Prepare for Impact...throw an asteroid on the barbie!

     Next summer an asteroid will come rocketing through the atmosphere heading straight for Australia! Ok not exactly, actually, it will be samples of an asteroid know as Itokawa inside a capsule that will be released from Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa, as it burns up in the atmosphere.
    Hi, I’m Ashleigh, one of the research interns here at NOVA and I’ve been working on researching this story. Sadly, we can’t make the trip to Australia next June, but here are some of the details:
     In the summer of 2003 JAXA (the Japanese space program) sent Hayabusa to the asteroid to sample it, the first mission of its kind. Next June, Hayabusa (which means falcon in Japanese) will return to earth, falling, just like an asteroid. NASA and JAXA will be tracking the spacecraft using asteroid tracking software, though they anticipate that it will land in Australia.
     Once the capsule containing (hopefully) the asteroid samples has been collected, the samples will be analyzed in a lab in japan. The teams involved are the Hayabusa mission team from Japan, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA. The story of the returning spacecraft was first reported by National Geographic Daily News.

Buzz Aldrin's Rocket Experience

Why do we love physics raps? Maybe it's the same sweet cringe that makes us devour sour lime popsicles and 8 am reruns of Saved By The Bell. Who knows?

In any case, Buzz Aldrin (yes, the astronaut), Snoop Dogg, Talib Kweli, and friends have teamed up to create the king of all physics raps. It's called Rocket Experience, and that's about all I have to say about it, except that you should really check out the "making of" video for some additional surreality.

As Buzz Aldrin says, "I have only two passions: Space exploration, and hip-hop."

'Honor' to have phallus-shaped mushroom named after scientist

Image credit: Brian Perry

Not many people get to have something in nature named after them. And Dr. Robert Drewes, Curator of Herpetology for the California Academy of Sciences recognizes his good fortune. He thinks it's a 'wonderful honor' to lend his name to a new species of stinkhorn mushroom, discovered on the African island of Sao Tome. Perhaps Dr. Drewes has yet to see the new fungus, now dubbed Phallus drewesii, which is two inches long, shaped like a phallus and gives off a foul, rotting meat odor. Or perhaps he is blinded by the celebrity that often comes with having something named after you.

Our president can commiserate - not long ago, he had a new species of lichen named after him - Caloplaca obamae. Once again, he didn't have much choice in the matter since it's the finder's choice in naming the discovery. But like Dr. Drewes, I'm sure the president smiles fondly whenever he comes across his bright orange lichen. In the same way, Dr. Drewes must be so proud to look upon his namesake phallus-shaped 'shroom.

What We're Watching: Chickens, Ferrets and Cane Toads, Oh My!

Filmmaker Mark Lewis knows how to showcase an animal. This is a producer who can bring a chicken to life like you wouldn't believe. His famous documentary 'The Natural History of the Chicken' is a perfect example. In what other nature film could you watch the story of a woman who brings back to life a once frozen solid chicken using 'mouth-to-beak' resuscitation? Or who else could make an ordinary ferret extraordinary through the eyes of eccentric ferret-lover pet owners who write songs about their beloved animals and even dress them up as cowboys, hula dancers and ballerinas?

One of my favorite scenes of a documentary comes from another of Lewis' hilarious film on the Australia animal scourge: 'Cane Toads: An Unnatural History.' The scene starts with a long shot of a truck swerving back and forth along a road. The driver is speaking while he's swerving and he's talking about how he takes aim at and kills as many cane toads on the road that he can - he does it to protect the natural wildlife, which, unlike the artificially introduced toads, he truly does love. As the truck gets closer, you start to hear thumping, which you can only assume are the toads getting run over.

These amazing films are no typical nature shows - Lewis' verite style that lacks narration draws you in to a subject you never thought could interest you and keeps you coming back for more.

Check out the PBS blog Q&A with filmmaker Mark Lewis to learn more.

How many fingers am I holding up?

Concussion science has come a long way since the bad old days when head injuries were diagnosed by finger-counting. But a new study finds that minor league hockey players have trouble identifying basic concussion symptoms and don't know when its safe to get back out on the ice after a knock to the head.

That's a sobering thought to anyone who watched Chicago Blackhawk Martin Havlat lying glassy-eyed on the ice after taking a major thump during one of last week's NHL playoff games. Okay, maybe not so many people watched that (except for Canadians, Chicagoans, and Detroiters like me), but here's the kicker: Two days later, Havlat was back in the game. Not for long, though: After taking a fresh hit, he made his way off the ice and didn't come back.

Concussions aren't harmless, especially they come in pairs. NOVA scienceNOW talked about the long-lasting and frustratingly nebulous symptoms of concussion in a story story that aired last year. Even more disturbing are results from the Boston University School of Medicine, where researchers are studying the brain tissue of deceased NFL players. Many of these players were in their 30s and 40s when they died, but their brains were mottled with the same tangles neuropathologists expect to see in elderly dementia patients.

Before they died, the players had reported crippling depression, memory problems, uncontrollable emotions, and debilitating headaches. Is this what we envision for our sports heroes' golden years?

-KB

The Science of Orgasms

It's not often you find the label 'Viewer discretion advised' accompanying a science talk. But that is what this Ted Talk by author Mary Roach warns. And for good reason. In her talk, Roach, bestselling author of 'Stiff' and 'Bonk,' shows a highly disturbing movie of a pig farmer inseminating and 'manually stimulating' a female pig to improve its litter numbers.

Aside from the cringe-worthy film, the talk is actually quite interesting. But for all the crazy experiments that have been done over the years to examine orgasms, we still have no clue what evolutionary purpose the behavior serves in us. So although I'm still not sure why it's 'good for me,' I do know why it's good for a pig.

Rocking the boat

Like music? Hate invasive species? Bret Shaw has some tunes for you.

Shaw, an environmental communication specialist, teamed up with three singer/songwriters to make rockin' instructional music about preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species. (Invasive species can travel from lake to lake on contaminated boats, bait, and bilge. I don't know what bilge is but it definitely sounds like something that should be properly drained.)

There's The Ballad of Aquatic Invasive Species, the rockabilly-inspired Clean Boats, Clean Waters, and my personal favorite, One Bait, One Lake.

Take a listen...and then take comfort knowing that, when they're not singing about draining bilge tanks and Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia, these guys all have day jobs.

Stephen Cobert immortalized as beetle

If you've been following this blog religiously (as I'm sure you have been), you may have read one of our previous posts about naming a fungus after President Obama, or the one about the attempt to name a piece of the space station after Stephen Colbert.

Well it looks like Colbert will finally get his name claim to fame and - it could be argued - that it's way cooler than a presidential fungus.

Two entomologists took on Colbert's challenge to the science community to "name something cooler than a spider" after him to honor him. So the scientists named a beetle after him. And to let Colbert know about it, they sent him a picture of the bug along with a birthday card asking 'What has six legs and is way cooler than a spider?' The answer, of course is the newly discovered diving beetle from Venezuela, Agaporomorphus colberti.

It's nice to see scientists with a sense of humor similar to Stephen Colbert's.

What We're Reading: Dread

Okay, college students, here's a simple way to freak out all of your classmates:

1. Buy a label-maker
2. Print out a bunch of labels that say "GERMS"
3. Stick them on every door handle on campus

I don't suggest you actually try this (unless, say, you own stock in antibacterial soap), and I can't take credit for the idea, either: I was actually a victim of this stunt back in my Bright College Years. I don't think I've ever washed my hands so many times in a 24-hour period.

Until last week, that is, when swine flu put its germy paws on every newspaper, Twitter feed, and Facebook page in the land. I washed my hands before getting to work and on the way out the door; after touching the elevator buttons and after picking up the telephone. I started wondering, hey, aren't there germs on the water cooler spigots and the mini-fridge door? And what about the communal sponge in the communal sink? And why is everyone around me suddenly coughing and sneezing? Is that a tickle in my throat? Are my eyes looking a little red? How long has it been since I last washed my hands?

Now that H1N2 seems to be milder than we thought, it all seems a little silly, but XXX's note below is a reminder that I wasn't the only one in the throes of swine-flu freak-out. In his new book Dread, Philip Alcabes says this kind of panic is totally normal--and totally irrational. Epidemics (a class now so broadly defined that it includes everything from obesity to "affluenza") resonate with deep human fears about everything from sex to strangers. Fears of death and illness are just convenient covers for our more nebulous nightmares, Alcabes argues, and that fact has been exploited by those who aim to fuel intolerance (of the poor, of immigrants, of Jews, of Muslims) for their own political gain.

Is that reading too much into my fixation with sudsing? Was the label-maker guy making a statement about the political uses of fear? I'll have to think about it. But first, maybe I should go wash up.

Swine Flu on Twitter

I'll admit it, I've been getting a little worked up about this possible Swine Flu pandemic. So it's probably not a good idea for me to keep track of the action using social networking sites, but I just can't resist.

So I started 'following' the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Twitter. And that's how I found out there are now 2 confirmed cases of swine flu in my state (Massachusetts).

I can then go to Facebook and join one of the dozens of 'Swine Flu' members and groups out there (some funny, some serious, some just down right ridiculous).

Luckily I can then go to You Tube and watch a CDC podcast with a calm looking doctor telling me the facts (and in my mind, not to panic).

So maybe there is something to this social networking, after all (at least something more than telling me - or worse showing me - what my cousin had for breakfast this morning).

A Fungus Among Us

A researcher at UC Riverside has named a newly discovered species of lichen after President Obama. Dubbed 'Caloplaca obamae,' the orange-colored lichen is actually a cross between a fungus and an algae. The discoverer, Kerry Knudsen, collected the final samples of the lichen during the last weeks of the Obama campaign and he finished the paper announcing the discovery on Inauguration Day. According to scientific protocol, it's up to the person who discovers a new species to name it. Wonder if he had to get the President's permission. I suppose it could have been worse - he could have found a slime mold, instead.

Batman's secret

Bats have a PR problem, according to Boston University's resident bat expert, Tom Kunz. From Vermont to Virginia, bats are falling victim to a mystery illness, but does the public care? No. According to the Boston Globe,

The researchers say they are learning a harsh truth about the public's desire to save animals: Cuteness rules.

And to that, I say: Guilty as charged. Here at XXXX, our subjects are almost always easy on the eyes (adorable chimps, beautiful butterflies, and those baby seals and sea lions that make me want to get up and hug my TV). If they aren't cute, they're classic creepy-crawlies (ants, more ants, and swarms of rats). Poor bats just can't catch a break.

So biologists think that bats need a publicist, "a kind of public relations batman - to give bats an image makeover and educate people about the night creatures' ecological benefits." But I think one fact could change how people--or, women, at least--feel about bats, and here it is:

Male bats lactate.

Okay, not all or them. Just two species, so far, wild fruit bats in Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, in which Kunz and a colleague discovered "well-developed and lacteriforus ducts and underlying mammary tissue similar to that found in lactating females."

Did the boy bats evolve this ability? Or could some pathology or exposure to female hormones be to blame? The researchers aren't sure yet.

But here's something else I didn't know: Human men can lactate, too, though it's typically brought on my drug- or malnutrition-induced hormonal imbalances. Not exactly nature's way.

What, if anything, does this add anything to the ongoing debate over breast vs. bottle? Could future humans evolve a similar natural ability? Or are we just as likely to start flying and locating our insect-meals via echolocation?

Scorpion venom + nanoparticles = Good for you?

Scorpion venom with nanoparticles slows spread of brain cancer. That's the irresistible headline topping a University of Washington press release out yesterday.

It turns out that researchers have known for a while now that scorpion venom--or, more precisely, a peptide called chlorotoxin which is contained in the venom--could be a cancer-fighter. It's in human trails right now.

But adding nanoparticles to the mix makes the venom peptide twice as potent, cutting the spread of malignant cells by 98%--at least, that's how it worked on lab-grown brain cancer cells. Nanoparticles aren't totally new to the cancer-fighting arsenal (they've also been combined with chemotherapy drugs), but this application is unique because it stops the spread of cancer rather than killing cells directly.

Next, the experimental treatment will be tested out on mice.

What We're Watching: Tweenbots

Are they art? Are they science? Who cares when they're so darn cute!

Tweenbots are smiley little robots that need your help to complete a task. Kacie Kinzer, a grad student at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, sets her Tweenbots loose on the streets of New York to see if regular New Yorkers will help them reach their destination. (The destination is written on a "help me!" flag sprouting out of the Tweenbot. Like I said, adorable.)

In this video, watch New Yorkers come to the aid of a Tweenbot trying to cross Washington Square Park. It's like On The Street meets R2D2.

And if you're wondering how a paper bag on wheels got so cute, it's all explained here.

Creepy or Not Creepy: Arm Implanted with Ear

Photo credit: NYTimes, Nina Sellars

The New York Times reported today on an Australian artist known as Stelarc who has been working on implanting an artificial, Bluetooth-enable ear in his arm. It's all part of his art exhibit that looks at the blurred lines between the living human form and its artificial extensions.

Stelarc has had to undergo a number of surgeries to implant the ear and has had to endure many infections along the way, delaying his 'art.' He plans to have a microphone installed in the ear on his arm, which will post all the sounds it records on the web.

I would say that this whole 'exhibit' is without a doubt 'creepy.'

What We're Watching - The Next Segway

It looks like the folks at Segway haven't just been sitting around waiting for the profits of their original people-moving invention to come in (who wouldn't want to Tour DC, Paris or even Budapest by Segway?)... They've actually been working on the next Segway - Project P.U.M.A (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility).

According to their blog, the vehicle can expand to hold up to two people in a seated position, runs on lithium ion batteries, goes at a speed of up to 35 mph and runs for up to 35 miles per charge.

You can check out their sleek YouTube video here.

What We're Watching - Evolution of Cuteness

A key part of researching a story for television is, well, the visual element. If there's nothing to see, it doesn't belong on TV. So it's probably not surprising that we spend a lot of time watching things on the web.

Take this Popular Science video posting on the evolution of cuteness, for example. It's actually cobbled together from YouTube home videos. Now tell me, who doesn't love to watch cuteness? We're talking instant television success (why do you think AFV is still on the air?)!

Creepy or not creepy: Robot scientist

UK researchers have created a "Robot Scientist" which, they believe, is the first robot to "discover new knowledge" using the scientific method. The robot, named Adam (of course), posed an original hypothesis about a strain of baker's yeast, devised and executed an experiment to test that hypothesis, and interpreted the results.
The work (written up by the human scientists, not the robot one) is published this week in Science.
Creepy or not creepy?

Heirloom Tomatoes - Genetic Freaks

Heirloom tomatoes are the ultimate symbol of the small, local farmer. We think of these many-colored oddly-shaped tomatoes as some of the more flavorful varieties that only come around once a year. You would think with all its many shapes and colors, this type of tomato would have enormous genetic variety. But unfortunately you'd be wrong. Heirlooms are actually a highly inbred species due to many failed breeding experiments throughout the ages.

One problem with all this inbreeding is that it has made heirlooms more susceptible to damage from its environment - the tomatoes crack more easily and tend to have less protection from many pests. So now researchers are selecting for certain genes from the tomato genome and inserting them into the heirlooms to make them more resilient without changing their taste or familiar heirloom shape. Researchers are also looking in to making regular tomatoes tastier by looking at what makes heirlooms so good - again, it's not all in their genes. It's actually more that heirloom plants grow fewer tomatoes on each vine, allowing them to have a more consolidated flavor. Who knew there was so much we could learn from an old frumpy-looking fruit?
-GR

Creepy or not creepy? Kleptomania drug

Sometimes, science fills us with awe and wonder.

Sometimes, it just creeps us out.

Remember when scientists grafted an ear on to a mouse's back? Or when a monkey operated a robot using only its mind?

It's not that these weren't great moments in science. But they carried some heavy heebie-jeebie baggage.

So, with that in mind, we're introducing a new feature called Creepy or not creepy? in which we present research that's walking that delicate line between forward-looking science and mad-scientist freak-out. Which is which? You be the judge.

Today's entry: Suppressing the compulsion to steal.

I think we're all in agreement that, aside from those Jean Valjean-stealing-a-loaf-of-bread-to-feed-his-starving-family-type situations, stealing is probably a bad thing. But it sure seems to make kleptomaniacs happy. Now, researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine have given self-described kleptomaniacs a drug called naltrexone, which kills the "rush" compulsive stealers get from a good pilfer.

So is this the sweet relief kleptomaniacs (and other addicts) have been waiting for, or something more sinister? And who gets to decide which "thrills" are acceptable and which should be medicated away?

The heart of the (anti)matter

One of the pleasures of life as a researcher is that you can spend an afternoon curled up with a good book and call it work. Today's good read: Antimatter by Frank Close. It's a little book packed with big ideas about the nature of the "stuff" (and anti-stuff) that makes up our universe.

Despite his first-class credentials (Professor of Physics at Oxford, former head of Communications and Public Education at CERN), Close isn't above taking on the cultish conspiracy theories buzzing around antimatter, subjects I suspect other writers might deem unworthy their highly-educated attention. Good for him: That's the fun stuff, the stuff that makes readers pick up the book in the first place.

Plus, Close has sympathy for poor antimatter. Hopelessly outnumbered by normal matter, just-born antimatter particles are thrust into existence only to be annihilated split-seconds later when they have the misfortune to run in to ordinary matter.

Now, back to reading. I'll let you know if there's a happy ending.

Crazy Animal Robots

Check out this crazy dog-like robot video made by MA-based Boston Dynamics. The idea is to use the robot in battle situations to transport heavy equipment through rough terrain. Looks like they really tested this guy out, getting someone try to kick it over and making it cross over a particularly icy patch of ground, then replaying both situations in slow-mo (not unlike an action film battle scene).

Now it looks like this 'BigDog' robot now has some competition from another Boston area company called Vecna. They are making a similar robot called BEAR that they promoting as "the robot that can save your skin." Unlike BigDog, BEAR stands on two legs. You can see for yourself on Vecna's website.

-GR

Ground control to Stephen Colbert

It's a crazy, mixed-up world out there, folks.

NASA held a contest to name a new "node" being added to the International Space Station next year. NASA tried to guide voters in the right direction.

The name should reflect the spirit of exploration and cooperation embodied by the space station, and follow in the tradition set by Node 1- Unity- and Node 2- Harmony.

But instead, two hundred thousand of the Colbert Report faithful voted for their own write-in nomination, "Colbert," over NASA's genteel suggestions, Earthrise, Legacy, Serenity and Venture.

Lesson learned: NASA's latest Name The Rover contest, which is running all this week, isn't taking write-ins.

Of course, NASA doesn't actually have to yield to the power of the people. We'll have to wait and see how they wiggle out of this sticky PR situation. And next time, perhaps they'll remember leave the big naming decisions in the capable hands of Siberian orphan children.

One shining moment (for mathematicians)

Basketball is a spectator sport. Mathematics is not.

Or is it? This month, hoops-loving statisticians get to ply their craft on the dunking, dribbling, alley-ooping data set which is the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Yes, mathematicians have the March Madness, too.

Scientific American obliges with a quick rundown of scientists who are getting in on the game, including University of Illinois computer scientist Sheldon Jacobson, who argues that seeding is irrelevant when it comes to picking winners in the Elite Eight and beyond. His study was published in the Journal of Gambling Business and Economics--the very existence of which merits a study of its own.

But if you really want to get your brain in a bunch, try figuring out the probability of picking an exactly correct bracket. The American Institute of Physics puts the odds at one in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. That's one in 2 to the 63rd power. Thanks, combinatorics, for busting my bracket!

But Georgia Tech professor Joel Sokol thinks he has the secret to beating those odds, and it's called a Logistic Regression/Markov Chain. Didn't hear about it on PTI? The system uses scoreboard data from the regular season to pick likely winners on a neutral court, giving less weight to photo-finishes than to routs. Last year, it led him to a perfect Final Four, championship game, and tournament winner pick. Stay tuned to see how he'll fare this year.

You may now return to checking your bracket, which thankfully doesn't use up as many productive hours as you thought it did.

Old School

Is rap the ideal medium for spreading scientific knowledge? You be the judge:

Large Hadron Collider Rap Let the particles fly

Gregor Mendel Rap Rapping monks

Scientific Method Rap It all starts with a question

Chemistry Rap: (Gas) Laws of the Streets PV=nRT!

Respiration Rap Just breathe

Rapping Science

Kudos to John Tierney for finding this awesome rap on Evo Devo (the science of Evolutionary Developmental Biology):
Tierney Lab.

For those who haven't heard of Evo Devo before, this is the science that looks at how we and all the species on earth evolved by looking through the lens of development (i.e. how an animal grows up from an embryo). So by understanding how an embryo grows into its complex adult form, we can find clues in the animal's genes as to how new limbs and body function arise (e.g. by looking at what genes are turned on to make a limb, we get an idea of the pathway that evolved in order to make limbs).

Also note in the rap one of the rappers is wearing an old Toronto Blue Jays hat - my home team! (Though now living in Boston I am of course a Red Sox fan :)

-GR

Under the sea

I was starting to think this whole "spookfish" thing might be a hoax. A deep-sea fish with a see-through head and tubular eyes? These marine biologists think we'll swallow anything!

But now I see that the spookfish--a.k.a. barrelfish--is as real as you and me. How do I know? It's on YouTube!

Prepare for some aquatic weirdness.

-KB

Creativity Google-Style

Google has a lot of things going for it, as we all know. But one thing I think they really got right was that they allow their employees one day a week – that’s 20% of their time – the luxury of working on new, innovative projects for the company. This could be anything their hearts desire, no matter how wacky or overly ambitious. They then have the option to post and test out some those crazy ideas on Google Labs.

And the results are pretty telling. Without this 20% ideas policy we wouldn’t have applications like Google Books, Google Scholar, Google Earth, Gmail… the list goes on.

As a story researcher, I am lucky enough to spend lots of time being creative and coming up with ideas for stories. Of course it would always be great to have more time, but everyday more immediate tasks often keep me too busy – like working on a show that needs to go on the air right away.

But on the rare occasions I have to really think about the embryo of an idea and see what could come of it… I can’t tell you how satisfying that is. These are often pretty hair-brained ideas that may not go anywhere, but just being able to think about such things seems to enhance and foster my creativity.

So wouldn’t it be great if everyone who worked at a company that valued creativity could have some time to just think? Of course it also helps to a have a forum and place to test out these ideas, such as Google Labs. But even if those ideas go no further than the water cooler, think about how great it is to get those creative juices flowing – regardless of where it leads.

-GR

Love – It’s all in your head

So I know I’m a bit late to be talking about love, but I was traveling on Valentine’s day so I missed out on celebrating with my beloved. But I did catch a neat podcast on the American Physiological Society’s site, Life Lines.

Lucy Brown, a neuroscientist at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine scanned the brains of young people newly in love. Making sure they thought only about love (not sex – which has its roots in another part of the brain), Dr. Brown scanned the subjects’ brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they looked at photos of their beloved. She found that their feelings of love could be traced to a part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area – an area that has to do with reflexes and primitive learning (e.g. hunger, thirst) and reward systems. This suggests that romantic love is more of a primal drive to pursue a preferred mate, rather than just an emotion.

Interestingly, both chocolate and cocaine also activate this ventral tegmental area. So maybe the expression ‘love is like a drug’ isn’t too far off the mark!

Another area that was activated by the love-struck subjects was the anterior singular cortex – an area associated with obsession – no wonder there are so many former boyfriends/girlfriends out there stalking each other...

To see if the brain scan results were replicated across different cultures, the researchers did the same study in China and found that again the ventral tegmental area lit up on the fMRI. This strongly suggests that romantic love is a universal part of our evolutionary survival system.

But one big question is can you stay in love? Many report that their initial feelings of romance fades after a few years with a partner. But there are some that say they still feel that romantic ‘in love’ feeling even after ten years together. These people showed similar activity in their brains as in the newly in love subjects. These subjects may not be the norm – though they all report still feeling and acting the same way toward their partners as they did when they first met. Their secret? Keep up the excitement in the relationship by trying lots of new things together.

-GR

Guns and butter

And now, from the strange bedfellows department:

Scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore, California, have their 500 trillion watt laser beam locked and loaded. Once it’s in action this spring, the laser could be a first step toward harnessing fusion energy; a window into the ultra-high pressure environments inside gas planets; and a test lab where astrophysicists can experiment on “artificial stars.” And, oh yeah, it will simulate the conditions inside a nuclear bomb. Its priorities, you may have guessed, are not necessarily in that order.

This isn’t the first time basic science has piggybacked on research of a more weaponly persuasion. Captured V-2 rockets were the workhorses of post-WWII atmospheric science; gamma ray bursts were discovered by Air Force satellites designed to spot covert nuclear blasts.

So how do we talk about science at NIF while being upfront about the machine’s real experimental priorities? You tell us.

-KB

Getting it right

I hate to be wrong. I can still remember the time in fourth grade when we were studying powers of ten, and the teacher asked, “What’s one hundred times one hundred?” and I raised my little hand and said, “One thousand.” Oh no! Wrong! The shame still stings a little.

So maybe it’s a good thing that ours jobs as researchers involve a lot of fact-checking. Typically, our tireless associate producers do their own fact checking (two sources for every fact, plus expert reviews, if you’re wondering). Our job is to check the checking. But sometimes time is tight, or someone forgot to hire an associate producer (oops!), and then your humble researchers jump in to the void.

That’s why this article in the February 9 New Yorker (registration required) made me smile. John McPhee (who, wouldn't you know it, just happens to have a Facebook page) pays tribute to veteran fact-checker Sara Lippincott:

Explaining her work to an audience at a journalism school, Sara once said, "Each word in the piece that has even a shred of fact clinging to it is scrutinized, and, if passed, given the checker's imprimatur, which consists of a tiny pencil tick."

So next time you’re watching XXXX, and that “Voice of God” narrator comes on and intones something like, “Elephants poop 300 pounds a day,” think about the lowly fact-checker, burning the midnight oil in some carpeted cubicle somewhere, reading everything she can get her hands on about elephants' toilet habits--all in the name of getting it right.

-KB

How Do You Put a Price on Science?

The recent economic stimulus package includes financial aid for university science departments. The bill allocates an extra $10 billion for the NIH (National Institutes of Health) and an extra $2 billion for the NSF (National Science Foundation) to stimulate shorter-term grants for science research. The provisions on the money are that it must be used soon and it must stimulate the nation’s economy.

So the question is: How will this money be spent? Most federal science research funding has remained flat for several years, so these additional funds are much needed. And while some of the money is being earmarked for laboratory and building improvements, where will the rest of it go?

Of course there are some concerns with the provisions. For example, will we cut funding in global health research in favor of more domestic benefits? Will stem cell research remain off limits, preventing us from finally catching up with the rest of the world in this fast expanding field? And what about providing jobs for all those graduating PhD scientists? While it’s great to encourage people to go into careers as scientists, it’s not so great when those people find they can’t get hired due to the lack of available positions. The NIH has urged universities to make new hires a priority as they contemplate how they will spend the stimulus funding. Will the institutions listen?

New scientific advances can undoubtedly boost the nation’s economy (particularly in the fields of clean energy and biomedicine), but we have to choose wisely in how we spend additional federal funds to make sure what science is done continues to provide for advances in all fields around the world.

-GR

RIP Newspaper Science Sections

It’s official – the Boston Globe has followed the lead of countless other national newspapers and has decided to deep six its ‘Health and Science’ section. I’m not surprised, really, as the section has been shrinking steadily for years. It first went from a full, robust stand-alone pull-out section to a progressively shorter couple of pages in the end of the front section just before the op-eds. This morning, as I flipped to the start of the section, I noticed a short note on the top left-hand corner of the page:

TO OUR READERS
Starting next Monday, the stories and features that now appear in the Health/Science section will move to other sections of the Globe. Personal health stories, including Health Answers and briefs about medical research, will move to “g”, which will have a personal health focus on Mondays. Science articles, including Ask Dr. Knowledge and The Green Blog, will move to the Business section, which will have a science and innovation focus on Mondays. White Coat Notes will be published online only, at www.boston.com/news/health/blog.

Is this just another sign of the times for the print media or could we look at it in a more positive manner – science is so prevalent that it doesn’t need its own section and there is a place for it in all the sections of the paper? I wish I could argue for the latter, but I fear it’s more likely the reality we are facing is that science print media is a dying breed.

I suppose that’s good for someone like myself who is in science television, but I still feel a sense of loss that yet another consistently measured and reliable form of science journalism is facing such tough times. Besides, didn’t our new president just tell us he wants to help restore science to its rightful place? Doesn’t that mean we should be working harder to cover MORE, not less science in ALL forms of media?

-GR

Just the facts

So, just how glamorous is life here in XXXX's research department? Let me tell you: Today, I researched giant sloth poop. (Clarification: That’s the poop of giant sloths, not oversized excrement.) Because, as fact checkers, sometimes we just need to know what ancient sloth poop is made of. How much carbon? How much nitrogen? How much phosphorous? And could it really be true that researchers found a 5 foot high pile of the stuff in a cave?

This is the kind of research that makes you hope your boss isn’t looking over your shoulder as you peruse, say, smellypoop.com, or as you type “What is poop made of?” into Google.

Why does XXXX care what sloth poop is made of, anyway? The more carbon it contains, the easier it is for scientists to determine its age via radiocarbon dating. And that is important for figuring out exactly when these giant sloths roamed the Earth--and when they disappeared, along with a whole zoo of their supersized "megafauna" friends. So what happened to Earth's Big and Tall department 13,000 or so years ago? Did humans use newfangled spears to kill them all off? Did climate change do them in? Or was the culprit something...cosmic? That's the question in XXXX, which is coming up on March 31.

And, by the way, if you happen to know the composition of sloth poop....Let's talk.

‘Sexy’ Science

I was recently in Chicago for the annual AAAS meeting. The AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) is the largest professional science organization in the world. Some 10,000 people participate in the meeting – so it can be a bit overwhelming, to say the least.

This year, though, I had a mission. I focused in large part on the many sessions dealing with evolution. Evolution was a big part of the conference clearly because of the famous naturalist Charles Darwin’s birthday (he turned 200 on Feb. 12, in case you hadn’t heard).

One of the more entertaining sessions I went to featured Dr. Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College London, author, television personality and New York Times blogger. Her session dealt with the topic of evolution and sexual behavior.

Even Darwin understood that there was such a thing as ‘sexual selection,’ where animals evolve certain features to attract mates (like the peacock’s flashy tail). But according to Dr. Judson, there are some pretty crazy examples of ways animals have evolved to mate. For instance, the male green spoon worm is 200,000 times smaller than the female so that it can live in its mate’s reproductive system and fertilize her eggs directly.

Or take the case of apes. Female gorillas mate with one male at a time. Because there is no competition among the males for that female, the males don’t need to produce as much sperm. So they have smaller testicles. Chimps, on the other hand, aren’t so monogamous – the females will mate with lots of males. That means the more sperm a male produces, the more likely he will fertilize that female’s eggs. Not surprisingly, male chimps have far larger testicles than gorillas. This is all part of the study of ‘sperm competition.’ (Read more on Dr. Judson’s blog at: http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/a-seedy-rivalry/)

Then there is the black-headed duck. The female duck lays her eggs in another bird’s nest so she can abandon them and they then hatch on their own. What this means is that the baby duck needs to have innate knowledge from the minute it is born of how to find its relatives, how to feed and protect itself, etc. So these behaviors have to be genetically encoded.

This is not so clear-cut in humans. We know that human babies raised without any human contact do not develop properly. So unlike in the black-headed duck, human behavior goes beyond genetics and must require some environmental influence. It’s the old ‘nature versus nurture’ question all over again.

The one point that was clear from all of Dr. Judson’s highly entertaining examples of sexual evolution is that the influence of genetics and the environment on behavior is a very exciting field that could help us understand much more about evolution and sex.

-GR