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We, Pine Beetles and Global Warming Make Three

Ed has a great review of a recent paper in Nature presenting new research that describes just how extensive the damage done by the mountain pine beetle in British Columbia. The culprit of the outbreak is most likely climate change since sudden drops in temperature common in northern areas like BC have historically been a check on the beetle's population; in recent years, the winters have been less intense and the beetle populations have benefited from the extension. It immediately reminded me of the extinction-themed AAAS session I attended and blogged about last year, where ecologist Jim…

Tri-ortho-cresyl phosphate (Jake leg blues)

Yesterday's entry on diethylene glycol reminded me of another public safety incident that occured pre-FDA: Jake leg. Jamaican ginger extract, or "jake," was just like the extracts you buy at the grocery store today - full of alcohol. During prohibition, a lot of people realized it made a decent substitute for real booze. As far as I know, extracts can't use denatured alcohol - they're intended for consumption. Soon, the treasury department wised up to this and declared that ginger extract had to have a certain amount of dissolved solids. Solomonic - if you wanted ginger extract, you were…

The Big 3: Shrimp, Tuna, and Salmon

If you read Blogfish, MBSL&S, and DSN, I think you see that Rick, Mark, and I are not advocating a complete ban on eating seafood. To the contrary seafood tastes good, especially with lemon and butter, and tastes even better if harvested sustainably. It is no surprise that the recent Cooking for Solutions event at the Monterey Bay Aquarium dedicated a session entirely to the Big 3. Rick Moonen, chef for rm seafood in Las Vegas and author of Fish Without a Doubt, noted that 60,000 lbs of shrimp are consumed daily in Sin City alone. However, eating bluefin tuna is like scarfing down…

Fuzzy Yeti Winner: The "Beauty" Industry Is Destroying Our Society With Their Lies

Since this won a Fuzzy Yeti Crab (The Fuzzy) for 2006, I thought a repost was in order. There is a great article at the San Francisco Chronicle on cosmeuceuticals and the extent people are distributing snake oil including this beauty... At the highest end of the skin-care spectrum, Saks Fifth Avenue on Union Square sells Estee Lauder's Re-Creation daytime and nighttime cream set (a store exclusive), which contains "deep sea water" for minerals and sells for $900. So what are the purported effects of deep-sea water? I collected some claims from around the internet which range from plain…

Senator Reid's Foot in Mouth Problem

Senator Harry Reid, the incoming Senator minority leader, caught a lot of flak for saying that Clarence Thomas' legal opinions are poorly written and that he was "an embarrassment to the court." Some of that flak came from me, in a post where I pointed out that while I am on the opposite side of most issues with Justice Thomas, Reid's claim was unjustifed and beneath the dignity of a Senate leader. Alas, Reid is not quite done making himself look like an ass. James Taranto, writing in the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web, quotes Reid's response when asked on CNN to provide an example of…

Eat Local

Notice of a local event, here in central Virginia, and a comment on the idea of local itself. I'm currently teaching environmental history (summer school), and we're to the point where we're discussing modern food systems. We had a nice trip to Whole Foods last week, with a scavenger hunt for all things so-labeled: organic (unsurprisingly, almost everything) "natural" (unsurprisingly with a great range of justification and definition) local (not so much, but cheese and wine) non-GMO (only a few volunteered to label as such) or otherwise. You know, just to see what's out there.…

Bulletproof T-shirts?

While it might sound science fiction or comic book fodder, scientists have actually developed a kind of wearable protective cloth from T-shirts that contains the same ultra-strong material used to armor tanks. Modern high-impact military vehicles and bulletproof vests are reinforced with a substance called boron carbide. It's the third hardest material known to man at room temperature, with a hardness of 9.3 on the mohs scale, just a hair behind diamond's hardness of 10. It's hard to imagine how such a rigid material could be comfortable to wear, but scientists have recently developed the…

Clueless about big tuna

What's happening in the Science News section at the Washington Post? A recent story about bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) made me wonder exactly what's going on behind the journalist's desk. The article in question is called "Advocates hope science can save big tuna", published Dec. 24, 2007. The Post article reviews scientific approaches that illustrate bluefin tuna migrations to and from spawning grounds in the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean Sea, then notes the bluefin populations are plummeting, but finally surrenders the problem to "political will" and the federal government. This…

Tirman in Editor and Publisher on Iraqi casualties

John Tirman has an article in Editor and Publisher. Extract: The charge, repeated in all these media, that the Iraqi research leader, Riyadh Lafta, M.D., operated "without U.S. supervision" and was therefore suspect is particularly interesting. Munro, in a note to National Review Online, asserted that Lafta "said Allah guided the prior 2004 Lancet/Johns Hopkins death-survey," which he also had noted in the National Journal piece. When he interviewed me he pestered me about two anonymous donors, demanding to know if either were Arab or Muslim. A pattern here is visible, one which reeks of…

Conservation Psychology: Think You're Green? Think Again!

Happy Earth Day, everyone! In honor of the day, here's a modified re-post of piece I wrote recently for LAist. Figure 1: Photo by poloroid-girl via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr. The great philosopher Kermit the Frog once said, "It's not that easy being green." Maybe he was on to something. You can't walk three steps down an aisle in any store without running into eco-friendly or "green" products. You probably have many of these products. Is your refrigerator or dishwasher Energy-star compliant? Do you have a paperless Kindle? Maybe bamboo guest towels in the bathroom? A Prius? Why do you…

Obesity rates decline among low-income preschoolers

After years of hearing about alarming increases in states' obesity rates, it was nice to get some good news: CDC reports that the percentage of low-income preschool children classified as obese has declined in 19 states. (Height and weight data came from 11.6 million children aged 2-4 participating in the Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System, which monitors the nutritional status of low-income children. Children whose body mass index was at or above the 95th percentile on CDC's growth charts were classified as obese.) Improvements among obesity rates of school-aged children have been…

You Just Might Find You Get What You Need

I have a vivid memory as a teenager of yelling at my Mother, "I didn't ask for two mothers! I don't need two mothers! I don't even want *you* and you got me this other one who won't leave me alone!" I was 14 and about as revolting as every other fourteen year old, or maybe just a little more. And like most step-children, I resented the heck out of my step-Mom, Susie. I have to say, I'm awed by anyone who sticks with it through the outs and ins of step-parenting - you've got my admiration - just thinking back on how unrewarding it was for my step-mother makes me realize y'all who take on…

My question for Luskin IV

I officially retract my question to Luskin as it has been answered. When I last asked my question of Luskin in regards to their assertion that the denial of tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez was a matter of "academic freedom", I really wanted an answer to it. My question was: Mr. Luskin, is it the considered opinion of the DI, UD etc., that it is never acceptable to discriminate against a professor in a tenure decision based on their ideas? Now, Tara shows me the answer to my question in her post Why deny only one part of science? IDists branch out into AIDS denial. I think my question is…

Mario Molina: Energy and climate change: is there a solution?

There are a few people who will now appear on the blog who will be extremely peevish about Molina's talk, because he simply clearly stated the scientific consensus. We are now living in the anthropocene, when so many people exist that that we are affecting the planet's functions. CO2 and CH4 concentrations have been changing rapidly in recent decades, along with changes in temperature, and the fact of the matter is that the changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere are causally connected to changes in temperature. He showed long term records of 450,000 years of temperature and…

Real Love

I don't think Eric and my eyes have ever met in one of those soppy, romantic looks couples give each other over a puddle of vomit before.  Yesterday, however, they did. We've been battling a nasty, slow moving stomach virus at our house (four down, four still to go ;-P), and one of the children threw up rather spectacularly all over their bed, the rug and (especially helpful) a gigantic pile of library books (I guess we now own a smelly $50 copy of the illustrated Silmarillion.  Yay.)  I walked in on the scene, yelled for husbandly help, and he set to the rug while I faced the library books…

Buyer beware when purchasing nail guns, salespeople know little about safety risks

[Updated 9/21/11: see below] Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk......is the familar sound around house framing and roofing jobs of the pnuematic nail gun. !Expletive! Expletive! Argh....Expletive!....is the cursing yelps from guys whose fingers, hands, and other body parts are punctured by nails inadvertently shot from these construction tools. An estimated 37,000 individuals in the US are treated annually in hospital emergency rooms for nail gun injuries. Moreover, nail guns are responsible for the most tool-related hospital admissions for workers in the construction trades…

Grumpy review of An Inconvenient Truth

At the third or fourth chance, the convenience of having this thing screened at BAS in the (extended) lunch break was too much to miss, and I've seen it. Its a documentary (I suppose) but a partisan one (maybe they all are...). Nothing really gets any caveats, unlike all my posts (for which see Ms. Rabett's Nude Scientist Exam). It ends with a fervent exhortation to do Your Bit and visit http://www.climatecrisis.net/ - when I did that, the first thing it offered me was the chance to buy the DVD, so clearly this is Consumption for Climate. How would we stop global warming? Since Gore fervently…

Cline vs. Woit

As an amusing follow-up to Friday's post, have a look at this lengthy op-ed from McGill University physicist Jim Cline, in The Ottawa Citizen. Here's an excerpt: Why is it that string theory has become such a favoured paradigm? Have theoretical physicists deluded themselves? Have they been pressured by social forces to blind themselves to other possible theories? Is there a behind-the-scenes string-theory conspiracy that is propping up a pseudoscientific house of cards? We could ask a similar question about cars. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that Hondas have been the most…

ID Books and Peer Review

The ACLU-PA blog has an interesting post on a key point in the cross examination of Michael Behe in the Dover trial. Behe was asked whether his book, Darwin's Black Box, had gone through a peer review process similar to the process used for articles submitted to scholarly journal: It has been stated here before that Behe has not submitted his own work on intelligent design for peer review. At the same time, Behe agreed, when asked by plaintiff's counsel Eric Rothschild if the "peer review for Darwin's Black Box was analogous to peer review in the [scientific] literature." It was, according to…

Shooting Down the New Confirmation Spin

The latest development in the Harriet Miers confirmation fight is this ridiculous talking point from the White House, via James Dobson: Some of the other candidates who had been on that short list, and that many conservatives are now upset about were highly qualified individuals that had been passed over. Well, what Karl told me is that some of those individuals took themselves off that list and they would not allow their names to be considered, because the process has become so vicious and so vitriolic and so bitter, that they didn't want to subject themselves or the members of their…

Street of the Horn

Hot on the heels of my paean to the Stockholm Sluice, here's something about the Hornsgatan street in Stockholm. Be warned, though: this work has been deemed substandard by the Swedish editor of Vice Magazine. HORNSGATAN By Martin Rundkvist, 19 March 2007 Hornsgatan, the Street of the Horn, used to be Stockholm's Wild West. It starts sedately enough at the 17th century South Town Hall but then ploughs straight through the churchyard of St. Mary, the bones of poets and burghers flying. Gathering speed, it passes Marijuana Square (as St. Mary's square was known in the 70s) and shoots off west…

Media Kick Swedish Heritage Board in Groin

As discussed here in a recent entry, there has long been a conflict over Ales stenar, a prehistoric stone ship monument in Scania, southern Sweden. Scholarship has argued that like all other large stone ships in southern Scandinavia with ample space between the standing stones, Ales stenar was built as a grave marker (or perhaps assembly site) in the late 1st Millennium AD. Radiocarbon dating has confirmed the date. On the other hand, amateur archaeo-astronomer Bob Lind has led a vociferous campaign asserting that the ship is several thousand years older than that and originally built as a…

How Do You Make People Care About Topological Insulators?

I had planned to spend some time this weekend trying to make sense of this new result on topological insulators, and maybe even write up the relevant paper for ResearchBlogging. Family life intervened, though, and I didn't have the time. I get enough of it to understand the basics of what's going on, but there's a whole lot I don't understand about topological insulators generally, so I'd need to do a bunch of reference chasing to get to something I can understand well enough to work back up to this week's Nature paper. And, to put it bluntly, there just isn't that much reward for the work…

Plastic Surgery Bimbo attacks Oklahoma State veterinary school

T. Boone Pickens. Never heard of the guy till I moved to OK. Some gazillionare that donates a shitload of money to Oklahoma State in Stillwater. Now while Pickens seems kinda like a cliche Republican (oil man, Swift Boat contributor, hoarding water), evidently his wife is a PETA nutbar. Oh certainly shes done 'good' things-- donated money to help pets stranded after Katrina, horse rescues-- But Madeleine Pickens is causing OSUs vet school to be under lock-down right now due to bullshit shes been puking to the local media. So the Pickens donate lots of money to OSU, right? Well Madeleine…

Pubs in London

While I kill time waiting for it to be a reasonable time to call Kate and the kids back in the US, a list of most of the pubs I've visited during this trip to London. Because why not? In more or less chronological order: The Victoria in Lancaster Gate. Or maybe Paddington, going from the URL. The naming of London neighborhoods is an enduring mystery to me. Anyway: given the name and location (two blocks from Hyde Park), I expected to be hip-deep in American tourists, but it was mostly a local crowd. Lots of Queen Victoria pictures, which mostly made me think of Eddie Izzard calling her "One…

Quantum Mechanics Is Not Magic, No Matter What Amazon Says

While I'm thrilled to see How to Teach Physics to Your Dog listed on Amazon, I am distressed to see it offered as a pair with something called The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart. I'm not linking to the Amazon page for that book, because it's a giant pile of crap, and I wouldn't want anyone to accidentally one-click-order it after following a link from my page. If you should choose to look it up, you can read bits and pieces of it via the "Look Inside" feature, and it's true that the opening chapter or so is a reasonable-sounding description of the physics of quantum entanglement,…

General Motors vice chairman: cunning genius or blathering idiot?

It's got to be one or the other. How else to explain the latest attempt by GM vice Cchairman Bob Lutz to attract attention to himself and his company, which continues to hemorrhage money? "Global warming is a total crock of shit," Lutz reportedly said told journalists at a Texas restaurant. "I'm a skeptic, not a denier." Those bon mots represent one of the most unambiguous denunciations of an entire body of scientific knowledge ever uttered by an American corporate executive. They trounce even Sen. James Inhofe's ever-so-slightly hedged claim to have presented "compelling evidence that…

On Gates

Far be it from a ScienceBlog to bloviate insufferably about current events, but I suppose I should weigh in on the whole Henry Louis Gates thing. I suppose this because I've had a very similar thing once happen to me. First Gates' story, then mine. The accounts of Gates and the arresting officer vary on several points, and each paints the other in a very poor light. From the points of agreement we can reconstruct a minimal but probably accurate recounting of the events. Gates and his driver arrived at Gates' home. They could not easily get the door open either as a result of malfunction…

Nat Geo Specials: And Then There Were Two

Tonight, I presume, you all are going to tune in and check out National Geographic's Morphed series. It was truly a blast to watch! But, what are your plans for this Tuesday? Because the fun's only just begun, and let me tell you, they saved the best for last. On Feb 10th starting at 9 PM, the National Geographic Channel premiers two other Darwin special features, and they are AMAZING. Technically, I watched the second one first, so I'm going to review it that way. You'll just have to deal. At 10 PM on Tuesday you should tune in to catch Monster Fish of the Congo. It tracks a team of…

Locking the Barn Door

You are a university president. You naturally wish to avoid scandal and negative publicity during your administration. The time to make it mandatory for all faculty and staff to undergo training in how to avoid sexual harassment is: A: When you take office, or shortly thereafter. B: After one of your professors is caught emailing female students a quid pro quo: A's if they would expose their breasts and allow him to fondle them. If you are University of Iowa president Sally Mason, you will, of course, pick option B. If this is only the first time the esteemed Professor Miller has engaged…

Bluewashing, Seafood Health, and Romantic Lobsters

Bluewashing. It's everywhere. In his article Beware of 'bluewash': Which fish should you buy? Nic Fleming covered our research on confusing seafood eco-labels in this week's NewScientist. In addition to the dangers of seeming eco-friendly, consumers are also up against an industry very set on convincing consumers seafood is healthy. Earlier this week, Dr. Melina Jampolis, the CNN diet and fitness expert, got the question: Is farm-raised salmon as healthy as wild? She consulted a senior vice president for research of the Environmental Working Group, who said: Eating farmed salmon…

Roland Martin, sorry to offend, but you are an offensive dit

Roland S. Martin is a CNN commentator who is coming late to the War on Christmas. The name Roland Martin reminds me of Rowan and Martin. I'm pretty sure that is why Rowan S. Martin uses the "S." .. so people don't think of Rowan and Martin when they hear his name. Rowan and Martin were funny in their day. Roland S. Martin is not funny. Yet it is hard to not laugh at the guy. In a recent commentary, Martin whines ... Because of all the politically correct idiots, we are being encouraged to stop saying "Merry Christmas" for the more palatable "Happy Holidays." What the heck are "…

Brain Performance Drugs

Last week, Nature published an editorial arguing for the mainstream acceptance of "cognitive enhancing drugs": Today, on university campuses around the world, students are striking deals to buy and sell prescription drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin -- not to get high, but to get higher grades, to provide an edge over their fellow students or to increase in some measurable way their capacity for learning. These transactions are crimes in the United States, punishable by prison. Many people see such penalties as appropriate, and consider the use of such drugs to be cheating, unnatural or…

Another anonymous Amazon reviewer exposed

The Panda's Thumb is an excellent new blog devoted to defending the integrity of science against attacks from creationists. I put it straight into my blog roll. Mark Perakh has a post where he tells a story that should be very familiar to those who know about Lott's antics at Amazon.com. My book Unintelligent Design became available from Amazon in the middle of December 2003. On December 22 those curious observers who watch the sometimes funny exchange of opinions regarding books offered by Amazon, already could read a review of my book signed "A reader…

Is there a role for homeopathy in cancer care? I think you know the answer to that question...

Homeopathy is The One Quackery To Rule Them All. There, I've started off this post the way I start off most posts about homeopathy, with a statement of just how enormous a pile of pseudoscientific (or rather prescientific) quackery that it is. You'd think that in 2015 no one would believe that diluting a substance (with vigorous shaking between each serial dilution step, of course, in order to "potentize" it) makes its effects stronger or that water has some sort of mystical "memory" that remembers the therapeutic substance but forgets all the other impurities, chemicals, and urine with which…

Should I get a Google Pixel?

My current phone, a Google Nexus made by Motorola, is still working fine. I'm much more worried about Amanda's Samsung, which is a nightmare. The storage on that phone is used up by Samsung proprietary gunk that can't be removed, and she can't insert a microSD card because the phone will not operate as an actual phone (reliably) when there is a microSD card in it. Her "deal" at Verizon is running out soon, and I'm personally hoping she goes with the Pixel. And, eventually, I'll be in the market for an upgrade as well. One must make proper comparisons. So I did. The bottom line:…

Too Many Little Brown Goats, and Other Consquences of Spring

It has been kind of quiet here, because well, it is spring, and that means that all my primary focus has shifted outside the house. The period from May 1 to June 15 is the busiest, craziest, wildest period of the year, and the shoulder season, ie, the month of April, its biggest rival. We have six baby goats on the ground right now, with two more does due this weekend and five more due in July. I'll be posting the "goats for sale" list very soon - we'll have a 1 year old buck (Goldenrod), at least one senior milking doe and at least one baby, and later in the season, we'll have two doelings…

Cool bloggy miscellanea

Scientific Collectivism 1: (Or How I Stopped Worrying and Loved Dissent): I want to bring up a discussion about what I perceive is a dangerous trend in neuroscience (this may be applicable to other areas of science as well), and that is what I will term "scientific collectivism." I am going to split this into two separate posts because it is so long. This first post is the weaker arguments, and what I see are the less interesting aspects of scientific collectivism-however, they deserve a discussion. What will you be? and the related Friday Poll: Tinker, Tailor, Biologist, Researcher. So, how…

A Pro-Science Film Festival: Why Not?

Over at Shifting Baselines, Randy Olson posts a comment suggesting how to combat anti-science movies like Expelled: You want to know how to start -- why doesn't somebody run a film festival for pro-evolution films? THAT is how you reach out to tap into new voices, new blood, new perspectives. THAT is what is desperately needed. Efforts to fan the fires of creativity and innovation. THAT was how I got started as a filmmaker -- winning awards at the New England Film and Video Festival while I was still a professor. That festival, and others, drew me into the world of filmmaking. But right now,…

Non-Science Fridays: Water clusters edition

For the un-initiated, I believe Fridays are good for coffee (I only drink caffeine once a week), doughnuts, and random stuff, not science (does this get me kicked off Science Blogs?). Meathead of the Week: Ken Ziman, partner at Simpson Thatcher. A piece in the NYTimes talks about how law firms are giving summer associates the 'chance' to have their summer lunch with a principle at a $15 or less place and the firm will give the rest of the food allowance ($45) to charity. The firms want to look socially responsible. First, this is just stupid, if they wanted to look responsible they would act…

Workshops at ScienceOnline2010

If you are coming to ScienceOnline2010 and you have checked the amazing Program there, you have noticed that there will be a set of hands-on workshops on Friday morning. If you will be attending (and even if you are not registered for the rest of the conference but will be in town on that day), you can sign up for workshops now - one 10am and one 11am worskhop. How do you sign up? By editing the Workshops page of the wiki - just add the number (up to 50 per session) and your name under the titles of workshops you want to participate in. How do you choose which two workshops to attend? If you…

Kay Glans Mourns Authoritative Newspaper Discourse

Kay Glans used to edit the literary pages of Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden's main conservative* newspaper, and Axess Magasin, a conservative Swedish arts & social sciences mag that also has a TV channel. The latter's standard is high, and I've been particularly pleased to find repeated staunch rebuttals of post-modernism there. What I don't like much in Glans's oeuvre is a tendency for aesthetic idealism and aesthetic conservatism, of the canon-stroking sort. His writers tend to believe that there are classics that every educated person should read. I'm an aesthetic relativist and accept no…

Nuclear is not "the answer"; slowing down in a sped-up culture is an act of resistance; and more from Rebecca Solnit

I had the chance to interview Rebecca Solnit for The Believer. It's on shelves now, in their September issue. They've also put the full text of it on-line at their website. (Here it is.) To quote the interview's intro, Solnit is the author of twelve books. She is a journalist, essayist, environmentalist, historian, and art critic; she is a contributing editor to Harper's, a columnist for Orion, and a regular contributor to Tomdispatch.com and The Nation; she's also written for, among other publications, the L.A. Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the London Review of Books. She talks…

23andMe to offer genetic testing through San Diego healthcare organisation

This seems like pretty interesting news: 23andMe, Inc., an industry leader in personal genetics, and Palomar Pomerado Health (PPH), the largest public health district in California, today announced that PPH will be offering the 23andMe Personal Genome Service for sale to San Diegans at its outpatient health centers. As an innovator in preventive health care, PPH encourages its communities to understand their genetic information in order to make more informed decisions about their health. This partnership marks the first time that a healthcare organization has provided the Personal Genome…

Workshops at ScienceOnline2010

If you are coming to ScienceOnline2010 and you have checked the amazing Program there, you have noticed that there will be a set of hands-on workshops on Friday morning. If you will be attending (and even if you are not registered for the rest of the conference but will be in town on that day), you can sign up for workshops now - one 10am and one 11am worskhop. How do you sign up? By editing the Workshops page of the wiki - just add the number (up to 50 per session) and your name under the titles of workshops you want to participate in. How do you choose which two workshops to attend? If you…

NASA, Japan Release Most Complete Topographic Map of Earth

From a NASA Press Release: NASA and Japan released a new digital topographic map of Earth Monday that covers more of our planet than ever before. The map was produced with detailed measurements from NASA's Terra spacecraft. The new global digital elevation model of Earth was created from nearly 1.3 million individual stereo- pair images collected by the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or Aster, instrument aboard Terra. NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, known as METI, developed the data set. It is available online to users…

Digging up the dirt on campus bacteria: how do we know if we have good data?

Metagenomics is a field where people interrogate the living world by isolating and sequencing nucleic acids. Since all living things have DNA, and viruses have either DNA or RNA, we can identify who's around by looking at bits of their genome. Researchers are using this approach to find the culprit that's killing the honeybees. We're also trying to find out who else shares our bodies, and lives in our skin, in our stomachs, and other places where the sun doesn't shine. Craig Venter used metagenomics when he sailed around the world and sequenced DNA samples from the Sargasso Seas. In this…

Popcorn Lung Becomes Butterscotch Lung

The lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans came to be called âpopcorn workers lungâ because this once-rare disease started afflicting workers from microwave popcorn plants with an alarming frequency. Scientists traced the disease, which destroys sufferersâ lungs, to the butter-flavoring chemical diacetyl. Two unions petitioned the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue an emergency temporary standard for diacetyl, and to begin the rulemaking process for a permanent standard on flavorings. (For more on this, read our diacetyl case study or diacetyl page.) Health officials first…

Does your doctor get money from drug companies? You'll be able to check in 2014

One of the less-noticed provisions of the Affordable Care Act is a requirement that pharmaceutical companies report to the Department of Health and Human Services the gifts and other payments they give to doctors and teaching hospitals -- and that HHS in turn make that information available to the public. (It's sometimes referred to as the "Physician Payment Sunshine Act," after legislation previously introduced in Congress by Senator Chuck Grassley.) Earlier this month, HHS released its final regulations to implement this provision. Beginning August 1, 2013, drug and device companies will…

Pacific Salmon take another hit, where it really hurts

Via the invaluable Knight-Ridder Science Journalism Tracker comes woeful news from the L.A. Times: One of the few remaining success stories, the Alaskan salmon fishery, is under threat by a parasite whose expansion seems related to climate change. I'm trying to finish an unrelated story myself, so will simply post the Tracker's write-up below the photo, which comes from a first-rate photo essay that accompanies Kenneth Weiss's full story at the LA Times. There's also quite a nice video version at the Times' site. (I can't figure out how to embed it here, but it heads the main story. http://…