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A Scientist's Approach, PO Box 982, Ridgeland, MS (2026)

06/16/2023

A labor of love, for Father's Day!

04/14/2023

Feel Good Friday!

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced today that award-winning journalist Bryant Gumbel will be honored with the lifetime achievement award at the 44th annual Sport Emmy Awards ceremony, which will be held at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall in New York City on May 22. “I’m humbled by this announcement and grateful to the folks at NATAS for this prestigious award,” said Gumbel in a statement. “After 50 years in the business, sharing the same honor with men like Jim McKay, Howard Cosell and Vin Scully is heady stuff indeed.” Since 1995, Gumbel has hosted HBO’s Real Sports with l, which has earned 36 Sports Emmy Awards during its 26-season run. Before launching his own news magazine series for the cable network, Gumbel spent 20 years at NBC and holds the record for the longest-running host of Today. He also worked at CBS News where he hosted his own prime-time program, Public Eye, as well as the network’s morning news program, The Early Show, before retiring from broadcast network television.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/bryant-gumbel-lifetime-achievement-award-sports-emmy-1235361794/

04/13/2023

A novel treatment using supercharged immune cells appears to work against tumors in children with a rare kind of cancer, researchers reported last week.

Nine of 27 children in the Italian study had no sign of cancer six weeks after the treatment, although two later relapsed and died. The treatment — called CAR-T cell therapy — is already used to help the immune system fight leukemia and other cancers in the blood. This is the first time researchers have achieved such encouraging results in solid tumors, experts in the field said, and raises hopes that it can be used against other kinds of cancers. Standard treatment can be intense, involving chemotherapy, surgery and radiation, depending on the cancer’s stage and other factors. The children in the study had cancers that had come back or were particularly hard to treat. It’s too soon to call it a cure for neuroblastoma, a nerve tissue cancer that often starts in infancy in the adrenal glands near the kidneys in the abdomen. Eleven children were alive when the three-year study ended, including some who only partially responded to treatment and got repeat doses of the modified cells.

https://apnews.com/article/cancer-car-t-cell-treatment-children-9c957b7b0737067cb37a61d4449f38dc

04/12/2023

More news on climate change for this week: hurricane season could be stronger for the coast lines.

Changes in air patterns as the world warms will likely push more and nastier hurricanes up against the United States’ east and Gulf coasts, especially in Florida, a new study said. While other studies have projected how human-caused climate change will probably alter the frequency, strength and moisture of tropical storms, the study in Friday’s journal Science Advances focuses on the crucial aspect of where hurricanes are going. Overall, in a worst-case warming scenario, the number of times a storm hits parts of the U.S. coast in general will probably increase by one-third by the end of the century, the study said, based on sophisticated climate and hurricane simulations, including a system researchers developed. The central and southern Florida Peninsula, which juts out in the Atlantic, is projected to get even more of an increase in hurricanes hitting the coast, the study said.

https://apnews.com/article/hurricanes-climate-change-gulf-coast-florida-c8e6101d0d6faa32b948f3aabeec89d5

04/11/2023

Climate change is now starting to have an effect on sports.

Climate change is making major league sluggers into even hotter hitters, sending an extra 50 or so home runs a year over the fences, a new study found. Hotter, thinner air that allows balls to fly farther contributed a tiny bit to a surge in home runs since 2010, according to a statistical analysis by Dartmouth College scientists published in Friday’s Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. They analyzed 100,000 major league games and more than 200,000 balls put into play in the last few years along with weather conditions, stadiums and other factors. One of a group of scientists who has consulted with Major League Baseball on the increase in homers, did his own simple calculation, based purely on known physics of ballistics and air density as it changes with temperature, and said he got the same result as the Dartmouth researchers. Non-climate factors contribute even more to the barrage of balls flying out of the park, scientists and baseball veterans said. The biggest is the ball and the size of the stitches, Nathan said, and MLB made slight adjustments to deaden the ball prior to the 2021 season. Others include batters’ recent attention to launch angle; stronger hitters; and faster pitches. The study started after the end of baseball’s infamous steroids era saw a spike in home runs.

https://apnews.com/article/baseball-home-runs-climate-change-2f05bcb73155ae63b8b6344b42dba33b

04/10/2023

Experts link graves to one of nation’s oldest Black churches. Three men whose graves were found at the original site of one of the nation’s oldest Black churches were members of its congregation in the early 19th century, a team of archaeologists and scientists in Virginia announced on last week. The First Baptist Church was formed in 1776 by free and enslaved Black people in Williamsburg, Virginia’s colonial capital. Members initially gathered in fields and under trees in defiance of laws that prevented African Americans from congregating. The church’s original brick foundation was uncovered in 2021 by archaeologists at Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum that now owns the land. The excavation of graves began last year in partnership with First Baptist’s descendant community. More than 60 burial plots have been identified. Last week's announcement confirmed what oral histories had long told — that previous generations were buried on the land before it was paved over in the 20th century.

https://apnews.com/hub/science?utm_source=apnewsnav&utm_medium=navigation

04/07/2023

Women at FBI Pittsburgh are setting new standards for the workforce.

Coming from different backgrounds and diversities, these women are setting the bar and new. This year, the FBI says it is pledging to advance women in law enforcement with its 30x30 Initiative. It's goal is to engage 30 percent of women in police recruit classes by 2030. Currently, women make up just 12 percent of sworn officers and 3 percent of police leaders across the U.S. The bureau says it's searching for candidates of all backgrounds with any degree and encourages women to step up and take their best shot. The FBI says advancing women in policing is critical to improving public safety, community outcomes and trust in law enforcement.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-pittsburgh-womens-history-month/

04/06/2023

DNA is now helping to tell the stories of others that were lost during slavery.

In the 1700s, a boy was born into slavery in Colonial America. He spent his life working in the coastal city of Charleston, South Carolina. And when he died in middle age, he was buried alongside 35 other slaves. That’s the likely history that researchers have uncovered for the man — there’s no written record for him or the others buried at the long-forgotten site. Their names have been lost, along with any details of their lives. But their stories are now being told through what was left behind: bones, teeth and, especially, DNA. In recent decades, advances in DNA research have allowed scientists to use ancient remains and peer into the lives of long-dead people. In Charleston, that’s meant tracing some of the African roots that were cut off by slavery. The Charleston project started a decade ago, when construction workers unearthed the remains beneath the grounds of the Gaillard Center, an arts venue in the city that was going through an expansion. Since it became possible to sequence DNA from ancient remains, the technology has taken us back to the days of Neanderthals and mammoths. Some researchers have been using ancient DNA to fill gaps in our more recent history. That includes cases like Charleston as well as the New York African Burial Ground Project, which revealed new details about Africans and their descendants in 18th century Manhattan.

https://apnews.com/article/dna-slavery-charleston-africa-c0aeabe3c0ab74ea34c074ba20479d99

04/05/2023

The United States is Earth’s punching bag for nasty weather.

Blame geography for the U.S. getting hit by stronger, costlier, more varied and frequent extreme weather than anywhere on the planet, several experts said. Two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, jutting peninsulas like Florida, clashing storm fronts and the jet stream combine to naturally brew the nastiest of weather. That’s only part of it. Nature dealt the United States a bad hand, but people have made it much worse by what, where and how we build, several experts told The Associated Press. Then add climate change, and “buckle up. More extreme events are expected,” said Rick Spinrad, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. China may have more people, and a large land area like the United States, but “they don’t have the same kind of clash of air masses as much as you do in the U.S. that is producing a lot of the severe weather,” said Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina.

https://apnews.com/article/tornadoes-disasters-extreme-weather-why-af8acdcb330cff39d689efc187cd17b7

04/04/2023

On Navy ships docked at this vast base, hundreds of sailors in below-deck mazes of windowless passageways perform intense, often monotonous manual labor. It’s necessary work before a ship deploys, but hard to adjust to for many already challenged by the stresses plaguing young adults nationwide. Growing mental health distress in the ranks carries such grave implications that the U.S. chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, answered “suicides” when asked earlier this year what in the security environment kept him up at night. One recently embraced prevention strategy is to deploy chaplains as regular members of the crew on more ships. The goal is for the clergy to connect with sailors, believers and non-believers alike, in complete confidentiality – something that has allowed several to talk sailors out of suicidal crises. Mental health problems, especially among enlisted men under 29, mirror concerns in schools and colleges, which are also increasingly tapping campus ministry for counseling. The isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated depression and anxiety for many.

https://apnews.com/article/navy-suicide-prevention-chaplains-norfolk-74910c421b5c2404db87c1d8fc6dd4c6

04/03/2023

Americans are renewing their focus on railroad safety after a string of recent derailments, especially two fiery ones involving hazardous chemicals in Ohio and Minnesota that prompted evacuations. Federal regulators and members of Congress are urging railroads to do more to prevent derailments. They want standards for the trackside detectors used to help identify equipment problems, more notice to states about hazardous chemicals they are hauling, and at least two people at the helm of freight trains. A Senate bill would toughen the penalty for safety violations to up to 1% of a railroad’s annual operating income and set standards for the maximum length and weight of freight trains, which have grown significantly in recent years. Trains now routinely stretch beyond two miles (3 kilometers) long. The railroads themselves say they will take steps that include installing roughly 1,000 more trackside detectors. But the industry has a long history of resisting new regulations. The Association of American Railroads trade group has already spoken out against the crew size rule and requiring electronically-controlled brakes. Railroads are generally regarded as the safest way to transport hazardous chemicals across land, and statistics show that 99.9% of those shipments arrive safely. Most derailments don’t cause major problems, but there are still nearly three a day somewhere in the country. Just one derailment involving hazardous chemicals can be disastrous.

https://apnews.com/article/railroad-safety-derailments-tank-car-ohio-minnesota-c60f33b64e9c7dc05768a78ae20f3ce5

03/31/2023

Feel Good Friday!

After close to a century, Vanderbilt University’s neurosurgery residency program will have its first Black woman resident.

Tamia Potter is the first Black woman to accept a spot in the neurosurgery position at the university’s medical center in Nashville, Tennessee. The 26-year-old received the news on March 17 – better known to medical students as National Match Day, when thousands of graduate medical students learn where they will do their residency training for the next several years. Only about 5.7% of physicians in the United States identify as Black or African American, according to the the latest data from the Association of American Medical Colleges. And a 2019 report by the association found there were only 33 Black women in the neurosurgical field in the United States in 2018. Vanderbilt trained its first neurosurgery resident in 1932, making Potter the first Black woman to join in 91 years, according to Dr. Reid Thompson, a professor and chair of the university’s Department of Neurological Surgery. Potter graduated summa cm laude in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. The school was the highest-ranked public historically Black college or university in US News & World Report’s 2022-23 ranking.

Way to go Tamia!

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/22/us/vanderbilt-tennessee-first-black-woman-neurosurgeon-reaj/index.html

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