I've seen this making the rounds in the media the last couple weeks.... Nat
*Metric system advocate: Talk about a lack of support. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has two people -- count 'em -- working to convert the American public to the metric system. ---------------- 2003 P.G. Publishing Co. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) September 22, 2003 Monday ONE STAR EDITION SECTION: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE, Pg.A-6 LENGTH: 613 words HEADLINE: THINK YOUR JOB IS BAD? BODY: A life in science can involve long hours in the lab, research dead-ends and cut-throat competition for funding and faculty posts. But it's not all glamor. In its October issue, Popular Science reports on the "Worst Jobs in Science" and some of them literally stink. Among them: *Flatus odor judge: A Minneapolis gastroenterologist investigating whether the smell of flatulence could be a symptom of digestive system health has hired two poor souls to repeatedly evaluate the odors of other people's gaseous emissions. *U.S. stem cell researchers: Federal regulations limit their studies to a small number of existing human embryonic stem cell lines, while counterparts abroad are creating their own cell lines. *Hot-zone superintendent: Somebody's got to fix equipment, change air filters and otherwise maintain Bio-Safety Level 4 labs, where scientists study lethal pathogens for which there is no known cure. No one else in the world comes into more frequent contact with these deadliest of microbes. *Brazilian mosquito researcher: The Anopheles darlingi species of Brazil doesn't respond to light or wind traps used elsewhere in the world. So malaria researchers studying the biting habits of this mosquito must offer themselves as bait. *Metric system advocate: Talk about a lack of support. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has two people -- count 'em -- working to convert the American public to the metric system. A light new space scope The next-generation space telescope that will replace the Hubble in a decade will have a much larger mirror, about 20 feet in diameter compared with 8 for the Hubble. The problem for NASA has been how to make a bigger mirror that isn't too heavy. Now the agency has an answer: The mirror will be made of the metal beryllium, not glass (as the Hubble's is). Testing of a demonstration mirror by Ball Aerospace, the contractor involved, showed that it met NASA's specifications for lightness and ability to operate at extremely low temperatures. Babies hear pretty well Babies are born wired to listen, new research suggests. One study suggests that babies younger than 5 days old prefer speech sounds; a second study indicates that newborns can probably pick out their mother's voice in a noisy room. Both studies appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using brain imaging, a team of scientists from Japan, France and Italy found that areas in the left halves of babies' brains responded more to normal speech than to speech played backward. In the other study, scientists from Hungary, Finland, Sweden, California and New York took brain recordings and found that babies could segregate two streams of sound played at the same time. The inhabited Amazon basin The Amazon River basin was not, as once thought, an untouched wilderness before Columbus came to the Americas. Researchers working in the Upper Xingu part of the vast tropical region have discovered clusters of densely settled communities linked by wide roads and canals, protected by moats and surrounded by agricultural developments. "These people were not the small mobile bands or simple dispersed populations" that some earlier studies had suggested, said Michael J. Heckenberger of the University of Florida, first author of the study in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The people demonstrated sophisticated levels of engineering, planning, cooperation and architecture. But Heckenberger said their society has been overlooked because they did not build the massive cities and structures common to the Mayans, Aztecs and other pre-Columbian societies in South America. LOAD-DATE: September 22, 2003
