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Science in the News
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 17:08:24 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: inthenews <inthenews () SIGMAXI ORG> Date: September 28, 2005 10:36:33 AM EDT To: SCIENCE-IN-THE-NEWS () LISTSERVER SIGMAXI ORG Subject: Science in the News Reply-To: inthenews () SIGMAXI ORG SCIENCE IN THE NEWS from Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society Today's Headlines - September 28, 2005 TEACHER SAYS BOARD EFFORT ON EVOLUTION WAS RESISTED from The New York Times (Registration Required) HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 27 - Science teachers at the high school in Dover repeatedly resisted the school board's efforts to force them to teachcreationism on equal footing with evolution in biology class, according to a former teacher who is among those challenging the board in a landmark trial.
The conflict in Dover grew so heated that in public meetings board members
called opponents "atheists," threatened to fire the science teachers and invoked Jesus' crucifixion as a reason to change the curriculum, two witnesses testified on Tuesday."We would repeatedly tell them, 'We're not going to balance evolution with
creationism. It's an inappropriate request,' " said Bryan Rehm, who once taught physics in Dover and is one of 11 plaintiffs in the suit. http://tinyurl.com/a4a7f GIANT SQUID PHOTOGRAPHED FOR THE FIRST TIME from Associated Press TOKYO -- The giant squid can be found in books and in myths, but for thefirst time, a team of Japanese scientists has captured on film one of the
most mysterious creatures of the deep sea in its natural habitat.The team led by Tsunemi Kubodera, from the National Science Museum in Tokyo, tracked the 26-foot long Architeuthis as it attacked prey nearly 3,000 feet
deep off the coast of Japan's Bonin islands."We believe this is the first time a grown giant squid has been captured on camera in its natural habitat," said Kyoichi Mori, a marine researcher who
co-authored a piece in Wednesday's issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. http://tinyurl.com/984be MASSIVE DISTANT GALAXY UPSETS THEORIES from Space.com One of the most distant galaxies ever studied is more massive and mature than expected, astronomers announced today. The finding suggests some galaxies grew up much more quickly than conventional wisdom held. The galaxy, named HUDF-JD2, is seen as the universe was only about 800 million years old. The universe today is about 13.6 billion years old. "This galaxy appears to have 'bulked up' amazingly quickly, within a few hundred million years after the Big Bang," said Bahram Mobasher of theEuropean Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute. "It made
about eight times more mass in terms of stars than are found in our ownMilky Way today, and then, just as suddenly, it stopped forming new stars.
It appears to have grown old prematurely." http://tinyurl.com/abjv7 FORECASTERS SAY STRONG HURRICANE LIKELY IN OCTOBER from The Los Angeles Times Meteorologists examining the conditions that spawned hurricanes Rita and Katrina say there is a strong likelihood another intense hurricane will occur in October.And while late-season storms tend to track eastward toward Florida or don't make landfall at all, the experts don't rule out the possibility of another
major storm targeting the battered Gulf region.Researchers also warn that the country should brace for 10 to 40 more years
of powerful storms because of a natural ocean cycle in the midst of the most-active hurricane period on record. http://tinyurl.com/7n2a4 POST-HURRICANE MOLD THREATENS HEALTH from ASsociated PressNEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) - Mold now forms an interior version of kudzu in the soggy South, posing health dangers that will make many homes tear- downs
and will force schools and hospitals to do expensive repairs.It's a problem that any homeowner who has ever had a flooded basement or a leaky roof has faced. But the magnitude of this problem leaves many storm victims prey to unscrupulous or incompetent remediators. Home test kits for
mold, for example, are worthless, experts say. Don't expect help from insurance companies, either. Most policies wererevised in the last decade to exclude mold damage because of "sick building" lawsuits alleging illnesses. Although mold's danger to those with asthma or allergies is real, there's little or no science behind other claims, and a
lot of hype. http://tinyurl.com/78fsk STEPS TO LIMIT GLOBAL-WARMING GAS from The New York Times (Registration Required) Capturing and storing the carbon dioxide generated by power plants andfactories could play an important role in limiting global warming caused by
humans, says an international climate research group associated with the United Nations.In a new report the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
says doing so could cut the cost of stabilizing carbon dioxideconcentrations in the atmosphere as much as 30 percent compared with other
options, like switching to cleaner technologies. Altogether, sequestering carbon dioxide could eventually account for slightly more than half of what is needed to prevent dangerous concentrations in the atmosphere, says the report, which was released on Monday and is online at www.ipcc.ch. http://tinyurl.com/88a3h TABLETS MAY SOLVE MAYA MYSTERY from The Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)The discovery of pristine stone tablets bearing 140 hieroglyphs that record
30 years of Maya history may have solved a mystery that has puzzledarcheologists for nearly half a century — the location of an elusive city
long known only as Site Q. Looted artifacts from Site Q — an abbreviation of the Spanish "¿que?" or"which?" — are in museum and private collections around the world, but their
source has long been a topic of debate.The two new tablets, discovered by archeologist Marcello A. Canuto of Yale University, may finally lay the debate to rest, proving that Site Q is an
ancient royal village called La Corona in the northwest Peten region of Guatemala. http://tinyurl.com/cxabd ******************************************************************** For accurate instructions on how to subscribe or unsubscribe to the listserv, follow this link: <http://www.mediaresource.org/instruct.htm>If you experience any problems with the URLs (page not found, page expired,
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- Science in the News David Farber (Sep 28)