Dell Recall

A Dell notebook computer in Thomas Forqueran’s pickup truck caught fire in July, igniting ammunition in the glove box and then the gas tanks.

Dell Will Recall Batteries in PC’s
By DAMON DARLIN, The New York Times, August 15, 2006

Dell is recalling 4.1 million notebook computer batteries because they could erupt in flames, the company said yesterday. It will be the largest safety recall in the history of the consumer electronics industry, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said.

Dell, the world’s largest PC maker, said the lithium-ion batteries were made by Sony and were installed in notebooks sold from April 2004 to July 18 of this year.

The recall raises broader questions about lithium-ion batteries, which are used in devices like cellphones, portable power tools, camcorders, digital cameras and MP3 players. The potential for such batteries to catch fire has been acknowledged for years, and has prompted more limited recalls in the past. But a number of recent fires involving notebook computers, some aboard planes, have brought renewed scrutiny.
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Science Tuesday - Mathematics, Archaeology, Polio and Creationism

Elusive Proof, Elusive Prover: A New Mathematical Mystery
By DENNIS OVERBYE, The New York Times, August 15, 2006

Grisha Perelman, where are you?

Three years ago, a Russian mathematician by the name of Grigory Perelman, a k a Grisha, in St. Petersburg, announced that he had solved a famous and intractable mathematical problem, known as the Poincaré conjecture, about the nature of space.

After posting a few short papers on the Internet and making a whirlwind lecture tour of the United States, Dr. Perelman disappeared back into the Russian woods in the spring of 2003, leaving the world’s mathematicians to pick up the pieces and decide if he was right.

Now they say they have finished his work, and the evidence is circulating among scholars in the form of three book-length papers with about 1,000 pages of dense mathematics and prose between them.

As a result there is a growing feeling, a cautious optimism that they have finally achieved a landmark not just of mathematics, but of human thought.
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Archaeologists Challenge Link Between Dead Sea Scrolls and Ancient Sect
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, August 15, 2006

New archaeological evidence is raising more questions about the conventional interpretation linking the desolate ruins of an ancient settlement known as Qumran with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in nearby caves in one of the sensational discoveries of the last century.

After early excavations at the site, on a promontory above the western shore of the Dead Sea, scholars concluded that members of a strict Jewish sect, the Essenes, had lived there in a monastery and presumably wrote the scrolls in the first centuries B.C. and A.D.

Many of the texts describe religious practices and doctrine in ancient Israel.

But two Israeli archaeologists who have excavated the site on and off for more than 10 years now assert that Qumran had nothing to do with the Essenes or a monastery or the scrolls. It had been a pottery factory.
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Polio Cases Rise in Afghan South
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA, The New York Times, August 15, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 14 — The number of polio cases in Afghanistan has increased substantially in recent months, health officials said Monday. They attributed the rise to growing violence in the south that has hampered vaccination.

Health officials said they had identified at least 25 cases of polio so far this year, compared with 9 in all of 2005; a 26th case is suspected.
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Essay: How to Make Sure Children Are Scientifically Illiterate
By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS, The New York Times, August 15, 2006

Voters in Kansas ensured this month that noncreationist moderates will once again have a majority (6 to 4) on the state school board, keeping new standards inspired by intelligent design from taking effect.

This is a victory for public education and sends a message nationwide about the public’s ability to see through efforts by groups like the Discovery Institute to misrepresent science in the schools. But for those of us who are interested in improving science education, any celebration should be muted.
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