Science Tuesday - The Cute Factor, NOLA, Archaeology, Gentically modified plants and home remedies

The Cute Factor
By NATALIE ANGIER, The New York Times. January 3, 2006


WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 - If the mere sight of Tai Shan, the roly-poly, goofily gamboling masked bandit of a panda cub now on view at the National Zoo isn't enough to make you melt, then maybe the crush of his human onlookers, the furious flashing of their cameras and the heated gasps of their mass rapture will do the trick.
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Scientist at Work | Shannon Lee Dawdy
Archaeologist in New Orleans Finds a Way to Help the Living
By JOHN SCHWARTZ, The New York Times, January 3, 2006


NEW ORLEANS -"That's a finger bone."

Shannon Lee Dawdy kneeled in the forlorn Holt graveyard to touch a thimble-size bone poking up out of the cracked dirt. She examined it without revulsion, with the fascination of a scientist and with the sadness of someone who loves New Orleans.

Dr. Dawdy, a 38-year-old assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, is one of the more unusual relief workers among the thousands who have come to the devastated expanses of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. She is officially embedded with the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a liaison to the state's historic preservation office.

Her mission is to try to keep the rebuilding of New Orleans from destroying what is left of its past treasures and current culture.
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Evidence Found for Canals That Watered Ancient Peru
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, January 3, 2006


In the Andean foothills of Peru, not far from the Pacific coast, archaeologists have found what they say is evidence for the earliest known irrigated agriculture in the Americas.

An analysis of four derelict canals, filled with silt and buried deep under sediments, showed that they were used to water cultivated fields 5,400 years ago, in one case possibly as early as 6,700 years ago, archaeologists reported in a recent issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Lax Oversight Found in Tests of Gene-Altered Crops
By ANDREW POLLACK, The New York Times, January 3, 2006


The Department of Agriculture has failed to regulate field trials of genetically engineered crops adequately, raising the risk of unintended environmental consequences, according to a stinging report issued by the department's own auditor.

The report, issued late last month by the department's Office of Inspector General, found that biotechnology regulators did not always notice violations of their own rules, did not inspect planting sites when they should have and did not assure that the genetically engineered crops were destroyed when the field trial was done.
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Vital Signs:Patterns: Home Remedies: A Matter of Culture, Not Money
By ERIC NAGOURNEY, The New York Times, January 3, 2006


A tendency among older blacks and American Indians to turn to home remedies to treat illness appears unrelated to personal finances or access to health care, a new study has found.

Writing in the new issue of The American Journal of Health Behavior, the researchers say the varying uses of the treatments among ethnic groups seem to reflect, above all, cultural differences.
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