WHAT'S NEW Friday, August 13, 2004

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 13 Jul 04   Washington, DC

Paul Gresser contributed to this week's issue of What's New.

1. DIETARY GUIDELINES: ADVISORY PANEL EMBRACES "THE PHYSICS PLAN"
This week, the 13-member federal advisory panel revising Dietary
Guidelines for Americans held its final meeting in Washington. 
Responding to the currently fashionable low-carbohydrate diets,
the panel flatly stated there is no value in using the glycemic
index and recommended that to maintain weight calories consumed
should not exceed calories expended.  This of course is just the
What's New "physics plan" http://www.aps.org/WN/WN00/wn022500.cfm
the only diet plan endorsed by the First Law of Thermodynamics.

2. HUBBLE: NASA INTERVIEWS ROBOTS FOR ASTRONAUT REPLACEMENT JOB. 
Having declared a service mission to Hubble to be too risky for
mere mortals, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe told engineers at
the Goddard Space Flight Center on Monday to begin serious work
on a robotic mission to Hubble in 2007.  His decision may have
been prompted by a malfunction of the Space Telescope Imaging
Spectrograph.  The leading candidate for the Hubble assignment is
Dextre, a two-armed Canadian robot.   The only concern comes from
those who question the wisdom of risking leading edge technology
on a mission for which human volunteers are readily available.

3. LOS ALAMOS: MISSING DISKS MAY HAVE ONLY EXISTED ON PAPER.
The word from Los Alamos this week is that the missing disks from
the weapons division, which have had the government in an uproar
http://www.aps.org/WN/WN04/wn071604.cfm , never existed.  A sheet
of 20 labels was printed out and entered into the database, but
only 18 were used.  As a result, 23 scientists were placed on
leave and research has been halted for weeks as the FBI hunted
for two nonexistent disks.  If this incident was really a
clerical error, rather than a consequence of the lab's "culture
of arrogance," then somebody owes these scientists an apology.   
 
4. MENTAL HEALTH: STOP MONKEYING AROUND AND GET BACK TO WORK.
Scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health claim they
have a cure for procrastination.  A recent study shows that
dopamine causes the brains of primates to visualize the time and
effort required for a task.  This is demoralizing, causing us to
goof off and delay work to the last minute.  By blocking the
receptors, the scientists transformed lazy lab monkeys into
workaholics.  What's New is going to try the technique out and
see if it works, maybe next week, or maybe the week after.    
     
5. NEW NUKES: BENNETT BILL REQUIRES PUBLIC DEBATE BEFORE TESTING.
The leak of the notorious Nuclear Posture Review two years ago    
http://www.aps.org/WN/WN02/wn031502.cfm implied that, in spite of
denials, there are plans to develop a new class of small nukes.


THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.  
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
---
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