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Gravitational Waves: Inflation or not?

Nothing gets past you, does it? A scientific paper came out earlier this week, and I took a look at it, sighed, and Jamie asked me, "What?" And I said to her, "When I see bad science, it just makes me a little bit frustrated and sad." Of course, I had no intention to write about it. But then Starts With A Bang reader Matt emailed me, and writes the following about this press release that he had seen: You have two explanations for these gravitational waves now and that much I understand. But they make it sound as if symmetry breaking and inflation are competing theories. They aren't, right? Do…

Herzog on "legislating from the bench"

I just came across this excellent post by Dan Herzog at Left2Right about the common conservative rhetoric of being opposed to "legislating from the bench." When he announced the Harriet Miers nomination, President Bush declared that "Harriet Miers will strictly interpret our Constitution and laws. She will not legislate from the bench." Likewise, the White House's information page about Miers' replacement as a nominee, Samuel Alito, says, "Judge Alito does not legislate from the bench...". Herzog explains what this code language is really intended to mean: The usual target in this discussion…

Cosmic Bombardment of the Earth ca 2.2 Million Years Ago?

There are bacteria that use Iron (and other elements) to make tiny magnets that they carry around so they don't get lost. (I anthropomorphize slightly.) There are isotopes of Iron that are not of the Earth, but are found only elsewhere in the universe. Suppose an event happened elsewhere and spewed some of that cosmic Iron isotope, say Fe-60, onto the earth, and the bacteria who were busy making their tiny compasses at that time used some of it. Then the bacteria died and were trapped inlayers in seafloor sediment and later examined by scientists looking for ... well, looking for…

Stardust Ends Its Mission

This just in from NASA: PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Stardust spacecraft sent its last transmission to Earth at 4:33 .m. PDT (7:33 p.m. EDT) Thursday, March 24, shortly after depleting fuel and ceasing operations. During a 12-year period, the venerable spacecraft collected and returned comet material to Earth and was reused after the end of its prime mission in 2006 to observe and study another comet during February 2011. The Stardust team performed the burn to depletion because the comet hunter was literally running on fumes. The depletion maneuver command was sent from the Stardust-NExT…

Population-based surveillance for MRSA

NHANES is an abbreviation that's quite familiar to epidemiologists of all stripes: the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. This survey dates back to 1956 with the passage of the National Health Survey Act, providing legislative authorization for "a continuing survey to provide current statistical data on the amount, distribution, and effects of illness and disability in the United States." Generally, information from these surveys has been used to look at the effect of nutrition, particularly micronutrients, on the health status of the population, or subgroups within the…

Journalistic flibbertigibbet

I am feeling a growing sense of incredulity as I read the latest babble from Susan Mazur. She was the one who reported on this upcoming meeting at Altenberg with an excess of hyperbole and a truly misleading inflation of the importance of that event. It sounds interesting in that a small group of respectable, credible scientists are gathering (along with a few who would most charitably be called crackpots), but it's not that unusual — meetings happen all the time, the people participating in this event go to meetings all the time, and it's simply different but routine. I get the impression…

Course Report: A Brief History of Timekeeping 03

It's been a little while since I wrote up what I've been doing in my "Brief History of Timekeeping" class, because I was out of town, and then catching up from being out of town. Some of this material has already appeared here, though, so I can hopefully catch up a lot of stuff in one post. The material that will be most interesting to random readers of the blog is the "How to" section, from a couple of weeks ago, which were the lecture form of the How to Read a Scientific Paper and How to Present Scientific Data posts here. The paper-reading class was on Monday and the data-presentation…

Early Neolithic Golf Course

I've made two archaeological field interventions today. First I seeded a site with finds, then I got some finds out of another site. Fieldwalking back in March, I found a grindstone and some knapped quartz at a Bronze Age site in Botkyrka parish. Taking their positions with GPS, I've filed a brief archive report on the finds to make sure that the data get into the sites-and-monuments register. But it turned out that the museum doesn't want to actually own that kind of low-end finds unless they're from a stratigraphic context. And I don't want to keep the stuff around either. So this morning I…

Warming is due to the Urban Heat Island Effect

This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic. Objection: The apparent rise of global average temperatures is actually an illusion due to the urbanization of land around weather stations, the Urban Heat Island effect. Answer: Urban Heat Island Effect has been examined quite thoroughly and simply found to have a negligible effect on temperature trends. Real Climate has a detailed discussion of this here. What's more, NASA GISS takes explicit steps in their analysis to remove any such spurious…

Links for 2010-07-21

Physics Buzz: APS hits ComicCon with the first superhero science comic "For the rest of this week I'll be blogging from the madness that is sure to be ComicCon 2010. APS will be the first professional society to bring a comic book, so us public outreach folks are excited to be rolling in with 2.5 tons of Spectra comics. For you unaquanited, the convention combines all things nerd under one massive roof for a week every year. All those people in Princess Leah or Batman or Wolverine or extra #554 from scene 3 on Tatooine in A New Hope comtumes? This is their summer sanctuary. I'm not knocking…

Tuberculosis Detected in Bones from 9 kya Israeli Neolithic Site

A team of archaeologists working offshore from Haifa, Israel in the Mediterranean has discovered both direct and indirect evidence of human tuberculosis. This is important because, if confirmed, the TB cases date to 3,000 years earlier than expected: The disease should not be in skeletons this old. Also, this research seems to indicate that Tuberculosis did not originally arise in cattle to be later transmitted to humans, but rather, the other way around. The site is called Alit-Yam, and it is a 9,000 year old Pre-Pottery Neolithic village. This site is about two or three hundred meters…

Gene therapy and X-linked SCID: Where are they today?

Yesterdays post got me so annoyed and flabbergasted-- I needed to read a nice MLV paper to cheer me up. And nothing cheers me up like using gene therapy on kids with genetic diseases, allowing them to live pretty much normal lives: Efficacy of gene therapy for X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency. Most readers of ERV know this story. Some baby boys are born with a malfunctioning gene, totally screws up their immune system. The babies are fine, for a while, because they get antibodies to most things from their mothers milk. But when its time for baby to start making his own immune…

What is David Brooks Talking About?

David Brooks has a fairly goofy column in today's New York Times. Apparently “hard-core materialism” is on its way out: Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. The idea that meaning, belief and consciousness emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of nerual firings is not an alternative to materialism, it is a consequence of it. The…

U. of Florida Poised to Dismantle Geology Department

Distressing news from Florida: The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences announced its plans to cut 10% from its budget. It targeted three departments: Communication Sciences and Disorders; Religion; and Geology. These three departments will take a far larger cut than 10% in order to 'preserve' the integrity of other departments. In an era of 'green technology', environmental awareness, the need for natural resource management, global climate change and the need to preserve access to freshwater, the thought of decimating a Geology Department borders on insanity. This is especially true…

We Must Become Litigious Assholes or the Litigious Assholes Win

Via Thoreau, a story at Free Range Kids about "zero tolerance" policy run amok, this time from someone who moved to the US as a kid and ran up against the modern school culture in a bad way: Once again, I came from a culture where you were made fun of if you forgot your pocket knife on a school trip. Then I entered a post-Columbine/Zero Tolerance hell. I hadn't used or even removed my knife from my bag while in school, but I did use it to cut a twig on my way home from school one day, and was apparently seen by one of my classmates. The next day, I was called into the principal's office where…

Japanese moths hit by male-killing virus

Male insects have a tough time of it. Aside from the usual threats of predators, competitors and the odd hungry female, many are plagued by discriminatory parasites intent on killing them, while leaving their female peers unharmed. These "male-killers" are incredibly successful and infect a wide range of insects, who are themselves a very successful group. One of these killers, a bacteria known as Wolbachia, may well be the world's most successful parasite. The male-killers are paragons of selfishness. Their success hinges on successfully infecting females, for whithin egg cells, they find…

Effects of invading island rats ripple across land and sea

Humans have explored the entire face of the planet, but we haven't done so alone. Animals and plants came along for the ride, some as passengers and other as stowaways. Today, these hitchhikers pose one of the greatest threats to the planet's biodiversity, by ousting and outcompeting local species. Islands are particularly vulnerable to invaders. Cut off from the mainland, island-dwellers often evolve in the absence of predators and competitors, and are prone to developing traits that make them easy pickings for invaders, like docile natures or flightlessness. Two years ago, I wrote about…

The Shadow Knows

My last post was political, and to be quite honest I sort of hate it when my favorite non-political writers decide to break out the soapbox and flog their views in public. Since I have just done so, let's at least partially make up for it by another post talking about something near and dear to my heart - the propagation of light. In this case, let's talk about shadows. Here's a cool one from Wikipedia: The basic idea of a shadow is simple. You have a light source, rays of light come out of it, some of the rays hit an obstacle, and the shadow is the region where the light has been blocked.…

35,000-year-old German flutes display excellent kraftwerk

Thirty-five thousands years before the likes of Kraftwerk, Nena and Rammstein, the lands of Germany were resounding to a very different sort of musical sound - tunes emanating from flutes made of bird bones and ivory. These thin tubes have recently been uncovered by Nicholas Conard from the University of Tubingen and they're some of the oldest musical instruments ever discovered.  The ancient flutes hail from the Hohle Fels Cave in Germany's Ach Valley, a veritable treasure trove of prehistoric finds that have also yielded the oldest known figurative art. The flutes were found less than a…

Quote of the Day: Edgar Allen Poe on the Perverse

From Edgar Allen Poe's essay The Imp of the Perverse: We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. To-…

Science on Funding Woes

Excellent analysis from an article in Science on the recent funding woes (sadly behind a subscription wall). Money quote: Meanwhile, research institutions everywhere were breaking ground on new facilities and expanding their faculty. In a 2002 survey, AAMC found that new construction at medical schools had exploded: From 1990 to 1997, schools invested $2.2 billion in new construction, compared to $3.9 billion from 1998 to 2002. But that paled in comparison to what was to come: an expected $7.4 billion in new construction from 2002 to 2007. AAMC has not yet confirmed whether these plans were…

Mice navigate a virtual reality environment

USING an inventive new method in which mice run through a virtual reality environment based on the video game Quake, researchers from Princeton University have made the first direct measurements of the cellular activity associated with spatial navigation. The method will allow for investigations of the neural circuitry underlying navigation, and should lead to a better understanding of how spatial information is encoded at the cellular level. In mice, spatial navigation involves at least four different cell types located in the hippocampus and surrounding regions. Place cells…

A Letter from Stony Brook

Last night I took the ferry across Long Island Sound to spend the day in Stony Brook at Evolution 2006, the joint annual meeting of American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the Society of Systematic Biologists. About 1500 scientists were there, and there were enough talks going on--often simultaneously--to keep me in constant motion from eight in the morning till eleven at night. The presentations were all over the map. In one study, scientists were pinpointing the molecular changes that Southwestern Indians have acquired to their cells as they adapted to…

Kurtz on Measuring Effectiveness in the New Scholarly Communications

Michael J. Kurtz of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics came to speak at MPOW at a gathering of librarians from across the larger institution (MPOW is a research lab affiliated with a large private institution).  He's an astronomer but more recently he's been publishing in bibliometrics quite a bit using data from the ADS.  You can review his publications using this search. As an aside, folks outside of astro and planetary sciences might not be familiar with ADS, but it's an excellent and incredibly powerful research database.  Sometimes librarians turn their nose up at it because…

A beef with US grass-fed beef labeling

If you've read Michael Pollan's, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and you still eat beef, chances are that you prefer to purchase grass-fed over corn-fed feedlot beef. The advantages include a more humane lifestyle for the animals and less fat for the consumer. Well, the US Department of Agriculture has been soliciting opinions on their proposed rules for labeling of beef as grass-fed and received a whopping 17,000 opinions before closing discussion last month. From Libby Quaid, AP Food and Farm Writer: With so many producers rushing into the market, the definition of grass-fed varies. Some meat is…

Lying With Math

Over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton just highlighted a new, dishonest, and despicable attempt at spinning the casualty figures from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This new spin is simple: military deaths under Bush aren't much different than the deaths under Clinton, so why is everyone picking on poor Dubya? Ed quotes one right-wing blog: Active duty deaths during Clinton's first four years (1993 - 1996): 4302 Active duty deaths during Bush's first four years (2001 - 2004): 5187 Ed points out a couple of problems with the comparison (it's based on all deaths, not…

What if it is Jesus?

So what if the remains found really are those of Jesus of Nazareth? This joke indicates that for some it might not matter: One day the Pope received a phone call from an archaeologist in Palestine. "Holy Father," the voice said, "I don't quite know how to tell you this, but we have discovered what prove beyond doubt to be the very bones of Jesus!" Hanging up, the Pope convened his closest advisors. Explaining the situation, he asked the stunned clerics for suggestions. One stammered, "Holy Father, I believe there is a theologian in America who might be able to help us. His name is Paul…

The difference between familiar and unfamiliar worlds; or, evidence that Steve Higgins is a real graduate student

When you look at a scene: a building, a park, a mountain, your visual system processes the information differently from when you look at a single object: a face, a pen, or a coffee mug. For example, this first image is from our trip to Prague this past summer: When you look at this picture, your eye might move first to the bridge, then to the lampposts on the bridge, to the castle in the background, to the overhanging limbs. The next picture is much simpler: It's a coffee mug, plain and simple. There's not much left to do with it. There are three regions of the brain that respond more…

What is the role of bloggers as book reviewers?

A new blog has emerged in Terre Haute, Indiana. Its message is somewhat cryptic, including such gems as this one, from "annefernald": For those who think of surgeons as spending their days operating on people, this would definitely not be Dr. Johnson....Not, in fact a medical doctor at all, the wit and writer is constantly trailed by a companion, one Boswell, who does most of his writing for him. What's the point of all this? It's a protest of sorts, inspired by a recent article in the New York Times discussing the decline of book review sections in newspapers, and the rising role blogs are…

Casual Fridays: Is U.S. Southern the world's most recognizable accent?

The general consensus about last week's world accent test is that it was very difficult, but also quite fun. Everyone also wanted to know the answers to the quiz. I'm not going to make it that easy for you, but at the end of the post I will offer a way for you to figure out which is which. The test required participants to listen to ten people from different parts of the world reading the same English text sample (via the fantastic Speech Accent Archive). Then they had to choose which accent was which from a list of 15 countries (actually 15 countries and 2 U.S. states). Which accent was…

Helping others pays off more than being helped

Most religions, from Anabaptism to Zoroastrianism, feature some version of Christianity's "Golden Rule": Do undo others, as you would have them do unto you. Aside from being a nice concept, how do we benefit from helping others? From an individual perspective, wouldn't we be better off if we just let others help us out, without giving anything in return? A 2003 study by a team led by Stephanie Brown indicates that we wouldn't (Stephanie L. Brown, Randolph M. Nesse, and Amiram D. Vinokur, University of Michigan; and Dylan M. Smith, VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, "Providing Social Support may…

CSI for the Genetic Age

by Philip H. DISCLAIMER - The opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the author alone. They do NOT represent the official opinion, policy, or action of any governmental agency the author may work for or have ever worked for at the county, state or federal level. If you do not like the content or opinions, contact the author, not your Congressmen. On Wednesday 6 August 2008, the FBI and Justice Department briefed the world on the conclusions of its anthrax investigation. This particular sleuthing began in the shadow of 9/11, when anthrax laced letters were found on Capitol Hill…

ISEF 2008: The best of the best! And they're girls!

Breaking news....they've just announced the grand award winners at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. And I'm absolutely thrilled to tears to announce that the top three prize winners are all girls! One more nail in the coffin for those who say that girls can't do science, math, and engineering. Go below the fold for full details... Three talented, hard working, and lucky students are the recipients of the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award, which includes a $50,000 college scholarship. This year's winners are: Efficient Hydrogen Production Using Cu-Zn-Al Catalysts…

Unprofessional emails from students

From the email files: To: Science Woman (science.woman@mystery.edu) From: sillyname@yahoo.com Subject: Hey can u tell me how to do number 4 on the problem set. i no u went over it in class but i have had a VERY LONG week lol tests ha ha ha and i lost my notes. pleeease help Stu Dear Stu, The notes are available on the class website, but you can also solve #4 by ... We'll also be working more examples in class tomorrow. Please see me during office hours if you need more help. Sincerely, Dr. Science I am *so* sick of correspondence like that - and that's from a typical student in my upper-level…

The Taxman Cometh Not

Back in August, in the midst of finding daycare, getting ready to teach, paying two mortgages, and reeling from my mother's illness, I got a most unwelcome piece of mail from the IRS. Actually, I think the timing of getting that letter is bad no matter when it occurs. The IRS had selected me for an audit and declared that I owed them $1X00 in back taxes because I had failed to pay self-employment taxes on my graduate fellowship income. I had paid income taxes on the stipend, but not self-employment taxes. Upon reading that, I did what any normal human being would do. I freaked out. When I…

#1: Shanghai Century Park, Museum of Science, Jinmao Tower

After an uneventful and Ambien-laden flight to Shanghai, I arrived at Pudong Airport more than a bit physically tired and quite a bit psychologically wired. "Three weeks off--Hooray!" kept scrolling across my mind like a stock ticker. As Darren was already there, we headed over to a sketchy (and none too cheap) bar called 'Red Lips' across from the Pudong Sofitel where I was staying. We drank quite a bit of Bacardi Raspberri (or something like that), and then stumbled back to the Sofitel for some much-needed booze-snooze. The next day we walked over to the largest park in Shanghai, Century…

Even pigeons can recognize "bad" art

. . . at least according to a Japanese researcher, who trained them to differentiate "bad" and "good" children's art. According to New Scientist, This isn't Watanabe's first efforts to teach art appreciation to pigeons. In 1995, he and two colleagues published a paper showing that pigeons could learn to discriminate Picasso paintings from Monets - work that earned him that year's Ig Nobel prize. New Scientist plays no role in selecting winners, but Watanabe's latest study make a strong case for another award. Zing. Of course, Watanabe first had to determine what was "good" or "bad" art.…

Distinct RNA Binding Proteins for Distinct Classes of mRNAs

Over the last few years it has become increasing clear that gene expression is partially regulated at the mRNA level. What do I mean by that? In eukaryotic cells, the first step of gene expression occurs in the nucleus when regions of DNA are transcribed into RNA. These "transcripts" then encounter RNA binding proteins (RBPs), some which act to process the RNA into a mature message, others that simply bind the mRNA. The whole collection of RNA and its associated proteins is often referred to as the Ribonuclear Particle (RNP). The protein content will dictate whether the RNA is spliced,…

A backward glance at PSA 2006

ScienceBloggers meet in the three-dimensional world: (from left) Janet Stemwedel, John Lynch, Prof. Steve Steve, John Wilkins, David Ng, Ben Cohen. I managed to get back home last night from the PSA meeting in Vancouver, although just barely. My co-symposiasts got a rental car and headed off to see mountains, an expedition I'd have joined were it not for my plane-missing paranoia. ("You realize that flying home from Vancouver is essentially a domestic flight, so you probably don't need to check in until about 90 minutes before flight time," the field trip organizer assured me. But I…

3 Quarks Daily announces awards for science blogging.

Actually, the awards will include other sorts of blogging, too, but it's the awards for science blogging that have a fast-approaching nomination deadline. 3 Quarks Daily Announces The Quarks: The First Award for Best Science Blogging Judged by Steven Pinker Celebrating the best of blog-writing on the web, 3 Quarks Daily will award four annual prizes in the respective areas of Science, Arts & Literature, Politics, and Philosophy for the best blog post in those fields. This year, the winners of the 3QD Prize in Science will be selected from six finalists by Steven Pinker, who will also…

Pinkers New Book Has A Fundamental Flaw ...

... that probably ruins the whole thing. I have not yet read The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, so I could be wrong, but if you have a copy check it out and tell me if I've got it right. Breifly, the book says: " it's a meticulously documented argument about how much violence has declined from our hunter-gatherer days ten millennia ago through medieval times to the modern day. " [from WEIT Website] Here's the thing. The data Pinker (and others) have been using over the last few years for "hunter-gatherers" includes mostly, or at least in large number, groups that…

On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth's Radiant Energy Balance

According to a newly published paper in the journal "Remote Sensing" the Earth's atmosphere releases into space more heat than climate scientists had previously estimated in a way that effectively removes concern about fossil CO2 being released into the atmosphere. The reason scientists have this wrong, according to the article's authors, Roy Spencer and William Braswell, is that climate scientists use a fundamentally flawed model of atmospheric heat dynamics and radiation of heat from the surface of the climate system into space. The senior author, Spencer, has previously argued that…

Leaves from the sky (Minneapolis Tornado)

Have a look at this picture (click to enlarge): We had a tornado here a couple of hours ago. It did not come near our house. It was probably an F2 or so in strength, and based on videos and the reported damage path it was about three or four tenths of a mile wide or wider at times, as it moved along a path of about 10 miles or so (maybe 20 by some reports), four of those miles being as a strong well formed twister taking out houses, toppling trees, etc. etc. As I say, it did not hit us, but it was large enough and close enough that I could hear it. You know, that freight train sound. At…

Scientific Research shows that a mystery pheromone may create zombies

Wasps, hornets, and other Hymenoptera may live nearly solitary lives, live in huge colonies, or something in between. The European hornet, Vespa crabro, lives in a colony consisting of one queen mated to a single male. In Hymenoptera, females are typically diploid (having genes from both parents) while males are typically haploid (having genes only from the female parent). If you draw a diagram of this and stare at it for a long time, you may come to the same conclusions that Bill "Buzz Off" Hamilton came to several years ago. A female would benefit genetically from helping her mother…

Re: Kleck proves Pim is a deceitful poser.

Sam A. Kersh writes: No, it up to you to show that an 88% reduction in rapes, 35% reduction in commercial robbery and an 84% reduction in residential burglaries is insignificant. Proof, not an inane assertion by Lambert as a citation. Sam, you seem to lack the most basic understanding of the way statistics is done. Changes are not assumed to be statistically significant until proved otherwise. The burden of proof is on you: present a statistical test for significance. I've asked you for this several times now. You keep trying to avoid the issue. (Hint for Sam: posting extracts from…

Lott changes his story again

In Lott's latest response, he changes his story again. He originally told Lindgren that hadn't discussed the survey with anyone at the time. Now he has recalled the name of an economist he discussed it with at the time. Unfortunately, when Julian Sanchez contacted this economist, he was unable to recall those discussions. He also originally told Lindgren that the survey was conducted by "several University of Chicago undergraduate volunteers" (a survey of the size he claims to have conducted would have required at least ten students, and…

AGBT highlights: imprinted disease genes, rare variants, and a gene for crossword puzzles?

I'll be uploading a few of what I saw as the highlights from the AGBT meeting over the next week or so, as I go over my notes - you can also browse over Anthony Fejes' blog for live-blogging of many of the sessions. In no particular order, here are some of the tid-bits gleaned from Friday's sessions. Kari Stefansson gave an overview of some of the latest results coming out from deCODE Genetics. He argued that combining multiple genetic variants for common diseases can now give clinically useful results - e.g. their work on thyroid cancer (published today in Nature Genetics) shows that the 3.7…

Setting the Record Straight on Global Warming

From the archives: (23 April 2006) The media is by its very nature sensational, and on the issue of global warming this can swing both ways. Therefore, there was a big fuss over a study in Nature this past Thursday that seemed to lay out a more conservative estimate for the expected increase in temperature due to global warming. Although some coverage was more damning than others, the quantity of press on the subject was extensive. As an article the next day in Science explained, though, all the Nature paper did was narrow down the range of possible scenarios to what was already the widely…

Fukushima's Organic Produce Hot, Hotter?

Source. Local produce, such as milk and spinach, are beginning to show potentially alarming signs of radiation up to 90 miles away from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plants, according to Japanese officials. Will this be temporary or of long range concern? According to an article in The New York Times: TOKYO -- The government said Saturday that it had found higher than normal levels of radioactive materials in spinach and milk at farms up to 90 miles away from the ravaged nuclear power plants, the first confirmation by officials that the unfolding nuclear crisis has affected the…