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A Bicycle Evangelist With the Wind Now at His Back
By CORNELIA DEAN, The New York Times, January 13, 2009
PORTLAND, Ore. — For years, Earl Blumenauer has been on a mission, and now his work is paying off. He can tell by the way some things are deteriorating around here.
“People are flying through stop signs on bikes,” Mr. Blumenauer said. “We are seeing in Portland bike congestion. You’ll see people biking across the river on a pedestrian bridge. They are just chock-a-block.”
Mr. Blumenauer, a passionate advocate of cycling as a remedy for everything from climate change to obesity, represents most of Portland in Congress, where he is the founder and proprietor of the 180 (plus or minus)-member Congressional Bicycle Caucus. Long regarded in some quarters as quixotic, the caucus has come into its own as hard times, climate concerns, gyrating gas prices and worries about fitness turn people away from their cars and toward their bikes.
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A Breakthrough in Imaging: Seeing a Virus in Three Dimensions
By JOHN MARKOFF, The New York Times, January 13, 2009
For the first time, researchers at an I.B.M. laboratory have captured a three-dimensional image of a virus.
The technique used by the I.B.M. scientists has some similarity to magnetic resonance imaging, or M.R.I., now routinely used by physicians to peer inside the human body. But the results were 100 million times better in terms of resolution with the new technique, magnetic resonance force microscopy, or M.R.F.M. The team of researchers, based at the computer maker’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., reports in the The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have captured a 3-D image of a tobacco mosaic virus with a spatial resolution down to four nanometers.
( Read More... )
In F.D.A. Files, Claims of Rush to Approve Devices
By GARDINER HARRIS, The New York Times, January 13, 2009
An official at the Food and Drug Administration overruled front-line agency scientists and approved the sale of an imaging device for breast cancer after receiving a phone call from a Connecticut congressman, according to internal agency documents.
The legislator’s call and its effect on what is supposed to be a science-based approval process is only one of many of accusations in a trove of documents regarding disputes within the agency’s office of device evaluation.
( Read More... )
By CORNELIA DEAN, The New York Times, January 13, 2009
PORTLAND, Ore. — For years, Earl Blumenauer has been on a mission, and now his work is paying off. He can tell by the way some things are deteriorating around here.
“People are flying through stop signs on bikes,” Mr. Blumenauer said. “We are seeing in Portland bike congestion. You’ll see people biking across the river on a pedestrian bridge. They are just chock-a-block.”
Mr. Blumenauer, a passionate advocate of cycling as a remedy for everything from climate change to obesity, represents most of Portland in Congress, where he is the founder and proprietor of the 180 (plus or minus)-member Congressional Bicycle Caucus. Long regarded in some quarters as quixotic, the caucus has come into its own as hard times, climate concerns, gyrating gas prices and worries about fitness turn people away from their cars and toward their bikes.
( Read More... )
A Breakthrough in Imaging: Seeing a Virus in Three Dimensions
By JOHN MARKOFF, The New York Times, January 13, 2009
For the first time, researchers at an I.B.M. laboratory have captured a three-dimensional image of a virus.
The technique used by the I.B.M. scientists has some similarity to magnetic resonance imaging, or M.R.I., now routinely used by physicians to peer inside the human body. But the results were 100 million times better in terms of resolution with the new technique, magnetic resonance force microscopy, or M.R.F.M. The team of researchers, based at the computer maker’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., reports in the The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have captured a 3-D image of a tobacco mosaic virus with a spatial resolution down to four nanometers.
( Read More... )
In F.D.A. Files, Claims of Rush to Approve Devices
By GARDINER HARRIS, The New York Times, January 13, 2009
An official at the Food and Drug Administration overruled front-line agency scientists and approved the sale of an imaging device for breast cancer after receiving a phone call from a Connecticut congressman, according to internal agency documents.
The legislator’s call and its effect on what is supposed to be a science-based approval process is only one of many of accusations in a trove of documents regarding disputes within the agency’s office of device evaluation.
( Read More... )
