Clearinghouse Update
From time to time we update our readers on situations which have been described in our Newsletter. On page 8 of our last issue readers were invited to submit their ideas to Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers (R-MI) for his report on formulating U.S. science policy. Those who are interested in following this up should read the interview with Ehlers on p. 635 of the 31 July 1998 issue of Science on the eve of unveiling his report.
Global Change Research Update
Our Fall 1997 issue reported on the annual volumes, Our Changing Planet, issued by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (GCRP), a supplement to the coming fiscal year's federal budget. The latest in this series, FY 1999, continues to focus on the same four key global change issues: "Seasonal to Interannual Climate Variability," "Climate Change Over Decades to Centuries," "Changes in Ozone, Ultraviolet Radiation, and Atmospheric Chemistry," and "Changes in Land Cover and in Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecosystems." Receiving special emphasis in this latest volume is the prediction of the 1997-98 El Ni–o event; a leveling off of hydrogen fluoride in the atmosphere (indicating limited numbers of ozone-destroying free chlorine atoms that formerly resulted from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), while CFC substitutes were detected in higher concentrations); a 5-10% rainfall increase over the twentieth century, with 20% more downpours (more than 2 inches per day); a 5% increase in carbon dioxide emissions over the past three years; estimated costs of weather disasters ($2-3 billion for the 1982-83 El Ni–o-Southern Oscillation, $40 billion for the 1988 Midwest drought, $15 billion for the 1993 Midwest floods, $3.3 billion for the 1995 California floods, and $4 billion for the 1995-96 Southwest drought); recognition that "the ability of plants and soils to store carbon . . . is limited by the availability of nitrogen"; the possibility of a huge sea level rise from melting of the Antarctic ice sheet (which contains more than 60% of the world's fresh water -- see Irma Jarcho's observations, this issue); and a 5oF warming in Alaska over the past 30 years ("what may prove to be the most pronounced climate change in the United States").
The GCRP is also conducting a National Assessment of the Consequences of Climate Change for the United States and has held eight regional workshops in 1997 and 12 in 1998. Future studies will focus on the Atlantic (to "help monitor ocean conditions of the tropical Atlantic where hurricanes form"); the societal use of climate predictions; the Pacific Exploratory Mission - Tropics B (to establish air quality baseline data over the tropical Pacific to assess future impact of Asian industrialization and biomass burning); and the INTeragency REsearch Partnership in Infectious Diseases (INTREPID) "investigating the link between disease and weather patterns." Also planned are new missions with Earth Observing System satellites (such as the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission), the new Landsat-7 satellite (July 1998), and the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System. The GCRP can be accessed on the World Wide Web at ; hard copies of Our Changing Planet can be obtained from the Global Change Research Information Office, User Services, 2250 Pierce Road, University Center, MI 48710, (517)-797-2730 (voice), (517)-797-2622 (fax), help@gcrio.org (e-mail), and http://www.gcrio.org/ (WWW).
More on Easter Island
Three years ago, in our Fall 1995 issue, Irma Jarcho reported on Jared Diamond's article on Easter Island in the June 1995 issue of Discover. In detailing the destruction of the islanders' environment and the final collapse into cannibalism and chaos, this article finally seemed to answer the many questions concerning the collapse of this Polynesian civilization.
Now The New York Times "Science Times" for 7 July 1998 gives a detailed explanation not only of the Island's decline and fall but, perhaps more importantly, its rise. The first settlers of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) arrived between 400 and 750 A.D. The navigators traveled south and east of their usual routes to an island 1400 miles southeast of Pitcairn -- the nearest inhabited island -- and 2340 miles west of Chile, to which Easter Island now belongs. Next year a team of Hawaiians skilled in this type of navigation are going to attempt the voyage in a replica of a 62-foot, twin-hulled Polynesian canoe. Modern day investigators, according to the Times, do not think the settlers were driven by overcrowding but by the desire to put their technologies to the test. Once on Easter Island, they were stranded when they stripped it of its forests and could no longer build canoes. They were truly alone.
More on Evaluating State Science Standards
Our coverage on "Building a Presence for Science" in New Jersey in our last issue concluded with a reference to the rating of state science standards by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, headed by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Assistant Secretary of Education under President Reagan. At the American Association of Physics Teachers meeting in Lincoln, NE, Lawrence S. Larner of California State University, Long Beach, reported on 6 August for the Fordham Foundation their ratings of all 36 science education standards. Six states earned an "A" (IN, CA, HI, AZ, NJ, and RI), seven a "B" (CT, LA, DE, UT, VT, IL, and WA), seven a "C" (OR, TX, MA, MO, KS, NY, and WI), seven a "D" (CO, ME, SC, AL, NE, GA, and VA), and nine an "F" (AK, TN, FL, NH, KY, WV, NM, MS, and ND). This evaluation was done, Lerner said, on the basis of 13 criteria, receiving from one to three points for each criterion. Many standards suffer from being laundry lists, he pointed out. He emphasized that what is needed is explanatory paragraphs to tie the elements together into a framework.
Certain concepts were singled out for being dealt with inadequately. Energy is often poorly defined, Lerner reported, and twentieth century astronomy is often shortchanged. But the concept under greatest criticism was evolution. Tennessee and Mississippi, which both earned an "F," completely ignored it, and Alabama (which earned a "D") treats the origin of life as "theory rather than fact" and goes on to describe evolution without the "e-word." Yet, Arizona, which earned an "A" because it largely followed the National Science Education Standards, expunged evolution -- from cosmology as well as biology.
Teaching the Bohr Theory by Inquiry
Our coverage of reaction to the National Science Education Standards on p. 18 of our Spring 1995 issue cited the problem of how to teach the Bohr theory of the hydrogen atom by inquiry. John Roeder took it upon himself to ask people how to do this at virtually every conference he has attended since. At the August 1998 meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers in Lincoln, NE, Jill A. Marshall of Utah State University provided the answer. Make boards showing the energy levels Bohr found for electrons in the hydrogen atom, and cut strips of the appropriate color and length for the three transitions leading to emission of visible light, then ask students to match the colored strips representing visible light emission to the appropriate energy levels.
And that wasn't all. Marshall also presented an inquiry activity for students to "probe" the "nucleus." She passed around cubes of foam, into which she had inserted pieces of shot to represent the Thomson and Rutherford atoms, then asked us to poke them with hat pins (which represented the alpha particles in Rutherford's experiment). Roeder thinks it's nifty and plans to try it!
Fate of the Smallpox Virus
The first Infusion Tip in our Winter 1995 issue concerned debating whether to preserve or destroy the last remaining stocks of the smallpox virus, held in confinement in Atlanta and Moscow. In a follow-up article in the May/June 1998 issue of The Sciences, Wendy Orent cites information from defectors claiming that the Russians have conducted research with their stocks of the virus to exploit them for biological warfare, in violation of their signing of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in 1972. In view of these reports, Orent wonders how the World Health Organization's plan to destroy the final stocks of the virus on 30 June 1999 can be sure to eliminate this virus forever from the surface of the Earth.
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