recent interesting or distressing news

Stuff that has accumulated while I was doing other things. I'm just going to let it all out.

• New York Times: Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy. How do flaming idiots like this get on school boards?
  

  “I believe a lot of incredible things. The most incredible thing I believe is the Christmas story. That little baby born in the manger was the god that created the universe.” But Dr. McLeroy says his rejection of evolution — “I just don’t think it’s true or it’s ever happened” — is not based on religious grounds. Courts have clearly ruled that teachings of faith are not allowed in a science classroom, but when he considers the case for evolution, Dr. McLeroy said, “it’s just not there.”

• Nature: Stuck in the Mud. The Environmental Protection Agency must gather data on the toxicity of spreading sewage sludge. Sixty percent of the biosolids left over from sewage treatment in the U.S. are used as fertilizers. "In what can only be called an institutional failure spanning more than three decades — and presidential administrations of both parties — there has been no systematic monitoring programme to test what is in the sludge." Reports implying it was safe are under question despite stories like this, the EPA is still dragging its feet.


UPDATE: The Toronto Star did a feature story on all the yummy things found in biosolids, and the issues involved with using it on cropland.

• New York Times: Where Breathing is Deadly.  Nobody denies the earthquake in China is a tragedy. But Nick Kristoff notes that as many Chinese die every month from air pollution as died in this earthquake. He also recounts his visit to the "village of dunces" where effluent from a fertilizer factory has poisoned the drinking water and the town has a large number of mentally retarded residents.


• PLoS ONE: Pollutants Increase Song Complexity and the Volume of the Brain Area HVC in a Songbird. This paper has been reported on elsewhere, but still merits mention. This study looked at European Starlings exposed to endrocrine distrupting chemicals (specifically, estrogen mimics) which are concentrated in sewage effluent setting ponds that birds often forage in. The starlings developed longer and more complex songs due to a change in brain physiology.  Female starlings preferred these males, even though the immune systems of the males were compromised. This could have disturbing reproductive consequences for birds feeding on these types of contaminants, which are surprisingly ubiquitous in the environment. An excellent and deeply frightening primer on this issue is Theo Colburn's Our Stolen Future.  This is a book I routinely recommend to my friends.


• The Independent (via Birder's World Field of View): The Great Migration Crisis. Population declines of so many species of migrant birds are so sharp and dramatic that ornithologists think the whole system of bird migration between Europe and Africa may be breaking down. 


• PLoS ONE: Parasitoid increases survival of its pupae by inducing hosts to fight predators. One of the most interesting dramas in the grassroots jungle, to me, is the world of parasitic wasps and their caterpillar hosts. Female wasps lay their eggs into the body of a caterpillar, which lives while the wasp larvae eat them alive. The caterpillars typically die once the wasp larvae exit to pupate. Researchers in Brazil found a species of moth whose caterpillar does not die, but guards the cocoons of the wasp larvae. Carl Zimmer explains this in his usual lucid and elegant style -- go check it out. Hat tip to BugGirl. 

There's more! But I'll get to it later...

Comments

[John]

It's about time that someone studied the safety of using sewage sludge as fertilizer. There have been so many recent outbreaks of E. coli and salmonella in vegetable crops. I wonder if the use of sewage could be connected to them.

[Nuthatch]

I guess nobody in this administration really gives a shit. (That was inevitable.)

[Gloria]

The idea that we poison ourselves by the use of fertilizer that in many areas might be very unsafe is not a very cheerful one.

[Ellen]

About that sludge. Let's see - people in Iowa can't return to their homes because the muck is a toxic mix of sewage, pesticides, fuel, and all sorts of other stuff that got into the water as homes and businesses flooded. This is the same muck that is covering the flooded farm fields. Do we really want to eat anything grown on that land? I just came across a New York Times article written in 1993 by E.O. Wilson entitled "Is Humanity Suicidal?" Apparently so.