Headline, Business, Financial and Science News From Around The World

Reuters - Japan's Toyota Motor Corp said on Thursday it would recall 412,000 high-end passenger cars in the United States to fix steering problems.

AP - Wearing saggy pants is not a crime, just foolish.

AP - New York Rep. Charles Rangel steeled himself for a bad day Thursday as a jury of his congressional peers prepared to publicly discuss ethical charges against the former committee chairman clinging to a job he's held in the House for 40 years.

AP - Four airmen were killed when a cargo plane crashed during a training run at an Alaska Air Force base, sending a fireball hundreds of feet into the air, military authorities and witnesses said.

AP - New jobless claims fell last week for the third time in four weeks but remain elevated. The decline is a sign that the economy added jobs in July, still not enough to lower the nation's high unemployment rate.

AP - Arizona is preparing to ask an appeals court to lift a judge's ruling that put most of the state's immigration law on hold in a key first-round victory for the federal government in a fight that may go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Reuters - New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits fell slightly more than expected last week, offering a ray of hope for the anemic labor market recovery.

Reuters - A U.S. judge on Wednesday blocked key parts of Arizona's tough new immigration law hours before it was to take effect, handing a victory to the Obama administration as it tries to take control of the issue.

Reuters - Prosecutors in Germany have charged a suspected Nazi camp guard with helping to kill 430,000 Jews in the Holocaust and personally shooting 10 others.

Reuters - BP may permanently shut the well that caused the worst off-shore oil spill in U.S. history as early as Monday, the company said as speculation grew over assets it might sell to cover mounting costs.

AP - Cooler temperatures and calmer winds helped firefighters in their battle against the most destructive of two big wildfires that have burned homes and forced hundreds of people to evacuate mountain communities on the edge of the Mojave Desert and in the southern Sierra Nevada.

AP - The government's point man for the Gulf spill plans to meet with coastal parish officials Thursday to talk about what's next now that the oil has stopped flowing.

AFP - Arizona's new immigration law went into effect on Thursday, stripped of a controversial provision that would have given police the power to check the immigration status of suspected criminals.

AFP - A French mother admitted killing eight newborn babies Thursday, investigators said, as a shocked nation struggled to digest the latest grisly tragedy of village life.

Reuters - Foreclosures rose in 3 of every four large U.S. metro areas in this year's first half, likely ruling out sustained home price gains until 2013, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

Reuters - The United States should alter policy to take account of China's role as a major player on the world stage if it wants to avoid friction and instability, a major state newspaper said on Thursday.

AP - A second U.S. Navy sailor who went missing in a dangerous part of eastern Afghanistan was found dead and his body recovered, a senior U.S. military official and Afghan officials said Thursday.

AP - As jurors retired to deliberate Wednesday in the corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, they entered a cocoon of privacy not all jurors in high-profile cases enjoy.

AP - Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino is used to answering questions from reporters.

Reuters - Afghan President Hamid Karzai questioned on Thursday the willingness of his Western allies to strike insurgent bases in Pakistan given the strong evidence of Islamabad's support for the Taliban.

Motorola Inc., the U.S. mobile-phone maker, reported second-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ estimates, helped by demand for its new range of smartphones.

Symantec Corp., the world’s largest maker of computer security software, fell the most in a year after issuing sales and profit forecasts that missed analysts’ estimates, evidence that customers delayed closing deals.

Cap Gemini SA advanced the most in more in almost a year in Paris trading after increasing its profitability forecast and reporting higher first-half profit.

Japan’s trade ministry asked Apple Inc. to report by Aug. 4 on measures the company will take to prevent a fire hazard the ministry said is related to the iPod Nano portable music player.

The purchase of game maker Playdom may help Disney's brands with the Facebook generation

A teardown analysis shows HTC's Incredible is incredibly similar to the Nexus One, the Android phone from Google

The best-selling Kindle will be at the center of Amazon's digital media strategy. Says CEO Bezos: "There's going to be a generation 10 and a generation 20"

A growing cash pile makes the Web search leader a prime candidate for issuing a dividend or buying back stock, investors say

The Hasbro toymaking unit is staging an edgy resurgence with a lineup of NERF dart guns that have evolved to function like assault weapons

With interest in social media growing, B-schools are adding courses to teach students what it means for business

Franklin Resources Inc., manager of the Franklin and Templeton mutual funds, said fiscal third- quarter earnings rose 21 percent as deposits in its global bond fund ranked second behind Bill Gross’s Pimco Total Return Fund.

The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance fell to 457,000 last week, a figure that signals the labor market will be slow to improve even as the economy grows.

European stocks rose as companies from Telefonica SA to Cap Gemini SA reported increased earnings and consumer confidence climbed to the highest level in more than two years.

The U.K. financial regulator proposed expanding the number of firms covered by rules on bonuses and compensation from 27 to 2,500 banks, building societies and hedge funds to comply with European Union legislation.

Sanofi-Aventis may offer as much as $70 a share for Genzyme, or about $18.7 billion, said three people with knowledge of the situation

A co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s debt commission said as much as three-quarters of the panel’s proposed savings ought to come through cuts to government spending rather than tax increases.

The financial overhaul sent a good idea off to be studied, but that doesn't mean it won't be back

Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Bill Gross said deficit spending by governments that seek to maintain artificial levels of consumption “can be compared to flushing money down an economic toilet.”

Jan Randolph, head of sovereign risk at IHS Global Insight, talks about BP's liabilities, its asset sales, and deep water drilling regulation.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is the darling of U.S. millionaires, or at least those in Tiger 21, a peer investment group

July 27 (Bloomberg) -- Karl Case, an economics professor at Wellesley College and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index, discusses the U.S. housing market.(This report is an excerpt of the full interview. Source: Bloomberg)

In a new edition of The Black Swan, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb warns against depending "on financial assets as a repository of value"

Nassim Taleb, author of "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable," discusses government debt, investment risks and financial regulation.

When older adults head back to universities and community colleges for retraining, what are the smartest ways to pay the bills?

The plan would invest federal money in small banks and give them incentives to re-lend that money to Main Street companies

President Barack Obama met privately with Democratic donors and made a pitch for his plan to aid small businesses on a trip that combined campaigning for his economic policies and raising money.

You won't soon sell your business for an ideal asking price. Here are three strategies to help you get a better offer than you might expect

Morale and profit margins plunged when an entrepreneur gave his sons too much responsibility. To save the business, he must reassert authority

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with baseball super-agent Scott Boras about his background, his firm's representation strategy, and George Steinbrenner's legacy.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with baseball super-agent Scott Boras about his background, his firm's representation strategy, and George Steinbrenner's legacy.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with baseball super-agent Scott Boras about his background, his firm's representation strategy, and George Steinbrenner's legacy.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with baseball super-agent Scott Boras about his background, his firm's representation strategy, and George Steinbrenner's legacy.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh about the launch and growth of the online shoe and clothing retailer, its focus on customer service, and its sale to Amazon.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh about the launch and growth of the online shoe and clothing retailer, its focus on customer service, and its sale to Amazon.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh about the launch and growth of the online shoe and clothing retailer, its focus on customer service, and its sale to Amazon.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh about the launch and growth of the online shoe and clothing retailer, its focus on customer service, and its sale to Amazon.

Small U.S. businesses pushing for a $30 billion federal lending fund are making their case without the support of some supposed allies: Washington lobbying groups who say they represent small businesses.

President Barack Obama is on the verge of creating as much as $300 billion in credit for small businesses as bankers raise doubt about whether there’s demand for new loans and how much will be repaid.

Financiers prefer to back entrepreneurs who are similar to them. This seemingly innocuous tendency creates problems for society, but the solution is difficult to make work, says Scott Shane

Starting a business? There are many ways to learn startup basics without spending a fortune to get an MBA. You just need to know where to look

Although the number of businesses owned by minorities is increasing, their economic impact isn't catching up yet

In an excerpt from Design Is How It Works, former BusinessWeek staff writer Jay Greene explores Lego's troubles and its comeback

Web-evangelist Clay has a point, but will his zealotry alienate the browsing masses?

As phones continue to shrink, fitting antennas in and making them work correctly often comes down to trial and error

A high-tech lab "fingerprints" discs and traces them to criminals

Goods touted in the schlocky TV ads are increasingly moving onto the shelves of big retailers like CVS and Target or online, and the ads now serve to build a brand beforehand

The Ooma Telo is helping slow the exodus to wireless by letting users make calls over the Web with their old phone—and phone number

The video game retailer has added to its store network and upgraded existing flagships, and will invest in game development to withstand an onslaught from Best Buy, Electronic Arts, and others

The stock is off 44 percent after product delays and misfires

The former marketer started Go Try It On, a website that uses instant online feedback to help solve a daily dilemma: What to wear?

Not Consumer Reports. Over the past year the 74-year-old magazine has carved up Apple and made Toyota roll over. Pretty good for a lab in Yonkers

After years of covering up by the pool, former Disney sales exec Lynn Werner decided to design a line of swimwear she could stand to be seen in

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System plans to sell its majority stake in 120 Broadway, a lower Manhattan office tower and national historic landmark co-owned by developer Larry Silverstein.

Moscow set a heat record for the second time in a week as the Russian capital remained wrapped in smoke from wildfires on dry peat bogs east of the city.

AstraZeneca Plc raised its earnings forecast for the third time this year and doubled a share buyback plan as the anti-clot drug Brilinta moved one step closer to approval and a U.S. court upheld a patent on the Crestor cholesterol medicine.

PartyGaming Plc plans to acquire Bwin Interactive Entertainment AG in a reverse takeover valued at about 1.13 billion pounds ($1.76 billion) to create the world’s biggest publicly traded online gambling company.

European stocks rose as companies from Telefonica SA to Cap Gemini SA reported increased earnings and consumer confidence climbed to the highest level in more than two years.

The European Union’s probes into International Business Machines Corp. show that Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia may continue his predecessor’s penchant for going after technology companies.

Portugal Telecom SGPS SA agreed to buy a stake in Telemar Norte Leste SA to remain in the Brazilian telecommunications market as it sells its shares in the country’s biggest mobile-phone operator to Telefonica SA.

The Spanish telecom giant will buy out Portugal Telecom's share in their Vivo Brazilian wireless venture after raising its bid for a third time

BP Plc’s disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will keep the planet’s biggest pot of untapped oil and gas under the Arctic ice for now as regulators toughen drilling rules and demand better ways to handle spills.

Earnings growth at Reliance Industries Ltd., India’s largest company by market value, may slow from the fastest pace in more than two years as the company falls behind schedule to increase gas production, investors said.

China, the world’s largest polluter, said the number of environmental accidents rose 98 percent in the first six months of the year, as demand for energy and minerals lead to poisoned rivers and oil spills.

Guangdong Development Bank is moving currency and bond traders to Shanghai as the city's role as a financial center grows

China, the world’s most populous nation, needs about 800 billion yuan ($118 billion) to complete high-speed rail projects as the country invests in train services to pare pollution and travel times.

(This is an edited excerpt from an op-ed piece I just wrote for Xconomy, posted here as I think it provides some nuance on my views on regulation of genetic testing that was lacking from my post last week.Some context for new readers: a Congressional investigation into the direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing industry last week left a sour taste in the mouths of many observers of the embryonic industry; it was a vicious, one-sided affair, starring a biased report on a "sting" operation performed by the US Government Accountability Office. Along with other recent moves by the FDA, it potentially sets the scene for draconian regulation to be laid down on the industry. Here I argue that other, more careful approaches are the best way forward.For more discussion from multiple viewpoints on the regulatory battle ahead, check out the posts by my co-authors on Genomes Unzipped and the ensuing comments threads: Caroline Wright argues that genetic data provides educational opportunities that should not be legislated away, and Jeff Barrett and Kate Morley argue that different standards should be applied to medical and non-medical tests.)The costs of regulationIt would be all too easy to use the false claims and unethical behaviour depicted in the GAO report to justify a whole-sale FDA crackdown on the direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry, and that was certainly the flavour of the Congress proceedings. However, such a move would be short-sighted, and would ultimately harm consumers more than it protected them. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

Something told the wild geese It was time to go, Though the fields lay golden Something whispered, "snow." Leaves were green and stirring, Berries, luster-glossed, But beneath warm feathers Something cautioned, "frost." All the sagging orchards Steamed with amber spice, But each wild breast stiffened At remembered ice. Something told the wild geese It was time to fly, Summer sun was on their wings, Winter in their cry. - Rachel Field I'm trying to get back to normal - even though things aren't quite normal here. In the last three weeks my blogging home has melted down twice and my physical home is up for grabs and I admit, I'm a bit discombobulated. But I'm also laying down the question of whether we should move, and putting it in Eric's hands. My husband both loathes moving more than I do and also worries about money more than I do - so in the end, I think this is going to come down to Eric's gut feeling - does he fear and loathe moving less than he fears and loathes financial instability? Honestly, this is a question only he can answer. For myself, I've actually sort of settled down on the subject and come to the conclusion that we can both make a go of it here and also make a good go of it there. That is, both options are ok with me - if I'm dissatisfied with the community here, I can work harder at it, and see if I can get more cool people out this way. We can rent out the in-law apartment to make the house more affordable. And while I worry about the tax burden and the costs, I've been poor enough in my life that we'd have to just be a lot more unstable for me to freak out. I'm content to make it work here, and I also think there are virtues to trying to make it work there - and I'll do either one. What *I* don't deal well with is uncertainty - but this isn't my decision in some way - I could push Eric one way or another, but I don't want to live with him when pushed ;-), so honestly, it is in my husband's hands. So I'm starting to focus back on my daily life - and there's certainly plenty to do there. Bazillions of herbs to harvest and dry. Plenty of vegetables, gardens to weed, quarts of peach salsa to can. The shelves are filling up and I have to clean and reorganize the kitchen - and that kind fo work will matter whether we stay or go. And like the wild geese in my oldest, Eli's favorite poem, I can feel the tang of winter coming. When you live on a farm, and when you eat with the seasons, winter is always coming in a way - I order my Thanksgiving turkey in February, order the seeds potatoes for my Chanukah latkes just a month or so after we finish eating them, thin our autumn's apples in June, plant the beets and kale we'll eat in December in July. Round and round and round we go, and we we stop we always know. It isn't like things really stop in winter - there's plenty to do in the quiet times. But at some point the last of the brussels sprouts and winter greens will be done, the hens will take their annual sabbatical from laying, and the food we have will be the food we eat, with light and judicious purchasing from things far away. Because we want to keep this light and judicious, we are always looking at the abundant plenty now with ideas of how we can put more summer into our pantry for the short, cold days ahead. There is a moment in summer, usually about halfway through - about now, really, when I begin to feel that tang of winter. It isn't caused by anything in particular - it is hot and humid right now, no change in the weather to shift my worldview. I've been canning and preserving since June, so the pickles and jams aren't the reason. The hay has been cut for a while now, and the animal's winter feed has been on our mind since June too. No, it is something intangible, faint, hard to identify, but real. Something is telling me to move my always-thinking-forward cyclical life into higher gear - perhaps an instinct, perhaps a habit born from a life of back to school planning - who knows. But it is time - not to go, but to recognize that steaming amber spice is a transient, passing thing, to be loved, held onto, preserved. I don't have to do this, of course - I can buy my thanksgiving turkey at a store, buy apples weekly at the same place. I don't have to change my diet from season to season - although the tastes and nutritional value and price will change, I could just keep on eating and doing the same things day after day. I don't want to, though. Besides the fact that my body craves what is coming, and gets frustrated with the good-looking, empty tasting aseasonal alternatives, those choices come with costs I don't want to bear. Every time I spend a dollar on food, I vote for what kind of food system I'm going to have - and I want to vote for what I want to see more of. My neighbors with farms can't provide me with strawberries and tomatoes in February - so if I'm going to vote for them, I'm going to eat those things sparingly - or not at all. At the same time, the lush abundance of summer in the Northeast is so overwhelming that without a serious commitment, food would go to waste, which seems to me a loss and a sorrow, when I know I will want it so badly in the cold. I can't eat every zucchini, eat every berry on the bush - we give it away, we share with friends and neighbors and the food pantry, and still, there is more. This plenty, glorious organic excess, produced in tandem with nature would be lost in part if I didn't put some of it away for winter. And it simply isn't that hard to do - the returns are so vast, the meals that I've done the primary labor for in summer, the short winter evenings that can be made longer by a dinner half ready, and fresh from last summer's heat, are worth it. This is what human beings have done for almost all the time in human history that we have abided in cold climates. I don't have any idea how much that history is bred into my bones - all I know is that like the squirrel who gathers more acorns and the bear that grows fat with berries, I can feel the whisper of frost. And there's something energizing and invigorating about that call, that sense of instinct taking over. I'm not really sure where I will winter - what nest I will crawl into, what fire I will sit before. But I know enough about my cold and pleasant place to know that every taste of the abundance of summer will be welcome, every bit of heat in a jar will be beloved when the cold seeps in the cracks and the quiet time begins. Summer sun is on my back, but winter is in my dreams - and hands. Sharon Read the comments on this post... Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

Funny how everything old is new again, isn't it? Yes, if there's one thing I've learned over nearly six years of blogging, it's that, sooner or later, everything is recycled, and I do mean everything. At least, that was the thought going through my mind when I came across PZ's discussion of a clueless wonder who appears to be advocating a science section in that cesspit of anti-vaccine quackery and quantum woo, The Huffington Post, whose proclivities for pseudoscience have led its activities to be characterized as a war on medical science. It's actually more than just a war on medical science, though. It's a war on all science, as posts by Deepak Chopra and a recent pro-"intelligent design" creationism post claiming that Darwin led inexorably to Hitler's genocide demonstrated. If there were any conclusive evidence that HuffPo is all about all kinds of pseudoscience, I was hard-pressed to think of what it could be. It's deja vu all over again, as the saying goes, given that a proposal that HuffPo develop a science section was floated to the science blogosphere nearly two and a half years ago, to the hysterical guffaws of the assembled science blogosphere, guffaws that turned to gasps of dismay when science bloggers realized that this was a serious proposal. Fortunately, the proposal appeared to have gone nowhere, although unfortunately not entirely so given how much HuffPo seems to have expanded its medical writings into realms of quackery hitherto unplumbed outside of NaturalNews.com, Mercola.com, and Whale.to. So here we are, nearly two and a half years after the previous time that someone advocated a science section for HuffPo, to the ridicule of serious science and medical bloggers everywhere, and the same idea rises from the grave again, like one of those zombies in The Return of the Living Dead who claw their way out of the ground as the rain picks up the 245-Trioxin in the crematorium smoke and saturates the graveyard with it. This time around, the person advocating the formation of a science section at HuffPo is someone named J.L. Vernon, who wrote a post entitled Ongoing debate about the establishment of a "Science" section on the Huffington Post "News" website. He starts out with what sounds like an admirable set of goals: Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

Another book with my name on it has just appeared. Again it's a kid's book: Dorling Kindersley's Know It All (Baines 2010) - a fantastically well illustrated, fact-packed encylopedia of everything science (and the successor to the highly successful 2009 Ask Me Anything). It's a multi-authored book (authors: Simone Bos, Julie Ferris, Ian Graham, Susan Kennedy, Darren Naish, Jim Pipe, Carole Stott and John Woodward). My section - titled 'Dinosaurs' - isn't just on dinosaurs; it also includes spreads on Palaeozoic tetrapods, ichthyosaurs, pterosaurs, Pleistocene mammals, and hominids. Does it really tell the Tet Zoo reader anything they don't already know? No, of course not. But it's still worth talking about, as I find it interesting that I'm increasingly able to get 'new' ideas on prehistoric tetrapods into popular books, and hence into 'mainstream' culture... Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

In the wake of last week's defeat of cap and trade, the predictable narrative offered by bloggers and commentators has been to blame the failure on industry, skeptics, and Republicans. It's also the explanation, unfortunately, likely echoing in the minds of many scientists and environmental advocates. But it's important to take a step back from the easy emotional reaction and take a look at the complexity of factors that shape societal gridlock on this issue. As I remarked to Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth earlier this month: If we were able to statistically model societal inaction on climate change, what proportion of the variance would be accounted for by the disinformation efforts of skeptics and false balance by journalists? Perhaps 10%. Maybe 15%? [Commentators] unfortunately tend to exaggerate the influence of climate skeptics while overlooking the many other factors that contribute to societal gridlock... At the Breakthrough blog, as Devon Swezey, Yael Borofsky, and Jesse Jenkins detail, Republicans opposed the bill but so did many Democrats giving Harry Reid likely only 30-40 votes in favor. And while the Chamber of Commerce opposed the bill, major industry members including Shell, BP, and Alcoa helped craft the legislation and actively lobbied in favor. The public opinion and media environment also contributed to the legislative failure, but this factor is far more complex than narrowly blaming the work of skeptics, conservative media, or claims about "false balance" in coverage. As I described in a panel presentation earlier this year at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, legislation on climate change--which necessitates a non-incremental, systemic change in policy--should be compared to other similar policy debates where wider public opinion and the level of news attention has played a decisive role. As the recent Six Americas of Global Warming report shows, the U.S. public has yet to come to the type of widespread consensus and opinion-intensity on the issue that creates the incentive for the White House, Democratic members of Congress, and moderates among Republicans to take the political risks of pushing through legislation. To get to that point, we need to rethink the focus and nature of policy action and how we communicate about the issue. Following Copenhagen and now with the failure of cap and trade, a window has opened for discussion of alternative policy directions. New voices, seats at the table, and fresh ideas are needed on the most effective approaches to curbing greenhouse gas emissions, policy proposals that are also capable of gaining bi-partisan support in Congress. In an interview with Ezra Klein at the Washington Post, Michael Shellenberger offers this perspective: I think that some time needs to pass for Democrats and liberals and greens to assess what happened and start coming to terms with the political, economic and technological realities that are the driving force behind the serial political failures of cap-and-trade. Our view is you need a price on carbon, but that it's going to start very low. No one will impose or sustain a high price on carbon as long as the gap between fossil fuels and clean energy remains so wide. So we need to be moving to a framework where at the center is technological innovation to close the gap between fossil fuels and clean energy. That might need to be funded with a small tax on carbon. But the center is the technological innovation. In conjunction with our policy approach to the problem, we also need to rethink how we communicate about the relevance of climate change and importantly the benefits that would accrue from proposed action. Environmental groups spent record amounts of resources on advertising and lobbying on behalf of cap and trade. From this effort, what lessons were learned? What appears to have been successful? What strategies can be ruled out as dead ends? As the NY Times' Tom Friedman concluded in his column yesterday: The Senate's failure to act is a result of many factors, but one is that the climate-energy policy debate got disconnected from average people. We need less talk about "climate" and more about how conservation saves money, renewable energy creates jobs, restoring the gulf's marshes sustains fishermen and preserving the rainforest helps poor people. Said Glenn Prickett, vice president at the Nature Conservancy: "We have to take climate change out of the atmosphere, bring it down to earth and show how it matters in people's everyday lives." See also: Audio and Highlights of the Harvard Kennedy School Panel w/ Andrew Revkin on Climate Change, Skeptics, and the Media Study: Re-Framing Climate Change as a Public Health Issue Slate: More Science Won't Solve Climate Change Gridlock At Slate, A Need for Diplomacy in the Climate Wars Read the comments on this post... Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

"Don't blame yourself. The apocalypse wasn't your fault. Actually, it was just as much your fault as it was anyone else's. Come to think of it, if you're an American, it was probably about 80-90 percent more your fault than the average human. But don't let that get you down. It wasn't exclusively your fault. Unless you're the president. Then it might be your fault. But you'll have plenty of interns to tell you that it wasn't, so you'll be fine." -Meghann Marco Nothing gets a scientist in the press quite like telling everyone that we're all gonna die. Remember when there was talk of creating black holes that destroy the world at the LHC? Remember the hype that the world's going to end on December 21st, 2012? Remember the supposed end-of-civilization-as-we-know it from Y2K? (Actually, younger readers may not!) As you may have guessed, none of these things either has destroyed the world or is likely going to. These stories are always out there, and they're almost always full of gross misinformation. One of the public services that science (and scientists) often perform is getting the correct information out there, out of the hopes that this will allay the hysteria and the wasted resources that these scares cause. But what do you do when it's one of your own who causes scares like this? I'm looking squarely at you, asteroid- and comet-hunters. Remember, a few years ago, there was speculation that there was a 1 in 37 chance that the large asteroid, Apophis, would hit the Earth with devastating results? Of course, now that we've taken better data, that chance is now down to less than 1 in 100,000. And this seems to be a recurring theme in popular media; I recall watching the worst episode ever of History Channel's "The Universe" on comets and asteroids destroying the Earth. To what should be no surprise, a new asteroid, relatively large in size, with poor data mapping its trajectory, is in the news. I've gotten to read headlines like: Asteroid Could Threaten the Earth in 2182, Giant Asteroid Headed Towards Earth; Could Level London, and Will an Asteroid Kill Us All in 2182? The reports are that there's a 1-in-1,000 chance that we're going to get hit. And I get it. I get why this is so scary. After all, a giant asteroid impact is what wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If that happened to Earth today, just as surely, we'd all be goners. Here's my problem with this type of reporting, both by journalists and by scientists. Remember the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf? It only works if the boy cries wolf when there's actually a wolf! Despite what's being reported, the odds are almost certainly much, much safer than "one-in-a-thousand." But you'd never know that from reading the news. Take Apophis, for example. The odds were reported at 1-in-37 because the data was poor at that point, the asteroid's trajectory was very uncertain, and solid conclusions couldn't be drawn. It wasn't until better data was taken and its trajectory was better determined that we could come up with a realistic estimate. And we did, and it was more like 1-in-250,000. But this means Apophis never had a 1-in-37 chance of hitting us, we just didn't have enough data to know better. Does this latest story feel like déjà vu? It should. When you tell stories like this, giving 1-in-1000 odds of our destruction I don't believe you. I've seen the pattern of bad reporting, and I assume -- correctly -- that you give "scary" odds because your data isn't good enough to make a realistic prediction. (Guess what? The data for this new asteroid, 1999 RQ36, isn't very good yet.) And you do it, alarming the public, every couple of years. And when more data comes in, we find out -- every time so far -- that the object is actually going to miss the Earth entirely by many thousands (or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands) of kilometers. So STOP. We've got lots of asteroids, and we need to learn to track them, because when a potentially devastating one actually does wind up on a collision course with Earth, we'd like to be ready. And even though "extinction" events (like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs) only happen once every hundred million years or so, smaller, substantial impacts that cause significant damage happen thousands of times more frequently. But by causing unfounded hysteria like this, based on inconclusive data, you make all of us look bad. Worst of all, you add to this awful misconception that science doesn't know what it's talking about most of the time. And that's not true. Science knows what it's talking about. But loudmouth scientists (and science journalists) who cry "wolf!" (or "Asteroid!") harm us all, and I'm speaking out against it. We're not all going to die, not from this asteroid, not anytime soon. And your great-great-grandkids probably won't either; give us a few more years to better track this asteroid and we'll have an accurate, meaningful estimate of the odds for you then. But until then, please don't lose any sleep over it. Read the comments on this post... Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

A friend of mine sent me the following video today. It is footage of renowned physiologist John Severinghaus talking about the White Mountain Research Station. As a bit of background, John Severinghaus is a big deal in physiology. If you have ever been in the hospital and had to have the O2 and CO2 in your blood measured to determine if your heart and lungs were working properly, you can thank John Severinghaus for the ability to have that test done. Dr. Severinghaus built the first blood gas machine and is credited for the first functioning CO2 and O2 electrodes. If you want an interesting read, click here for an article about the creation of the first blood gas machine and a couple great pictures. Dr. Severinghaus is also the first to use mass spectrometry in the operating room to measure anesthesia gases. But, back to the video at hand. A friend sent me this video in which Dr. Severinghaus talks about his work studying altitude on White Mountain. If for no other reason, it is a fascinating oral and visual history of physiology. My favorite parts of the video are seeing people drawing spinal fluid from each other at the top of a mountain and blood from each other with no gloves on. Indeed, this is the way much of our knowledge about how we respond to altitude has been obtained. Groups of scientists who were interested in climbing would pack their gear, go to altitude, and study each other. I wonder if these types of studies would be approved today. Ok, I don't really wonder because I am afraid I already know the answer. It is becoming increasing difficult to have invasive studies approved by an institutional review board. It is damned near impossible to convince them to allow you to study each other. And while I understand the arguments about not allowing postdocs and graduate students to experiment on each other (not that I necessarily agree with them), there are some who believe that the regulation of research is excessive and is driving qualified and enthusiastic investigators away from science. I think he may be right. I know that in the next several studies I am planning I am considering making less than optimal measurements not because I know they will be safer, but because I know the IRB won't give me a hassle about them. And, these are measurements that have been made previously routinely in the literature. I wonder if in the long run this new practice enhances the safety of human subjects or simply enhances the volume of suboptimal data in the literature. Is it better to study six people invasively and obtain definitive data or 130 people noninvasively and obtain data whose interpretation is left to question? Unfortunately, today's IRB's tend to require the latter. Which is a shame because few studies have advances physiology the way that Dr., Severinghaus's studies did. Read the comments on this post... Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

In a humble effort at citizen journalism, we went around New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf asking people what they thought of the BP oil spill. Most of victims don't have voices, but here is what a few of the humans thought (they wrote down their opinions or, on occasion, dictated it to us). For the collection, see the Flickr set. If you would like to add your photo and thought to the fray, please email me at guilty planet at gmail dot com. Josiah & Kejeaun, Jennings, LA Don Houghton, New Orleans, LA Joshua Carter, Clayton, TX John Smith, New Orleans, LA Zack Vincent, Brent Smith, & Robby Khader, New Orleans, LA Read the comments on this post... Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

George Steinmetz began his aerial adventures on leave from Stanford in 1979. Thirty one years later he has accumulated thousands of photographs from his flying machine. He showed us a sample here at the Aspen Environment Forum, sponsored by the National Geographic and the Aspen Institute. The Waw an Namu volcano in S. Libya, A 20K peak in the Himalayas, deserts encroaching on farms in China, immigrant tomato pickers in Saudia Arabia, sand basins in the Sahara- all photographed from a motorized paraglider. The flying man is determined and creative. He has dodged arrows, fled machine guns, survived crashes, and recovered from severe altitude sickness. Read the comments on this post... Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

The DC Weatherams eventFest Coalition is a partnership of government, scientific societies, private enterprise, and institutions in education which focuses on serving as an important resource for information on weather, water, and climate, and how these impact our lives. Recognized as a "Perfect Festival Partner" for its noted efforts in the event, the Coalition is especially cited by the Festival for assembling an impressive array of exhibits -- including those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the American Meteorological Society -- all under the common theme, or strand, of atmospheric and oceanic science. This "common thread" concept is a great way not only to add depth and excitement to exhibits and presentations, but also to allow Expo visitors to explore related topics from different perspectives. Using this approach to examining the wonders and mystery of weather, water and climate certainly adds intrigue and excitement to the many hands-on exhibits sponsored by DC WeatherFest Coalition partners, says Elizabeth Mills, a Coalition representative who serves as Associate Director, Education Programs at the American Meteorological Society. For example, she says, "visitors in one area of our exhibits can be interviewed on camera, in another explore a weather station, and in others learn about the latest in weather research," and in other exhibits, "they can see, first-hand, the instrumentation used in the ocean and understand the way climate is changing, or watch their kids being entertained by the WeatherBug mascot." Ron Gird, NOAA National Weather Service Outreach Program Manager adds, "Visitors will take away knowledge of how to access critical weather, water and climate information to protect lives and property. Information on careers and educational opportunities will also be available." Organizations with exhibits in the WeatherFest Coalition include: the American Meteorological Society (with AWS WeatherBug, WJLA-TV, and News Channel 8); Alliance for Climate Education; American Geophysical Union; American Society of Limnology and Oceanography; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Weather Service; George Mason University; and National Earth Science Teachers Association. The DC WeatherFest Coalition is also represented by organizations and institutions on its Festival Executive Committee (many which will have volunteers at booth areas). These include: CSC, Federal Aviation Administration - NextGen Integration & Implementation; Howard University; HowThe WeatherWorks; ITT; Johns Hopkins University; Lockheed Martin; NASA; Noblis; Raytheon, and the University of Maryland. We have noticed that Festival partners, in addition to the DC WeatherFest Coalition, have also made use of use of the "common thread" concept in their exhibits, such as the "Evolution Thought Trail" in its exhibits covering evolution. If your institution or organization would like to sponsor a "common thread" track for the Expo, or if you have ideas for a track, please email the festival. Read the comments on this post... Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

"`It's quite hard to destroy the Earth.' Does that statement make anyone else nervous? I mean, does that sound like experience talking?" -from the comments on the LHC at slashdot Last week, I started an open thread, giving you the chance to ask about how certain we were about the validity of certain physical theories. (The thread is still open, FYI.) Here's the ranking scale I'm using, along with a few examples of where certain ideas currently fall. And some of the most intriguing questions that came up were about the Higgs: what is it, how does it give mass to things, and is it even a certainty? Let's take a deeper look, starting at the basics. These are all of the different types of particles that make up the known Universe, and I'll give you a basic introduction to them below. There are four different types: The Quarks: In the upper left-hand corner, the quarks are tiny, massive subatomic particles. They make up protons, neutrons, and the nuclei of all the elements in the Universe. The also make up fun, weird little oddities (like mesons and heavy baryons) that we've discovered thanks to particle accelerators and cosmic rays. Each of the six quarks comes in three different colors (red, white, and blue), two different spins (+½ and -½), and in both matter and anti-matter varieties, for a total of 72 possible states. Ultimately, the quarks are responsible for the majority of the matter we know of in the Universe. (Not including dark matter.) The Leptons: In the lower right-hand corner, the leptons are much lighter than their quark counterparts. The most famous, the electron, is responsible for electricity and for turning those protons, neutrons, and nuclei into atoms. The six leptons can all exist in matter and anti-matter varieties, but while the electron, muon, and tau can have two different spins (+½ and -½), the three neutrinos don't get a choice; the "matter" neutrinos are all spin -½ and the "antimatter" ones are all spin +½. They all have masses, including neutrinos, which shouldn't. (Indicating that there is something beyond the standard model.) All told, there are 15 different types of leptons. The Force Carriers: On the right, these are the particles responsible for the forces between the quarks and leptons. There's the photon, responsible for the electromagnetic force, which you know best in its role as light. It doesn't come in matter and anti-matter varieties, though, as it's its own antiparticle, and the only two states it can have are from its different spins (+1 and -1; 0 is forbidden because it's massless). There are the W's (electrically charged + and -, with spins +1, 0, and -1) and the Z (neutral, with spins +1, 0, and -1), the particles responsible for the weak force and for radioactive decay. And then there are the gluons, the massless "glue" that's responsible for the strong nuclear force. It holds protons, neutrons, and nuclei together. Gluons also have two different spins (+1 and -1), eight different color combinations, and no electric charge. All told, this means there are 27 different states for the force carriers, which nails down all of the known forces except gravity. The Higgs: Without this, the standard model doesn't make sense. Yet, it's the last part of it that hasn't been discovered. If it exists, it would interact with (or "couple to") the quarks, the charged leptons, and the weak force carriers, giving mass to all of them, but not with the photons or gluons, leaving them massless. Now, those are the particles that live in the standard model's zoo. The quarks, leptons, and force carriers have all been discovered, and they've all been tested with extraordinary rigor. The last remaining mystery? Where does mass come from? According to theory, the Higgs couples to quarks, leptons, and the W's and Z's, giving them mass, but not to photons or gluons. In theory, it also couples to itself, meaning that it, itself, has mass. And what is that mass? Well, without having successfully made and detected one, we're not sure. But, based on the standard model, we can place limits on its mass. Before the LHC, there was LEP, which was the same underground, 27 km-long tunnel used for the LHC today. Only, instead of protons, they collided electrons and positrons. Based on measurements from LEP, the Higgs would have been discovered if it had a mass below 114 GeV, so we can be confident that if the Higgs exists, it's heavier than this. (A GeV, by the way, is a unit of energy. A proton, for comparison, has a rest-mass energy of just less than 1 GeV, or 0.938 GeV, to be more precise.) It also can't be too heavy. Precise measurements of the electromagnetic and weak interactions tell us, that if the standard model is valid, the Higgs can't be too heavy, either. From limits from multiple colliders, the Higgs must be lighter than 186 GeV as well. So there's only a narrow range left where we can expect to find the Higgs. And it's a question of who'll get there first. You may have seen, in the news this week, the Tevatron (the giant accelerator at Fermilab, in Batavia, Illinois) has ruled out part of that mass range! If the Higgs exists, it's either lighter than 158 GeV or heavier than 175 GeV. The Tevatron will continue to both run and look at the data from its current run, and will either extend those limits or -- hopefully -- find the Higgs! But if not... The LHC -- the giant collider on the border between France and Switzerland -- ought to find it, or be able to rule out the Standard Model's Higgs entirely. Either way is incredibly interesting. Although it's still speculative, most of us expect that the Higgs will be found. Most of the theoretical particle physicists I know, in fact, expect that when it is found, it will weigh in somewhere around 140 GeV, although that's based on some speculative assumptions. It's hard to imagine that the standard model, good for all of these billions of collisions we've observed, would suddenly fail us now. But we have good imaginations. Maybe the Higgs, the only fundamental scalar (completely spinless) particle in the standard model, is forbidden? We've never observed a fundamental scalar before, after all. Maybe some of the standard model "particles" aren't fundamental particles at all! Although these models are restricted, they're certainly possible. Or maybe, perhaps, there's some really wild stuff going on, and that we don't understand the origin of mass and the nature of matter nearly as well as we think we do. What do I think? I think that the Higgs, until we discover it directly, is still a speculative idea, but I think it's a likely one. (The indirect evidence for it and against the Higgs-less models is pretty strong.) If I were a betting man, I'd say the odds were better than 50-50 that the Higgs exists, and that it exists in the mass range where we expect it. But nature is often full of surprises, and one of the most interesting (theoretically, anyway) things that could happen would be for the Tevatron and the LHC to both find no Higgs. So it's speculative right now, but even if we find it, there's still one more question that's going to arise. Why are the masses of these standard model particles so different from one another? The electron weighs in at only half of an MeV (0.000511 GeV for those of you keeping score), while the top quark tips the scales at more than 170 GeV (173.1 GeV, give or take about 1.3 GeV). The Higgs must have different coupling constants to each of these particles, but the standard model offers no explanation for either why or how. Plus, even though this gives particles a "rest mass" (what some people term inertia), it doesn't explain how things with mass gravitationally attract or interact. So even if we find the God particle, we still have a bunch left to learn. Hope this has helped shed some light on the mysterious Higgs boson; what follow-up questions do you have? Read the comments on this post... Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

Back at the start of the summer, I asked a question about automotive thermodynamics: On a hot day, is it better to open your car windows a crack when making a short stop, or leave them closed? For a long term-- say, leaving your car parked outside all day-- I hope everyone will agree that leaving the windows slightly open is the better call, but the answer isn't as clear for a short stop. There might well be some time during which the open-window car heats up faster as warm air from outside gets in, while the closed-window car holds in the air-conditioned goodness longer. It occurred to me not long after posting that, while walking through the parking lot, that it was possible to test this with SCIENCE! A colleague in computer science has a car that is very nearly identical to mine, as you can see in this picture: Chris's car is similar enough to mine that I have more than once stood next to it like an idiot pressing the "unlock" button on my car remote and wondering why the door wasn't opening. This makes for a nearly ideal test of the question of how to arrange your windows: just park both cars in the sun, one with the windows open and one with the windows closed, and monitor their temperatures over half an hour or so. It took a while to get together, but yesterday, we did just that. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

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