CLIMATE
The Human Toll of Climate Change
Science projects dangers to people and their well-being, including severe natural disasters, the spread of disease, loss of coastal communities, and declining crop and fish yields.
FDA Did Not Finish Its Homework On BPA
Yesterday, the Science Board Subcommittee on Food Contact Applications of BPA released its report on the Food and Drug Adminstration’s draft assessment of bisphenol A, a chemical used to strengthen all manner of plastic containers, the most damaging example being baby bottles. This story has been brewing for months, and the public health bloggers who smelled a regulatory proposal baked with industry-authored research are slamming the FDA.
Digital Freedom of Expression and Human Rights
Rick Weiss wrote Monday about scientific work in genetics, forensics, and satellite imaging that has helped nongovernmental organizations combat genocide and human rights abuses and bring war criminals to justice. This week also brings news from the tech sphere about an initiative to ensure the human rights to freedom of expression and privacy. Read the rest of this post >
SCIENCE, CULTURED
The Science Writer’s Lament
As the media’s interest in covering science declines, the lack of strong advocates for such coverage also comes to light.
GENETICS
Spitomics
The first stop on the road to a healthcare revolution: saliva-collection parties. But as the nascent direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry grows, what can consumers really expect to learn from these services?
WEISS'S NOTEBOOK
Science Secures Human Rights
There are a growing number of cases in which technologies developed for routine scientific and medical uses are finding unexpected application in the shrouded world of genocide, torture, and political oppression.
Traumatic Brain Injury and Helmet Design
According to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, from 10 to 20 percent of Iraq war vets, or between 150,000 and 300,000 soldiers, have suffered a traumatic brain injury. Developing better ways to diagnose and treat TBI is important, but preventing it in the first place would be even better. Recent research from scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory investigates the mechanics of how blasts affect the brain and may provide an answer.
BIOETHICS
Pro-Life, Pro-Cloning?
“Saving” embryos from destruction through the Human Cloning Ban Act, as conservatives suggest, would neither save them or the women carrying them to term.
Gates Foundation Funds Research, Venture Capital Style
There’s no shortage of good researchers with groundbreaking, unfunded ideas. So the Gates Foundation will dole out $100,000 to 104 scientists around the world with the aim of cultivating novel new preventive methods or cures for treating a variety of diseases, including HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
CLIMATE
The Future’s So Bright, You Need a Green Roof
In the general absence of defined heat island policies, more environmental construction enables heat island mitigation, but often as a byproduct. A look at how urban areas bake and how green building technologies can cool them.
SCIENCE, CULTURED
The Science Crunch
How will unprecedented budget deficits affect the funding of American science? The answer: No one is entirely sure, but they can’t be good.
A Brief History of Lead Regulation
In a surprising move last week, the Environmental Protection Agency sided with science, environmentalists, and America’s children. It has been 30 years since the United States saw a reduction in lead emissions standards, but on October 15, EPA reduced the limits from 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter to 0.15. Here’s a timeline of lead regulation in the United States over the past 100 years.
Ask the Expert Video: Rick Weiss on the Downward Slope of Biomed Research Funding
The flat-funding of the NIH since 2004 hasn’t really been flat. In fact, Weiss reminds readers that “the NIH research budget has actually now dipped to an inflation-adjusted level about 13 percent less than it was five years ago,” according to the AAAS. And to top it all off, the extreme difficultly of securing a first-time research grant is sending young scientists packing for jobs in other sectors.
CLIMATE
Ecosystem Overload
Because plants and soils act as major carbon sinks, any reduction in their ability to draw down and store CO2 could have dramatic consequences for the climate. As things stand, ecosystems are already struggling to keep up with the meteoric growth in emissions over the past few decades.
WEISS'S NOTEBOOK
From the Lab to the Home (Without Leaving the Building)
As different as Singapore is from America politically and culturally, the way it is tackling its economic challenges through big investments in science and technology deserves attention from Washington insiders and the American public.
Dinner on Your Desktop
Nutritious Rice for the World runs out of the University of Washington, but pieces of the research work could be unfolding on a desktop near you. That’s because the research is one of five projects currently part of IBM’s World Community Grid. The grid allows volunteer computer users to run a small program that takes advantage of unused processing power to predict the structure of desirable rice proteins.
Sunny and Windy with Increasing Megawatts Around the Nation
The Earth Policy Institute offers a rosy update on the booming wind and solar industries in every corner of the country. To get a real sense of the intense grow in these sectors, words alone don’t really do the job.
Bluegrass Brain Surgery
Deep brain stimulation is an experimental technique in which electrodes are implanted into the thalamus to correct the effects of neurodegenration or brain injury. Scientists have used the process to treat essential tremor since 1997 and Parkinson’s disease since 2002. The Neurophilosophy blog reports that doctors have recently used the technique to monitor brain surgery in real time—and in tempo. Neurosurgeons had their patient, the legendary bluegrass musician Eddie Adcock, play his banjo while he was undergoing deep brain stimulation.
STEM CELLS
State Stem Cell Policies Deserve National Attention
American science succeeds because it rewards achievement, ability, and the promise of good ideas. Merit, not geography, should determine where research dollars go, because families affected by disease don’t care where the cure comes from.
Bacteria Outmaneuvering Proven Vaccine
It’s been about a year since MRSA, or drug-resistant staph, last made major headlines. But the news this October is about a form of Streptococcus pneumoniae, or pneumococcus, that is causing meningitis, pneumonia, and bloodstream infections, according to a report in The New York Times. Rather than resisting antibiotics, the organisms in this case may have outmaneuvered a proven vaccine.
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Science, Innovation, and Competitiveness
Science Progress and American Progress's Doing What Works project teamed up to produce a set of policy proposals that the Obama administration and Congress can adopt to reinvest in the building blocks of American science, innovation, and economic competitiveness. Read the overview of the five reports.
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