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Dignity denied

Today's must-read article is by Dan Savage, whose mother recently died of pulmonary fibrosis. It's personal and painful, and it also touches on the political. Washington state has a ballot measure coming up that would make it legal for doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication for the terminally ill, and Savage's mother, when her disease reached a crisis stage, had to choose what kind of painful death she wanted to face. People must accept death at "the hour chosen by God," according to Pope Benedict XVI, leader of the Catholic Church, which is pouring money into the campaign against I-…

What's New on ScienceBlogs.de, May 29-June 4

It's back! Here are the stories that were moving and shaking this week at our European partner site, ScienceBlogs.de: From a Science Museum Basement What do you know about Germany? We wear lederhosen and dirndls, we drink lots of beer...and we have the Deutsches Museum! At the moment huge efforts are going on to modernize it. Which makes it all the more interesting to take a look in the basement, where past exhibits and miscellaneous collections are kept. Jürgen Scriba, a photographer and science writer, invites us to share some of his views and impressions of the Deutsches Museum. New…

Applying Biological Principles in Designing Robots of the Future

Hod Lipson is noted for bringing biologically-inspired approaches to the study of robotics - all in an effort to answer what he believes to be two great challenging questions in engineering: "First, can we design machines that can design other machines, and second, can we make machines that can make other machines?" he asks. Both of these questions, Hod contends, lie at the crux of understanding the engineering process itself, and science's ability to design, make and maintain complex machines, like robots, in the future. Biological life itself, he says, has answered many of these questions…

AT&T Sponsoring USA Science and Engineering Festival

Thanks AT&T for being a Sponsor for the USA Science and Engineering Festival! Find the full press release here on prnewswire. Festival will feature AT&T Eco Booth and 50 satellite events around the nation to motivate kids to take interest in science, technology, engineering and math WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- To motivate kids to take interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), AT&T* will sponsor the USA Science and Engineering Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on October 23rd and 24th. According to a new report by the President's…

A Perfect Partner: DC WeatherFest Coalition Uses 'Common Thread' to Link Multiple Institutions in Exploring Weather, Water and Climate

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…

Digital Biology Friday: The importance of being aerobic

If we compare sections 1, 2, and 3, we see that section 2 matches very well in a number of different samples, and that there are differences between the sequences in sections 1 and 3. We also learn something about the people who did the experiment. At first it appears somewhat odd that there are many matching sequences that are all shorter than the genome and all the same length. What's up with that? It turns out that information doesn't have anything to do with the fraction of the genome that matches our query. These short segments are PCR products. They're the same size because the PCR…

Trade publications in biology teaching

Trade publications; such as catalogs, technical bulletins, and web sites; are a valuable source of information for students in biotechnology-related courses. Not only do catalogs and technical publications provide current information, but they also contain a wealth of useful facts and physical constants that biologists need on-the-job. Further, using catalogs in the classroom mimics the way that science is carried out in the real world. In the research lab, scientists and technicians often rely on catalogs, technical bulletins, and web sites, for quick and useful information. I probably…

The Carte Blanche of Intelligent Design

As an alternative to biblical creationism, Intelligent Design infers a less obtrusive God to explain life on Earth. This deity doesn't hurl bolts of lightning, unless it's with the express purpose of sparking abiogenesis in the primordial soup. On EvolutionBlog, Jason Rosenhouse dismisses probabilistic arguments against the likelihood of complex organisms, explaining that even the most improbable-seeming outcome of natural selection is more or less inevitable. As a flawed analogy, he imagines flipping a coin 500 times. This will always manifest a sequence of heads and tails that only had a…

Cloning - what's the big deal?

First, there were The Boys From Brazil not to mention a lof of other science fiction: like, for example, the cloned dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park: Then came Dolly, the cloned sheep: Then came the AskThe ScienceBlogger weekly question: On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal. Ten years on, has cloning developed the way you expected it to?... What followed were (not in chronological order) a bunch of other cloned animals, including: some cute mice: piglets: Millie, Christa, Alexis, Carrel and Dotcom: a rhesus monkey, a male named Andy (a female named…

Carnival Roundup

In chronological order, starting with tomorrow....[under the fold] First The Synapse (neurobiology, brain and behavior) will be on June 25th, 2006 on Pure Pedantry. Next Carnival of the Godless (religion from godless perspective) will be on June 25, 2006 on Silly Humans. Next Tar Heel Tavern (North Carolina blogging) will be on June 25th, 2006 on My Blue Puzzle Piece. First Radiology Grand Rounds will be on June 25th, 2006 on Sumer's Radiology Site. Next Carnival of the Green (sustainability, environment, conservation) will be on June 26th, 2006 on Jen's Green Journal. Next Carnival of Bad…

Phase-Dependence of Rozerem Effectiveness?

Rozerem is a selective melatonin agonist. It acts on melatonin receptors at the suprachiasmatic nucleus. It is prescribed as a non-addictive sleep aid for people having difficulties with the onset of sleep, i.e., falling asleep in the evening. While melatonin itself appears unlikely to be a molecule that directly induces sleep, it does have phase-resetting effects on the circadian clock. Thus, Rozerem appears ideal as an aid for extreme "owls" to help them fall asleep (if they need to wake up early in the morning, as some jobs require). By mimicking melatonin, it would phase-advance the…

Swine flu: let's scrap the pandemic alert system

CDC is reporting about 14,000 confirmed or probable cases of swine flu, although they have already said this may represent only a fraction of the total number of infected. I wasn't able to find the latest number of those hospitalized (some of you probably have it but I couldn't locate it with a quick search), but my recollection is that it is somewhere around 300. That puts the hospitalization rate at around 2% of the confirmed/probable cases (I round figures liberally because they are too uncertain to worry about precision). 2% is the same number the Chilean health authorities are using for…

Machines of aggressively loving grace

Squid don't just make sperm: they package it up into fairly elaborate little torpedoes called spermatophores, which are either handed to the female with a specially modified arm called the hectocotyl arm, or squirted onto her with a penis. Once on the female (or a male, it really doesn't matter), the spermatophore everts, forming a structure called the spermatangia, in which all the packed sperm uncoil, ready to do their job, and the whole mass is anchored to the target with a cement body. These structures do show species-specific differences, but here is one example from Heteroteuthis…

Do the tropics have a flu season?

The scientific literature is full of specialized papers that on their face would seem to be of little interest. Here's a title like that: "Prevalence and seasonality of influenza-like illness in children, Nicaragua, 2005-2007" (Gordon et al., Emerging Infectious Diseases 2009 Mar). Over 4000 Nicaraguan children, aged 2 to 11 years old and living in the capital of Managua were followed for 2 years, April 2005 to April 2007 and observed for development of ILI (influenza-like illness). We know a lot about influenza in major industrialized countries in the northern and southern temperate zones,…

Obama dumps CDC Director

A genuine fear among many in the public health community was that Obama would not replace Dr. Julie Gerberding as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (aka, the CDC). I am relieved to report that she will be out in 9 days, although she isn't going willingly and will wring every last second of power and salary out of it: literally. Her requested resignation is effective at noon on January 20 just as Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States: CDC Director Julie Gerberding's controversial tenure will end Jan. 20 -- after Barack Obama is sworn in as president,…

Another multistate salmonella outbreak, this one from ?

You may be surprised to learn (I was) that the US is having a large (almost 400 people) multistate (42) salmonella outbreak (S. typhimurium, often but not always associated with poultry and dairy products). So far 67 hospitalizations, with patients spanning the age spectrum (ages 1 to 103).DNA fingerprinting has established all cases are related (a common source or sources). Oh, and one more thing. It didn't just begin. Apparently it's been going on since sometime in September. Like the plat du jour, this is the salmonella outbreak du jour. Last summer we were treated to the tomatoes-cilantro…

Killer business people

My students sometimes say of me that no horse is too dead for me to stop beating it, but when it comes to the tobacco industry there seems to be no way to stop its zombie like undead behavior. These folks are businesspeople, of course, and they are just carrying out their fiduciary responsibility to turn a profit for the shareholders. But they lead a double life. One as the respectable business person. The other as a cruel, vicious and cold blooded murderer. The US has led the world in anti-tobacco measures and now Europe is catching up. But it's a big world and the tobacco giants have just…

Poultry monoculture?

Public health scientists and professionals have human health and welfare at the center of our concerns. But we have learned that the human species is part of a tightly connected web of other living species and we are all roaming around in a common environment, the surface of the earth. Avian influenza is a good case in point. The influenza virus is mainly a parasite of birds but some forms also infect humans and some infect both. The influenza/A subtype designated H5N1 ("bird flu") is a case in point. It devastates terrestrial birds, like poultry, and when it infects humans it has a truly…

Awesomely horrible

We have a long history in developmental biology of studying the most amazing freaks of nature — damage to developing organisms can produce astonishingly ghastly results as the embryo tries to regulate and recover, yielding results that are almost normal. There's even a whole subdiscipline of the field, teratology, dedicated to studying aberrations of embryology. The word is perfect, since it is derived from a Greek root that means both "wonders" and "monsters". An unfortunate child in Colorado was the recipient of one of these wonders/monsters. Diagnosed with a brain tumor, when surgeons…

Bush administration is protecting privacy and constitutional rights -- of tomatoes

The FDA and CDC still don't know the origin of the massive Salmonella outbreak, now extending to 40 states. They have lots of reasons, and under current conditions it's not an easy problem since the production channels for things like tomatoes are labyrinthine. There's lots of mixing, matching, diverting, and who knows what else going on as a tomato goes from a farm or hothouse to your table or local salad bar. We know this because FDA and CDC have been telling us so as explanation for why they still don't know where a single clone of Salmnella saintpaul has managed to infect almost 1000…

Missouri: the scam me State

Faith-based disaster relief sounds a bit like a contradiction to me. Why did God send the disaster in the first place? But what do I know. I'm an atheist. I'm also an American, however, and it seems passing strange to me that money raised from Missouri taxpayers should be used to support religious organizations to "transform lives and empower Missourians." That's what Republican Governor Matt Blunt is doing with his faith-based disaster relief initiative, designed "to increase cooperation between state government and faith and community-based groups in providing services to Missouri families…

Will the Bush administration lock you up in a pandemic?

Most of us read the Federal Government pandemic flu plan as having two components: the first is procurement of vaccines and antivirals for stockpiles and sale to states at a discount; the second is to leave everything to the locals. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sees it differently and they may well be right. They see the federal pandemic flu plan as containing a covert but not subtle command and control law enforcement core. Whatever you think of the ACLU (and I confess to be ambivalent because they caved in to McCarthyite enemies of civil liberties in the 1950s; they have since…

Why trust the government about bird flu?

I'm not sure who Professor David Alexander, the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland is (he's identified as an adviser to NAOA and the UK Government on pandemic flu) but I think he's got it right: The public would put themselves at risk because they would not trust politicians to tell the truth if the country was hit by a major outbreak of bird flu, a world expert on disaster management has claimed. Professor David Alexander, of the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, has been appointed as an adviser to both Nato and the UK Government on the issue of pandemic flu. Alexander says…

Director General of OIE speaks. Too bad.

An AP report in The Daily Star (Egypt) says the head of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) is complaining that fears of a flu pandemic caused by H5N1 are overblown. He's talking to the press so presumably he understands that he has to be careful how he says things. So we also have to assume that when Bernard Vallat said that he meant to send a message. But what is the message? Vallat said the H5N1 virus has proved extremely stable, despite concerns that it could mutate into a form that could spread easily among humans. "We have never seen such a stable strain," Vallat said. He…

Pneumonia in and out of the hospital

Hospitals are dangerous places, but sometimes you have to be there. If you are a child in the developing world sick with pneumonia, the World Health Organization (WHO) thinks that's one of the times. Pneumonia is the big killer of children globally, so WHO guidelines call for children with severe pneumonia to be treated with intravenous antibiotics in the hospital. Now a landmark clinical trial from a team at the Boston University School of Public Health and published this week in The Lancet (January 4 issue), says these seriously ill children will do just as well at home on antibiotic syrup…

Poultry workers and drug resistant E. coli

Being a poultry worker, in any country is not wonderful. There's the risk of bird flu, of course. And lots of opportunity to be seriously injured. And its strenuous, difficult, low paying and dirty work, which is why it employs so many undocumented workers. It also turns out it is a great way to pick up drug resistant E. coli: Poultry workers in the United States are 32 times more likely to carry E. coli bacteria resistant to the commonly used antibiotic, gentamicin, than others outside the poultry industry, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg…

Benin, voodoo and what I am afraid of

I don't know much about the West African state of Benin, but the newswires have made sure to alert me to the fact it is the home of ritual Voodoo sacrifice. Which, it turns out, is relevant to bird flu because Benin is having a poultry outbreak with H5N1. This is not much of a surprise, as it is surrounded by neighbors that already have reported infected poultry: Nigeria, Togo, Niger and Burkina Faso. A bit farther afield but still in the region are Ghana, Ivory Coast and Cameroon, all with reported poultry outbreaks. Nigeria has also had a human fatality. But back to Voodoo. In the US we…

Public health's Maginot Line

Influenza A/H5N1 (bird flu) bubbles away this year much as in past years and public health professionals continue to wait with bated breath for the other shoe to drop. It could happen this year, next year or not at all. That's the way the world is. Betting on "not at all" isn't considered prudent by most people in public health, despite the fact that it's possible. So given the uncertainty, what is the best strategy? It is a bit disconcerting to see that the overwhelming preponderance of resources to pandemic preparedness resources are going into influenza-specific counter-measures,…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: Inductive reasoning

It's no secret atheists have an image problem in the US. That seems to be improving. What isn't improving is the public's view of Christianity. Young folks look around them and get the message. Christianity is a religion. Just like other religions. And that isn't such a good recommendation. The Barna Group supports religion, specifically, Christianity. They also do polling. I can't vouch for their methods, but the latest poll should give pause to the adherents of the Christian religion (one among many, remember): Barna polls conducted between 2004 and this year, sampling 440 non-Christians (…

A moving story for a school of public health

There are a lot of medical schools in the US (126 regular and 28 osteopathic schools), and you probably thought there must be a lot of schools of public health, too. It's true there are a lot more now than there used to be, but even with recent additions there are only 39 schools accredited by the Association for Schools of Public Health (ASPH), the official accrediting body (and in effect the trade association for the schools, although it wouldn't like to be referred to that way -- tough). So there are four times as many medical schools as Schools of Public Health. Says something. The news…

Sucking up to the feds

George Mason University in Virginia is a good school. Slightly on the conservative side, politically, but with astute thinkers in economics, political science and many other fields, including molecular biology. It also has a National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases. It has just announced it will be building a high containment research lab "aimed at thrusting the university into the forefront of the nation's counter-bioterrorism efforts" (Examiner.com). The lab, which is being built adjacent to George Mason's Prince William campus in Manassas, will house laboratories that are…

What does mumps have to teach us about pandemic flu?

It's not nice to get mumps. Mumps is caused by a paramyxovirus. Since the introduction of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine most people have been spared the unpleasantness of the swollen, inflamed an painful salivary glands, or in older individuals, the systemic complications like orchitis (inflamed testicles) that can sometimes cause sterility in young males. It can also inflame the ovaries or breasts in females. It is contagious through the respiratory route and infected people shed virus three days before they get symptoms until up to nine days after symptoms start. So vaccination is the…

Bird flu in vaccinated ducks in Guangdong, China

10,000 ducks in Guangdong Province in the south of China have died of bird flu and 100,000 more culled in an attempt to stop the spread of the disease. Massive bird flu outbreaks are not exactly a novelty these days but the Chinese incident is noteworthy because it is now reported the ducks were in vaccinated flocks: According to Guangdong Animal Epidemic Prevention Center director Yu Yedong, the 9,800 ducks that died at Sixian village had been vaccinated. But he added the first vaccination could only be 65 percent effective, while a second shot would have made it 90 percent. He believed the…

Carnivals this week

George has posted a last call for submissions for the next edition of the Teaching Carnival - all about Higher Ed, life in academia, etc. He is hosting it on WorkBook this Friday, September 1st, so send your entries on time to: georgehwilliams at gmail dot com Next Tangled Bank (science, nature, medicine, environment and intersection between science and society) will be held on Epigenetics News this coming Wednesday. Send your entries to: admin AT epigeneticsnews DOTcom or host AT tangledbank DOT net. Carnival of the Liberals will be on Wednesday on The Greenbelt. Send entries to: cotl…

A question regarding dog training

We've had a few dogs over the years and housebreaking them was never a big problem. But now we got my mother-in-law's puppy labradoodle - who is a real sweetheart - for a couple of weeks to see if we can housebreak him because she was not successful. My wife turned out to be a better animal psychologist than I am and figured out what the problem is. This is not a case of a little puppy who is not yet housebroken. This is a case of a puppy that was inadvertenly trained to poop inside the house and not outside. What we think happened is either that the dog got yelled at when he soiled the…

The monster in the rawbar

If you eat raw shellfish you are asking for trouble. I know, I know. There are people who love rawbars and think nothing is better than letting a raw oyster slide down their gullet. The FDA is warning consumers and retailers nationwide, though, that they might love nothing less that what could happen if they eat oysters recently harvested near Port Sulphur, Louisiana from an oyster bed known as Area 7. Not that if you do it will likely kill you. But you might wish it would, because these oysters are suspected in an outbreak of norovirus. We've dealt with norovirus here (and in real life) a…

Casinos galore in Oklahoma, only one is smoke free

My summer road trip took me through the scenic State of Oklahoma.  As I drove heading north through the Sooner country, billboards line I-35.   They didn't advertise restaurants, gas stations, insurance firms or country stores.  Billboard after billboard promoted one or more casinos in the State.   I wondered how it was possible for a rather sparsely populated locale could support what seemed like dozens of casinos.  One particular billboard caught my eye.  It read: "The only smoke-free casino in Oklahoma." There are 94 casinos in Oklahoma owned by 33 tribes.  Gaming is the second largest…

Going back for seconds at all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets

Getting more than one helping of food is obviously a draw for patrons of all-you-can-eat restaurants.   But can one predict how many trips to the buffet a particular diner will make?  Does scoping out the buffet before grabbing a plate lead to more trips?  How does sitting in a chair that faces the buffet influence those second or third helpings? Researchers with Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab have been exploring these questions using 30 trained observers staked out in buffet restaurants in six states.  Some of their findings are presented in the current issue of the American Journal…

On the Subject of the Previous Post: More Reasons to Stay Together in Tough Times

I wrote this post years ago, and have republished it occasionally since - it has been a while, though, and it does go with the other one ;-) Reasons to Stay Together in Tough Times 1. Gives you something sustainable to do during those rolling blackouts (sex and fighting would probably both fit the bill, actually.) 2. You can't afford dinner and a movie, much less romantic gifts for your mistress or new sweetie anyway. You might as well stay with someone whose expectations have already been lowered by exposure to the real you. 3. Lowered economic expectations mean that even if you are no…

You Must Read This!

I have an enormous amount of respect for Stuart Staniford, who I think is one of the best minds working on our collective ecological crisis. That said, we've had some serious debates, because I've tended to think that our situation, particularly our longer term food situation, is more serious than Staniford has - but those debates on my end have always included just a profound gratitude for the kind of analytic work he does. (Days over 100 degrees in projected high emissions scenarios) Staniford has done a fabulous review (Note: apologies for linkage problems, they should now be fixed!)…

Why Bunnies are Cuter than Babies

Not as off-topic for this blog as it might seem, I thought this (which I found through Gene Expression, one of my new favorite reads) essay on the merits of evolutionary psychology to be a very good and clear way of expressing my doubts on the subject. He writes: Daniel Dennett has advanced the opinion that the evolutionary purpose of the cuteness response in humans is to make us respond positively to babies. This does seem plausible. Babies are pretty cute, after all. It's a tempting explanation. Here is one of the cutest baby pictures I found on a Google search. And this is a bunny.…

Best Recipe of the Season

Ok, I did try and do a real blog post today, but it just isn't happening. We had wonderful guests this morning, and it is bloody cold, and I really need to clean the rabbit cages and then I just want to hang out and bake things that smell like cinnamon - writing is way down on the list. So today I'm just inviting you to share - what's the best thing you've cooked in the last few weeks? What was so great about it? Want to post the recipe? Besides pumpkin pie, which is always a high number contender for best food ever, my most recent contender for best recipe of the season is latke-kugle…

Stekkjastaur – the Elfs are Coming - Pt 1 Revisited

Today is the 12th of december, and there are 13 days until christmas. This means, of course, that the first of the yule elves came to town this morning. As you know, Bob, there are thirteen of the Yule Lads, or jólasveinar, as we call them. And they are not really elves, since their mother is a troll. The childstealing, cannibal Grýla, of legend. Stekkjastaur They come to town, one each day until christmas eve, and then leave in order, starting christmas day and finishing on the 6th of January. They leave small treats or presents in the shoes of good children, if the kids know to leave…

Heights of Lunacy

"There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark." While the Moon has a nearside and a farside, it does not, actually, have a dark side or a light side, now. At least not a fixed dark side, just a slowly moving night side, and day side. But it used to. Sorta. "I remember the first time I saw a globe of the moon as a boy, being struck by how different the farside looks," said Jason Wright, assistant professor of astrophysics. "It was all mountains and craters. Where were the maria? It turns out it's been a mystery since the fifties." Jason, Arpita Roy a Penn State grad…

The Hubble Rate

Is approaching 1 per minute and accelerating. Proposals of course! Yes, it is Happy, Happy Hubble Proposal Deadline Day! You've downloaded yer new and improved APT20 (Astronomers Proposal Tool); installed the updated Java; bookmarked the subtly changed Proposal Guidelines, and even written some Science Justification - now it is the deathmarch to the deadline o'doom - can you write your Descriptions of the Observations or Analysis and Management section before dinner (tea on the west coast)?! Will you get your lucky 4 digit submission number at 7:59:53? Or are you one of these very organized…

On The Proper Subject Order in High School

This is an old favourite. re-presented here to lay the ground for the great return to the phys ed education debate... Several years ago, a major organ of our professional society raised a troubling issue: namely whether the three major subfields were being taught in the proper order at the high school level . A furor arose in the letter pages, debating the merits endlessly. Which first, which last? (also here). Now, I think we can all agree on the basics - there are not enough resources to teach all subfields each year of high school, and I am told scheduling is also impossible if people are…

The Global Toll of Depression

Scicurious at Neurotic Physiology is publishing a bunch of "Back to Basics" posts that are well worth a read, and I found her series on depression particularly interesting. In Depression: Part 1, Scicurious explains why we should care about this disease: Right now, depression is thought to occur in 21% of women and 13% of men worldwide, with 18 million people affected in the US (this is according to the lecture I had in 2006 on it, though other people say it's 8-17% of the total population). It's a big deal for research, depression is second leading cause of disability, and antidepressants…

White House hides behind executive privilege

By Michael Stebbins, originally published at Scientists and Engineers for America Action Fund Last month I wrote about the White Houseâs apparent involvement in the denial of Californiaâs request for exemption from the Clean Air Act to set their own guidelines for the regulation of auto emissions standards. Now the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been forced to postpone a vote to hold EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Administrator Susan Dudley in contempt for not turning over documents relating to the role of the White…

W.R. Grace to Pay $250 Million for Libby Cleanup

In the largest Superfund cleanup settlement ever, W.R. Grace has agreed to pay $250 million to cover government investigation and cleanup costs associated with the asbestos-laden ore the company mined in Libby, Montana. EPA has already spent roughly $168 million removing asbestos-contaminated soils and other dangerous materials, EPA Emergency Coordinator Paul Peronard told the Missoulian. He estimates that it will take another $175 million to get to the point where cleanup efforts are considered a success â which doesnât mean that the town will be entirely clean. EPA cleanup efforts started…

Journalists Win Polk Award for Chemical Fallout Report

Our regular readers may already be familiar with Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporters who investigate the stories behind chemicals used in consumer products. Their series âChemical Falloutâ includes articles on bisphenol A and flame retardants, and in-depth looks at how EPA and FDA are (or arenât) regulating the many chemicals we encounter on a daily basis. Rust and Kissinger have just won a George Polk Award, which was established by Long Island University in honor of George W. Polk, a CBS correspondent killed while covering civil war in Greece in 1948.…