Author: Zimmer

Trump Finally Picks a Science Adviser. And Scientists? They Seem Relieved.

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The New York Times, August 1, 2018

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President Trump will nominate Kelvin Droegemeier, a well-regarded meteorologist who studies severe storms, to be director of the federal Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The director acts as the president’s chief adviser on science. The post has been vacant since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, by far the longest the office has been without a director since the position was created in 1976.

“I am deeply honored to have been selected by President Trump to serve the nation as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and I look forward to the Senate confirmation process,” Dr. Droegemeier, 59, said in a statement.

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‘Global Greening’ Sounds Good. In the Long Run, It’s Terrible.

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The New York Times, July 30, 2018

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“Global greening” sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

Plants need carbon dioxide to grow, and we are now emitting 40 billion tons of it into the atmosphere each year. A number of small studies have suggested that humans actually are contributing to an increase in photosynthesis across the globe.

Elliott Campbell, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues last year published a study that put a number to it.

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What Is a Genetically Modified Crop? A European Ruling Sows Confusion

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The New York Times, July 27, 2018

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Mushrooms that don’t brown. Wheat that fights off disease. Tomatoes with a longer growing season.

All of these crops are made possible by a gene-editing technology called Crispr-cas9. But now its future has been clouded by the European Union’s top court.

This week, the court ruled that gene-edited crops are genetically modified organisms, and therefore must comply with the tough regulations that apply to plants made with genes from other species.

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Years of Education Influenced by Genetic Makeup, Enormous Study Finds

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The New York Times, July 23, 2018

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In the largest genetics study ever published in a scientific journal, an international team of scientists on Monday identified more than a thousand variations in human genes that influence how long people stay in school.

Educational attainment has attracted great interest from researchers in recent years, because it is linked to many other aspects of people’s lives, including their income as adults, overall health and even life span.

The newly discovered gene variants account for just a fraction of the differences in education observed between groups of people. Environmental influences, which may include family wealth or parental education, together play a bigger role.

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Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools Outside Africa

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The New York Times, July 11, 2018

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The oldest stone tools outside Africa have been discovered in western China, scientists reported on Wednesday. Made by ancient members of the human lineage, called hominins, the chipped rocks are estimated to be as much as 2.1 million years old.

The find may add a new chapter to the story of hominin evolution, suggesting that some of these species left Africa far earlier than once believed and managed to travel over 8,000 miles east of their evolutionary birthplace.

The age of the Chinese tools suggests that the hominins who made them were neither tall nor big-brained. Instead, they may have been small bipedal apes, with brains about the size of a chimpanzee’s.

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