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Opting Out in the Debate on Evolution
By CORNELIA DEAN, The New York Times, June 21, 2005
When the Kansas State Board of Education decided to hold hearings this spring on what the state's schoolchildren should be taught about evolution, Dr. Kenneth R. Miller was invited to testify. Lots of people thought he was a good choice to speak for science.
Dr. Miller is a professor of biology at Brown University, a co-author of widely used high school and college biology texts, an ardent advocate of the teaching of evolution - and a person of faith. In another of his books, "Finding Darwin's God," he not only outlines the scientific failings of creationism and its doctrinal cousin, "intelligent design," but also tells how he reconciles his faith in God with his faith in science.
But Dr. Miller declined to testify. And he was not alone. Mainstream scientists, even those who have long urged researchers to speak with a louder voice in public debates, stayed away from Kansas.
In general, they offered two reasons for the decision: that the outcome of the hearings was a foregone conclusion, and that participating in them would only strengthen the idea in some minds that there was a serious debate in science about the power of the theory of evolution.
"We on the science side of things strong-armed the Kansas hearings because we realized this was not a scientific exchange, it was a political show trial," said Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, which promotes the teaching of evolution. "We are never going to solve it by throwing science at it."
The American Association for the Advancement of Science, a large organization of researchers and teachers, and the publisher of the journal Science, also declined to participate.
"If the evidence for modern Darwinian theory is so overwhelming, they should have called the bluff on the other side and come and made their arguments," said John West, a political scientist and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a research organization that supports work challenging the theory of evolution. "They should have put up or shut up."
Dr. West said that although most of the institute's resources support research on intelligent design, the theory that life on earth is far too complex to have evolved without the guidance of an intelligent agent, the organization does not advocate that students be required to learn it. Nor does it object to the teaching of evolution, he said.
"The majority of biologists obviously support Darwinian evolution in its full-fledged view," he said. "The question is, are there legitimate, peer-reviewed criticisms? If there are, students should know about them."
In theory, this position - "teach the controversy" - is one any scientist should support. But mainstream scientists say alternatives to evolution have repeatedly failed the tests of science, and the criticisms have been answered again and again. For scientists, there is no controversy.
Dr. Miller said he decided to stay away from the hearings because he was convinced that the panel would recommend a "teach the controversy" approach regardless of the testimony presented. "The people running things were people whose minds were already made up," Dr. Miller said in an interview in May, before the panel's recommendations were announced.
He said he had anticipated that "they would say, 'This is such a fascinating controversy that what we need to do is let the children of Kansas have the same benefit' " of learning about it.
When the hearings ended, the subcommittee running them concluded just that. The hearings had produced "credible scientific testimony that indeed there are significant debates about the evidence for key aspects of chemical and biological theory," the panel said, and it is "important and appropriate for students to know about these scientific debates."
Still, scientists who stayed away say they did the right thing.
Declining to testify "can be made to look as if you do not want to defend science in public, or you are too afraid to face the intelligent design people in public," Dr. Miller said.
But, he said, taking part in this kind of argument only contributes to the idea that there is something worth arguing about, and "I wasn't interested in playing a role in that."
Dr. Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said that when the association was invited to present its views at the hearings he raised the issue with his board. Although some members said "go straighten them out," he recalled, the consensus was that the association should stay away.
"We were invited to debate one supposed theory against another," Dr. Leshner said, when in fact there was no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution.
Dr. Scott said that until recently she believed scientists should seize opportunities to debate the opponents of evolution. "I was one of the holdouts, saying yes, appear with these guys, yes, tell them what is wrong with their ideas, go to their conferences, treat them like scholars," she said.
Like other scientists, she said that if someone identified a flaw in evolutionary theory that could not be dealt with, science would have to modify the theory or even scrap it. But the criticisms raised have fallen in the face of scientific scrutiny, she and others say, yet opponents of evolution raise them again and again.
So a few years ago, she said, "even I threw in the towel."
"Our willingness to engage their ideas," she went on, "was not being reciprocated."
Dr. West, of the Discovery Institute, argues that scientists have shown the same unwillingness to engage when they talk about evolution. In Kansas, he said, "there was a sort of arrogance - claiming that 'since we are the majority scientific view we don't owe an explanation to anyone, especially these public officials we think are stupid.'
"Well, they can have that attitude, but whether they like it or not we have public officials who are charged with making decisions," he said. "They seem to think the A.A.A.S. should just appoint a panel and replace every elected school board."
Despite their decision to stay away from Kansas, scientists continue to make the case for evolution.
For example, a number of scientists, including Dr. Miller, plan to testify in a case in Dover, Pa., where teachers were directed to instruct that intelligent design was a scientific alternative to evolution. "In a court of law, you have standards, rules and laws you are interpreting," Dr. Scott said, in explaining why scientists are taking part in this case. "In Kansas, it was a free-for-all."
Earlier this month, the National Academy of Sciences started a Web site (nationalacademies.org/evolution) with information about evolution and assurances that no credible scientific challenge to evolutionary theory has been raised. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (aaas.org, click on "evolution resources") and other organizations maintain similar sites.
Dr. Leshner wrote an opinion article about the evolution issue that ran in The Kansas City Star before the hearings were held this spring. The essay dealt with one of the powerful issues underlying the debate about evolution: whether science and religious faith can coexist.
It is not surprising that defenders of evolution are staying away from the hearings, he wrote, "since it's a debate that can't be won."
"After all, interpretations of Genesis are a matter of faith, not facts," he wrote. But faith and facts "should not be pitted against each other; the theory of evolution does not, in fact, conflict with the religious views of most Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu followers."
But some scientists have made the point that it is difficult to make the case for evolution at a time when many Americans view it as an assault by the secular elite on the values of God-fearing people.
"The creation and evolution issue is not just about science," Dr. Scott said. "The science is necessary but not sufficient. It is ultimately and predominantly a political and cultural kind of issue rather than a scientific issue."
Now that the panel that conducted the hearings has recommended that challenges to evolution be taught in Kansas, "we may appear to have at least temporarily lost the battle," Dr. Leshner said. "But we have not fallen prey to allowing them to redefine science, and that's the core issue."
He added: "Evolution is not the only issue at stake. The very definition of science is at stake."
Archaeologists Discover an Ancient Egyptian Glass Factory
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, June 21, 2005
In Egypt and the rest of the Middle East in the 13th century B.C., bronze was the heavy metal of power, and glass the rare commodity coveted by the powerful, who treasured glass jewelry, figurines and decorative vessels and exchanged them as prestige gifts on a par with semiprecious stones.
But definitive evidence of the earliest glass production long eluded archaeologists. They had found scatterings of glassware throughout the Middle East as early as the 16th century B.C. and workshops where artisans fashioned glass into finished objects, but they had never found an ancient factory where they were convinced glass had been made from its raw materials.
Two archaeologists now report finding such a factory in the ruins of an Egyptian industrial complex from the time of Rameses the Great. The well-known site, Qantir-Piramesses, in the eastern Nile delta, flourished in the 13th century B.C. as a northern capital of the pharaohs.
In an interview by e-mail last week, Dr. Thilo Rehren of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London said, "This is the first ever direct evidence for any glassmaking in the entire Late Bronze Age."
Other experts familiar with the research said the findings were important for reconstructing the ancient technology of glassmaking. But some questioned the claim that Qantir represented the first evidence of primary glass production, citing previous findings in Egypt at Amarna, which are dated a century earlier.
Dr. Rehren and Dr. Edgar B. Pusch of the Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany, said they had excavated cylindrical crucibles and remains of glass raw materials in various stages of production. The site yielded samples of quartz grains, thought to be the main silica source of glassmaking in the Bronze Age.
One well-preserved crucible contained a block of raw glass, and many other vessels held semifinished glass and some fragments that had been colored blue, red and purple.
In the June 17 issue of the journal Science, the two archaeologists reported, "We could identify several hundred individual vessels used in glassmaking and coloring; more than 90 percent of these are crucibles, the rest being jars."
The archaeologists concluded that this was a large-scale glassmaking operation. In the first step of production, a mixture of crushed quartz and plant ash was heated at a low temperature in ceramic vessels. Salt contaminants were then washed away from the semifinished glass. Next, the glass powder was mixed with coloring minerals and heated inside the crucibles. At the end, the containers would have been smashed to remove the glass ingots.
Dr. Caroline M. Jackson, an archaeologist at the University of Sheffield in England, said the new finds "convincingly show that the Egyptians were making their own glass in large specialized facilities that were under royal control."
Writing in an accompanying journal article, Dr. Jackson noted that at Qantir, copper was used to color glass either red or blue, a relatively difficult process, and that glass ingots were the end product. This seemed to settle a dispute among scholars: whether the Egyptians at this time were able to produce and export glass, or only rework glass into luxury goods, like colorful beads and containers for perfumes.
It was one of many uncertainties about the history of glass. Archaeologists generally credit Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, as the original and primary source of glass, as early as the 16th century. But no factories have been uncovered there.
More than a century ago, the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie discovered what he considered evidence of Bronze Age glass production at Amarna. The site is dated to the 14th-century reign of Akhenaten and therefore earlier than Qantir. But skeptics suspected that the Amarna glassworks was not a production plant, only a place where glass ingots were reworked into finished goods. And if it was a primary factory, why would records show Akhenaten requesting that glass be shipped to Egypt?
Dr. Paul Nicholson, an archaeologist at Cardiff University in Wales, pointed out that new excavations at Amarna had yielded two large furnaces, "which I believe are for use in glass production." No such furnaces have so far been uncovered at Qantir, he noted.
"It is likely that neither Amarna nor Qantir are actually the earliest in Egypt," Dr. Nicholson said in an e-mail message. But the Qantir evidence "is important and Thilo has reconstructed a possible technological sequence from it," he added.
At least, archaeologists said, Amarna and now Qantir affirm that even if the technology probably began in Mesopotamia, the Egyptians seemed to acquire it in time and left direct evidence of how glass was made in the Late Bronze Age.
Above, from left, items found in the ruins of an industrial complex that flourished at Qantir in the 13th century B.C. include a jar fragment, a ceramic vessel and a funnel, all used in glassmaking.
The Claim: Mosquitoes Attack Some People More Than Others
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR, The New York Times, June 21, 2005
THE FACTS They're the unwanted guests that return every summer. They show up in droves, descending to feast on limbs and provoke fits of swatting and spraying. Mosquitoes will attack anything with a pulse, but why is it that some people seem more likely to become a target than others?
Female mosquitoes - the only ones that bite - are attracted to body heat and chemicals in sweat like lactic acid. But earlier this year, scientists at Rothamsted Research in England found that bite-resistant people also produce about a dozen compounds that either prevent mosquitoes from detecting them or drive them away.
Why some people have this built-in shield is unclear. And despite the old wives' tales, there is no scientific evidence that those who lack it can ward off pests simply by eating garlic, bananas or any other food.
Avoiding perfumes and using repellents made with DEET can make a difference. In 2002, a study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that sprays with even small amounts of the chemical protected wearers up to five hours, while special wristbands and sprays made with citronella lasted only minutes.
THE BOTTOM LINE Some people produce natural chemicals that protect them from mosquitoes.
Nutrition: A Calcium Clue to Easing Premenstrual Distress
By ERIC NAGOURNEY, The New York Times, June 21, 2005
Women who take in a lot of calcium and vitamin D appear less likely than others to suffer from premenstrual syndrome, researchers have found.
Earlier studies had suggested that calcium might reduce the severity of premenstrual symptoms like depression, irritability and fatigue. But writing in the current Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers said this appeared to be the first evidence that regular consumption of calcium and vitamin D, which regulates calcium absorption, could reduce the risk of the syndrome.
The researchers, led by Dr. Elizabeth R. Bertone-Johnson of the University of Massachusetts, based their findings on the figures in the Nurses' Health Study, a large, continuing long-term study. They looked at 10 years' worth of data from 3,000 women aged 27 to 44, about a third of them with premenstrual syndrome.
When the researchers looked at diets, they found that the women with the highest daily intake of calcium, 1,200 milligrams, and vitamin D, 400 international units, were least likely to develop PMS. That is the equivalent of about four servings of skim or low-fat milk, fortified orange juice or foods like yogurt. Some studies, the researchers noted, have linked high-fat diets to the syndrome.
Dr. Bertone-Johnson said that on the basis of one study, she was hesitant to recommend that women increase calcium and vitamin D intake in the hope of avoiding the syndrome. But she noted that there might be other good reasons to do so. Other studies have found calcium and vitamin can help women reduce their risk of osteoporosis, as well as some cancers. Although PMS and osteoporosis usually occur at different stages of a woman's life, Dr. Bertone-Johnson suggested that the underlying mechanisms might be similar.
Alaska Natives Push for More Toxin Studies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, The New York Times, June 20, 2005
FAIRBANKS (AP) -- Alaska Natives have seen runny bone marrow in moose and caribou, and lesions and parasites in fish -- and that makes Shawna Larson wonder if toxic chemicals in these traditional foods are making people sick, too.
''We see things our elders never used to see,'' she said at the 60th American Chemical Society Northwest Conference. ''Why do we have cancer? Why do we have high diabetes?''
Larson, who works for Alaska Community Action on Toxins, and others say the anecdotal evidence linking sickness in the wild food supply to illness in humans needs to be studied.
She also is working to change the way federal standards are used to measure harmful levels of toxins in Alaska's wild foods.
Cancer is the leading cause of death among Alaska Natives, yet 50 years ago the disease was rare.
''Something is wrong,'' said Larson, who also works for the Indigenous Environmental Network. ''We just want to know why we are sick.''
Federal standards for measuring harmful levels of contaminants are based on the number of fish meals that would sicken a 160-pound white male.
But Larson says the government also should consider constant low-level exposure because Native people eat fish more regularly.
Scientific studies suggest high rates of obesity and tobacco use, not chemicals in the food chain, explain the corresponding rates of cancer and other diseases in the Native population.
Research by the federal Environmental Protection Agency found that fish in Cook Inlet contained low levels of contamination and were safe to eat.
Some scientists at the conference acknowledged the need to further study possible environmental causes for sickness among Alaska Natives.
''There is a gap between science and public opinion,'' said Augustine Arukwe, a biology professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
However, he said word-of-mouth isn't enough to prove a real connection between high disease rates and the traditional wild food supply.
''Science is rigid,'' Arukwe said. ''To do good science you have to do a certain procedure.''
------
Information from: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, http://www.newsminer.com
By CORNELIA DEAN, The New York Times, June 21, 2005
When the Kansas State Board of Education decided to hold hearings this spring on what the state's schoolchildren should be taught about evolution, Dr. Kenneth R. Miller was invited to testify. Lots of people thought he was a good choice to speak for science.
Dr. Miller is a professor of biology at Brown University, a co-author of widely used high school and college biology texts, an ardent advocate of the teaching of evolution - and a person of faith. In another of his books, "Finding Darwin's God," he not only outlines the scientific failings of creationism and its doctrinal cousin, "intelligent design," but also tells how he reconciles his faith in God with his faith in science.
But Dr. Miller declined to testify. And he was not alone. Mainstream scientists, even those who have long urged researchers to speak with a louder voice in public debates, stayed away from Kansas.
In general, they offered two reasons for the decision: that the outcome of the hearings was a foregone conclusion, and that participating in them would only strengthen the idea in some minds that there was a serious debate in science about the power of the theory of evolution.
"We on the science side of things strong-armed the Kansas hearings because we realized this was not a scientific exchange, it was a political show trial," said Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, which promotes the teaching of evolution. "We are never going to solve it by throwing science at it."
The American Association for the Advancement of Science, a large organization of researchers and teachers, and the publisher of the journal Science, also declined to participate.
"If the evidence for modern Darwinian theory is so overwhelming, they should have called the bluff on the other side and come and made their arguments," said John West, a political scientist and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a research organization that supports work challenging the theory of evolution. "They should have put up or shut up."
Dr. West said that although most of the institute's resources support research on intelligent design, the theory that life on earth is far too complex to have evolved without the guidance of an intelligent agent, the organization does not advocate that students be required to learn it. Nor does it object to the teaching of evolution, he said.
"The majority of biologists obviously support Darwinian evolution in its full-fledged view," he said. "The question is, are there legitimate, peer-reviewed criticisms? If there are, students should know about them."
In theory, this position - "teach the controversy" - is one any scientist should support. But mainstream scientists say alternatives to evolution have repeatedly failed the tests of science, and the criticisms have been answered again and again. For scientists, there is no controversy.
Dr. Miller said he decided to stay away from the hearings because he was convinced that the panel would recommend a "teach the controversy" approach regardless of the testimony presented. "The people running things were people whose minds were already made up," Dr. Miller said in an interview in May, before the panel's recommendations were announced.
He said he had anticipated that "they would say, 'This is such a fascinating controversy that what we need to do is let the children of Kansas have the same benefit' " of learning about it.
When the hearings ended, the subcommittee running them concluded just that. The hearings had produced "credible scientific testimony that indeed there are significant debates about the evidence for key aspects of chemical and biological theory," the panel said, and it is "important and appropriate for students to know about these scientific debates."
Still, scientists who stayed away say they did the right thing.
Declining to testify "can be made to look as if you do not want to defend science in public, or you are too afraid to face the intelligent design people in public," Dr. Miller said.
But, he said, taking part in this kind of argument only contributes to the idea that there is something worth arguing about, and "I wasn't interested in playing a role in that."
Dr. Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said that when the association was invited to present its views at the hearings he raised the issue with his board. Although some members said "go straighten them out," he recalled, the consensus was that the association should stay away.
"We were invited to debate one supposed theory against another," Dr. Leshner said, when in fact there was no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution.
Dr. Scott said that until recently she believed scientists should seize opportunities to debate the opponents of evolution. "I was one of the holdouts, saying yes, appear with these guys, yes, tell them what is wrong with their ideas, go to their conferences, treat them like scholars," she said.
Like other scientists, she said that if someone identified a flaw in evolutionary theory that could not be dealt with, science would have to modify the theory or even scrap it. But the criticisms raised have fallen in the face of scientific scrutiny, she and others say, yet opponents of evolution raise them again and again.
So a few years ago, she said, "even I threw in the towel."
"Our willingness to engage their ideas," she went on, "was not being reciprocated."
Dr. West, of the Discovery Institute, argues that scientists have shown the same unwillingness to engage when they talk about evolution. In Kansas, he said, "there was a sort of arrogance - claiming that 'since we are the majority scientific view we don't owe an explanation to anyone, especially these public officials we think are stupid.'
"Well, they can have that attitude, but whether they like it or not we have public officials who are charged with making decisions," he said. "They seem to think the A.A.A.S. should just appoint a panel and replace every elected school board."
Despite their decision to stay away from Kansas, scientists continue to make the case for evolution.
For example, a number of scientists, including Dr. Miller, plan to testify in a case in Dover, Pa., where teachers were directed to instruct that intelligent design was a scientific alternative to evolution. "In a court of law, you have standards, rules and laws you are interpreting," Dr. Scott said, in explaining why scientists are taking part in this case. "In Kansas, it was a free-for-all."
Earlier this month, the National Academy of Sciences started a Web site (nationalacademies.org/evolution) with information about evolution and assurances that no credible scientific challenge to evolutionary theory has been raised. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (aaas.org, click on "evolution resources") and other organizations maintain similar sites.
Dr. Leshner wrote an opinion article about the evolution issue that ran in The Kansas City Star before the hearings were held this spring. The essay dealt with one of the powerful issues underlying the debate about evolution: whether science and religious faith can coexist.
It is not surprising that defenders of evolution are staying away from the hearings, he wrote, "since it's a debate that can't be won."
"After all, interpretations of Genesis are a matter of faith, not facts," he wrote. But faith and facts "should not be pitted against each other; the theory of evolution does not, in fact, conflict with the religious views of most Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu followers."
But some scientists have made the point that it is difficult to make the case for evolution at a time when many Americans view it as an assault by the secular elite on the values of God-fearing people.
"The creation and evolution issue is not just about science," Dr. Scott said. "The science is necessary but not sufficient. It is ultimately and predominantly a political and cultural kind of issue rather than a scientific issue."
Now that the panel that conducted the hearings has recommended that challenges to evolution be taught in Kansas, "we may appear to have at least temporarily lost the battle," Dr. Leshner said. "But we have not fallen prey to allowing them to redefine science, and that's the core issue."
He added: "Evolution is not the only issue at stake. The very definition of science is at stake."
Archaeologists Discover an Ancient Egyptian Glass Factory
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, June 21, 2005
In Egypt and the rest of the Middle East in the 13th century B.C., bronze was the heavy metal of power, and glass the rare commodity coveted by the powerful, who treasured glass jewelry, figurines and decorative vessels and exchanged them as prestige gifts on a par with semiprecious stones.
But definitive evidence of the earliest glass production long eluded archaeologists. They had found scatterings of glassware throughout the Middle East as early as the 16th century B.C. and workshops where artisans fashioned glass into finished objects, but they had never found an ancient factory where they were convinced glass had been made from its raw materials.
Two archaeologists now report finding such a factory in the ruins of an Egyptian industrial complex from the time of Rameses the Great. The well-known site, Qantir-Piramesses, in the eastern Nile delta, flourished in the 13th century B.C. as a northern capital of the pharaohs.
In an interview by e-mail last week, Dr. Thilo Rehren of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London said, "This is the first ever direct evidence for any glassmaking in the entire Late Bronze Age."
Other experts familiar with the research said the findings were important for reconstructing the ancient technology of glassmaking. But some questioned the claim that Qantir represented the first evidence of primary glass production, citing previous findings in Egypt at Amarna, which are dated a century earlier.
Dr. Rehren and Dr. Edgar B. Pusch of the Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany, said they had excavated cylindrical crucibles and remains of glass raw materials in various stages of production. The site yielded samples of quartz grains, thought to be the main silica source of glassmaking in the Bronze Age.
One well-preserved crucible contained a block of raw glass, and many other vessels held semifinished glass and some fragments that had been colored blue, red and purple.
In the June 17 issue of the journal Science, the two archaeologists reported, "We could identify several hundred individual vessels used in glassmaking and coloring; more than 90 percent of these are crucibles, the rest being jars."
The archaeologists concluded that this was a large-scale glassmaking operation. In the first step of production, a mixture of crushed quartz and plant ash was heated at a low temperature in ceramic vessels. Salt contaminants were then washed away from the semifinished glass. Next, the glass powder was mixed with coloring minerals and heated inside the crucibles. At the end, the containers would have been smashed to remove the glass ingots.
Dr. Caroline M. Jackson, an archaeologist at the University of Sheffield in England, said the new finds "convincingly show that the Egyptians were making their own glass in large specialized facilities that were under royal control."
Writing in an accompanying journal article, Dr. Jackson noted that at Qantir, copper was used to color glass either red or blue, a relatively difficult process, and that glass ingots were the end product. This seemed to settle a dispute among scholars: whether the Egyptians at this time were able to produce and export glass, or only rework glass into luxury goods, like colorful beads and containers for perfumes.
It was one of many uncertainties about the history of glass. Archaeologists generally credit Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, as the original and primary source of glass, as early as the 16th century. But no factories have been uncovered there.
More than a century ago, the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie discovered what he considered evidence of Bronze Age glass production at Amarna. The site is dated to the 14th-century reign of Akhenaten and therefore earlier than Qantir. But skeptics suspected that the Amarna glassworks was not a production plant, only a place where glass ingots were reworked into finished goods. And if it was a primary factory, why would records show Akhenaten requesting that glass be shipped to Egypt?
Dr. Paul Nicholson, an archaeologist at Cardiff University in Wales, pointed out that new excavations at Amarna had yielded two large furnaces, "which I believe are for use in glass production." No such furnaces have so far been uncovered at Qantir, he noted.
"It is likely that neither Amarna nor Qantir are actually the earliest in Egypt," Dr. Nicholson said in an e-mail message. But the Qantir evidence "is important and Thilo has reconstructed a possible technological sequence from it," he added.
At least, archaeologists said, Amarna and now Qantir affirm that even if the technology probably began in Mesopotamia, the Egyptians seemed to acquire it in time and left direct evidence of how glass was made in the Late Bronze Age.
Above, from left, items found in the ruins of an industrial complex that flourished at Qantir in the 13th century B.C. include a jar fragment, a ceramic vessel and a funnel, all used in glassmaking.
The Claim: Mosquitoes Attack Some People More Than Others
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR, The New York Times, June 21, 2005
THE FACTS They're the unwanted guests that return every summer. They show up in droves, descending to feast on limbs and provoke fits of swatting and spraying. Mosquitoes will attack anything with a pulse, but why is it that some people seem more likely to become a target than others?
Female mosquitoes - the only ones that bite - are attracted to body heat and chemicals in sweat like lactic acid. But earlier this year, scientists at Rothamsted Research in England found that bite-resistant people also produce about a dozen compounds that either prevent mosquitoes from detecting them or drive them away.
Why some people have this built-in shield is unclear. And despite the old wives' tales, there is no scientific evidence that those who lack it can ward off pests simply by eating garlic, bananas or any other food.
Avoiding perfumes and using repellents made with DEET can make a difference. In 2002, a study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that sprays with even small amounts of the chemical protected wearers up to five hours, while special wristbands and sprays made with citronella lasted only minutes.
THE BOTTOM LINE Some people produce natural chemicals that protect them from mosquitoes.
Nutrition: A Calcium Clue to Easing Premenstrual Distress
By ERIC NAGOURNEY, The New York Times, June 21, 2005
Women who take in a lot of calcium and vitamin D appear less likely than others to suffer from premenstrual syndrome, researchers have found.
Earlier studies had suggested that calcium might reduce the severity of premenstrual symptoms like depression, irritability and fatigue. But writing in the current Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers said this appeared to be the first evidence that regular consumption of calcium and vitamin D, which regulates calcium absorption, could reduce the risk of the syndrome.
The researchers, led by Dr. Elizabeth R. Bertone-Johnson of the University of Massachusetts, based their findings on the figures in the Nurses' Health Study, a large, continuing long-term study. They looked at 10 years' worth of data from 3,000 women aged 27 to 44, about a third of them with premenstrual syndrome.
When the researchers looked at diets, they found that the women with the highest daily intake of calcium, 1,200 milligrams, and vitamin D, 400 international units, were least likely to develop PMS. That is the equivalent of about four servings of skim or low-fat milk, fortified orange juice or foods like yogurt. Some studies, the researchers noted, have linked high-fat diets to the syndrome.
Dr. Bertone-Johnson said that on the basis of one study, she was hesitant to recommend that women increase calcium and vitamin D intake in the hope of avoiding the syndrome. But she noted that there might be other good reasons to do so. Other studies have found calcium and vitamin can help women reduce their risk of osteoporosis, as well as some cancers. Although PMS and osteoporosis usually occur at different stages of a woman's life, Dr. Bertone-Johnson suggested that the underlying mechanisms might be similar.
Alaska Natives Push for More Toxin Studies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, The New York Times, June 20, 2005
FAIRBANKS (AP) -- Alaska Natives have seen runny bone marrow in moose and caribou, and lesions and parasites in fish -- and that makes Shawna Larson wonder if toxic chemicals in these traditional foods are making people sick, too.
''We see things our elders never used to see,'' she said at the 60th American Chemical Society Northwest Conference. ''Why do we have cancer? Why do we have high diabetes?''
Larson, who works for Alaska Community Action on Toxins, and others say the anecdotal evidence linking sickness in the wild food supply to illness in humans needs to be studied.
She also is working to change the way federal standards are used to measure harmful levels of toxins in Alaska's wild foods.
Cancer is the leading cause of death among Alaska Natives, yet 50 years ago the disease was rare.
''Something is wrong,'' said Larson, who also works for the Indigenous Environmental Network. ''We just want to know why we are sick.''
Federal standards for measuring harmful levels of contaminants are based on the number of fish meals that would sicken a 160-pound white male.
But Larson says the government also should consider constant low-level exposure because Native people eat fish more regularly.
Scientific studies suggest high rates of obesity and tobacco use, not chemicals in the food chain, explain the corresponding rates of cancer and other diseases in the Native population.
Research by the federal Environmental Protection Agency found that fish in Cook Inlet contained low levels of contamination and were safe to eat.
Some scientists at the conference acknowledged the need to further study possible environmental causes for sickness among Alaska Natives.
''There is a gap between science and public opinion,'' said Augustine Arukwe, a biology professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
However, he said word-of-mouth isn't enough to prove a real connection between high disease rates and the traditional wild food supply.
''Science is rigid,'' Arukwe said. ''To do good science you have to do a certain procedure.''
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Information from: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, http://www.newsminer.com
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Date: 2005-06-21 02:36 pm (UTC)As far as reconciling science and faith - my parents believe that God initiated a creation process, but that evolution was the actual method. I don't know if I even agree with that, but at least they realize that creation story as told in Genesis (much like the Great Flood and several other Biblical events) is likely a metaphor for an event beyond the culture's understanding. Science and faith can work together - it can happen, it's just a matter of people opening their eyes and minds. Disavowing the notion that God created the earth in a seven-day calendar week is not blasphemous - it's using the intelligence that you claim God gave you.
So far the debate has stayed out of Missouri, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time...
/rant (sorry!!!)
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Date: 2005-06-21 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 05:43 pm (UTC)Anyway, my father is a geneticist and is pretty frustrated with the whole thing, too; the real problem, as I see it, is one of incommensurate discourse--the people who want "intelligent design" taught keep insisting that intelligent design is "equal" in some way to evolution as a "theory" (and they often use the word "theory" as if it meant "something I pulled out of my butt"), while most scientists are just going, "This has nothing to do with evolution as a theory at all." (See Dad's entry on the subject: http://www.livejournal.com/users/aardvark_gumbo/6263.html --it makes a point similar to your parents' conception of the process.)
So I don't know what I think about just not engaging in the argument, if it does more harm than good or not, but I can definitely see why a person would not want to get into it; you can't change these people's minds with scientific evidence (which no one ever seems able to differentiate from "proof") and it doesn't FEEL like you're achieving anything.
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Date: 2005-06-21 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 03:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 05:49 pm (UTC)In my family, the mosquito attraction (and intensity of our allergic reaction) is so bad that my ancestor who fled the U.S. after the Civil War had to abandon his original destination of Cuba because his son couldn't make it through Florida, due to the mosquitos.
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Date: 2005-06-21 03:22 pm (UTC)So, it seems that mosquitos don't like me, but LOVE my wife-to-be. heh.
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Date: 2005-06-21 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-22 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 07:20 pm (UTC)