Science & the Public

Tech

FDA bans BPA in baby bottles, cups

From now on, U.S. manufacturers may no longer produce polycarbonate baby bottles and sippy cups (for toddlers) if the clear plastic had been manufactured from bisphenol A, a hormone-mimicking compound. Long-awaited, the announcement is anything but a bold gesture. The Obama administration decided to lock this barn door after the cow had died.

Humans

Putting BPA-based dental fillings in perspective

A new study finds that children who have their cavities filled with a white composite resin known as bis-GMA appear to develop small but quantifiable drops in psychosocial function. To put it simply: Treated kids can become more moody, aggressive and generally less well adjusted.

Humans

Warning to bats: Cuddle not

Ecologist Kate Langwig of Boston University and her colleagues want Eastern bats to listen up: No more cuddling — at least during hibernation. Just keep those wings to yourselves.

Humans

Ozone: Heart of the matter

As reported this week, breathing elevated ozone levels can mess with the cardiovascular system, potentially putting vulnerable populations — such as the elderly and persons with diabetes or heart disease — at heightened risk of heart attack, stroke and sudden death from arrhythmias. Is this really new? Turns out it is.

Humans

De-papering environmental summits

One token — but highly visible — gesture toward sustainability at the UN's 2012 Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio was a request for all attendees to shrink their paper footprints. Apparently, most complied.

Humans

What’s in your wallet? Another ‘estrogen’

A chemical cousin of bisphenol A, a hormone mimic, has turned up on banknotes from around the world in addition to tainting 14 other types of papery products. Owing to the near ubiquity of BPS in paper, human exposure is likely also “ubiquitous,” conclude the study's authors. Oh, and a second new study shows that BPS behaves like an estrogen.

Science & Society

Measuring how well kids do science

On June 19, the National Assessment of Educational Progress released the first national report card gauging the performance in hand-on and research-oriented interactive computer tasks by U.S. children. And the overall grades: Well, they show lots of room for improvement.

Tech

Court ‘shares’ researchers’ e-mails, intellectual property

“A situation has arisen involving scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) that should concern all those who value the principles of academic freedom and responsibility,” warns top WHOI officials. They were responding to a court order requiring that two WHOI scientists turn over 3,500 emails and other documents to BP. Included in the information was intellectual property that outsiders could exploit.

Humans

Depolarizing climate science

A study out this week attempts to probe why attitudes on climate risks by some segments of the public don’t track the science all that well. Along the way, it basically debunks one simplistic assumption: that climate skeptics, for want of a better term, just don’t understand the data — or perhaps even science. “I think this is sort of a weird, exceptional situation,” says decision scientist Dan Kahan of the Yale Law School, who led the new study. “Most science issues aren’t like this.” But a view is emerging, some scientists argue, that people tend to be unusually judgmental of facts or interpretations in science fields that threaten the status quo — or the prevailing attitudes of their cultural group, however that might be defined. And climate science is a poster child for these fields.

Animals

Bat killer hits endangered grays

The news on white-nose syndrome just keeps spiraling downward. The fungal infection, which first emerged six years ago, has now been confirmed in a seventh species of North American bats — the largely cave-dwelling grays (Myotis grisecens). The latest victims were struck while hibernating this past winter in two Tennessee counties.

Climate

Rising CO2 promotes weedy rice

There has been a lot of research, recently, showing how global change — especially warming — can alter the habitat and preferred range of marine and terrestrial species. But rising levels of greenhouse gases can also, directly, do a number on agricultural ecosystems, a new study shows. At least for U.S.-grown rice, rising carbon dioxide levels give a preferential reproductive advantage to the weedy natural form — known colloquially as red rice (for the color of its seed coat).

Humans

Our increasingly not-so-little kids

Little kids are meant to get big. Just not too quickly. When overfeeding spurs the girth of young children, youngsters find themselves propelled down the road towards diabetes and heart disease, a new study finds. In just the past decade, for instance, the share of kids with diabetes or pre-diabetes skyrocketed from 9 percent to a whopping 23 percent.