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October 30, 2007
We've been following the crescendo of stories illustrating the severe limitations of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (here, here, and here): CPSC lacks the resources to test products adequately, it canât levy hefty enough fines to deter corporate wrongdoing, and it can announce a recall…
October 29, 2007
The US Dept of Justice (DOJ) announced last week an agreement with British Petroleum (BP) on three outstanding criminal cases, with monetary penalities totaling more than $370 million. Included among the settlement were violations of the Clean Air Act associated with the March 2005 explosion…
October 29, 2007
On both sides of the Atlantic, new research into lead and crime is attracting attention. The New York Times and The Independent both reported on a new study by Amherst College economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, who found a correlation between blood lead levels and violent crime rates. Jascha Hoffman…
October 29, 2007
You lol'ed at science education spoof Look Around You: Brain, and now for Halloween here's Look Around You: Ghosts. In this nine minute pseudoscience mockumentary you'll learn things like, "Ectoplasm is perfectly safe to eat, and tastes like pig's milk." Spooky!
October 26, 2007
Andrew Leonard at How the World Works has rounded up posts about the role of climate change in the California wildfires, and concludes that environmentalists are expressing themselves with nuance. Ben at Technology, Health & Development points out that the particulate-matter density in the…
October 26, 2007
[Updated (10/30/07) below]
Representatives from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the Chamber of Commerce met this week with White House Office of Management and Budget in a last-ditch effort to influence OSHAâs rule clarifying employersâ obligation to pay for workers' personal…
October 26, 2007
Dave Kellet jokes about a visual illusion the visual pop-out phenomenon, in his webcomic Sheldon. Click the cropped image to see the full comic strip. Thanks Dave!
[Thanks, T.N. for the correction. Two blog posts about it here and here.]
October 26, 2007
In time for Halloween:
Trailer for Central State: Asylum for the Insane. A filmmaker prowls a closed mental institution to "...uncover the mysteries left behind when the facilities closed in 1994." There's lots of shaky handheld camerawork in poorly lit tunnels, and shakier rumours of ghosts, but…
October 25, 2007
Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified on Tuesday at the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works hearing âExamining the Human Health Impacts of Global Warming.â Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that Gerberdingâs written testimony…
October 25, 2007
The Council of Science Editors has organized 235 journals from 37 countries are publishing more than 750 articles on poverty and human development this week. For its theme issue, PLoS Medicine asked a variety of commentators from around the world to name the single intervention that they think…
October 24, 2007
Flight crews from the UK and Australia are warning that engine-oil fumes can contaminate cabin air in certain types of planes. The BBC reports that after two incidents this year in which flight crews experienced problems with fumes, some flight crew members from the Exeter-based Flybe airline are…
October 24, 2007
The Chesapeake Watershed in the eastern U.S. covers over 500 miles, reaching north to Otsego Lake, NY and south to Virginia Beach, and traveling west to Blacksburg, VA and east to Ocean City, MD.  It's been called a "giant, sprawling system of rivers that all drain into one shallow tidal…
October 24, 2007
Omni Brain met its fundraising goal of $1000 for music education programs through DonorsChoose. Thank you to everyone who's donated. You rock! Now 30 kids will too.
But it'd be okay, you know, permissible (haha) to exceed our goal if you'd still like to help a Lisa Simpson. A few of the programs…
October 23, 2007
In late September, Topps Meat Company recalled 21.7 million pounds of ground beef for possible contamination with E. coli O157:H7, which can leave consumers with bloody diarrhea and, in the worse cases, kidney failure and death. The recall put Topps out of business, but the problem goes beyond a…
October 23, 2007
This week, the Salt Lake Tribune is running a must-read series of reports by Loretta Tofani about the human cost of the cheap goods we get from China. Tofani begins with the story of Wei Chaihua, a 44-year-old former farmer who sought factory work in order to give his children education and a…
October 23, 2007
You're seeing other ScienceBlogs readers donate, now join the love train*.
A rare serious post from Steve explains The Real Mozart Effect and why we should support music education with DonorsChoose. Playing an instrument has cognitive and developmental benefits.
That reason formed an episode of…
October 22, 2007
Shawn Boone was only 33 years old in 2003 when he was fatally burned from several violent explosions at the Hayes Lemmerz plant in Huntington, Indiana. The plant manufactured cast aluminum automotive wheels.  These firey blasts, which also severely burned two other workers, were fueled…
October 22, 2007
The spin doctors have been hard at work on the EPAâs Superfund Program. The result is that the public and many lawmakers are misinformed about how the program works, along with the continued need for the program.
Last week, Professor Rena Steinzor of the University of Maryland School of Law…
October 20, 2007
Since we broke the story of the first "popcorn lung" case in a popcorn consumer, many new readers have visited The Pump Handle. We've been writing about the hazards of diacetyl for years (here and here, for example). If this is your first visit, you might want to know who we are, where our name…
October 19, 2007
Drug resistance is a big news topic this week. Tara Smith at Correlations describes MRSAâs move from hospitals to communities; Mike the Mad Biologist has numbers on the toll of that antibiotic-resistant bug; and Theo Francis at the WSJ Health Blog highlights a shortage of infection-control…
October 19, 2007
Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao announced that workplace injury and illness rates for 2006 were the "lowest ever recorded" and noted it was the fourth consecutive year of a rate decline for private sector employers.
"The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, showing the lowest rates since the…
October 19, 2007
Look Around You: Brain. "The brain is basically a wrinkled bag of skin filled with warm water, veins, and thought muscles. ... The opposite of the brain is probably the bum." Brief vintage BBC parody of science education films about the brain. Watch through to the end, when a brain in a jar is…
October 18, 2007
A lot of people who care about the high rates of uninsurance in the U.S. do so because it just seems wrong that the wealthiest country in the world leaves a large swath of its population without healthcare â and, thus, facing employment difficulties, financial ruin, years of unnecessary pain or…
October 18, 2007
The demand for coal is going through the roof. Do giant U.S. energy companies really need a handout?
Apparently, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opporunity thinks so. Yesterday, Governor Rod R. Blagojevich announced the awarding of millions of dollars in economic development aid…
October 18, 2007
Via The Neurocritic.
brainscannr by Ken Yasumoto-Nicolson. Try it with your name. Hot! :)
October 17, 2007
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a state law that will require manufacturers to remove six types of phthalates from products intended for children under the age of three. The San Francisco Chronicle quotes the billâs author, Assemblywoman Fiona Ma:
âCalifornia continues to lead…
October 17, 2007
Gold mining is in the news this week after a makeshift gold mine in Colombia collapsed and killed 22. The dead were mostly women, many of them single mothers digging for a few grams of gold that would allow them to feed their families. The Guardianâs Rory Carroll explains, âAn informal agreement…
October 16, 2007
Just before the House passed legislation last month requiring OSHA to regulate diacetyl, OSHAâs press office went into high gear, announcing the agency was getting to work on just that issue. Two days before the vote, OSHA announced it was initiating rulemaking under section 6(b) of the…
October 16, 2007
Youâve probably heard about âcolony collapse disorder,â the mysterious widespread die-off of bees thatâs been worrying commercial beekeepers in recent years. Last month, researchers suggested that Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus was playing a role; parasites and overwork (and mobile phones) have also…
October 16, 2007
I am going to take a break from astronomy blogging for an indefinite period of time.
I'm finding that as I'm involved in my new job, while I still do get a charge out of posts like the Big Bang post I did the other day, my heart isn't 100% in this.
Also, after the deleted post yesterday, I'm just…