After several deaths of people in Cambodia, Vietnam and China recently, the bird flu is making a comeback in public discourse. Concerns are growing about the H5N1 strain of the influenza virus. A few years ago the world-sweeping swine flu stole headlines but the bird flu, which is much more virulent than it’s porcine cousin, has been spreading from poultry to people.

An 18-year-old duck farmer in Vietnam died last week, becoming the first bird flu fatality in that country in two years. The World Health Organization also reports that a two-year-old boy in Cambodia died from bird flu after being exposed to sick poultry in his village. Those deaths follow quickly on the heals of a 39-year-old Chinese bus driver dying on December 31 just outside of Hong Kong. And a 24-year-old man and five-year-old toddler in Indonesia also reportedly died from the bird flu this year.

The WHO says that makes 343 deaths from 582 cases of bird flu since 2003 when the virus first began hopping from birds to people.

But now growing fear over the necessary research to better understand this pathogen, which has a 60 percent mortality rate, is forcing bird flu scientists to take a 60-day break.

Researchers studying a more deadly version of the H5N1 virus that can be spread through the air voluntarily suspended their research for two months after bioethicists raised concerns of the virus being turned into a bioweapon.

Electron Micrograph of the H5N1 Influenza Virus

This deep concern began in late December when a U.S. federal government scientific advisory board asked two peer-review journals not to publish the papers if they explained how they were able to genetically modify the current, naturally-occurring strain of bird flu. The government scientists made the virus even more deadly by making it airborne.

Just days after that announcement and before the papers could be published, government advisers demanded the details be kept secret and not published in scientific journals to keep the information from falling into the wrong hands.

The scientists who created the deadlier H5N1 in the lab say they needed to know if the current strain has the potential to mutate into an airborne one. It does. They just sped up the process. Knowing that key piece of information will allow countries to take more severe measures to eradicate the newly emerging illness.

Now the story about bird flu has mutated as well, raising concerns that the manmade strain of the virus is now a bigger threat than the naturally-occurring one, which seldom hops from poultry to people.

In a letter that appeared in both journalsScience and Nature, several key bird flu researchers explain why they are temporarily halting their research.

The principal investigators at the labs where the bird flu research is being conducted say that perceived fear of the new manmade strain of the flu virus escaping the lab is making them push the pause button for 60 days.

Drs. Ron Fouchier, Adolfo García-Sastre, Yoshihiro Kawaoka and 36 others recognize that they and the rest of the scientific community need to more clearly explain the benefits of bird flu research and reassure the public that the biosafety measures taken minimize its possible risks.

They say, “We have agreed on a voluntary pause of 60 days on any research involving highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 viruses leading to the generation of viruses that are more transmissible in mammals.”

The controversial research that prompted government warnings and the voluntary research suspension centered around ferrets. The researchers proved that viruses possessing a haemagglutinin (HA) protein from highly pathogenic avian H5N1 influenza viruses can become transmissible in ferrets.

Scanning Electron Microscope Image of H5N1 Avian Flu Virus

But now the perceived fear of the ferret-infected virus escaping from the secure labs is creating a fear pandemic instead.

They continue, “We would like to assure the public that these experiments have been conducted with appropriate regulatory oversight in secure containment facilities by highly trained and responsible personnel to minimize any risk of accidental release.”

The scientists agree their research is absolutely necessary to help to public health efforts detect when the H5N1 influenza virus might change in the wild, sparking a human pandemic. But Fouchier of Erasmus Medical College in the Netherlands, Garcia-Sastre of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the lead authors on the letter in Science and Nature nevertheless are voluntarily suspending it so public perception can catch up.

Censorship in Science

When a U.S. government advisory panel told the editors of Science and Nature to censor a submitted bird flu paper, the complex issue also enjoined the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The reason for asking for censorship was noble. Biosecurity experts fear an airborne version of the H5N1 flu virus that becomes transmissible between humans could create a pandemic worse than the 1918-19 outbreak of Spanish flu that killed between 20 million and 40 million people.

The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) made the following recommendations about the publication of two papers submitted on the highly pathogenic avian influenza, H5N1:

1. Neither manuscript should be published with complete data and experimental details.

2. Conclusions of the manuscripts be published but without experimental details and
mutation data that would enable replication of the experiments.

a) Text should be added describing: 1) the goals of the research, 2) the potential
benefits to public health (including informing surveillance efforts, pandemic
preparedness activities, and countermeasure development and stockpiling efforts), 3)
the risk assessments performed prior to research initiation, 4) the ongoing biosafety
oversight, containment, and occupational health measures, 5) biosecurity practices
and adherence to select agent regulation, and 6) that addressing biosafety, biosecurity,
and occupational health is part of the responsible conduct of all life sciences research.

b) The NSABB should develop a statement that explains their review process and
rationale for the recommendations. This statement will be provided to the journals to
consider for publication.

c) The USG should encourage the authors to submit a special
communication/commentary letter to the journals regarding the dual use research
issue.

In other words, don’t publish the whole genome and don’t explain exactly how this mutation occurred.

Both journals responded by agreeing to the recommendations in part.

Science writer Carl Zimmer sums it up best. He describes the journals’ response, “In essence, “We haven’t decided yet. It would be nice if you let us know how responsible scientists could get hold of the data.”

Since science is rooted in reproducibility this type of censorship flies in the face of the method.

But the U.S. government does have a history of censoring sensitive science, including the recipe for nuclear fission and fusion. And now the formula for ferret to ferret transmission of bird flu.

Columbia University virologists Vincent Racaniello tells Zimmer the censorship move doesn’t make any sense. He says, “The point of a science paper is to enable others to duplicate the findings. Are we going to set a new precedent, where security matters override the reason for publication? This is setting a very dangerous precedent for virology and biological sciences in general.”

But in the end, the scientists themselves agreed to grudgingly redact contested parts of the papers.

Albert Osterhaus of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands says this type of activity is unprecedented. He believes that public health is best served by making the information widely available. A spokesman for Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin, Madison also says the lead author will modify the paper and resubmit it.

Meanwhile the editors of Nature and Science are working with government officials to iron out a “written, transparent plan” for relevant scientists to have access to the critical details of this research, which will likely not make the published version of the papers. Science editor-in-chief Bruce Albersis confident that this all can be resolved in a couple of weeks.

Last week, a Minnesota science class got more than they bargained for when a combustible demonstration being done by the physical sciences teacher caught chemicals on a lab table on fire and burned several students, including 15-year-old Dane Neuberger.

The burned student says, “I started screaming and he was on me fast to put the fire out and my shirt and face were on fire.” The 9th Grade teacher, Matt Achor wrapped Neuberger in a fire blanket, smothering the flames as soon as they erupted.

The student was sitting in the front row of his science class with three others when a methanol experiment went terribly awry, putting him in the hospital with second-degree burns covering his hands, face and neck. Luckily the resilient teen is stable and could be released by mid December and doctors say he may not require skin grafts and could have no permanent scarring.

But the Maple Grove Junior High School teacher who conducted the experiment is on paid administrative leave until the school can conduct a full investigation of the accident.

Neuberger’s father wants the school to implement stricter safety policies governing science labs.

A week after Thanksgiving students gathered in Mr. Achor’s class for a final at the end of the term. After the test was over the teacher rewarded the students with a dangerous display, demonstrating how methanol vaporizes into the air and becomes combustible. This demonstration is dangerous and should only be conducted under the proper circumstances. And even then, something can go wrong.

In this case, left over chemicals from another experiment dotted the lab table where the combustion experiment was being done. The flash of methanol flame didn’t stay in the five gallon water jug as planned. It escaped and mixed with the chemical residue on the lab table, burning the students closest to the flash fire.

Neuberger says it caught his shirt and some papers on fire. A fire extinguisher in the room was used to stop the burning papers.

The school district says the school is no longer conducting the lab experiment that led to the students getting burned.

The Internet has about 300 videos of this experiment being done, including one by science educator Steve Spangler. He suggests the demonstration makes a great classroom experiment because it allows a teacher to show students how combustion works. They get to see a flash of fire and an impressive spectacle. But they also learn that the fire which heats the vaporized methanol releases carbon dioxide and leaves water as a byproduct.

John Long is a geologist for Osborn Heirs, an oil and gas exploration and development company in San Antonio, Texas. When the earth started rumbling beneath is office he had a pretty good idea why. The answer he says is hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking.

He says, “Anytime you take fluid or add fluid to the Earth in this particular area it seems like it leads to earthquakes.”

The epicenter of the rare 4.8 quake last week is in the middle of the Fashing, 56 oil field, an area, Long says that workers have been blasting with chemicals and water to break the rock deep below the surface to reach oil and gas deposits more easily. Then then those fracking fluids are reinjected into wells when they can longer be used.

This process has been ongoing in this area for about 50 years and Long believes fracking has caused earthquakes in the past, dating back to the 1970s.

The quake that was felt across San Antonio and its surrounding counties may have started when a sleeping fault was forced awake from hydrofracking along its spine.

Most of the concerns over hydrofracking, which is becoming a widely used technique for extracting natural gas and oil locked in rock formations have centered around water quality and contamination of the environment.

Hydraulic Fracturing Process in Marcellus Shale

But a few geologists are watching the increase in fracking activity to see if it corresponds with an increase in earthquake activity.

Democratic members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee have asked 14 oil and gas companies for details about their fracking techniques. In a recent letter (PDF) Reps. Henry Waxman, Ed Markey and Diana DeGette sent to Lisa Jackson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, they asked the leading gas and oil companies to provide amounts of diesel fuel they used in hydrofracking.

According to the letter, hydrofracking is ongoing in 20 states and between 2005 and 2009 32.7 million gallons of diesel fuel were used as part of the injection process.

But so far no one is asking about drilling-induced earthquakes.

In late May, England stopped operation of its only hydrofracking project after two earthquakes near the site within an eight-week period. Dr. Brian Baptie, the seismology project leader for the British Geological Survey says, “It seems quite likely that they [the hydrofracking project and the earthquake] are related.”

And for the last few years Arkansas has been plagued by earthquake swarms. After two injection wells used to dispose of fracking fluid were shut down the earthquakes subsided.

Even Shane Khoury, the deputy director for the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission says preliminary reports showed evidence potentially linking injection activities with more than 1,000 mostly minor quakes in the region between October 2010 and March 2011.

Both Chesapeake Energy and Clarita Operating, the two companies with the injection wells maintain the earthquakes are from natural causes and not the result of drilling in the area.

The Center for Earthquake Research and Information recorded around 100 earthquakes in the seven days preceding the shutdown in early March, including a magnitude 4.7 quake on Feb. 27, which is the largest quake to hit the state in 35 years. Over a dozen quakes registered more than magnitude 3.0.

The week after the two wells went offline earthquake frequency dropped by half to 50. Once the wells were shut down, only two quakes have been magnitude 3.0 or greater. The majority were between magnitudes 1.2 and 2.8.

Scott Ausbrooks, a geo-hazards supervisor for the Arkansas Geological Survey, said the area’s seismic activity has dramatically declined since the injection well closures.

“We’re still having earthquakes, but that’s not unexpected,” he said. “We’ve definitely seen a marked decrease in the number of earthquakes since the shutdown, especially the larger ones.”

The Geology

Shale is the most abundant sedimentary rock. It is found in sedimentary basins worldwide. Shales that house significant quantities of natural gas are rich in organic material. They are usually found in mature petroleum sources where high heat and pressure have converted oil to natural gas. The rocks are sufficiently brittle and rigid enough to maintain open fractures. But the gas is locked in the rocks, which is why hydraulic fracturing is required to access the energy supply.

For the last ten years, natural gas production in shales has been growing rapidly. The Marcellus Shale is the largest natural formation believed to house up to half of the gas in North America. There are at least 30 major shale formations in the U.S. and many more nearby in Canada and Mexico.

Shale Gas Formations in the U.S., courtesy of Energy Information Administration

The Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas is an organically rich rock formation underlying the region. It also serves a major source of natural gas in Arkansas. Drillers free up the gas by using hydraulic fracturing or fracking, which requires injecting pressurized water to create fractures deep in the ground. The two injection wells at issue dispose of “frack” water when it can no longer be reused by injecting it into the ground.

Anti-hydraulic Fracturing Protest in Philadelphia, PA

Hydrofracking Safety

After the very rare 5.8 magnitude Virginia earthquake that shook the Atlantic coast in late August people began asking if fracking in Virginia was the cause. The short answer is no, because there was no such drilling going on within 100 miles of the Mineral, VA epicenter.

According to its Earthquakes Hazards Program, the U.S. Geological Survey says it is possible for human activity to cause earthquakes. It says, “Earthquakes induced by human activity have been documented in a few locations in the United States, Japan, and Canada. The cause was injection of fluids into deep wells for waste disposal and secondary recovery of oil, and the use of reservoirs for water supplies.”

After a series of similar small quakes near Dallas in 2009, Cliff Frohlich from Southern Methodist University worked as part of team that found a relation between seismic activity and hydraulic fracturing. Nothing conclusive points to the drilling as the cause of the quakes. If anything scientists are focused on the injection of frack water back into the ground as the most likely culprit.

Better understanding how geology of a region reacts to fluids pumped into formations is important especially as scientists figure out how to store carbon dioxide in a process called carbon sequestration.

Frolich says, “It’s important we understand why and under what circumstances fluid injection sometimes causes small, felt earthquakes so that we can minimize their effects.”

Jeffrey Smith has written the book on genetically modified foods (GMOs). Now he’s on a crusade to rid the U.S. of unhealthy food hybrids that not even animals choose to eat.

He tells the story of a farmer who was growing corn for his cows. The farmer grew non-GMO corn next to corn that had been modified by Monsanto, a large agriculture company. First, he grew the corn independently and then when it was ready for the big cow taste test he separated the corn and gave the cows a choice of which feed they wanted.

He says that without fail the cows chose the regular old non-GMO variety, AKA corn. He says the cows would approach the modified corn and sniff it before walking out of their way to reach the non-GMO corn trough.

Smith believes that if only humans had the sense of cows, we wouldn’t have any genetically modified ingredients in the food supply. He says, “It turns out there’s only nine food crops that are genetically engineered but they’re pretty widespread because soy and corn in particular are practically omnipresent in processed foods.”

Other countries have banned GMOs. Zambia, Venezuela India and all of Europe are GMO-free. But in the U.S. up to 70 percent of processed foods contain one or more genetically modified food ingredients.

What is a GMO?

A genetically modified organism is an organism that has been genetically altered using engineering techniques. In foods, the most common technique is called recombinant DNA technology, where molecules from different plant species are combined into a single hybrid with a new set of genes.

Some GMOs are transgenic, meaning that they have intact DNA segments or functional genes from another organism inserted into them.

Food expert Elisa Zied is the author of Nutrition at Your Fingertips. She says, “If a food is genetically modified it means that its genes are altered. DNA from one species is inserted into DNA of another species to create a unique genetic combination that doesn’t occur in nature.”

There are only a handful of crops that have been genetically modified. They include corn, canola, cotton, and soy. However, those are the plants whose derivatives are found in just about all processed foods.

In addition, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is commonly injected or fed to cows which then genetically alters the milk they produce. That hormone is often blamed in part for human obesity. After all, the hormone stimulates milk production in cows. Imagine what it does in people.

Food Fight

The big fight over GMO foods was fueled by a single Supreme Court ruling in 1980, which allowed companies to patent lifeforms for commercialization.

California company Calgene began selling the the first genetically modified food in 1994. It was the flavrSavr tomato, which was more resistant to rotting than its unaltered version. No special labeling was required and the FDA took a wait and see approach to new gene-modified foods.

Then came insect-resistant cotton and soybeans that could tolerate a potent chemical herbicide, both in 1996. Then thousands of patent applications poured forth starting a GMO frenzy.

According to the Grocery Manufacturers of America in the U.S. by 2009, genetically modified varieties dominated 89 percent of the planted area of soybeans, 83 percent of cotton, and 61 percent of corn.

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho is a geneticist and biophysicist who runs the Institute for Science in Society. She says, “Genetic engineering is inherently dangerous, because it greatly expands the scope for horizontal gene transfer and recombination, precisely the processes that create new viruses and bacteria that cause disease epidemics, and trigger cancer in cells.”

But well-meaning scientists invented genetically modified food crops as a means to common crop problems. GMO plants are resistant to disease and they can tolerate herbicides. They can also become more nutritious when vitamins are added.

However, most anti-GMO activists say the danger far outweighs the benefits and that a worldwide ban on GMO foods must be levied before it’s too late.

The U.K. Greenpeace website calls GMOs an utter disaster. It says, “The science of taking genes from one species and inserting them into another was supposed to be a giant leap forward, but instead they pose a serious threat to biodiversity and our own health.”

The debate rages on and for now GMO is making its way into our grocery stores and our stomachs.

Jeffrey Smith, anti-GMO activist and author of Seeds of Deception says, “I would say 70 to 80 percent of the food sold in the supermarket has some derivative of genetically modified food crops. In addition you have alfalfa, which is used as hay for animals, a little bit of zucchini, crooked neck squash and Hawaiian papaya. There’s also a genetically engineered drug for cows that increases milk supply, but also creates a hormone in the milk that many doctors and scientists think is quite unhealthy.”

No Laws Against GMO in the U.S.

Some consumer advocates estimate as many as 30,000 different products on grocery store shelves are contain genetically modified ingredients. That’s largely because many processed foods contain soy. And, half of North America’s soy crop is now genetically engineered.

Now, 93 percent of soy, canola oil and cottonseed, 86 percent of corn and 95 percent of sugar beets are genetically modified and they are base ingredients in most of the foods we eat and find in grocery stores.

Smith says just nine food crops have been approved for genetic modification but many others have been affected in the process.

Honey - Honey can be produced from GM crops. Some Canadian honey comes from bees collecting nectar from GM canola plants. This has shut down exports of Canadian honey to Europe.

Cotton - Resistant to certain pesticides – considered a food because the oil can be consumed. The introduction of genetically engineered cotton plants has had an unexpected effect on Chinese agriculture. The so-called Bt cotton plants that produce a chemical that kills the cotton bollworm have not only reduced the incidence of the pest in cotton fields, but also in neighboring fields of corn, soybeans, and other crops.

Rice - Genetically modified to contain high amounts of Vitamin A. And rice containing human genes is being grown in the U.S. but destined to treat infant diarrhea in the developing world.

Soybean - Genetically modified to be resistant to herbicides – Soy foods including, soy beverages, tofu, soy oil, soy flour, lecithin. Other products may include breads, pastries, snack foods, baked products, fried products, edible oil products and special purpose foods.

Tomatoes - Made for a longer shelf life and to prevent a substance that causes tomatoes to rot and degrade.

Corn - Resistant to certain pesticides – Corn oil, flour, sugar or syrup. May include snack foods, baked goods, fried foods, edible oil products, confectionery, special purpose foods, and soft drinks.

Sweet corn – genetically modified to produce its own insecticide. Officials from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have said that thousands of tonnes of genetically engineered sweetcorn have made their way into the human food supply chain, even though the GMO crop was approved only for use in animal feed. Monsanto says that about half of the U.S. sweetcorn acreage has been planted with genetically modified seeds.

Canola - Canola oil. May include edible oil products, fried foods, and baked products, snack foods.

Potatoes - (Atlantic, Russett Burbank, Russet Norkatah, and Shepody) – May include snack foods, processed potato products and other processed foods containing potatoes.

Flax - More and more food products contain flax oil and seed because of their excellent nutritional properties. No genetically modified flax is currently grown. An herbicide-resistant GM flax was introduced in 2001, but was soon taken off the market because European importers refused to buy it.

Papaya - The first virus resistant papayas were commercially grown in Hawaii in 1999. Transgenic papayas now cover about one thousand hectares, or three quarters of the total Hawaiian papaya crop. Monsanto, donated technology to Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, for developing a papaya resistant to the ringspot virus in India.

Squash - (yellow crookneck) – Some zucchini and yellow crookneck squash are also GM but they are not popular with farmers.

Cotton seed oil – Cottonseed oil and linters. Products may include blended vegetable oils, fried foods, baked foods, snack foods, edible oil products, and smallgoods casings.

Meat - Meat and dairy products usually come from animals that have eaten GM feed.

Sugarbeets - May include any processed foods containing sugar.

Dairy Products – About 22 percent of cows in the U.S. are injected with recombinant (genetically modified) bovine growth hormone (rbGH).

Vitamins - Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is often made from corn, vitamin E is usually made from soy. Vitamins A, B2, B6, and B12 may be derived from GMOs as well as vitamin D and vitamin K may have “carriers” derived from GM corn sources, such as starch, glucose, and maltodextrin.

How can the public make informed decisions about genetically modified (GM) foods when there is so little information about its safety? The short answer is labeling. But efforts thus far to pressure the FDA have fallen short.

According to the FDA and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), there are over 50 new plant varieties that have completed all of the federal requirements for commercialization and are waiting to go into production.

Just Say “No” to GMO Rap, by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

Pee pressure, beer bottle-humping beetles and a wasabi-flavored fire alarm were among the top prizes awarded at Harvard University’s 21st Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, a more laid back version of the Nobel Prize ceremony. Nobel Prize laureates present the Ig Nobels to scientists and philosophers who have made legitimate contributions toward the sillier side of science.

Top honors in literature went to a researcher who 15 years ago wrote a paper about procrastination. Waiting a ridiculous amount of time before honoring the man is indicative of the Ig Nobel prizes. His theory holds that even the best procrastinator can successfully execute a complex task if he believes that he is working on it to avoid an even greater task.

Stanford University philosophy professor John Perry says, “To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.”

A Japanese team decided that during an emergency people would much rather be awoken or alerted using a fire alarm that produces the horseradishy smell of wasabi rather than a blaring sound. They won the Ig Nobel Chemistry prize for determining the correct and patent-pending density for airborne wasabi, a feat fit for a sushi restaurateur.

A group from the beer-swilling nations of Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. stumbled upon a species of beetle that is convinced it can mate with beer bottles. And not just a particular brand either.

Male Jewel Beetle Mates with Stubbies

Another Ig Nobel prize went to an international team from Europe, the U.S. and Australia who tested the idea that people with an overwhelming need to urinate make decisions differently. During their full-blattered research they discovered that those in greatest need to relieve themselves actually exhibited the same level of clarity as a drunk person. One of the papers is titled “Inhibitory Spillover.” (PDF) Just don’t hold it and drive.

Finally, the Math prize went to a group of people predicting the Apocolypse, including Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of KOREA (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of UGANDA (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end again on October 21, 2011). They won the prize “for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.”

The Nobel laureates who physically handed the Ig Nobel Prizes to the new winners:

Dudley Herschbach (chemistry, 1986)
Rich Roberts (physiology or medicine, 1993)
Roy Glauber (physics, 2005)
Eric Maskin (economics, 2007)
Peter Diamond (economics, 2010)
Louis Ignarro, (physiology or medicine, 1998)

Cover Photo: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania and winner of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.

It may be the fastest invasion of a slow-moving creature but people in Miami-Dade County are taking care not to mess with the new snail in town.

The east African land snail is making a home in south Florida and causing all sorts of problems. They reproduce at an exponential rate and grow fast. They slime everything they touch, destroy most plants and even eat the stucco off homes to build up their shells.

But the biggest worry for public officials is the health problems the snails pose. They come fully loaded with worms that can pass to humans by just making skin contact with the slow-moving invaders. The worms can get into the brain and cause a type of meningitis that currently has no cure.

So if you are in the south Florida area, steer clear of giant land snails and if you must touch one, use rubber gloves to protect yourself from a serious illness.

Officials are trying to figure out what will best get rid of the invasive pest.

Richard Gaskalla, director of plant industry at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services says, “It’s us against the snails.”

Here’s what you should know about these snails.

They grow to 10 inches long and four inches wide and are considered one of the most damaging land snails in the world. They eat at least 500 species of plants, lay about 1,200 eggs a year, and can carry a strain of non-fatal meningitis. They are prolific breeders and contain both female and male reproductive organs. And the little house-eating buggers can live as long as nine years.

The outbreak started on September 16, when two sisters waved down a fruit fly inspector conducting a routine check in their neighborhood. They told him that the snails were everywhere. Since local and national agriculture inspectors were alerted ten days ago they have removed over 1,000 snails from a one-square-mile area of Coral Gables.

Some older residents remember the last time there was a giant snail invasion in Miami. It was 1966. After a boy brought three snails back from a trip to Hawaii, his grandmother released them in her garden. It took ten years and $1 million to eradicate the slimy pest and is the only known giant African snail eradication program on record.

Because they are so destructive, the snails are allowed into the U.S. only with special permits and for scientific research.

NASA says there could be a spectacular show on Friday if someone spots the re-entry of an old satellite. But that is a big if. The space agency is down-playing any danger associated with a 20-year-old, school-bus-sized piece of space junk crashing into a populated area.

But there is still a chance that someone will spot one of the 26 pieces NASA estimates will survive atmospheric re-entry and land somewhere between northern Canada and southern South America. The agency puts those odds at one in 3,200. So not great but not impossible either.

The reason for such uncertainty of the return of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite is twofold. Sun and rockets. With the solar cycle heating up things are moving faster in space, including orbiting satellites. Solar activity is making it difficult for NASA to pin point the exact time and location of UARS falling to Earth.

Because the satellite was launched on space shuttle Discovery in 1991 it doesn’t have fuel left to push the thrusters to help NASA guide falling debris like this away from people.

Those two factors are making careful prediction of the de-orbiting satellite more difficult. But NASA is hopeful that the pieces will land in the ocean or in desert areas.

NASA is working closely with the Air Force’s Joint Space Operations Center to pinpoint the re-entry locations. By the time the satellite is getting ready to drop into Earth’s atmosphere scientists should have a better picture what to expect. NASA estimates the debris footprint will be about 500 miles long.

Mark Matney from NASA’s orbital debris program says the motion of the satellite is unpredictable but he believes it will come to Earth sometime on Friday. He says, “It’s coming in a little faster than we anticipated.” And since it is an uncontrolled re-entry there is still a lot of uncertainty.

NASA and the joint space operation center will give public updates daily until Friday when updates will come 12, 6 and 2 hours before impact.

Medium-sized pieces of space debris fall to Earth about once a week, generally landing in the ocean. But some of the pieces of this satellite could weigh up to 300 pounds and pack quite a punch if they hit solid ground.

NASA reminds people who find chunks of the satellite in the next few days or weeks to call local law enforcement to report them. After all the burned up satellite is government property. So don’t try to sell it on eBay.

When Hurricane Irene began tracking toward New York City, officials feared the worst. In a city full of skyscrapers a hurricane can become a bigger instrument of destruction. Flying glass as windows blow out create dangerous projectiles littering the streets. And the space between highrise buildings which turn into wind tunnels on a windy day can spin up debris that does much more damage.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen in New York. This time. But it did happen further north in Montreal, Quebec. By the time Irene crossed the Canadian border she was downgraded to a post-tropical storm. But she still blew into the French-speaking city with powerful winds.

And there, 300 miles north of New York and with much weaker winds, skyscraper windows blew out and fell to the street. In one building windows on the sixth and 19th floors crashed to the ground. Because it was raining so hard and people were warned to stay indoors, no one was injured. But on a regular day, this heavily trafficked street would have been bustling with pedestrians.

When the National Hurricane Center measures wind speeds for a hurricane, they are the speeds at ground level. In a vertical city like New York, those speeds increase rapidly with altitude. For example, wind speed of 60 miles per hour turn into 90 mile per hour winds on the 25th floor and get stronger the higher you go.

Hurricane Irene hit New York City with winds clocked about 60 miles per hour, too slow to even be considered a hurricane. Remember, those are sustained winds. Gusts blew much higher in short bursts.

Tropical Storm Irene didn’t blow windows from skyscrapers in New York because the storm was weaker than predicted when it hit the Big Apple. But meteorologists recognized her damaging potential.

According to CNN meteorologist and severe weather expert Chad Myers Irene’s pressure was still so low when it reached New York that it still had the necessary energy to do some real damage. He says it was just luck that avoided a glass-shattering disaster.

Even though Irene won’t remembered for her winds, tall buildings in hurricane zones generally come built with windows that can withstand pressure and winds associated with a Category 3 hurricane. But a Category 3 on the ground can be a Category 5 a few hundred feet up.

Tropical Storm Irene entered Manhattan with sustained winds of 60 mph. That means those same winds were 110 mph on the 100th floor of a building.

Cover photo of Houston following Hurricane Ike

Over 177 million people in 34 states are talking about the heat dome that is parked over one million square miles of the U.S. and sending temperatures and heat indices into dangerous triple digit territory.

A heat dome is a common summertime occurrence when heating on land occurs faster than over the ocean. This year, drought conditions in Texas and Oklahoma created the perfect conditions for rapid heating and a large dome began forming a few weeks ago. The Jet Stream in the upper atmosphere which usually pushes these high pressure systems across the country within a few days has been stuck up north in Canada, unable to move the growing lid of heat.

Eli Jacks at the National Weather Service tells the Associated Press, “When a high pressure system develops in the upper atmosphere, the air below it sinks and compresses because there’s more weight on top, causing temperatures in the lower atmosphere to heat up.” He adds, “The dome of high pressure also pushes the jet stream and its drier, cooler air, farther north — it’s now well into Canada — while hot, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico circulates clockwise around the dome, traveling farther inland than normal.”

Underneath the lid, people from Kansas to Maine are shriveling as record temperatures fall like dominoes. To add insult to sweaty injury high humidity and almost no wind are making temperatures feel far hotter than they actually are. And on top of all of that misery, there is little relief at night. In fact, since the dome began super-heating the upper mid section of the country, 98 cities set record high nighttime temperatures in the last week while over 1,000 new high temps have been recorded.

Places like Dallas have been trapped under the immobilized high pressure system. There temperatures have been consistently over 100 degrees for 18 days. In Oklahoma City, residents have had only two days this month when temperatures didn’t reach 100. On those days they were 97 and 99.

A few days ago the stagnant mass of hot air began to slowly edge its way east, heating up urban areas in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Washington D.C. where high air-conditioner use could create power problems. Already Detroit has begun implementing rolling brown outs.

Over 20 people have been killed by the excessive heat while hundreds have been hospitalized or treated for heat wave related illnesses.

According to NOAA’s State of the Climate report, before this heat wave the first half of 2011 ranked as the 11th warmest January to June period on record. June was the 7th warmest June on record and the 316th consecutive month above the 20th Century average temperature. The last time the average monthly temperature dipped below the 20th Century average was in February 1985.

Extended forecasts show this heat dome shrinking to its northeastern corner offshore of New England by mid next week but then another high pressure system begins to reform in the west, possibly creating a repeat of this sticky situation.

Gender stereotypes about math and science abound. Boys are known for performing better in math and science while girls tend to excel in history and language arts. Though the U.S. still leads the world in scientific discovery and vision, another stereotype is that the U.S. education system is failing students and allowing other countries to out compete citizens for global jobs.

The results of the six-month long Google Science Fair blew both of those stereotypes right out of the water. Three girls, all from the U.S. won the first annual science competition. They beat out 10,000 other students from 90 countries, demonstrating female and U.S. prominence in science.

But perhaps more notable than breaking stereotypes is the potential real science that these young women are doing. One has discovered a way to make ovarian cancer treatments more effective. Another wants to revise the Clean Air Act using her model, quantifying air pollution among asthmatics. And the third winning project could lead to a barbeque meat marinade that reduces carcinogens.

Shree Bose, Age 17

When not in the cancer lab, Bose enjoys a good cattle drive near her home of Fort Worth, Texas.

For her ground-breaking science project, she won $50,000 from Google as well as a trip to the Galapagos Islands on the National Geographic Discovery research ship. She will also have an opportunity to have a once in a lifetime internship experience at CERN, the nuclear physics lab in Switzerland.

Alice Bell, one of the judges for the Google Science Fair and a writer for the UK paper The Guardian says that the teens she met through the judging process are not the public. She says, “It is perhaps best to think of schoolchildren as holding a liminal position with respect to science and the rest of society. They are not quite inside the scientific community or squarely outside it either. They are both science and ‘the public’, and they are neither of these things, yet. Their lives could go in a range of directions.”

One thing is for sure, after winning this new scientific accolade, none of these girls lives will ever be the same.

Naomi Shaw, Age 16

In her project she quotes a common saying among environmentalists, “The genetic make-up is like loading a gun. The environmental pollutants represent the trigger!”

Shah noticed that doctors are quick to prescribe steroids and other inhalers, instead of addressing the quality of the air asthma sufferers are breathing. She learned that’s because nobody had figured out how much air pollution affects lung function. So she did.

Online environmental magazine Grist calls Shah awesome, not because she is a budding scientist but because she “let’s her green flag fly.” Shah describes herself as an environmentalist as well as an objective scientist in training.

She says, “Air quality doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves, and should be one of the top sustainability goals for the coming future.”

Shah took first place at the Intel Science Fair earlier this year. Since then she has sent President Obama and Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Lisa Jackson a letter asking for her mathematical model to be used to revise the Clean Air Act.

Lauren Hodge, Age 14

She found that lemon juice and brown sugar cut the level of carcinogens sharply, while soy sauce increased them.

Shah and Hodge each received $25000 scholarships and internships at Google and LEGO.

Girl power ruled the day at the first Google Science Fair.

Bose is proud of that fact. She told the New York Times, “Personally I think that’s amazing, because throughout my entire life, I’ve heard science is a field where men go into.” She added, “It just starts to show you that women are stepping up in science, and I’m excited that I was able to represent maybe just a little bit of that.”

Google science fair judge Vint Cerf was secretly pleased by the female sweep in all three age groups. Of the 15 finalists, there were 9 boys and 6 girls.

Though the competition was completely gender neutral, he says, “I was secretly very pleased to see that happen. This is just a reminder that women are fully capable of doing same or better quality work than men can.”

Few people have ever heard of the cookiecutter shark. They are prevalent in the deep, tropical ocean but they are not very large predators. In fact, the fish measures just a couple of feet long. But don’t be fooled by its size. This is a saw-toothed fish that bites dolphins, whales, nuclear submarine seals and now at least one person.

Maui man Mike Spalding becomes the first documented case of a human being bitten by the cookiecutter shark. He was swimming in deep water at night between the big island of Hawaii and Maui when he felt a pin prick in this chest followed by searing pain in his leg.

The tiny shark took a sizable chunk out of his calf muscle and the injury took months to heal. That was in 2009. Now several years later, scientists are taking a closer look at this small, ferocious shark.

The Florida Museum of Natural History houses a cookiecutter shark specimen but few people have ever heard of the species. the museum’s shark attack expert George Burgess says, “They have the biggest teeth of any shark in relation to the size of their jaws.”

As one of the co-authors of the new study that appears in the journal Pacific Science (PDF), Burgess wants people to know that humans entering deep ocean waters away from shore at twilight and nighttime hours should do so knowing that cookiecutter sharks are a potential danger, particularly during periods of strong moonlight, in areas of manmade illumination, or in the presence of bioluminescent organisms such as glowing squid.

Spalding’s attack happened around sunset during a 30-mile long distance swim. He says he began seeing the bright bioluminescence of squid before the shark attacked. These sharks hide among glowing squid because they have glowing spots on their skin. When a larger animal feeds on the squid, the shark goes in for a wounding bite.

Spalding was swimming through a group of cuttlefish when he was probably mistaken for a dolphin or whale.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s curator of field operations John O’Sullivan says, “These animals are very small and very aggressive in behavior. People say, ‘Thank God these things don’t get big.’” He’s been trying capture a live cookiecutter shark for several years because he is fascinated by the small shark’s interesting behavior. But he says it’s “turning out to be more difficult than our white shark program.”

The study was led by Randy Honebrink of the Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources and co-authors include Robert Buch of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service, and physician Peter Galpin of Maui Memorial Hospital.

The record snow pack melt combined with cool, heavy spring rains forced reservoirs in northern states to release extra water into rivers, creating a big flood which is now surging south, from North Dakota to Nebraska where the Missouri River is over its banks and threatening two nuclear power plants.

The Ft. Calhoun plant near Omaha has been offline for maintenance since April, after getting a bad safety report card last year. One of the marks against the plant was lax flood protection, which is now being tested as the Missouri River laps at its front and back doors, leaving part of the facility swamped while the rest stands like a castle surrounded by a moat.

Downriver, the Cooper Nuclear Station has built a ten-foot wall and is still operating normally. That station looks to be adequately protected from the rising flood waters.The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is visiting the power plant personally to inspect the facility, himself.

A no-fly zone was imposed over the Ft. Calhoun plant a few days ago but regulators say that no radioactive material has escaped. It was likely imposed to prevent news helicopters from flying too close to the facility and into power lines as they do flood coverage.

In northern New Mexico, it is fire not flooding that has members of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Radiological Assistance Program heading for Los Alamos National Laboratory. The team will assess whether any danger exists for radioactive material to escape into the atmosphere from the encroaching 93 square mile wildfire.

As power plants face eminent threats from fire and flood, a year-long investigation by the Associated Press has found that the licensing process at the nation’s 104 nuclear power plants is not very strict.

Most of the nuclear power plants were built during the 1960s and early 1970s. At the time it was common knowledge that nuclear reactors were built to run for 40 years and then be replaced. That entire life-span was based on the assumption that major upgrades and improvements would be made along the way.

Now the Associated Press is saying that nuclear regulators and the nuclear power industry are rewriting history. The AP says industry and regulators are telling a different story — that reactor units were built with no expiration date.

This historical about face is making it easier for plant owners to automatically extend the lives of dozens of reactors in a licensing process that amounts to a nuclear rubber stamp.

The AP’s investigation uncovered documents showing that the process lacks independent safety reviews. It relies on paperwork, especially from NRC, which sometimes matches verbatim language used in the plant operator’s application. The AP also discovered the relicensing process required very little on-site verification or inspection.

The AP found that 66 of the 104 U.S. reactors have been granted license renewals — most for an extra 20 years of operation. The NRC has yet to reject a single application.

Regulators say that the 40-year lifespan was chosen for economic reasons and to satisfy antitrust laws not for safety reasons. The AP reports that regulators insist nuclear reactors have no technical limits on their use.

But engineers, including those who designed many of these plants, tell a different story.

In 1982, Clark Gibbs was the chair of an early nuclear industry group’s safety committee. The AP quotes him, saying, “Most nuclear power plants, including those operating, under construction or planned for the future, are designed for a duty cycle which corresponds to a 40-year life.”

International Atomic Energy Agency Deputy Director General for Nuclear Energy Yury Sokolov told a nuclear industry conference in Shanghai in February that plant life management (PLiM) is a an effective tool to safely and cost effectively manage aging effects in systems, structures, and components. He says, “Even though the design life of a nuclear power plant is typically for 30 or 40 years, it is quite feasible that many nuclear power plants will be able to operate in excess of their design lives.”

Last September Germany decided to extend the life of its aging nuclear power plants by as much as 12 years, even though a poll of Germans found that 6 in 10 want the plants phased out by 2020. Chancellor Angela Merkel says that renewable energy sources are not developed enough yet to get rid of nuclear power.

Then in March, everything changed. When Japan faced a significant nuclear crisis in the wake of the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that shook the island nation to its core, other nation’s rattled by what happened in Japan reconsidered their nuclear power position.

Since then, Germany closed seven plants and will phase out all nuclear power plants by 2022 Earthquake-prone Chile is considering doing the same and China put 50 power plant applications on hold. But the U.S. is still gung-ho for nuclear power.

In a report from Scientific American last week science investigative journalist Karl Grossman says President Obama embraced nuclear power — even picking a pro-nuclear Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu — after initially expressing concerns about its safety while he was running for office in 2007.

Two weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant crisis in Japan, President Obama pledged that nuclear power should be revived in the U.S., as it provides “electricity without adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.”

Congressman Edward Markey has asked for a moratorium on nuclear licenses until new safety standards can be put in place, incorporating the lessons learned in Japan.

Now floods from the north, fires in the southwest and a relaxed relicensing process — in addition to tornadoes, earthquakes and tsunamis — threaten the future of nuclear power in this country and our safety. Nuclear power currently provides about 20% of the nation’s electricity.

For over 30 years the Food and Drug Administration has been wrestling with the rules governing suntan lotion. About five years ago, the federal agency began urging sunscreen companies to give consumers better information about sun protection products.

Now, the FDA is announcing new rules this week that make deciphering sunblock much easier.

Since it began overseeing sunblock makers the FDA only required companies to protect against ultraviolet (UV) B rays. Those rays cause painful sunburns. But the other UVA rays are the bits of solar radiation that cause skin cancer.

Now, the FDA has created the term “broad spectrum” which will begin appearing on sunscreen labels in the next few weeks. Any product that meets the broad spectrum standard is deemed to help block both types of solar rays, UVA and UVB. The FDA is limiting the top Sun Protection Factor (SPF) rating to 50+.

Scientists have not been able to prove that sunblock above SPF 50 protects wearers any better. But the FDA is leaving the door open so if future research finds that SPF 100 is much better at blocking UVA rays than SPF 50 labels may change again.

Most companies knew this change was coming and have begun putting protective information about UVA and UVB rays on packaging for several years. Any sunscreen between SPF 2 and SPF 15 that doesn’t meet the broad spectrum requirement will get a warning label, saying the product has not been shown to prevent skin cancer or early skin aging.

Many dermatologists recommend using sunblock with a minimum of SPF 30 to protect from harmful cancer causing UVA rays and painful UVB ray sunburns. They used to recommend a minimum of SPF 15 for extended sun exposure. Now they are suggesting using sunscreens with a higher SPF and to reapply lotions and sprays often.

It sounds like something from science-fiction — but it’s actually the latest brainchild from town planners in the western French town of La Rochelle. Small electric cars without drivers steer themselves through the streets taking locals and tourists around town in the first driverless car pilot program.

French law prevents vehicles without drivers from traveling on expressways so when those tests begin later this year, they will have a person in the vehicle as backup in case something goes awry.

The system works much like an elevator. A screen at stations allows passengers to enter their destination and the nearest vehicle comes to pick them up. Civic leaders want to add more automated vehicles to the fleet of five to reduce wait times at stations and get people where they need to go faster.

New Rochelle is hoping to roll out more driverless vehicles in time for the Christmas holidays.

In the U.S. tech giant Google is pressing Nevada to change state law and allow driverless vehicles on state roads and highways. The company would like to get permission to test its location software on driverless cars but must get permission from the state legislature before conducting any tests.

Volvo’s Senior Safety Engineer Thomas Broberg says that driverless cars will become a reality as they are a big part of the company’s initiative to eliminate fatalities in any of its cars by 2020.

Update:
Preliminary tests prove negative for E. coli in bean sprouts from an organic farm in the Uelzen district of the German state of Lower Saxony. 23 out of 40 sprout samples from the farm came back negative for the bacteria. 17 samples are undergoing further testing which won’t be available for 7-10 days.

Hamburg, Germany is the epicenter for what is now the deadliest E. Coli outbreak in modern history. 21 people have died and 2,200 people have fallen ill, including over 600 with a rare disease that causes kidney failure and other dangerous symptoms.

While German health officials haven’t ruled out tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce entirely, they are confident that the bacterial outbreak originated in 17 different kinds of bean sprouts on an organic farm. So they took the popular salad item off the menu across the country until further notice.

Bean sprouts are the perfect incubator for E. coli and they have been linked to previous outbreaks, including one in Japan in 1996. According to the Lower Saxony Agriculture Ministry Gert Lindemann, the farm grows 18 types of sprouts and cultivates them in liquor barrels at a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the sprouts are watered with steam.

“Those are also optimal conditions for the germ of all germs.” — Gert Lindemann, Lower Saxony Agriculture Minister

U.S. health officials periodically warn people against eating bean and alfalfa sprouts since both are known to carry E. coli.

This strain is new and scientists say it combines the genes of two other strains of E. coli to create a deadly bacteria.

As of Wednesday afternoon officials said 17 people had died in Germany and one in Sweden. A recent E. coli outbreak across Europe is believed to have started in northern Germany but it appears to be causing people to fall ill all around the world, including two cases in the U.S.

The unusually virulent strain of the bacteria commonly found in animal stomachs, including our own, has contaminated fresh vegetables and forced many markets to stop selling cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce. At first, Germany pointed a finger at cucumbers imported from Spain but later withdrew the accusation.

Officials are worried that they may never know the cause of the food-borne illness, which has sickened over 2,000 people in under a week.

While e. coli bacterial outbreaks occur periodically from poorly handled produce, this outbreak has health officials and scientists more concerned. For one it is striking healthy adults over age 20 and is causing kidney failure, stroke and some patients to lapse into comas. That makes this much more serious than typical outbreaks which cause gastrointestinal distress for most and are more tend to be more serious for the elderly and children.

Scientists immediately ran a gene sequence of the new bacteria and found it is a new strain of E. coli, which had mutated from two other strains to combine their poisonous effects and become much more deadly.

Hilde Kruse, a food safety expert at the World Health Organization says, “This is a unique strain that has never been isolated from patients before.” And she adds, “Various characteristics that make it more virulent and toxin-producing.”

According to health experts this outbreak is already the third largest, following a 1996 Japanese outbreak and a 2000 Canadian outbreak. And it may be the deadliest.

The new European E. coli strain shows the presence of genes typically found in two different types of E. coli: enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC) and enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC).

Because many people likely ate contaminated vegetables but didn’t have strong reactions, doctors believe the outbreak may be much larger. Those with mild responses to the bacteria probably wouldn’t seek medical attention. They may stay home from work and recover quickly, thinking they had the flu.

The WHO put information about haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) and enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) on its website after most people in Germany developed those two diseases from exposure to the bacteria.

A WHO statement says that as of May 31, nine of the patients in Germany had died of HUS and six of EHEC. It goes on to say, “There are many hospitalized patients, several of them requiring intensive care, including dialysis.”

NBC News reported that according to doctors, two-thirds of patients in Hamburg, Germany, were suffering from severe neurological problems such as language difficulties and seizures.

For years scientists have argued that cell phones could be harmful to our health. But it wasn’t until last year that the first long term study suggested a relationship between prolonged cell phone use and brain cancer. And even that preliminary finding didn’t get people to turn off their cell phones.

Earlier this year, a National Institutes of Health study showed that cell phones caused an increase in brain activity and glucose metabolism.

Now, a new study from International Agency for Research on Cancer involving 31 researchers(PDF) from 14 countries assembled by the World Health Organization says that cell phones are carcinogenic(PDF). Actually it says, “radiofrequency electromagnetic fields are possibly carcinogenic to humans based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with
wireless phone use.”

The organization puts them in the same category (2B) as gasoline fumes and pesticides. Serious but not that serious if you limit your exposure.

Dr. Keith Black, the head of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, who was not involved in the study says using a cellphone is about as safe as sticking your head in a microwave oven. He says that the radiation cell phones emit makes water in the brain vibrate. That vibration has the potential to heat up or cook the brain over time just like food in a microwave. And that causes cells to form improperly which leads to cancer.

Right now over 5 billion cell phones are in use around the world. But doctors believe that even if cell phones do pose the cancer risk that long term studies are now beginning to see, brain cancer is a very rare disease. And cell phone use doesn’t cause cancer it just may increase the risk.

One thing that the scientists do agree upon is that cell phone use by children should be limited to prevent radiation from seeping into their still forming brains. Since children’s skulls are thinner than adults they can allow in five times as much radiation as an adult brain.

All scientists agree that more research is needed. But since cell phones are so ubiquitous in our lives, it is unlikely that these studies will have a remarkable effect on our cell phone behavior.

For those who are concerned about radiation, limit the amount of time the phone is held to your head. Use a bluetooth or other handsfree device or use the speaker phone function.

University of Washington bioengineering professor Henry Lai told the L.A. Times “I think it’s a very fair conclusion,” Dr. Lai was the first to show cellphone radiation can damage DNA in brain cells. He and his fellow researchers also found memory loss and other learning problems in rats exposed to moderate levels of cellphone radiation.

“At this point, I think the best thing for people to do is limit their exposure to this radiation.” — Henry Lai, University of Washington

Chinese farmers are scratching their heads after fields of watermelons turned into exploding land mines. The official cause remains unknown but some believe that the farmers sprayed a rapid growth chemical on the fruit too late in the season and after an extremely wet period. The combination of factors could lead to exploding fruit, as the cells expand so rapidly the fruit bursts out of its rind.

State-run Chinese TV reports that acres of watermelons have been destroyed by the mysterious fruit explosions.

In China the chemical forcholorfenuron is commonly used to give fruits a burst of growth. The chemical is only approved for use on kiwis and grapes in the United States. But using the chemical incorrectly can cause problems — like exploding watermelons.

In 2004 the Environmental Protection Agency added forcholorfenuron to a list of newly created pesticides. The agency classified the growth accelerator as a phenyl urea compound but found that it is unlikely carcinogenic in humans. Due to the small amounts required to accelerate fruit growth, the agency decided to approve the chemical.

Though it did include a warning.

“The Agency‘s major concern is forchlorfenuron‘s persistence and its possible chronic effects to terrestrial organisms. It is highly persistent in the environment with laboratory half-lives ranging from 226-578 days in terrestrial environments and stable in aquatic environments. While forchlorfenuron rapidly photodegrades in sensitized water, the Agency does not believe that this route of dissipation is significant in the environment. Suspended sediment and shading prevent photodegradation.”

This plant growth regulator should be used two to three weeks after bloom. If applied properly (in low amounts) Forchlorfenuron results in an increase in fruit size, but does not affect the number of fruit or the keeping quality of the fruit.

Farmer error is likely behind the Chinese exploding watermelons. Although some Chinese officials say that the seeds, which were imported from Japan, might be the culprit. In ten fields, farmers who claimed not to use forchlorfenuron also experienced combustible fruit.

The EPA warns pregnant women or women looking to become pregnant about the dangers of mercury on unborn children. The agency says stay away from big, predator fish like Swordfish, Orange Ruffie and even Ahi tuna. They tend to have the highest mercury concentrations because they feed on smaller fish that are also exposed to mercury.

But it’s not just women. In men, mercury can increase the risk of heart disease.

Trout, Salmon and other fish, including Tilapia contain far less mercury and won’t pose as much risk to seafood lovers.

The Sierra Club has more information about mercury pollution and finding safe fish to eat.

A new report estimates that half the meat and poultry sold in the supermarket may be tainted with the staph germ.

A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases recently found a startling amount of staphylococcus bacteria in grocery store meat. The study included 136 samples from 80 different brands of turkey, pork, chicken and beef from five cities across the country.

Researchers discovered that 47 percent of all samples contained the staph aureus bacteria, which can make people sick if exposed to it. They also found that of all the samples with staph contamination 96 percent were resistant to one common antibiotic and 52 percent were resistant to three or more antibiotics.

Scientists believe the harmful bacteria in the meat is appearing because animals are being exposed to antibiotic-resistant staph on farms. The bacteria does not appear to be from poor food-handling procedures during manufacturing.

But this study does raise concerns about the use of antibiotics in agriculture. Routinely food farmers give their animals antibiotics to fuel growth rather than to fight disease. Now, it appears decades of feeding drugs to animals is creating a microbial chain reaction that will lead to longer, more intensive human illness when these superbugs become drug-resistant.

Currently, the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System is monitoring four pesky bacteria. NARMS is a collaboration of the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The group is watching Enterococcus, Salmonella, Campylobacter and E. coli. It doesn’t currently track staph bacteria or any of its anti-biotic cousins like MRSA.

“Salmonella and Campylobacter, the most common sources of food borne illnesses in the United States, account for well over a million resistant infections in this country each year.” — Margaret Mellon, Union of Concerned Scientists, from her Congressional Testimony, July 2009(PDF).

Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been ravaging patients in hospitals and become a community health problem. Now that this familiar superbug has been found on meat, research needs to be conducted to see if this is part of the reason for the rise of MRSA.

Since heat kills bacteria, cooking meat and cleaning cutting boards, knives or anything (including hands) that comes into contact with raw meat with hot, soapy water should help prevent the spread of staph. Public health officials are watching these tough bacteria closely.

The World Health Organization, Union of Concerned Scientists and American Medical Association have called for significant restrictions in the use of antibiotics in animals for non-therapeutic purposes. The FDA has even drafted guidelines(PDF) advising food farmers to stop giving animals antibiotics that are used as human medicines but until they become regulations they are just suggestions.

In the meantime, drug-resistant bacteria are moving into our food supply.

“Antibiotic-resistant microorganisms generated in the guts of pigs in the Iowa countryside don’t stay on the farm. They can be transmitted to humans in at least three ways: carried on meat or poultry; colonizing farm workers who transmit them into the community; or moving through water and soil, which can lead to the contamination of fresh produce.” –Margaret Mellon, Director of the Food and Environment Program, Union of Concerned Scientists

Veterinarians say that when antibiotics used in raising food animals such as pigs, cows and chickens are the same as those used in doctors’ offices, those bacteria become impervious to those classes of human drugs.

It sounds like the plotline for a young boy’s bedtime story. But real-life laser weapons are being tested by the U.S. Navy and their first target is modern day pirates who are tormenting shippers and sailors on the northeast coast of Africa.

A ship-based laser could seriously turn up the heat on Somali pirates. Last week the Navy successfully tested a solid-state high-energy laser from a ship.

While it didn’t have the high-pitched movie laser sound found in the movies, the laser was aimed at a small boat and disabled the engines without any other damage. Bullets from traditional guns don’t have the precision of a laser and tend to ricochet off targets and strike bystanders. The new laser can also be dialed up or down to go from lethal beam to just a nuisance, says the Office of Naval Research.

British defense contractor BAE Systems has been working on the non-lethal version of the laser to be used on commercial ships to protect them from pirates.
These Free Electron Laser (FEL) guns are also likely going to be a big part of the Navy’s future fight against pirates.

“From a science and technology point of view, the marriage of directed energy and kinetic energy weapon systems opens up a new level of deterrence into scalable options for the commander.” — Navy Rear Admiral Nevin Carr.

Tokyo Electric Power is putting remote controlled machinery to use at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan. Helicopters mounted with cameras can safely survey the damaged reactors to give clean up crews a clear view of the mess without exposing them to dangerous radiation, following the 9.0 mega thrust earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

To prevent a worse nuclear disaster, power plant workers allowed several hydrogen explosions to release pressure building inside the disabled nuclear reactors. Now workers nearby are relying on remote-controlled bulldozers, dump trucks and other heavy equipment to drive the clean up process while radiation levels are still too high for humans to be in the area for any length of time.

Why Not Robots?

Japan is known for being on the leading technological edge, with its earthquake early warning system and automatic seismic shutoff system at nuclear power plants. It’s also known for mechanizing the manufacturing process by employing robots do the work of humans, much more efficiently.

So it stands to reason that the now crippled nation would want to send robots to the hobbled Fukushima Daiichi power plant. But there are no robots to handle that kind of a job — yet.

The father of industrial robotics says that it is impossible to anticipate a disaster like this which would make programming a robot for this clean up task equally as impossible. But, Joseph Engelberger also says that now that Japan understands what job a robot could do under these conditions, it should be fairly easy to develop a series of commands to allow the robot to react in specific ways under specific circumstances.

The remote-controlled power plant clean up operation uses humans to control machines, also known as teleoperation. Robots act based on code that creates parameters under which they can operate while teleoperators rely on human-driven decision-making.

So until the robots can be made radiation resistant and get to the Japanese power plant we’ll just have to appreciate their aesthetic value as baby robots dance.

French company Aldebaran Robotics makes Nao human-like robots. Nao in Chinese means brain. These five sychronized robots recently performed at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

The company just opened its first U.S. subsidiary office in Boston this month.

Now, we just need to get them to Japan to sift through radiation-contaminated debris.

Workers in Japan have started dumping more than three million gallons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Tokyo Electric officials spent about two days dumping out all that water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in northeastern Japan, following the devastating March 11 earthquake. That water contains unsafe levels of radioactive iodine and cesium but it is a necessary move to make room to store more radioactive water used to cool superheated fuel rods after the quake.

The water will disperse in the ocean and become less radioactive as it decays. Since the most common form of radioactive iodine loses half of its potency in just eight days radioactive water heading toward Hawaii and the U.S. mainland will be so diluted by the time it reaches the shores it likely won’t pose any risk.

Some concerned residents in Hawaii have stopped eating seafood and stopped drinking bottled water. Scientists say that is unnecessary at this point because it will take weeks or months — depending on ocean currents — for any radioactive water to reach detectable levels near the islands.

A physicist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa has already begun monitoring water off Waikiki Beach for any signs of radioactivity. So far, nothing has been observed. Henrieta Dulaiova expects some radioactive material to be detectable in Hawaiian waters in the coming weeks but she is not concerned about seafood or water contamination.

The three million gallons of water dumped from the Fukushima Daichi power plant is about enough to fill five Olympic-sized swimming pools. The Pacific Ocean holds enough water to fill about three trillion of those same pools. In other words, the size of the ocean will make radioactive water less of a threat to fish and people.

The Food and Drug Administration is carefully watching all fish and food imported to the U.S. from Japan, looking for any signs of radioactivity.

In Japan, radioactive food is unfortunately inevitable, but very manageable.

James Acton says the first radioactive fish has been found with unsafe levels of radioactive iodine and cesium. But he says radioactive contamination is a manageable problem because strict monitoring will keep dangerous food off of people’s tables.

The Carnegie Endowment nuclear physicist says that radioactive material released into the water and atmosphere is becoming so diluted already that even twenty miles away from the nuclear power plant, radiation levels are undetectable.

For those of us part way around the world, the risk of radioactive contamination is very low. On the west coast of the U.S. iodine-131 has been detected in milk but experts and public health officials haven’t raised any warnings that those amounts present any risk whatsoever. Several experts have been equating the amount of radiation in the air and in food to being about the same dose any airline passenger receives when going on a trip.

The national snake hunt is now hissstory! After a six-day search for an Egyptian cobra, the director of the Bronx Zoo told a relieved city that the snake was found in a non-public area of the zoo’s reptile house.

The poisonous snake disappeared from a Bronx Zoo exhibit and caught the nation’s attention as it spent nearly a week on the lam. One clever snake fan even created a fake Twitter account and posted dispatches from the runaway reptile.

Bronx Zoo director Jim Breheny says the snake was found right where zookeepers expected — still inside the reptile house, coiled in a dark corner. During the time of her disappearance, keepers searched for the 20-inch snake three times a day. Breheny says patience was the zoo’s greatest tool. During a press conference last Thursday, he said once she felt comfortable to explore her environment he knew they’d find her.

Now that the celebrity snake has made a name for herself she needs a name. The as yet unnamed cobra may be called Houdini for her surprising escape or perhaps Cleopatra.

This is not the first great snake escape. Vanity Fair lists a few others in recent memory.

Dan Malone, a herpetologist at the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, Michigan told Mlive.com that snakes are natural escape artists. Even though every zoo has strict venomous snake handling policies, the Bronx Zoo hasn’t yet said how the sneaky cobra escaped.

Because she is so small — weighing only 3 ounces — the pencil-thin snake could have slipped between panes of glass in her enclosure, slithered through a grate or screen cover or just taken advantage of human error.

The consumer watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest wants to ban all artificial color from foods. At the very least the organization wants the Food and Drug Administration to put warning labels on foods containing some dyes, like Yellow 5 and Red 40, which have been linked to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in children already prone to it.

CSPI executive director Michael Jacobsen says, “Getting rid of food dyes is not going to solve the hyperactivity or attention deficit disorder problem. But it would reduce the problem.”

Advisors to the FDA met this week in a meeting to discuss the science behind artificial colors in food and whether they lead to hyperactivity in children. At the end of the two-day meeting, the FDA decided not to require labels on foods containing artificial colors.

FDA advisers examined how the problem was reduced when Great Britain banned several artificial colors. Most companies did. Strawberry bars purchased in the U.K. are made with paprika extract for color. In the U.S. the same product is made with Red 40.

The Grocery Manufacturers of America issued a statement saying there’s no clear link between artificial food colors and hyperactivity among children, and that “we are always producing the safest possible product for our consumers.”

Experts say the use of artificial colors in the U.S. has increased by half in the past 20 years, and a fresh look at their effect is overdue. Georgetown University’s Dr. Laura Anderko says, “The regulation hasn’t kept up with our consuming habits.”

Frito-Lay recently announced it will switch to using natural colors like beets and carrots in half of its snacks by the end of the year. The FDA advisers recommended further study of the link between artificial food coloring and ADHD but voted 8 to 6 against putting warning labels on food products.

The FDA is not required to follow the recommendations of this panel of advisers but it often does.

The radiation levels at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant continue to fluctuate. Overnight, the spike in radiation levels forced the remaining workers out of the plant for a short time. Police are planning to use water cannons normally reserved for crowd control to keep nuclear fuel rods submerged in water.

When those rods burn off the water which turns to steam and escapes the compromised reactor container that’s when radioactive material gets into the atmosphere.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant is not just one nuclear reactor. The whole site is made of six reactors and they all appear to have been damaged after the March 11 9.0 earthquake and tsunami. While the Japanese power plants were built to handle an 8.5 quake and large tsunami this mega quake just dwarfed what the plant can handle.

Timeline of Events
Shortly after the earthquake Japan declared a nuclear emergency when some of the automatic cooling procedures failed. Within hours, power plant workers released low level radioactive steam in an effort to cool the overheating unit 1 reactor.

On March 12, four workers were injured when the built up heat and pressure inside the unit 1 reactor containment building exploded. This hydrogen explosion destroyed part of the outer building but left the nuclear core intact, though compromised and heating up.

Then two days later unit 3 exploded. The outer building was destroyed but the reactor was not breached. Japanese officials reported this explosion as another hydrogen explosion caused by a build up of heat and pressure from the overheating reactor.

In the evening of March 14, officials reported that the unit 2 reactor was intact but that fuel rods had been exposed to air still within the intact containment vessel and therefore not exposed to the outer atmosphere.

Fuel rods are submerged in freshwater to keep them cool. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the company that operates the nuclear power plant says that an airflow gauge was accidentally turned off. When that happens, water can’t flow into the reactor. As the water boils off from the heat of the fuel rods the rods are left high and dry, which puts them at risk to begin melting.

Then on March 15 a third explosion rocked the Fukushima 1 power station. This time the roof blew off of unit 4, which was believed to have been damaged when unit 3 exploded.

At the same time, radiation spiked from unit 2 where Japanese officials thought the rods had begun melting after the pressure-suppression system was likely damaged.

Later that morning, unit 4 caught fire. Again radiation levels spiked, indicating that nuclear material was escaping into the atmosphere. The International Atomic Energy Agency said the fire was at a spent fuel pond and it took about three hours to extinguish, during which time all remaining nuclear power plant workers were evacuated.

Since then, radiation levels have spiked and dropped. Unit 4 caught fire again. Then unit 3 began emitting what officials believe is radioactive steam from the damaged reactor. Workers planned to spray boric acid from a helicopter on the fuel rods to prevent the spent nuclear fuel rods from reaching criticality again and starting a nuclear chain reaction. But that plan was put on hold because radiation levels near the plant were too high.

Radiation Release
Plutonium, tritium, radioactive iodine, strontium and cesium are all the elements that are being discussed in association with the nuclear crisis at Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant in northeastern Japan.

When the quake struck, reactors 1, 2, and 3 were in service. Units 4, 5, and 6 were undergoing routine maintenance and were already offline. Unit 4 was fully de-fueled, meaning it didn’t contain a radioactive core. But all six reactors have spent fuel ponds, which became unstable after proper cooling procedures failed after the mammoth quake and resulting tsunami.

First, power plant workers released small amounts of steam containing tritium and cesium to relieve some pressure at unit 1. They did another small release for the same reason at unit 3.

Tritium is an istotope of hydrogen which easily bonds to air and water. It is what is called a low beta emitter, meaning it dangerous externally. Radiation risk only exists if inhaled or ingested in food or water or through absorption through the skin. Tritiated water breaks down in the human body in 7-12 days so therefore poses little risk of short term exposure if ingested and it won’t accumulate in the body over time.

Cesium is a heavy metal that has 39 different isotopes, ranging from 112 t0 151. Those numbers represent the atomic mass of the element. The most common radioactive isotope is cesium 137. It has a half-life of 30 years, meaning it will take that long to decay into the element barium.

Strontium 90 is another radioactive isotope associated with spent nuclear fuel rods. It is considered a “bone seeker” because it exhibits similar biochemical behavior to calcium, the main ingredient in bones. Strontium is generally taken in through contaminated food or water. About 70-80 percent of the strontium is expelled from the body with the rest being absorbed in bone and bone marrow That’s where concerns about heightened risk of leukemia or bone cancer originate. It’s half-life is also about 30 years.

With the growing concern about radioactivity leaking into the environment, concerned Japanese citizens and even people on the west coast of the U.S. have flocked to pharmacies to purchase potassium idodide pills to counteract any potential exposure to radioactive idodine. This isotope is 131. It has a half-life of 8 days.

Taking idodine tablets saturates the thyroid gland with iodine just before exposure to prevent radioactive idodine from getting into the gland and causing thyroid cancer. Taking the pills as a precaution is unnecessary if there is no immediate threat of radiation exposure. The pills will only protect people from absorbing idodine 131 for 24 hours.

There’s been more trouble at Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant. With cooling systems down, fuel rods have been exposed at the facility’s Unit 2 reactor, and there was an explosion at Unit 3.

While not ideal these explosions keep the threat of a total nuclear meltdown to a minimum. And that’s the best Japanese officials can do after last Friday’s monster earthquake and tsunami.

Japan has about 50 nuclear power plants scattered throughout Honshu island. The 8.9 earthquake that struck on March 11 was centered offshore from the north portion of the island. Sendai city was one of the hardest hit areas. That town is near the Fukushima nuclear power plant, where a loss of power and access to freshwater has crippled operations there.

All power plants automatically shutdown when there is an earthquake in Japan. It’s a precaution to prevent a nuclear disaster. But several plants failed to cool down properly after the big earthquake and tsunami. An explosion forced a 12-mile evacuation and scared residents around the world on Saturday. Then another blast at a different unit at the same power plant on Monday raised concern again.

Japanese officials explained that they are being forced to push seawater into the reactor to cool the nuclear fuel rods. The corrosive saltwater destroys the power plant, costing about $1 billion. But if successful it prevents a much greater threat–a total nuclear meltdown.

The two blasts occurred when hydrogen inside the reactor core built up enough heat and pressure which needed to be released. Venting that heat along with a small amount of radioactive cesium particles caused the cement structure housing the containment units to explode. But the containment units, inside which sit the nuclear reactor cores, appear to be intact. This greatly reduces the threat of radiation escaping the facility and causing more damage.

160 people are being treated for low level exposure to radiation while some media over the weekend reported that iodine tablets were being distributed as a precaution.

When situations like this arise, scientists begin looking at all possible scenarios. One such outcome is a meltdown of the nuclear core, which causes a critical nuclear event, including emission of radioactive material. If that were to happen the release could threaten a lot more people.

Nuclear experts and atmospheric scientists in the U.S. started speculating as soon as explosions at nuclear power plants were broadcast over the weekend.

Dan Jaffe, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Washington says it is very unlikely that the amount of radiation released in Japan would make it to the west coast of the United States.

A few scientists in Seattle have documented pollution crossing the Pacific Ocean and reaching the west coast. In 1998, Dr. Jaffee noted that atmospheric ozone from China was able to travel to the U.S. under the right conditions in about a week. That surge of pollution was enough to push ozone levels in the Northwest past limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr. Jaffe says, “If the nuclear incidents turn into a major meltdown and release radiation, and depending on wind patterns, it could be transported in about seven days.”

But that’s a big if.

Japan is perhaps the nation best equipped to handle a triple-whammy threat of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident. Even though this is being described as the most devastating event since World War II and the most threatening earthquake and tsunami in 1,200 years, Japanese officials are trying to prevent the worst case scenario by sacrificing nuclear power plants in order to spare the rods in the reactors and prevent a bigger disaster.

Dr. Jaffe says that he and his team have established an atmospheric observatory on Mt. Bachelor in the mountains of Oregon. While the sensors are designed to monitor pollution traveling from Asia, he says in the event of a major radiation release he would try to get some detectors added to the observatory to track the path of the radiation.

Move over bomb-sniffing dogs. Here comes Benjamin Clough. The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute doctoral student just received $30,000 for developing a safer way for police, military and bomb squads to detect hidden explosives and other dangerous chemicals using sound waves.

He has been working in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering to improve security technology where he has developed a method for extending the distance that sound waves and terahertz technology can detect explosives, chemicals, and dangerous materials.

His technology has been demonstrated to work from a distance of several meters.

Radio frequency exposure to cell phones may increase brain activity and glucose metabolism.

Scientists don’t know what it means for our health but a new National Institutes of Health study has found that hand held cell phone use stimulates brain activity.

Dr. Nora Volkow says the study shows that the human brain is sensitive to the electromagnetic radiation that is emitted from cell phones.

But the piece scientists don’t yet understand is whether this rise in brain metabolism is harmful in the long run. More research is needed to answer that question.

Scientists say the growing number of people on the Earth could lead to a food crisis by 2050 and reshape the planet. Now@9 viewers and Actor/Comedian Hal Sparks discuss the idea.

The conversation was sparked by this weekend’s American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington D.C. where top scientists gathered to discuss breakthroughs, discoveries and science policy.

Food shortages, rapid population growth and a more affluent developing world all spell resource shortages in the future. That will dramatically change the face of the planet. And scientists are starting to discuss how we can prepare now.

From the front line of the food wars comes a new warning for those who regularly consume beverages and condiments that contain caramel coloring.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is asking the FDA to ban all food products with an artificially dark color, including Coke, Pepsi and other cola drinks, Worcestershire sauce, whiskey and some dark beers.

Caramel coloring doesn’t add anything to the foods except…color. It’s not a preservative and it adds no nutritional value. The caramel coloring that concerns some scientists breaks down sugars using ammonia and in some cases cancer-causing chemicals get released during the reaction.

That has some scientists concerned. But others say that in order to get a cumulative effect of the tiny amounts of carcinogenic chemicals, you would need to drink 10,000 Coca-Colas a day for a lifetime.

Nevertheless the state of California is considering putting warning labels on Coke and other products containing caramel coloring. The beverage industry says there is no cancer-causing agents in any of its products.

Even if the risk is minimal, CSPI says take the color out and you remove the problem.

Tony Ford may call himself a ‘technician,’ but in reality he’s more like a flimflam man: A purveyor of potions. A glorified vitamin salesman.

But he is one of thousands of independent sellers of L-Arginine, the latest miracle health cure, said to cure stroke, cancer, diabetes, reverse Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease and lower cholesterol.

The FDA doesn’t regulate nutritional supplements and this hidden camera investigation shows the dubious medical science at the heart of this product’s claims.

KRQE’s Larry Barker reports.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is increasing his foundation’s commitment to eradicating Polio. At last week’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Gates pledged $100 million to a global effort that appears close to eliminating the disease. Gates joins Rotary International’s End Polio campaign which has raised over $1 billion from members to fight the crippling disease.

Right now polio is endemic in only four countries–Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria. With the successful elimination of smallpox as a measuring stick British Prime Minister David Cameron says that polio will be the next disease to be eradicated but “we just need to finish the job.”

The additional Gates Foundation funds are part of a $10 billion, 10-year vaccine initiative aimed at improving health conditions in developing countries.

Most Californians are worried about the Big One, referring to a massive and devastating earthquake. But now residents of the Golden State have a new natural disaster they can start sweating.

Scientists with the U.S. Geological survey held a 2-day seminar in Sacramento last week urging local communities to start preparing for the next “arkstorm”, a Pacific coast phenomenon that last hit the central valley area of California in 1861.

USGS director Marcia McNutt says this weather disturbance occurs when “an atmospheric river comes in from the Pacific ocean, and dumps days of rain on California.” The amount of rainfall can be measured in feet not inches and could dwarf the torrential downpours associated with tropical hurricanes.

The preparation for an Arkstorm is part of a simulation exercise to determine the outcomes for different worst-case scenarios. There is no actual storm on its way to California anytime soon.

The computer simulation of such a weather event indicates that damage would measure in the trillions of dollars and that widespread destruction would harm food production and threaten lives.

Director McNutts says of the potential storm, “It takes out one-fourth of the homes in California, one-third of the agricultural land and one-third of the taxable land in California and renders it inoperable.”

Preparation for this kind of large-scale disaster requires a lot of time, which is why the USGS is having these discussions now and not when the 150-year storm actually sets its sights on California.

Airport runways don’t need to be moved but they do need to reflect changes going on deep within the Earth. Many airports with runways running north-south are waiting for word from the Federal Aviation Administration to see if they need to rename their main runways.

Because the earth’s magnetic north pole is shifting, changes must be made to airports runways. Changes in the Earth’s magnetic core are causing the magnetic north pole to shift about 40 miles each year, according to a 2009 National Geographic article. And that means any structure that is built along a magnetic heading — like a runway — will eventually have to change to match the changes in the magnetic north pole.

Since pilots use this information to land planes new numbers on the runways must be painted to reflect the shifting pole. In Tampa, Florida, the international airport is shutting one runway at a time to paint new numbers with accurate magnetic compass headings.

It’s common for airports to change their runway names every 20-30 years.

David Nichols studies the way psychedelic drugs act in the brains of rats. But he’s haunted by how humans hijack his work to make street drugs, sometimes causing overdose deaths. He was hoping that his work would lead to new ways of treating psychiatric disorders not become club drugs.

Today the journal Nature published an essay by Dr. Nichols where he describes the ethical dilemma he and and other neuroscientists face.

“I had never considered the possibility that something I’ve done might lead directly or even indirectly to somebody dying.” — David Nichols, Purdue University

It’s the newest health craze. Magnets are back. This time they are supposed to harness the biological signatures of frequencies in our bodies to improve cellular efficiency. One new product even claims to use a hologram to optimize the body’s natural energy flow.

You’ve probably seen these energy bracelets sold online, at malls, and even sporting good stores. They claim to make you healthier, stronger and more balanced. In Tampa, Florida FOX 13’s Doctor Jo shows why some believe the marketing is moving faster than the science.

The only science these new energy bracelets demonstrate is the placebo effect.

“if they could do what they say they can do, they would be rewriting the laws of biology and physics.” — Dr. Louis Slesin, an expert on electromagnetic fields

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/12/28/brace-yourself-for-energy-bracelets/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/12/27/oil-sands-slips-up-with-inadequate-monitoring/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/12/27/oil-sands-slips-up-with-inadequate-monitoring/#comments Mon, 27 Dec 2010 19:00:13 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3699

In a new report (PDF), a high-level scientific panel has sharply criticized the water quality monitoring system in Alberta’s oil sands development near Fort McMurray, Alberta. The panel says, “there is no system” despite supposedly 13 years of rigorous scientific data.

The panel says “We are back at square one” even though most Canadians believed that the water monitoring system was world class.

High levels of toxins associated with the costly extraction of oil from sand deposits have been found in rivers downstream from the massive project. And fish with significant deformities are also becoming more common in the area.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/12/27/oil-sands-slips-up-with-inadequate-monitoring/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/14/health-concerns-rise-over-use-of-oil-dispersant-corexit/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/14/health-concerns-rise-over-use-of-oil-dispersant-corexit/#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:56:55 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3162

Seven Louisiana fishermen reported getting sick after exposure to the oil dispersant that is being used to thin the oil slick on the Gulf of Mexico.

Nalco, the company that makes Corexit, the dispersant used after the April 20 Horizon Deepwater oil spill, says it has faith in its product. It insists that the product is biodegradable and that when it breaks down into tiny droplets, microscopic organisms then eat the oil and dispersant, cleaning the ocean in the process.

“The use of COREXIT dispersants to break up the oil in the Gulf of Mexico has been widely acknowledged by government officials as a safe, effective and proven response. Its ingredients rapidly biodegrade, do not bio-accumulate and are commonly found in popular household products. And because the dispersant works by spreading oil particles evenly through the water column, it is extremely unlikely that individuals along the Gulf Coast would come into contact with it.” — Nalco Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Manian Ramesh

But after health concerns began emerging the EPA is trying to curb the use of Corexit. To date, BP has sprayed more than one million gallons of the dispersant to prevent a massive oil slick from reaching the shorelines of the gulf states.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/14/health-concerns-rise-over-use-of-oil-dispersant-corexit/feed/ 1 http://www.realscience.us/2009/12/08/gaga-for-zhu-zhu/ http://www.realscience.us/2009/12/08/gaga-for-zhu-zhu/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:07:14 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=2747

The world has gone nuts for five robotic hamsters, called Zhu Zhu Pets. While the cute and cuddly creatures race around on a surfboard, skateboard or in a car, the “it” toy of 2009 has some heavy metals that are within safety limits but beg the question: Do toys need to have these toxic ingredients at all?

Consumer products safety organizations measure the presence of dangerous elements two ways. One uses an XRF scanner to determine if a metal is present at all. The other dissolves the product in a solution to measure the presence and quantity of heavy metals.

New rules go into effect in 2010 that will require Zhu Zhu Pet maker Cepia and other toy manufacturers to follow stricter standards to ensure lead and other heavy metals don’t creep into toys and other goods.

Essco Safety Check, a Redmond, WA company is offering consumers free testing of any household item they bring to the Seattle-area retail location until mid January.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2009/12/08/gaga-for-zhu-zhu/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2009/11/19/mammogram-recommendations-pit-science-against-policy/ http://www.realscience.us/2009/11/19/mammogram-recommendations-pit-science-against-policy/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:28:49 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=2656

A long-standing debate over younger women getting annual breast cancer screening is reigniting this week, after an independent medical panel changed its recommendations.

Confusion, fear and politics are swirling around the new U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations. The task force now recommends shifting from annual to biennial mammograms for all women aged 50-74.

They no longer recommend annual mammograms and they don’t think women under 50 need them at all. By analyzing the available cancer data, they also found that breast self-examination didn’t reduce deaths from breast cancer.

Many groups are upset by the new recommendations and are urging women to continue annual screening like they have for years. Some are even tying this to health care reform and other politics.

Congress will hold hearings next month and even the White House felt compelled to weigh in on this issue.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2009/11/19/mammogram-recommendations-pit-science-against-policy/feed/ 3 http://www.realscience.us/2009/10/25/h1n1-flu-now-a-national-emergency/ http://www.realscience.us/2009/10/25/h1n1-flu-now-a-national-emergency/#comments Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:50:38 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=2548

As the numbers of Americans sickened by the H1N1 swine flu skyrockets into the millions, President Obama declared the flu a national emergency.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2009/10/25/h1n1-flu-now-a-national-emergency/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2009/10/14/anti-swine-flu-suit/ http://www.realscience.us/2009/10/14/anti-swine-flu-suit/#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:41:02 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=2504

Japanese menswear company Haruyama Trading has developed a suit that it claims can protect wearers from the swine flu.

For only about $600, white-collar workers in Tokyo and other crowded Japanese cities will help reduce the spread of the H1N1 flu virus, which has already infected more than 350,000 worldwide.

The flu-killing suit is coated with titanium dioxide, the compound found in toothpaste and some cosmetics. It is believed to wipe out about 40 percent of the flu within a couple of hours.

The maker of the anti-sweat suit, the anti-odor suit now is fighting the flu with the anti-swine flu suit.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2009/10/14/anti-swine-flu-suit/feed/ 2 http://www.realscience.us/2009/10/05/h1n1-vaccine-brings-big-shot-program/ http://www.realscience.us/2009/10/05/h1n1-vaccine-brings-big-shot-program/#comments Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:09:03 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=2446
After months of speculation and waiting for the vaccine to grow, the new swine flu virus killer is ready and rolling out across the country this week.

The CDC hopes that at least 150 million Americans will get the shot or nasal spray to fight the H1N1 flu virus that began its worldwide rampage in April.

Some are worried about side effects. But the CDC and other research groups are teaming up to monitor people who get the vaccine. Others are worried about a preservative in the vaccine. If you want a thimerasol-free vaccine, just ask.

This is slated to be the biggest voluntary vaccination program in U.S. history. And if the demand calls for it the federal government is prepared to vaccinate the entire population in the next few months.

But public opinion surveys show only about 40% will definitely get their vaccination when it is made available.

Some want to get both seasonal vaccine and the new H1N1 flu vaccine. Is that advisable? The CDC says, Yes. But a new Canadian report finds an unexpected link among those who got the seasonal flu vaccine last year and those who fell ill with swine flu.

To prevent the flu, the CDC recommends:

Washing your hands–with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
Cover you mouth–when you cough and sneeze.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth–that’s how germs spread easily.
Stay home if you feel sick–don’t go to school or work and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

For more information, go to www.flu.gov.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2009/10/05/h1n1-vaccine-brings-big-shot-program/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2009/09/25/mouthrinses-awash-in-controversy/ http://www.realscience.us/2009/09/25/mouthrinses-awash-in-controversy/#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:24:07 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=2281

New research coming from Johnson & Johnson shows that Listerine antiseptic not only kills germs that cause bad breath and gum disease but also could prevent those germs from entering the bloodstream where they can lead to diabetes, heart disease and pneumonia.

This follows on the heels of an Australian study showing “sufficient evidence” that alcohol-containing mouthwashes–including Listerine–may be associated with a greater risk of mouth cancer.

So the question remains, is this 120-year-old health product both helping and harming us?

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2009/09/25/mouthrinses-awash-in-controversy/feed/ 2 http://www.realscience.us/2009/09/01/retractions-on-the-rise/ http://www.realscience.us/2009/09/01/retractions-on-the-rise/#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:51:56 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=1465

Hwang Woo Suk's Fake Cloned Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Scientific papers are the hallmark of any scientist’s career and achievements. And having a published paper retracted spells trouble.

Do rising retraction rates hurt the public trust in science? Or does closer scrutiny signal improved safeguards against fraudulent science?

A new study shows that 106 papers were retracted between January and July this year, setting a 20-year record for most retractions in one year. And the year has months to go.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2009/09/01/retractions-on-the-rise/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2009/07/09/bottled-water-goes-under-the-microscope/ http://www.realscience.us/2009/07/09/bottled-water-goes-under-the-microscope/#comments Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:42:57 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/2009/07/09/bottled-water-goes-under-the-microscope/

Water, water everywhere but no two types are regulated the same way. It’s a mouthful but a new report suggests that consumers know less about expensive bottled water than they do about what comes out of the tap for free.

Now the Government Accounting Office is suggesting better labeling, to differentiate between bottled water which is regulated by the FDA and municipal tap water which is regulated by the EPA. Here is the GAO testimony (PDF), presented to Congress this week.

Americans drank 8.6 billion gallons of bottled water in 2008, twice that which was consumed ten years ago. Bottled water is a big business, worth about $16 billion a year. But few consumers ever know where the water comes from or if it is better for them than drinking tap water. One report found most people believe that bottled water is healthier.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2009/07/09/bottled-water-goes-under-the-microscope/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2009/06/11/swine-flu-hits-pandemic-level/ http://www.realscience.us/2009/06/11/swine-flu-hits-pandemic-level/#comments Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:13:13 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/2009/06/11/swine-flu-hits-pandemic-level/

The H1N1 virus, also known as Swine Flu, has been declared a flu pandemic, the first in over 40 years. The World Health Organization has declared the H1N1 a level 6 pandemic, as global numbers top 29,000 in 70 countries and resulting in 150 deaths.

Declaring the virus “unstoppable” will prompt health officials to work on a vaccine for this mild form of the flu. But all eyes are on the Southern Hemisphere as it heads into its regular winter flu season. Doctors fear that the virus could mutate and become more virulent.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2009/06/11/swine-flu-hits-pandemic-level/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2009/05/05/jet-fueling-concern/ http://www.realscience.us/2009/05/05/jet-fueling-concern/#comments Tue, 05 May 2009 19:44:19 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/2009/05/05/jet-fueling-concern/

When an emergency landing near Seattle forced a commercial aircraft to dump thousands of gallons of fuel, people misted during this incident began thinking about where that toxic mixture goes when after it hits the ground and water.

The scientific consequences of this event are complicated and difficult to measure. And this one-time event is helping to focus a bigger toxic point. Listen here.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2009/05/05/jet-fueling-concern/feed/ 0 0:07:30 When an emergency landing near Seattle forced a commercial aircraft to dump thousands of gallons of fuel, people misted during this incident began thinking about where that toxic mixture goes when after it hits the ground and water. The scientific [...] When an emergency landing near Seattle forced a commercial aircraft to dump thousands of gallons of fuel, people misted during this incident began thinking about where that toxic mixture goes when after it hits the ground and water. The scientific consequences of this event are complicated and difficult to measure. And this one-time event is helping to focus a bigger toxic point. Listen here. Engineering, Environment, SciClips, Video Michael Bradbury/REALscience clean no http://www.realscience.us/2009/05/01/swine-flu-on-the-march/ http://www.realscience.us/2009/05/01/swine-flu-on-the-march/#comments Sat, 02 May 2009 00:40:24 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/2009/05/01/swine-flu-on-the-march/

Swine flu is racing across the world, spreading a deadly virus from continent to continent. The World Health Organization is worried about the beginning of a pandemic. The Center For Disease Control is trying to learn all it can about the new strain of human influenza A H1N1. And, vaccine manufacturers are hoping to offer some protection against this virus by fall.

But what makes this virus so tricky, so unusual and so deadly? Well, science is rushing to answer those questions.

Listen here.

Here’s the live virus outbreak map.

Photo by C. S. Goldsmith and A. Balish, CDC

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2009/05/01/swine-flu-on-the-march/feed/ 1 0:19:02 Swine flu is racing across the world, spreading a deadly virus from continent to continent. The World Health Organization is worried about the beginning of a pandemic. The Center For Disease Control is trying to learn all it can about the new strai[...] Swine flu is racing across the world, spreading a deadly virus from continent to continent. The World Health Organization is worried about the beginning of a pandemic. The Center For Disease Control is trying to learn all it can about the new strain of human influenza A H1N1. And, vaccine manufacturers are hoping to offer some protection against this virus by fall. But what makes this virus so tricky, so unusual and so deadly? Well, science is rushing to answer those questions. Listen here. Here’s the live virus outbreak map. Photo by C. S. Goldsmith and A. Balish, CDC Diseases, Genetics, Genomics, SciClips Michael Bradbury/REALscience no no
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