What's New Friday Aug 22, 2008

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 22 Aug 08   Washington, DC

1.  JALAPENOS: IS IRRADIATION ONLY FOR RABBIT FOOD?
At the end of a long day do you find yourself dreaming of a big bowl of 
iceberg lettuce?  I don’t either.  However, the FDA is finally allowing 
lettuce and spinach to be irradiated at levels that protect against 
salmonella and E. coli.  I don’t know what took them so long.  The culprit 
in the most recent salmonella outbreak, however, wasn’t salad greens or 
tomatoes, it was jalapeno peppers.  That’s more serious.  Capsaicinoids in 
jalapenos trigger the release of endorphins in the brain.   Endorphin 
junkies are forced to deal with shady jalapeno pushers.  Irradiation is 
the safest and most effective sanitation technology that isn’t used.  In 
the UK the "natural food" lobby is led by Prince Charles.  In the U.S., we 
have no such excuse.

2.  LUNACY:  HAS ANYONE THOUGHT THIS THROUGH?
This week, according to today’s Science magazine, Senator Obama supported 
the Bush plan to return humans to the Moon.  Replay Apollo?  Not exactly; 
Obama wants a more international effort.  You can see how well that worked 
with the ISS.  Meanwhile in Cape Canaveral, McCain was backing the Bush 
plan to build a successor to the shuttle. Of course, he was in Florida, 
and that’s what politicians all say when they’re in Florida, but he did 
not favor returning to the Moon.    

3.  BASIC RESEARCH: HAS BELL LABS HIT BOTTOM?
Fifty years ago Bell Labs was the greatest basic research lab the world 
had ever seen or perhaps ever would see.  Enlightened managers 
recruited top graduates and enforced an absolute rule: their work had to
be very relevant to the phone business, or it had to be very, very good.  
There was no in between.  Bell Labs became a national treasure, 
capturing 6 Nobel prizes and revolutionizing communications.  But as 
Geoff Brumfiel observes in yesterday’s Nature, relevant work continues but 
basic science is all but gone.  The cruelest blow came in 2002 at the 
hands of young German physicist, Jan Hendrik Schoen.  He seemed to be able 
to make a thin layer of organic dye molecules assemble an electric circuit 
that behaved like a transistor.  It’s still not clear how much was 
illusion and how much was delusion, but it wasn’t real. 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN02/wn092702.html 

4.  ERROR: NORMAN BORLAUG’S 1970 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE.   
It has been pointed out to me that I have twice given the date as 2003, 
which isn’t even close.  He was awarded the prize in 1970.  I was assigned 
the penance of commenting on the contribution of alcoholic beverage 
production to atmospheric CO2.  It is not clear that there is a 
contribution.  CO2 is a product of fermentation, but CO2 was extracted 
from the atmosphere to synthesize the sugar.

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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