Seabirds and Bacteria

I had some free time at the beach recently in Woods Hole, Mass., before starting a week of lectures and meetings with some of the most impressive oceanographers in the world. But I forgot to bring a book, so I occupied myself by watching seabirds harass a pair of beachgoers who’d brought snacks and thought it wise to share.

White gulls, brown gulls and several other shorebirds hopped along the sand with (mostly) quiet anticipation, until a thrown bit of food sent them into a flurry of screeches and feathers. It was all very entertaining, but I might have been more concerned about this had I first seen science writer Maryn McKenna’s dispatch from an infectious diseases meeting in Chicago. These birds were probably depositing nasty drug-resistant bacteria right at our feet.

McKenna reports on a small study of seagulls at Miami Beach, whose stools (such as they are) were found to contain 83 isolates of gut bacteria, including 21 drug-resistant forms of E. coli. “Seagulls could be an important vector of multi-drug resistant bacteria,” said study author Dr. Patrice Nordmann of the Hopital de Bicetre near Paris. And earlier studies seem to bolster this theory: ordmann and others have found similar results in Portugal, Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, Russia and the south of France, McKenna reports on her blog at Wired.

What does this mean for beach lovers? In most cases, a good scrubbing will eliminate the vast majority of bacteria from your clothes and your body, so it’s not like you should avoid the beach just because of the gulls. But it does suggest a smart beach strategy: Don’t feed the birds! If they stay at a healthy distance, maybe their poo will, too.

Industry and NASA’s Future Vision

Can private industry really replace the government’s most mystical agency? Washington Monthly magazine tackles the question this month, in a story that illuminates the divide within NASA about its future vision. It’s especially timely given the news last week that NASA canned Jeff Hanley, a rogue administrator who defied the White House and told workers to keep the Constellation program going.

As the Obama administration prepares for a congressional fight over NASA’s future, editor Charles Holmans wonders whether free enterprise — the market kind, not the space kind — could be the savior of the space program.

The recession is a unique problem for the hallowed agency. Its current near-Earth orbit missions are expensive, but so is planning for an uncertain future. In the current economic climate, it’s got to be one or the other.

The Obama administration aims to focus NASA on deep-space research and science missions, and remove the emphasis on sending humans to space. The administration hopes private enterprise can fill that void.

Holmans says it can be done, so long as businesses can figure out how to make rockets and space cargo trips profitable.

His proof of concept? The Kelly Air Mail program of the 1920s. Congress allowed commercial airlines to bid on U.S. Postal Service delivery contracts, which in turn let airlines to expand their routes. Demand for cargo increased, flights got cheaper, and as the public realized air travel was safe, passenger traffic grew.

It’s worth pointing out something Holmans doesn’t — the other result of the air mail act was the pioneering spirit it engendered. Charles Lindbergh, the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic, gained the experience and confidence he needed to fly alone on instruments as an air mail pilot between Chicago and St. Louis.

Private space entrepeneurs like Richard Branson and Elon Musk are of a similar mold. There’s no reason private enterprise can’t inspire us, too.

Starting again

This site hasn’t had an update in several months … bad, bad blogger. Now that my career has pretty much migrated to the Internet — with some exceptions — it’s time to start taking this thing seriously.

So here goes. New posts every couple days. I’ll do my best.

Shooting the moon

Tonight, NASA will crash a rocket into the moon — on purpose, of course. You can watch online and read all about it in my latest story:

The harvest moon–which came a couple weeks late this year, on Oct. 4–has long allowed farmers to gather their crops late into the night, using moonlight as a beacon.

Someday, the moon might yield a harvest of its own, thanks to a natural supply of water. A NASA probe is set to crash into the moon this week in search of that potential bounty. Here’s how you can watch it from here on Earth.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-10/tomorrow-nasa-will-smash-rocket-lunar-crater#

Salad with a side of danger

<cross-posted on dscriber.com>

Neither blowfish nor butter are as dangerous to your health as your salad Nicoise, according to a new report authored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Health foods like leafy greens, eggs and tuna top the list of the 10 riskiest foods regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.

So does that mean we can ditch health food and start feeling good about ground beef? Probably not. But you should take extra caution when washing your produce, which, along with eggs and fish, are responsible for about 40 percent of all food-borne disease outbreaks, the CSPI says in a new study announced Tuesday.

“Outbreaks give the best evidence of where and when the food safety system is failing to protect the public,” said CSPI staff attorney Sarah Klein, the lead author of the report.

The study does not include beef, pork or poultry, which are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and which present plenty of peril on their own. But the FDA regulates 80 percent of the food supply, including produce, seafood, dairy products and most packaged goods like peanut butter.