Obama's Weekly Web/Radio Address

Over the past few weeks, Vice President-Elect Biden and I have announced some of the leaders who will advise us as we seek to meet America’s twenty-first century challenges, from strengthening our security, to rebuilding our economy, to preserving our planet for our children and grandchildren. Today, I am pleased to announce members of my science and technology team whose work will be critical to these efforts.

Whether it’s the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create twenty-first century jobs – today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation. It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.

Right now, in labs, classrooms and companies across America, our leading minds are hard at work chasing the next big idea, on the cusp of breakthroughs that could revolutionize our lives. But history tells us that they can’t do it alone. From landing on the moon, to sequencing the human genome, to inventing the Internet, America has been the first to cross that new frontier because we had leaders who paved the way: leaders like President Kennedy, who inspired us to push the boundaries of the known world and achieve the impossible; leaders who not only invested in our scientists, but who respected the integrity of the scientific process.

Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources – it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient – especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States – and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.

Dr. John Holdren has agreed to serve as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. John is a professor and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, as well as President and Director of the Woods Hole Research Center. A physicist renowned for his work on climate and energy, he’s received numerous honors and awards for his contributions and has been one of the most passionate and persistent voices of our time about the growing threat of climate change. I look forward to his wise counsel in the years ahead.

John will also serve as a Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology – or PCAST – as will Dr. Harold Varmus and Dr. Eric Lander. Together, they will work to remake PCAST into a vigorous external advisory council that will shape my thinking on scientific aspects of my policy priorities.

Dr. Varmus is no stranger to this work. He is not just a path-breaking scientist, having won a Nobel Prize for his research on the causes of cancer – he also served as Director of the National Institutes of Health during the Clinton Administration. I am grateful he has answered the call to serve once again.

Dr. Eric Lander is the Founding Director of the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard and was one of the driving forces behind mapping the human genome – one of the greatest scientific achievements in history. I know he will be a powerful voice in my Administration as we seek to find the causes and cures of our most devastating diseases.

Finally, Dr. Jane Lubchenco has accepted my nomination as the Administrator of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is devoted to conserving our marine and coastal resources and monitoring our weather. As an internationally known environmental scientist, ecologist and former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Jane has advised the President and Congress on scientific matters, and I am confident she will provide passionate and dedicated leadership at NOAA.

Working with these leaders, we will seek to draw on the power of science to both meet our challenges across the globe and revitalize our economy here at home. And I’ll be speaking more after the New Year about how my Administration will engage leaders in the technology community and harness technology and innovation to create jobs, enhance America’s competitiveness and advance our national priorities.

I am confident that if we recommit ourselves to discovery; if we support science education to create the next generation of scientists and engineers right here in America; if we have the vision to believe and invest in things unseen, then we can lead the world into a new future of peace and prosperity.

Thank you, and happy holidays everybody.

Make Me Puke

Oink, a male chauvinist pig goes to the White House. This is your brain on dope. Or testerone.

HuffPo: Larry Summers: Director Of National Economic Council, Top Adviser To Obama

ABC News reports that Obama has tapped Larry Summers to be his top economic adviser.

Can you imagine Obama naming as his top economic adviser someone who said in an address to an academic conference that blacks might have innate differences that explain their failure to attain high positions in the sciences and engineering? And that when asked to explain his racist remarks, this supposed intellectual stated this was a legitimate hypothesis? That he was just trying to be provocative? And complained about political correctness?

That person would not be named economic adviser, I posit, but a man who said those things about women has.

I want some of my money back, Barack.

Copernicus' Remains Identified Through DNA

yahoo: In this image provided by the Kronenberg Foundation in Warsaw on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008, a computer-generated reconstruction of what astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus may have looked like on the basis of a skull discovered in the cathedral in Frombork, northern Poland, is seen. Polish and Swedish researchers said Thursday they have identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus by comparing DNA from a skeleton they have found with that taken from hair retrieved from one of the 16th-century astronomer's books.
(AP Photo/Kronenberg Foundation, HO)

AP (via Yahoo): Scientists say Copernicus' remains, grave found

WARSAW, Poland – Researchers said Thursday they have identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus by comparing DNA from a skeleton and hair retrieved from one of the 16th-century astronomer's books. The findings could put an end to centuries of speculation about the exact resting spot of Copernicus, a priest and astronomer whose theories identified the Sun, not the Earth, as the center of the universe.

Polish archaeologist Jerzy Gassowski told a news conference that forensic facial reconstruction of the skull, missing the lower jaw, his team found in 2005 buried in a Roman Catholic Cathedral in Frombork, Poland, bears striking resemblance to existing portraits of Copernicus.

The reconstruction shows a broken nose and other features that resemble a self-portrait of Copernicus, and the skull bears a cut mark above the left eye that corresponds with a scar shown in the painting.

This story reminds me of the novel People of The Book by Geraldine Brooks (author of the March). People of the Book is like a literary CSI, where a rare books expert traces the history of a real book, the Sarajevo Haggadah, through its 600-year-history using modern methods of evidence collection and analysis. Not as good as March, but it's tough to top a Pulitzer Prize-winner.

Cindy Parlow Leaving Her Brain to Science

NYTimes: 12 Athletes Leaving Brains to Concussion Study

Cindy Parlow retired from international play in 2006 because of post-concussion syndrome.

“I’m doing this to raise awareness of concussion and the injury, because it’s so misunderstood,” said Parlow, 30, who competed in three Olympics and two World Cups for the United States team and now has severe headaches from two significant concussions. “You can’t say, ‘Look at my broken leg.’ It’s a hidden injury. Especially in female athletes, because it’s seen as a football or male injury.”

Parlos is also on the Athlete Advisory Board of The Sports Legacy Institute, which was founded to bring awareness of the injuries suffered by athletes, especially brain injuries.

When I saw that a female soccer player was participating in this study, I thought it would be Joy Fawcett, who wore the anti-concussion headgear her last few years with the national team.

Beautiful Photographs

"Moth" (Third Prize) A thin, elastic metal film made of PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) and gold, used to make stretchable electronics
Photograph: Ingrid Graz/University of Cambridge

Guardian (uk): Microsoft Photograph Competition 2008

Take That, Lawrence Summers

Photo via Is It Just Me?

Math study finds girls are just as good as boys

It's Not Your Fault

WaPo: Weight Gain May Not Be Based Just on What You Eat

THURSDAY, June 5 (HealthDay News) -- "You are what you eat" is a frustrating truism familiar to the diet-conscious choosing between carrots and carrot cake. But new research suggests that weight control isn't just a matter of what you put in your mouth, but also how the nervous system is genetically predisposed to process fat.

The theory is based on research with worms that suggests that the brain chemical serotonin -- long known for its appetite control properties -- relies on independent but coordinated nerve pathways to drive not only hunger, but also fat metabolism.

"I want to be clear that there is absolutely nothing in our study that says that good nutrition and activity is not important or not good for you," said study lead author Kaveh Ashrafi, an assistant professor in the department of physiology and the Diabetes Center at the University of California, San Francisco. "But that said, I think that it is important to realize that there is a major contributing factor to body weight that is genetic."

Read From the Left

Two new books deconstruct the arguments from the right that have distorted our national discourse on two important topics: science and politics.

"Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health" (Oxford University Press, 2008) by David Michaels.

From the author himself, writing at The Pump Handle:

In Doubt, I recount how the strategy of manufacturing uncertainty was pioneered by the tobacco industry. Clearly successful, it has been adopted by the asbestos, beryllium, chromium, and pesticide industries, among others, and it is the strategy used by global warming deniers. There are few industries that haven’t tried it - Andrew Dressler at Grist has a new piece on how the Indoor Tanning Association is trying to convince the public that “there is actually no evidence linking sun exposure with cancer.” (I talk about that in my book, too.)

"Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics" by Glenn Greenwald:

From the time I began blogging in October, 2005, I've written about many different topics, but almost all have a similar undercurrent: the Limbaugh/Kristol/Fox-News right-wing faction that controls the Republican Party and has dominated our political life for the last 15 years, and the multiple ways that our political institutions -- and particularly the Drudgified establishment press -- enable them. Marketing packages aside, this book is about them; how they function; the weakness-driven bloodthirstiness, dishonesty and sleaze which defines them; the indispensable eagerness of the establishment media to be used by them; and what can be done by those opposed to them to change all of that.

All of the radical and reprehensible events of the last eight years -- the commencement and endless prosecution of an indescribably disastrous war, the accelerated dismantling of our Constitutional framework, the creation of a lawless Surveillance State and a virtually omnipotent President, the legitimization of truly grotesque torture and detention regimes, the complete corruption of our political discourse -- have individuals and a political movement behind them, causing all of that to happen. They have cultivated the ability to manipulate media behavior, largely as a result of a media eager to help. But what they do not have is popular support for virtually anything they are doing. And yet they continue to win elections.

How and why that happens -- the deceitful electoral tactics and manipulative personality-based myths the Right has perfected and continuously deploys to win elections, and the ways in which our slothful, vapid and complicit establishment press propagates those myths -- is the principal subject of this book. And understanding and exposing that right-wing/media partnership is a necessary precondition for weakening it.

Hidden Beauties

A carpet of red blood cells clearly showing their typical biconcave disc shape
Photograph: Dave McCarthy and Annie Cavanagh/Wellcome Trust

Some gorgeous scientific photographs.

Guardian (uk): Wellcome Image Awards 2008

From a fly on sugar to the internal structure of an HIV cell and the trachea from a silkworm, the Wellcome Image Awards 2008 spotlights some of the boldest pictures taken during groundbreaking scientific research

Liquid crystal seen under polarised light
Photograph: Karen Neill/Wellcome Trust

Lying By Omission

wikipedia
Bush and his administration haven't just lied about weapons of mass destruction. They've forced our scientists to lie by pressuring them to change scientific reports, all part of Bushco's attempt to deny the reality of climate change and global warming.

der Spiegel: Politicians Censor Report on Dangers of Arctic Drilling

There's black gold beneath the snow white Arctic -- and oil companies are gearing up to exploit it on a massive scale. Scientists had hoped to warn of the scope of the environmental dangers of Arctic drilling in a new report, but 60 passages have been removed following pressure from the United States and Sweden.

By all accounts, this ought to be a triumphant day for John Calder. The graying director of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Arctic Research division spent four years writing his report titled "Arctic Oil and Gas" -- together with 150 scientists with the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP). And now it's finally time for Calder to publicly present his first summary of the report. His presentation in the large auditorium at the University of Tromsø is the highlight of the Arctic Frontiers Conference, at which 500 experts will spend the remainder of the week discussing the outlook for oil and gas production in the ever-warming Arctic (more...).

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The Phrase "Climate Change" Is Unwelcome

But despite these commendable warnings, there is a significant problem behind the work of Calder and other scientists: it has been devalued by political wrangling. Until recently, the summary ended with more than 60 recommendations the scientists had compiled for politicians. Those recommendations have since disappeared.

The modifications are the result of quarrels within the Arctic Council, which commissioned the AMAP study. Unanimity is required between the permanent members of the Council, which include the Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Canada, the United States and Russia -- but Sweden and the US were opposed to the document. Sources at the Tromsø meeting said the Americans didn't even want the term "climate change" to be used in the final report.

hat tip to The Pump Handle

Obesity Caused by Plethora of Plastic?

WaPo: Chemicals May Play Role in Rise in Obesity

[S]everal recent animal studies suggest that environmental exposure to widely used chemicals may also help make people fat.

The evidence is preliminary, but a number of researchers are pursuing indications that the chemicals, which have been shown to cause abnormal changes in animals' sexual development, can also trigger fat-cell activity -- a process scientists call adipogenesis.

The chemicals under scrutiny are used in products from marine paints and pesticides to food and beverage containers. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found one chemical, bisphenol A, in 95 percent of the people tested, at levels at or above those that affected development in animals.

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"Exposure to bisphenol A is continuous," said Frederick vom Saal, professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Bisphenol A is an ingredient in polycarbonate plastics used in many products, including refillable water containers and baby bottles, and in epoxy resins that line the inside of food cans and are used as dental sealants. In 2003, U.S. industry consumed about 2 billion pounds of bisphenol A.