs, he notes.
From January 2004 through December 2008, about 78 percent of all airline flights in the United States were on time, Maxson said. Greg Forbes, a meteorologist at The Weather Channel in Atlanta, reported at the same meeting that more than 5 million flights took to the air in the United States in 2009, but only 0.08 percent of them experienced delays of more than two hours.
Science Education
L.A. Times: Green jobs initiative to help community college students
-- Carla Rivera
California Community Colleges and Southern California Edison have launched a $1-million green jobs initiative to help train financially needy students for jobs that benefit the environment.
The gift from the electric utility will provide $2,000 scholarships to students at 10 colleges offering "green" education and job training in six key areas in which workforce demand is expected to grow. Those sectors include solar panel installation, water and waste water management, transportation and alternative fuels, biofuels production and farming, green building and energy efficiency, and environmental compliance, such as air quality and pollution prevention. It is the first time that Edison has aimed grants specifically at expanding job opportunities in eco-friendly technology, said SCE President John R. Fielder.
Science Writing and Reporting
Science News: Book Review: Communicating Science: Professional, Popular, Literary
By Nicholas Russell
Review by Rachel Zelkowitz
Books about science communication typically start from the premise that communication is important and proceed to tell scientists how to do it better. Russell’s book departs from that tradition to analyze the history of such communication and look at how views of its importance have changed over time. The result is a fascinating exploration of past and current trends, with some insight into what the future may hold.
Science News: Book Review: The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved & Why It Endures
By Nicholas Wade
Review by Bruce Bower
Several recent best sellers in the natural and social sciences have portrayed religious belief as irrational and even downright harmful. In his new book, Wade gives faith a reprieve. He argues that religion served crucial purposes in ancient societies and, via evolution, became ingrained in the human brain.
Wade offers a respectful outlook on humanity’s faith in gods and supernatural powers, while not shying away from the darker side of religious convictions, including wars and inquisitions. But his notion that natural selection equipped human brains with an innate system for learning religion is speculative.
Science is Cool
L.A. Times: The origin of Darwin
By Lori Kozlowski
Randal Keynes, 62, is the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. He is also the author of the book "Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution," inspiration for the new film "Creation," starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly.
The film, which opened Friday and gets a wider release Jan. 29, is a heartbreaking biopic that explores Darwin's life and loves and portrays him as more than a bit tortured by an irony in his family: Darwin (Bettany) was poised to go public on the origins of all life, including that of human beings, and his wife, Emma (Connelly), was a devout Christian who believed the only way to heaven was to trust in God.
Darwin struggled over whether to reveal his theories and how it would affect his family. His oldest daughter, Annie, who died at age 10, becomes his conscience in the film -- an apparition that helps and haunts him.
Keynes talked about the book, the film and his family's stories about Darwin.
L.A. Times: Ed Begley Jr.: Big green man
By Patt Morrison
I once tried to pick up Ed Begley Jr.
Before your mind dives for the gutter, it was 2004, not long after Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor, and I rented a Hummer to write about whether it was all that its most famous fancier believed it to be. I invited Begley, connoisseur of energy consumption, to join me. After all, at 6 feet 4-ish, he's the right size for the Hummer's hugeness. But nyet, nein, no way, he said. Never been in one. Wouldn't ruin his perfect record now.
Short of living in a yurt on the Bolivian Altiplano, Begley is as green as they come, certainly for someone inhabiting one of the biggest cities in the First World. His father was the Oscar-winning actor, and he's found his own way onto the small screen and large: from the complex 1980s hospital drama "St. Elsewhere" to "Six Feet Under," and current guest spots on "The New Adventures of Old Christine"; and film roles in droll mockumentaries like "This is Spinal Tap," the handiwork of Begley's friend, Christopher Guest.