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New and Exciting in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine

Five Years of Access and Activism: In April 2009, we marked the five year anniversary of PLoS Medicine's first call for papers with an editorial titled "A Medical Journal for the World's Health Priorities" [1]. The editorial was a renewed and revitalized call for papers, announcing a "refocusing of the journal's priorities." Going forward, we said, we would prioritize papers addressing those diseases with the greatest global burden. We would also aim to be as broad a journal as possible, publishing papers that explored not just biological causes of illness, but also social, environmental, and…

DonorsChoose update

As you are likely aware, the DonorsChoose campaign is in full swing here on Scienceblogs.com. What you may not be aware is that Seed Media Group is in, with some nice prizes to the donors: You can forward the donation receipt to scienceblogs@gmail.com for a chance to win some Swag Bags from ScienceBlogs, complete with Seed moleskin notebooks and tote bags, ScienceBlogs mugs and USB drives, and books from Yale University Press and Oxford University Press - we'll draw a winner or winners every week in October. Check out all the Sciblings' challenges and pick some to give - a little bit by many…

A small air pollution risk. Nano sized.

The particles are smaller but the risks appear to be bigger. We're talking air pollution, here, folks. Not so long ago EPA regulations were on the basis of pretty large partiles, ten microns in size. Then a considerable body of work indicated that much smaller particulate matter, size around 2.5 microns were a much better measure of risk. Like a lot of things, though, as our measurements get better we are finding effects, sometimes big ones, with ever smaller particles. A recent study published in Circulation Research and reported by Bloomberg says that unregulated extremely fine particles,…

What some public health docs are reading

The medical site WebScape has a service that caters to physicians called MedPulse. In about 20 specialty areas it surveys a dozen or two scientific journal and alerts subscribers to interesting or pertinent papers. I subscribe to the Public Health and Prevention topic and the other day got the list of the "most read" articles by subscribers in the last year. There is always something curiously fascinating about "top ten" lists and this was no exception. So what do you think preventive medicine types were reading on MedPulse newsletters the last year? At the top of the list was a paper from…

The Pump Handle: One year and counting

The blogosphere is pretty crowded these days and one might think there's no need for less, not more. But in public health, that's not the case. There are a lot of Doctor/Medical blogs but not many public health blogs. So yesterday marked a significant milestone in the public health blogosphere, the First Blogiversary of The Pump Handle. As Jordan Barab, lately of Confined Space fame, notes in a congratulatory comment over at TPH, first year blog mortality is extremely high, so just making it at all is a significant accomplishment. But TPH didn't "just make it" but made it in real style. They…

PRISM makes me crazy and Dave Munger Makes my Day

I don't suppose I can sue somebody for negligence resulting in impairment of my mental health. But if I could, I would surely go after the assholes at the PRISM coalition, an alleged grassroots group (such front groups for industry are often called astroturf groups) whose task in life is to lock up tax payer financed research under copyright laws they and their cronies wrote for their own benefit. And THEY ARE MAKING ME CRAZY! So there was at least some therapeutic benefit to the discovery of my SciBling Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily that these hypocrites were violating copyright on their…

Devilish Hillary

Pam found the link to this article from LA Times in which Rev.Jerry Falwell compares Hillary Clinton with the Devil: "I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate," Falwell said, according to the recording. "She has $300 million so far. But I hope she's the candidate. Because nothing will energize my [constituency] like Hillary Clinton." Cheers and laughter filled the room as Falwell continued: "If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't." At that moment in the recording, Falwell's voice is drowned out by hoots of approval. But two in attendance, including a Falwell staff member, confirmed that Falwell…

Science Blogosphere Dynamics

Daniel Collins of Down To Earth blog, did a little research on the power law as it applies to the recent and current standing of various (mostly science) blogs, with some interesting obervations about the edge effects, the gradual lowering of the slope, and the slow move of the cut-off point towards the right. The main points: - science blogosphere is still young, growing and developing. - the power-law works only for the high-ranked blogs, i.e., the "B/C-list", and breaks down for superpopular blogs as well as low-ranked blogs. - we play the Red Queen game, i.e., each one of us needs to…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Dogs Copy Other Dogs' Actions Selectively, The Way Humans Do: A distinguishing feature of human intelligence is our ability to understand the goals and intentions of others. This ability develops gradually during infancy, and the extent to which it is present in other animals is an intriguing question. New research by Friederike Range and Ludwig Huber, of the University of Vienna, and Zsofia Viranyi, of the Eötvös University in Budapest, reveals striking similarities between humans and dogs in the way they imitate the actions of others. The phenomenon under investigation is known as "…

Fogel speaks

This gets better and better. President Daniel Fogel of the University of Vermont has given several interviews on the Ben Stein affair, and clarified quite a few matters. He explicitly says he did not ask Stein to withdraw from the commencement ceremonies, but when you read these comments, it's clear that that there was a lack of support from the UVM administration and that he was confronted with some serious objections, and Stein withdrew knowing that if he persisted it was going to get ugly. Here's one interview with Fogel: I think the fundamental concern of the people that wrote to me was…

Security theater: are they satisfied now?

Once, long ago, I used to be in a radiology department in a famous hospital. I liked radiology quite a bit and even before becoming a doctor I worked in them. Later I did research on the kinds of errors radiologists make when they read x-rays. One of the errors that was extremely well known even 40 plus years ago (although that didn't prevent it from being made with dismaying consistency up to and including today) was something called "satisfaction of search error." In essence, it meant that once one abnormality was found on an x-ray, there was an increased chance of missing a second,…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: a Special Relationship

The US and Israel are near the top of the list in having citizens who believe in evolution -- at or near the top, that is, if you turn the list upside down. In international surveys the US ranks last and Israel 4th from last among 27 countries regarding belief in the proposition that "human beings developed from earlier species of animals" being definitely or probably true (US, 45%, Israel, 54%). There's another similarity. The US has fringe fundamentalist crazies in positions of authority (like the Texas State Board of Education) who deny evolution (and this just in: took The Enlightenment…

Not an “accident”: Elbert C. Woods, 45, suffers fatal work-related injury at Cleveland, Ohio company

Elbert C. Woods, 45, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Thursday, August 21 while working at Cleveland Track Material. Local reporters provide some initial information on the worker’s death: The Northeast Ohio Media Group reports: Woods’ clothing became stuck in a machine and he was pulled into it. Woods’ co-workers were able to free him from the machine while they awaited response by the local fire department. Cleveland.com notes that Cleveland Track Material: Employs about 250 people. The company manufactures railway track and components, such as switches that move trains from one…

American Cancer Society & AMA weigh in on OSHA silica rule

The American Cancer Society (ACS) and the American Medical Association (AMA) have offered their endorsement to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) regulatory efforts to reduce workers’ exposure to respirable silica. It’s a hazard that can cause the disabling lung disease silicosis, as well as lung cancer and other disorders. The ACS’s and AMA’s official statements of support are found in the agency's rulemaking for its proposed silica rule. The docket closed on Tuesday for this phase of the rulemaking process. The AMA’s support comes in the form of a policy statement…

Winding Up the Season

We missed frost earlier this week by a degree or two, just enough to clip the basil (basil is wussy that way ;-)), but tomorrow night should be definitive.   We've moved from steaming amber spice orchards (as the poet puts it) to "post-frost" quiet.  We brought the pumpkins in earlier this week, picked the last of the okra and tonight I'll bring in the green tomatoes for pickling and/or ripening (depending on how far along they are).  The first fire in the cookstove will probably be tomorrow or the next day.  We picked the last raspberries on Sunday afternoon, and they became the last batch…

Jim Kunstler On Occupy Everything

It was interesting to me that my comments that protesting the economy without also including elements of economic protest were taken to mean "I think Occupy Wall Street is bad." I still think that to be genuinely effective, protests of capitalism have to take into account what will replace it - and our own implication in the system, but I am happy to see the protests growing, and developing an emergent sense of possibility. I think Jim Kunstler hit it on the head this week: This is the funniest part to me: that leaders of a nation incapable of constructing a coherent consensus about reality…

Racial Wealth Disparity Rises Dramatically

And in non-goat news.... According to the study, the inflation-adjusted median wealth among Hispanic households fell 66% from 2005 to 2009. Black households suffered a 53% drop in net worth over the same period. By contrast, whites saw a decline of 16% in household wealth. In 2009, the typical black household had just $5,677 in wealth. Hispanic families had about $6,325 in wealth. The average white household had a net worth of $113,149. The study also showed that a third of black and Hispanic households had zero wealth, meaning that their debts were larger than the value of all their assets…

Ugo Bardi on Depletion and What We Leave Behind

Ugo Bardi has a lovely article about both peak oil and intergenerationalism: I sort out again my old watch, "You see, this old watch is still working, more than 70 years after it was made. Whenever I look at it, I feel a kind of kinship to the man who had left it to me. I am grateful to him because he left me something that still works, that I can use and that I like. And I think he may be happy, too, if he looks at us from above, that his old watch is still appreciated by someone in this world". I pause for a moment to look upwards, as if I were seeing the ghost of the old Swiss man. The…

Cargo Cult Administration

Many physical scientists learned of the curious phenomena of the Cargo Cult from Feynman's commencement address at Caltech, as reproduced in his book, "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!". In the address, Feynman cautions us against the conceptually similar notion of Cargo Cult Science, where people go through the motions of mimicking a scientific process, while never comprehending the essential nature of science. The Cargo Cult Scientists follow some process that bears a superficial resemblance to science without understanding the true nature of what they are doing and the results are…

Wanted: survey of extreme infrared objects researcher

Postdoctoral Scholar, Stellar and Exoplanetary Astrophysics and SETI "Applications are invited for a postdoctoral research associate position to work with Prof. Jason Wright and collaborators. The ideal applicant will have some combination of: • experience working with large photometric datasets, especially in the near and mid-IR • strong coding skills, in languages including IDL • the ability to independently solve novel research problems, including the application of results from unfamiliar fields • a desire to work with and assist in advising graduate and undergraduate students; • a…

Cholera Outbreak in Haiti - and in Central Africa

Months after it was hit by a devastating earthquake, Haiti is now battling an outbreak of cholera. So far, more than 1,500 cases have been reported and 142 victims have died of the disease, which causes severe diarrhea. The treatment is straightforward - rehydration therapy to reverse potentially deadly dehydration - but relies on hospitals being able to handle surges of weakened patients. It's been a century since Haiti last faced cholera, and until now everyone had been relieved that the earthquake hadn't spurred an outbreak. The Guardian's Rory Carroll reports that the outbreak is taking…

Who met with OMB on cranes last week??

Update: 7/1 (4:00 pm): The link is fixed!  It was two reps of the National Association of Home Builders, four staff of OMB and one from the Dept of Labor's Solicitor's Office.  Hmmm...no one from OSHA attended the meeting.  On June 18 we reported here that OSHA had submitted to OMB's Office of Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) its proposed rule on crane safety.  Today, I noticed on OIRA's site that on June 26, someone met with OMB staff about OSHA's crane safety proposal, but the link is broken --- you get this message.  It's a mystery for now the names and affiliations of the participants.…

Occupational Health News Roundup

More than three years after the blast at BP's Texas City refinery killed 15 workers and injured many others, an independent monitor reports that the company has made "substantial progress" in safety at its U.S. refineries, but that it still has many improvements to make. Kristen Hays reports for the Houston Chronicle: Much of the progress in the last year has involved developing various safety implementation and monitoring plans, process safety reviews, and appointing groups of managers to oversee them. These plans include detailed internal audits of safety and operations at U.S. refineries…

Occupational Health News Roundup

On March 27th, South Africaâs Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism announced a prohibition on the use, processing or manufacturing, of any asbestos or asbestos containing products. The regulationâs objectives are: To prohibit the use, processing or manufacturing, of any asbestos or asbestos containing product unless it can be proven that no suitable alternative exists, in which case a phase-out plan may be approved. To prohibit the import or export of any asbestos or asbestos containing product provided that the importation is purely for transit through the country. Any person…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Workers repairing the Qarmat Ali water injection plant in Iraq were told that the orange substance strewn around the facility was only a mild irritant â but after two-and-a-half months of exposure to it, many workers felt ill. Farah Stockman reports in the Boston Globe: But the chemical turned out to be sodium dichromate, a substance so dangerous that even limited exposure greatly increases the risk of cancer. Soon, many of the 22 Americans and 100-plus Iraqis began to complain of nosebleeds, ulcers, and shortness of breath. Within weeks, nearly 60 percent exhibited symptoms of exposure,…

USDA Inspectors Can't Keep Up

In the LA Times, Victoria Kim follows up on the issue of USDA inspections related to the record-setting beef recall. The terrible practices caught on tape at the Hallmark slaughterhouse evidently occurred under the nose of USDA inspectors, and Kimâs article explains how this can happen: Slaughterhouse workers watch every move of federal inspectors. They know when they take bathroom breaks. They use the radio to alert one another to the inspector's every step. They even assign the pretty talkative woman to work next to the inspector to distract him from his mission to safeguard the nationâs…

Occupational Health News Roundup

The Washington Postâs Pamela Constable reports on brickmakers in Pakistan, where a worker might toil from 4:30am to sundown, produce 1,200 bricks, and earn $3.50 for the dayâs labor. Brickmakers toil near the bottom of Pakistan's economic and social ladder, forever at the mercy of heat, dirt, human greed and official indifference. By law, they cannot be compelled to work or be kept in bondage; in practice, the great majority are bound to the kilns by debt. The work is seasonal and families move often, but if they leave one kiln for another, their debt is transferred to the new owner. If they…

Occupational Health News Roundup

In Texas, a construction worker dies every two and a half days. In the Texas Observer, Melissa Del Bosque explains that itâs because of âlax enforcement of labor and safety regulations, too many overtime hours without rest breaks and a lack of safety training and equipment.â The Austin-based nonprofit Workers Defense Project, which helps construction workers seek restitution for injuries, spent three months visiting construction sites to interview workers about these issues. Del Bosque summarizes their findings: Researchers found that Austin construction workersâwhether theyâre legal…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Last summer, a fire in an illegal coal mine in Chinaâs Hebei province killed 35 workers â and the mine owners managed to conceal the tragedy for three months. The New York Timesâ Sharon LaFraniere reports: The mine owner paid off grieving families and cremated the minersâ bodies, even when relatives wanted to bury them. Local officials pretended to investigate, then issued a false report. Journalists were bribed to stay silent. The mine shaft was sealed with truckloads of dirt. âIt was so dark and evil in that place,â said the wife of one miner who missed his shift that day and so was spared…

Occupational Health News Roundup

The escalating drug-cartel violence in Mexico is especially dangerous for those trying to govern and enforce the law. Drug traffickers demanded that Ciudad Juarez Police Chief Chief Roberto Orduña Cruz should resign, and promised to kill a police officer every 48 hours. After Orduñaâs deputy, four other police officers, and a prison guard were murdered, Orduña resigned and fled the city. The federal government has sent 5,000 soldiers to take over the cityâs police department. The New York Timesâ Mark Lacy reports: Right now, the Juárez police are no match for the outlaws. Last year, the…

EPA Medical Waste Rule Helps Clear the Air

Itâs nice to finally be able to report that the Bush administration EPA has issued what appears to be a strong pollution-curbing rule on medical waste incineration. Although medical waste incinerators account for a relatively small amount of overall air pollution, they can have significant effects in the 57 communities where theyâre currently located. EPA estimates that if incinerators meet the new requirements, theyâll reduce mercury emissions by 637-682 pounds each year, and lead emissions by 361-420 pounds annually â good news the neurological functioning of children growing up near these…

Another Censored Environmental Report (Arctic Drilling Edition)

At the second annual Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø, Norway, 500 experts are discussing the outlook for oil and gas production in the rapidly warming Arctic. As is all too common these days, theyâll do so without the benefit of all the information that scientists worked hard to compile about the topic. Christoph Seidler reports in Der Spiegel that the final âArctic Oil and Gasâ report, the product of four yearsâ work by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, is missing 60 recommendations that scientists had compiled for politicians. Can you guess who was behind the editing?…

Psychics like Sylvia Brown are immoral frauds

In the wake of the dramatic events surrounding the discovery of three women including Amanda Berry, being held captive for a decade by a monster, it's important not to forget another sociopath played a role in this drama. That sociopath is the psychic who told Amanda Berry's mother that her daughter was dead: Her mother, Louwana Miller, never gave up hope that the girl known as Mandy was still alive, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The case attracted national attention when Miller went on Montel Williams’s nationally syndicated television show in 2004 and consulted a psychic. “She’s…

We need a new denialism category for Obama conspiracies

Right Wing Watch is a great site to follow to track the latest conspiratorial craziness coming from the right. It seems every single day there is some new bizarre claim about homosexuals trying to enslave America and institute sharia law (that makes sense right?), or how Obama is a muslim, yada yada. But today I they've got a real zinger and I can't pass it by. Apparently at age 11 Obama decided to become president of the US to destroy the Shiites, Israel, and America itself. Here come the insanity, from Avi Lipkin: Lipkin: Obama was made a Muslim man in Indonesia by age 11. He said, ‘I’ve…

The New Yorker Ranks the Republicans vs. Science

And get's it wrong What's amazing is they rank Newt first at the same time acknowledging he destroyed the Office of Technology Assessment. Jon Huntsman may have the most rational scientific and technological policies of anyone in the field, but Gingrich, sometimes called Newt Skywalker, has far more passion. As Kelefa Sanneh argues in the current issue, the philosophy of Gingrichism is nothing but a combination of the idiosyncratic views of the man himself--which include his beliefs in the virtues of space exploration and his opposition to regulating the Internet, even when it comes to porn.…

[Updated] Free Markets and the Credit Crisis Freefall

[Update: The WSJ reports that you're now bailing out AIG.] For years working in Washington, I listened to libertarian tripe about how privacy law would prevent free markets from operating, and how banks should be able to freely trade personal information to assign risk and create new credit products. The "Miracle of Instant Credit" was invoked as a positive force that would allow banks to move smartly into the subprime market and make more Americans homeowners. They won that battle with the 2003 passage of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act, which largely superseded state law…

The History Channel might do something right

I just got this announcement for a new series to appear on the History Channel in June. This has the potential to be really good — at least it sounds like the focus is on the biology — and we'll have to tune in. SERIES PREMIERE! EVOLVE: EYES Eyes are one of evolution's most useful and prevalent inventions, equipping approximately 95 percent of living species. They exist in many different forms across nature, having evolved convergently across different species. Learn how the ancestors of jellyfish may have been the first to evolve light-sensitive cells. In the pre-Cambrian era, insects, in…

The Taiping Rebellion---mass murder in the name of Jesus's crazy little brother

A number of years ago, I saw an older physician reading a book with an intriguing title---God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan, by Jonathan Spence. Like most Americans, I know very little about Chinese history. I certainly had no idea that there was a massive civil war in 19th century China that by most estimates killed around 20 million people. Twenty. Million. People. By comparison, the American Civil War, which took place in roughly the same time period, took around 700,000 lives (military, disease, civilian, etc.). I'm not a historian, and I read the book a…

Placebo effect, not placebo treatment

In the course of reading the comments in the last several posts, I've come upon many mentions of the "placebo effect". Steve Novella has a few good posts on the placebo effect, but I'd like to take a look at the clinical view. The placebo effect is a phenomenon often observed in clinical studies. When doing clinical studies, there is often a notable change in subjects response simply by being in the study. This effect is multifactorial, often due to such biases as a desire to please researches, better medical follow up, and others. It is most often a data artifact that arises when…

GM foods cause delusions

Here at denialism blog, we've written a bit about so-called Morgellons syndrome. Every once in a while, when I tire of sanity, I scan the news for more Morgellons madness, and when it comes to madness, Mike Adams never disappoints. In his latest foray into paranoid idiocy, he tries to link this non-existent illness to genetically modified (GM) foods. And what abuses of logic does he use to create this connection? He starts with the classic "begging the question". The entire first section of his article simply assumes that Morgellons exists as some sort of unique pathology. On what…

Greenpeace Founder Explains Departure: Group Abandoned Science

An oped in today's Journal by Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, argues that he left the organization because it abandoned scientific justifications for its advocacy. Moore argues: At first, many of the causes we championed, such as opposition to nuclear testing and protection of whales, stemmed from our scientific knowledge of nuclear physics and marine biology. But after six years as one of five directors of Greenpeace International, I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs.…

Measles---it's no joke

A new patient came to see me a few months back. She is in her 60's or 70's and not in the best health. She is very nice. And simple---very simple. I spoke to her brother before the appointment. He told me that she was a normal, happy kid until the age of seven. Then she got sick. At first it wasn't much, just a cold. Then there was a rash. Then she got very, very sick. She had measles, and she was one of the about 1-1000 people who develop acute encephalitis as a complication of the disease. The rest of the kids in the family are quite bright and successful. My patient came to…

How listening to my wife CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE!!!!

Most of us around here know about internet memes, hoax emails, and other sources of scientific and medical rumor. After all, we're geeks (or at least, I am). My wife, however, is not. She is a typical (and wonderful) woman, from a particular ethnic group, and particular part of town (and well-educated). I'm a fairly well-known physician, but when we go out to dinner, everyone stops to say "hi" to her---and is introduced to "her husband" for the third time. So it isn't really a surprise that she knows more about the "real world" than I do. I was sitting on the couch reading my feeds,…

Bibliolatrists: Quickly Dial 911! That Woman Has Been Shunned!

The Wall Street Journal's Alexandra Alter reports on the newest reason not to spend your money and time at church: shunning has returned, meaning that years of devotion to your religious institution can be cut off if you do something like gossip or dare to question the grand panjandrum: On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. "And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P…

Does bestiality increase your risk of penile cancer?

Aah, the things one learns when awake at 3AM on a Saturday night. Via a few different Tweeps, I ran across this article from Men's Health magazine, titled "Urgent Warning: Sex with Animals Causes Cancer." I probably should have just stopped there. But no, I read the magazine article, which states: Brazilian researchers polled nearly 500 men from a dozen cities, and found that--we're not joking around here--roughly 35 percent of the men had "made it" with an animal. That's a problem, because screwing a horse, donkey, pig, or any other animal was found to up your likelihood of developing…

Biblical flu paper going bye-bye

Well, that was quick. Yesterday's post highlighting a really terrible paper in BMC's Virology Journal drew a lot of comments here and at Pharyngula, and attention at the journal (where it currently stands as the 5th most-accessed article in the last 30 days). The journal's Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Robert F. Garry, this in the comments section to my post: As Editor-in-Chief of Virology Journal I wish to apologize for the publication of the article entitled ''Influenza or not influenza: Analysis of a case of high fever that happened 2000 years ago in Biblical time", which clearly does not provide…

Administration: overdose antidote not good public health policy

Via new acquaintance Tom Levinson of the Inverse Square blog comes an all-too-familiar story of our "compassionate conservative" administration putting their own morality above proven public health programs: Fact 1: public health officials around the country...are distributing rescue kits [containing Narcan, see below --TS] that save heroin users from overdoses. The kits cost $9.50, and they are credited with reversing 2,600 overdoses in 16 such local programs around the country. For context: NPR reports that "overdoses of heroin and opiates, such as Oxycontin, kill more drug users than AIDS…

Turtles: not a kid's best friend

An ongoing outbreak of Salmonella associated with turtles has now sickened more than 100 and caused a quarter of that number to be hospitalized: Cases have been reported in 33 states, but mostly in California, Texas, Pennsylvania and Illinois. Most of the patients have been children. No one has died in the latest outbreak, which began in August. But some patients have experienced severe symptoms, including acute kidney failure. The most common symptoms reported to the CDC included bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping, fever and vomiting. The median age of patients was 7 1/2 . More after the…

White House clings to risk assessment goals

A mere nine months after the National Academy of Science told OMB to junk its junk science proposal, the Bush administration is at it again. On Wednesday, OIRA administrator Susan Dudley and OSTPâs associate director Sharon Hays sent a memorandum to all executive agencies. The memo advised that âafter carefully evaluating [the] constructive recommendations from the NAS, as well as feedback from rigorous interagency review, and public commentsâ OMB decided not to issue a final version of its risk assessment bulletin, but instead, to issue a memorandum âto enhance the scientific quality,…

Trapped Miners in "Most Difficult Ground Conditions Ever"

Ellen Smith, Managing Editor of Mine Safety and Health News reported at 5:30 pm (EST, 8/12) on the status of the operation to rescue the six trapped miners at the Crandall Canyon mine in Emery County, Utah.  She wrote that MSHA Assistant Secretary Richard Sticker, said they are dealing with "the most difficult ground conditions -- ever" and conditions are getting much more difficult. Ellen Smith's report continues: There continue to be severe bumps and outbursts along the ribs. They have explored four entries in the active working section, but because of the adverse conditions, they…