What Would Durkheim Do?

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist whose last lecture, titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," became a viral video on YouTube, died today at the age of 47 after a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. Doctors told Pausch last August that his cancer, which was in remission, had recurred and that he would live only three to six months longer. [More]

Cell phones--The new cigarettes?There has been a raging debate over whether cell phones--or more specifically electromagnetic radiation that they emit--up a person's cancer risk. The latest chapter: Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, this week warned consumers to limit exposure to cell phone radiation--and alerted parents to beware of possible effects on their kids' developing brains. Although the evidence remains controversial, he is convinced that the radiation poses a risk to human health. As he pointed out, a number of countries, including France, Germany and India, have already issued such warnings to their citizens. Herberman outlined 10 ways to reduce exposure. Among them: reduce cell phone use, use a hands-free earpiece, switch ears while chatting to limit radiation concentration in one spot, and avoid using mobile phones in public places to limit second-hand radiation. In particular, he cautions parents about the possible effects of cell phone radiation on children. He indicates that kids should only be allowed to use these devices in cases of emergency, as their developing brains are more likely to be susceptible to possible side effects. He said recent studies indicate that "living tissue is vulnerable to electromagnetic fields within the frequency bands used by cell phones." Worried? Perhaps you should be. But that doesn't mean you should hang up altogether, Herberman says. As he noted in his memo: "Our society will no longer do without cell phones." But he says there's enough biological data to indicate that consumers should take precautions. Herberman also called on the cell phone industry to improve current technologies to limit radiation risks. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration did not respond to requests for comment, but the agency says on its Web site that no clear link exists between cell phone usage and cancer.

Alaskan residents who watched as wildfires claimed a record 10,000 square miles (26,00 square kilometers) of land in 2004 can take cold comfort in the fact that the choking smoke endured during wildfire season could blunt some of the effects of global warming. Researchers from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) analyzed the short-term climatic impact of smoke from wildfires that swept Alaska and western Canada in 2004, burning 22,000 square miles (57,000 square kilometers) in total. They report in the Journal of Geophysical Research that the billowing clouds may have a cooling effect on the Arctic, where dwindling ice sheets have researchers worried about the potential for sudden climate changes to come. They say that smoke carried north on the wind absorbs some of the sun's rays and perhaps lessens the impact of global warming for weeks or months at a time, to a degree that depends on the soot's thickness, the sun's elevation and the brightness of the surface (ground or water). They note signs that the 2004 wildfires had atmospheric effects as far north as Greenland and the islands above Norway and down south to the Gulf of Mexico. The only hitch: Particles that land on snow or ice might actually cause it to melt faster. Still, NOAA says, it's possible the Arctic might benefit if the wildfires intensified--a distinct possibility as global warming leads to drier summers up north.

There has been a raging debate over whether cell phones – or more specifically electromagnetic radiation that they emit – up a person's cancer risk. The latest chapter: Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, this week warned consumers to limit exposure to cell phone radiation--and alerted parents to beware of possible effects on their kids' developing brains. Although the evidence remains controversial, he is convinced that the radiation poses a risk to human health. As he pointed out, a number of countries, including France, Germany and India, have already issued such warnings to their citizens.

Herberman outlined 10 ways to reduce exposure. Among them: reduce cell phone use, use a hands-free earpiece, switch ears while chatting to limit radiation concentration in one spot, and avoid using mobile phones in public places to limit second-hand radiation.

In a tragic turn of events, police yesterday found convicted "spam king" Edward "Eddie" Davidson dead, along with his wife and three-year-old daughter in Bennett, Colo., the victims of an apparent murder/suicide. The incident occurred four days after Davidson, 35, escaped from a minimum-security prison in Florence, Colo., 130 miles (209 kilometers) away as his wife Amy Lee Ann Hill, 29, was leaving after visiting him. The two drove off in Hill's Toyota SUV, which was later found at the murder scene. [More]

Esquire magazine plans to give its readers both the written – and the digital – word in its October issue, which will feature so-called electronic ink. [More]

Louise Brown, the first child conceived by assisted reproductive technology or in vitro fertilization (IVF), as it is commonly known, enters her 30s today. Her 1978 birth, just outside of Manchester, England, caused a stir throughout the world, with many groups claiming that her manner of conception was akin to scientists playing God. Today, she is merely the first of more than 3.5 million children around the globe (more than 250,000 in the U.S.) conceived in a test tube. That accounts for 1.5 percent of all babies born every year.  According to celebrity magazine US Weekly, that number includes Angelina Jolie and Bratt Pitt's twins Knox and Vivienne born in Nice, France, on July 12. [More]

Though not a household name, the impact that Victor McKusick had on medicine is profound: He was a pioneer in the field of genetics, showing the role that genes play in inherited diseases and abnormalities, ranging from Marfan's syndrome to dwarfism. [More]

A barge full of more than 400,000 gallons of fuel and a heavy tanker collided in New Orleans on Wednesday, spreading a rainbow sheen of oil across 100 miles of the Mississippi River down to the Gulf of Mexico. The smell of the industrial boiler oil spread for miles, according to residents, and stands out even in a city known for its industrial accidents. [More]

Dear EarthTalk: I was intrigued to hear that there were a number of ways one could modify or construct a roof on a house or office facility that would provide great environmental benefit. Can you enlighten? -- Bill Teague, Menlo Park, CA

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]

The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition--thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not.

On the one side are scientists who have been unable to find any causal link between the symptoms of autism and the vaccine preservative thimerosal, which in the body breaks down into ethylmercury, the culprit du jour for autism’s cause. On the other side are parents who noticed that shortly after having their children vaccinated autistic symptoms began to appear. These anecdotal associations are so powerful that they cause people to ignore contrary evidence: ethylmercury is expelled from the body quickly (unlike its chemical cousin methylmercury) and therefore cannot accumulate in the brain long enough to cause damage. And in any case, autism continues to be diagnosed in children born after thimerosal was removed from most vaccines in 1999; today trace amounts exist in only a few.

We Scientific Americans are emphatic empiricists. And although astronomy and astrology have common historical roots, the modern practice of astrology is total hooey. (And we say that only because we choose not to use stronger words than hooey in a family magazine.)

Nevertheless, some staffers were recently musing about what a horoscope would look like in our august pages. (Or September, even.) So here’s a proof-of-concept. It’s not based on science, because it’s impossible to have a horoscope based on science. But it’s science heavy. Specific predictions accompany individual zodiacal signs as per the form of the typical newspaper or magazine horoscope page (and shame on all you allegedly legitimate news outlets for running such garbage). Some of the predictions may seem intimately related to the sign in question. Even so, consider them all totally interchangeable, as the truly important aspect of the coordinates of your birth is the GDP at that time and place. And away we go.

People have long marveled at the majestic and mysterious northern lights that light up the skies over the polar regions of countries like Canada and in Scandinavia. Scientists have known for years that these undulating auroras are caused by a storm of charged particles high above Earth. And although a sight to behold, the forces triggering these lights can endanger satellites and air travelers near the poles. But researchers were in the dark about just what forces acted on these so-called magnetic substorms to produce the shimmering lightshows that dazzle us--until now.

Scientists have debated for decades whether local electrical disruptions in Earth's magnetic field or far-flung happenings in the so-called magnetotail (the tapering region of the magnetic field that points away from the sun) lead to the flare-ups of these substorms and their associated auroras.

Was the Antarctic once a balmier place? Researchers report in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B that a fossil of a tiny crustacean offers proof that it had a relatively toasty clime as recently as 14 million years ago. The rocks in eastern Antarctica's Dry Valleys region yielded the fossil of an ostracod (seen at left)--a shrimp-like crustacean that lived in an ancient Antarctic lake seen at left. The tiny crustaceans need liquid water to survive--unavailable in today's Antarctic where temps average -13 degrees Fahrnenheit (-25 degrees Celsius), but possible eons ago when the climate there was more like Alaska's. The living relatives of the ancient critter don't get any closer to Antarctica than the surrounding seas, but the fossil indicates that the bone dry landscape, often compared to that of Mars, once was warm enough to have water. What it doesn't reveal is what caused the climate shift, a process that may be reversing itself at present.

Can we tweak certain genes to stave off the aging process--or, conversely, to speed it up? New research indicates that it may one day be possible. [More]

Forget Jaws. The scariest thing about sharks is their tenuous future.

Though often misperceived as villainous denizens of the deep, these top predators play an important role in preserving the balance of the ocean's ecosystems by keeping their prey's populations in check.

Researchers have offered a new explanation for an unprecedented stellar explosion caught in the act earlier this year. [More]

Dear EarthTalk: Should we expect to see “plug-in” hybrid cars anytime soon? I’ve been hearing they are on the horizon but I wonder if that means in one year or 10.-- Bill A., Stratford, CT

Law enforcement has for years struggled to keep up with cyber crooks who use computers and networks to commit their crimes--whether it's theft, extortion or fraud. Cyber criminals are a slippery bunch, adept at covering their digital fingerprints to stay one step ahead of the law. One of the most effective ways of fighting any crime is to discourage would-be criminals by making an example of lawbreakers. [More]