See here. It is a good summary of last week's blogging conference, with commentary from sponsor Sheila Jasanoff, head of the science and technology studies program at the Kennedy School:
Throughout the day, panelists touched on topics including blogging as a business, the perks and pitfalls of the Web as a medium to distribute scientific information, what makes responsible blogging, how to handle false information spread through the blogosphere, and the norms and expectations of the science blogging community. The final panel explored the issue of “what needs fixing” in the blogosphere during which panelists discussed the responsibility and mechanisms by which the science journalism and law communities have to address these problems.
“It was interesting to see that speakers with law backgrounds were generally extremely reluctant to impose any controls on speech in the blogosphere, whereas some science writers felt that there was a need for stricter standards, and maybe even a system of independent ratings of the reliability of science blogs,” said Jasanoff. “Another interesting insight was that blogging under an assumed identity — ‘pseudonymous’ blogging — may allow socially valuable information to be conveyed that a blogger with a known identity might not risk communicating. This runs contrary to ...

The storm of news about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has reached a relative lull today, as the oil company preps for its containment dome project that it will try to execute over the next several days. With a moment to take a break from the constant news updates, reports are starting to ask: What’s with all that chemical dispersant responders have been dumping on this spill?

The stuff is called Corexit, made by the Nalco Company, and BP has now dumped about 160,000 gallons of it in the Gulf (as well as pumping 6,000 gallons more all the way down to the leak location). The dispersant particles bind to oil, sink, and are carried away by ocean currents. But while that could help keep a spill from reaching the shores en masse, it means the oil isn’t actually “cleaned up,” but rather diluted. And the dispersant chemicals themselves can be dangerous, as Nalco’s own documents (pdf) show.

The 10-page documents go into detail about compounds that must be handled with great care in their original form, that should not touch the skin and can damage lungs. Although the documents state that the potential environmental hazard is “moderate,” they say that when used as directed at sea in the recommended amounts the potential environmental exposure is “low” [The New York Times].

The company says Corexit contains no toxic metals or carcinogens. But it has refused to divulge the full chemical composition, calling it proprietary information. That’s annoyed environment groups that want to know exact what we’re putting into the sea in such mass quantity. Still, with the number of options dwindling and oil continuing to gush into the Gulf, some of those groups have come to accept chemical dispersants as the lesser of two evils.

“It’s basically a giant experiment,” said Richard Charter, a senior policy adviser with Defenders of Wildlife. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it; we have no good options” [AP].

Another eyebrow-raiser is the choice of chemical. While the United States is familiar with Corexit from having used it previously, Wired.com reports that there are better alternatives on the market, like Dispersit.

Both Corexit and Dispersit were tested by the EPA, and according to those results, Corexit was 54.7 percent effective at breaking down crude oil from the Gulf, and Dispersit was 100 percent effective. Not only did Corexit do a worse job of dispersing oil, but it was three times as lethal to silverfish – used as a benchmark organism in toxicity testing — and more than twice as lethal to shrimp, another benchmark organism and an important part of Gulf fisheries [Wired.com].

Previous posts on the BP Oil Spill:
80beats: BP Will Tow a Containment Dome to the Oil Leak Site Today
80beats: Is the Gulf Oil Spill Headed for Florida & North Carolina?
80beats: Gulf Oil Spill: Fisheries Closed; Louisiana Wetlands Now in Jeopardy
80beats: Gulf Oil Spill Reaches U.S. Coast; New Orleans Reeks of “Pungent Fuel Smell”
80beats: Uh-Oh: Gulf Oil Spill May Be 5 Times Worse Than Previously Thought
80beats: Coast Guard’s New Plan To Contain Gulf Oil Spill: Light It on Fire
80beats: Sunken Oil Rig Now Leaking Crude; Robots Head to the Rescue
80beats: Ships Race To Contain the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Image: U.S. Coast Guard / Petty Officer 2nd Class Andrew Kendrick

There have long been complaints that teaching gets relatively short shrift in academe--especially at major research universities--and that what everybody really values is research. Well, there's some new data out on the topic--a survey by Nature Education, reported on by Times Higher Education:
The analysis is based on a survey of 450 university scientists from more than 45 countries who have both undergraduate teaching and research responsibilities.
It states that while in theory most consider teaching to be as important as research, their actions suggest otherwise.
While 77 per cent say that teaching and research are equally important and only 7 per cent say that research takes precedence, when asked to select a candidate for a role involving both duties, 48 per cent chose a star researcher with no significant teaching experience.
The report says that the respondents believe that this is the appointment their institution would want them to make, adding that despite missions to educate, most top-level universities are "far more interested" in pursuing a research than a teaching agenda.
It notes that such institutions tend to "direct more funding, awards and job security to outstanding researchers than outstanding teachers". You can read the full report on the Nature Education study here. My take: We ...

The Japanese mission Hayabusa ("Falcon") has been nothing if not ambitious. Launched in 2004, it reached the bizarre asteroid Itokawa a little over a year later. It took phenomenal images and other measurements, and even landed on the asteroid itself to take samples, destined to be returned to Earth.

But it has suffered a series of crippling mishaps that have threatened the mission time and again with failure. However, despite all that, the end game is in sight: Hayabusa is almost back home, and on June 13, sometime around 14:00 UT, the sample recovery capsule will parachute down to the Earth.

This is an unprecedented opportunity for scientists! While meteorites that fall to Earth give us samples of asteroids, this will be the first time we’ll have obtained one that has not been through the perils of atmospheric re-entry directly. Also, Itokawa is just plain weird. As you can see in the picture, it’s covered in rubble, and lacks impact craters! This is strong evidence that it’s not a single, monolithic body; in other words, it’s not a solid rock. It may instead be more like a pile of rubble, an asteroid that has been shattered repeatedly by low-speed impacts with other rocks, but had its own gravity hold it together like a bag full of shattered glass.

Asteroids like this may comprise a significant percentage of all the asteroids we see. And if one of them is headed toward Earth, how we deal with a rubble pile may be very different than how we might try to push a solid rock out of the way. Studying Itokawa is therefore very important… and may just save the world.

The sample return capsule will land in Woomera, Australia, where it hopefully will not be attacked by venomous Koalas (everything Down Under can kill you). I just learned that my old friend and editor J. Kelly Beatty will be there to watch it come back! He’s doing it as part of the high school at which he teaches; go read his remarkable story to learn more.

And expect to hear a lot more about this in the coming weeks, too. It will take a long time to study and understand the actual samples returned, but in the meantime the re-entry itself is very exciting, and hopefully we’ll get cool video of it too.

Tip o’ the Whipple Shield to Mike Murray.

Drawing credit: Corby Waste and Tommy Thompson for NASA / JPL. Image of Itokawa credit: JAXA