Newmark's Door

Two on physics

There's been a lot of excitement on the Net about the purported first applied use of string theory.

And quantum mechanics and relativity might finally be united if  "a long-cherished tenet of physics" is sacrificed.

Betelgeuse may be getting ready to explode

It's shrunk 15% in the last 15 years. It could be "close" to going supernova.

"Could tremors be building for new California quake?"

A team at Cal-Berkeley says "yes".

"Do Pop Stars Really Die Young?"

Apparently, yes.

Remember those frogs with the missing legs?

They were supposed to be yet one more sign of the environmental apocalypse--either chemical pollution or UV-B radiation was suspected to be the cause.

Not really.

Two on volcanoes

Volcanoes were responsible for the mass extinction 260 million years ago.

Scientists better understand the mechanism for the volcanoes in the "ring of fire".

"You, Decoded"

Stanford Magazine on personal DNA scans.

A link to Lou Gehrig's disease in lake water?

From the Manchester, NH Union Leader (6/7):

The risk of developing a fatal neurodegenerative disease is 25 times higher than the norm for people who live around Mascoma Lake, according to researchers studying the possibility of a link between lake bacteria and neurological illness.

Over a recent six-month period, three people residing on the north shore of Mascoma Lake were diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. So far, nine cases of the disease have been confirmed near the lake.

Doctors and scientists at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon say there is strong evidence that suggests cyanobacteria, single-celled organisms that form on lakes and ponds and release harmful toxins, are an environmental trigger for the development of ALS in people who are genetically predisposed to the illness. 

(Some) asthma sufferers versus environmentalists

Long but balanced and interesting article on the phase-out of CFC inhalers for asthma. Link via MetaFilter, where the extreme envrionmentalists evince their profound empathy and remarkable kindness.

Not.

"Explosions in the Lab"

Article in Slate contends that university science labs have a safety problem. Why? The first rule of economics: people respond to incentives.

Why the difference between industry and academe? For one thing, the occupational safety and health laws that protect workers in hazardous jobs apply only to employees, not to undergraduates, graduate students, or research fellows who receive stipends from outside funders. (As a technician, Sheri Sangji was getting wages and a W-2. If she'd been paying tuition instead, Cal/OSHA could not even have investigated her death.) Commercial firms, which have only employees, make workplace safety a top priority. In industry, a major incident can result in significant career damage and sometimes dismissal. The major scientific companies that do research comparable to that in university labs go so far as to make safety a line item on a lab chief's annual performance evaluation, so any significant safety violation becomes a permanent black mark. The safety of labs and their personnel thus becomes the personal responsibility of the lab chiefs and their superiors.

Academe doesn't work that way. The major federal funding agencies, which set the priorities for research on campuses across the country, don't even ask about a scientist's safety record before awarding funds, and neither do tenure and promotion committees. At most colleges and universities, the responsibility for lab safety falls to an office of health and safety that has little power over professors who are bringing in millions of dollars in grants. Even serious mishaps rarely damage lab chiefs' careers.