Stem Cells: A Way Out of the Debate?

As neatly summarized in this article by MSNBC's Alan Boyle, two groups of researchers have developed ways to genetically modify adult cells to create new cells identical to embryonic stem cells. Neither method is ready for large-scale application, but they offer the promise of further exploring the theraputic possibilities of such cells without the oral and ethical questions surrounding the use of stem cells from human embryos.
COMMENT: Whatever one's stance on the use of human embryonic stem cells (personally, it makes me very queasy), this is good news. Hopefully this progress will attract funding to determine the large-scale applicability of these methods. When there's a non-controversial way to pursue research, it only makes sense to pursue it that way. My other thought is that the media may well be overblowing the whole subject: no useful product derivered from embryonic stem cells has yet emerged from several years of research. The potential, though, is still there, and this news may indicate a workable route to pursuing further research.

A New Hurdle for the Ares Rocket

During a system definition review (SDR) which finished up in October, NASA and contractor engineers found a potentially serious vibration/oscillation problem with the five-segment solid-fuel "stick" Ares I booster design intended to loft the Orion CEV.

A NASA spokeperson said, in response to a question from NASAWatch:
"Thrust oscillation or resonant burning is a characteristic of all solid rocket motors. It is caused by vortex shedding inside the solid rocket motor, similar to the wake that follows a fast-moving boat. When the vortex shedding coincides with the acoustic modes of the motor combustion chamber, pressure oscillations generate longitudinal forces that may affect the loads experienced by the Ares I during the last phase of first-stage flight. NASA is assessing the analyses in more detail, looking for any potential impacts to the integrated stack and ways to mitigate those impacts. Results are due in spring 2008. It is a normal part of the development process to identify, mitigate and track challenges such as this."
NASA confirmed this meant a delay of six months in the Critical Design Review (CDR) but denies a rumor that this means a slip of over a year in the first human flight, currently scheduled for March 2015. According to NASA, there's enough flexibility in the development schedule to solve the new problem without long-term impact.

COMMENT: All large rockets, being elongated structures through which tremendous and complex stresses are acting, do have challenges of this type at some point in the design phase. Going all the way back to 1958, the spinning upperstage package on the Jupiter-C/Juno I had to vary its rotation rate to avoid a "coupling" of vibrations as the first stage burned fuel and thus changed its own characteristics.
That said, no large rocket has ever been this elongated: the Ares/Orion stack will have a ratio of height to diameter of 18:1.
NASA made an early decision for a Shuttle SRB-dervived booster for Orion over alternatives like man-rating a Delta or Atlas EELV to simplify the whole Constellation program, keeping the cost down and getting the program moving sooner. To me (insert my usual "I'm not an engineer" disclaimer here), the idea that this was a "safe, simple, soon" solution, as manufacturer ATK described it, is increasingly hard to argue for. The current Ares design is no more a "simple" modified SRB than the Vanguard booster was the "modified Viking sounding rocket" the Navy used to sell its program in 1955. (Insert usual "If that's not familiar, read my book" comment here.)
I understood the initial basis for proposing the Ares family, but that logic may not be valid any more. Some human spaceflight experts have always been leery of a solid-fuel booster, which cannot be turned off, despite the addition of an Apollo-type escape tower. If I were the NASA Administrator, I'd continue with the Ares program but invite the EELV makers to provide a new round of proposals for a backup booster option.



(Insert one more comment, emphasizing even more than usual that this is a personal opinion and not related to any company or organization I'm affiliated with.)

A Really Wayward Whale

I try to keep up with "lost cetacean" incidents, mainly because it puzzles me how intelligent animals with great sensory capabilities get so screwed up. This last one was really a wanderer - a minke whale that turned up stranded on a sandbar over 1,500 km up the Amazon in Brazil. At least report, the 6-meter animal was still alive despite being partially exposed to the air and sun, and officials were trying to determine if the creature could be freed and sent off in the right direction.

A Strange new Sauropod

On Tetrapod Zoology, a superb blog maintained by my acquaintance, paleogeologist Darren Naish, is a new entry describing

"Xenoposeidon proneneukos Taylor & Naish, 2007, an enigmatic and morphologically bizarre Lower Cretaceous neosauropod from the Wealden Supergroup rocks of East Sussex, described in the new issue of Palaeontology (Taylor & Naish 2007).

The new species is based on a single vertebra, about 20 cm long and 30 cm high, found in the Natural History Museum of London after roughly 115 years of being overlooked in storage. Paleontological enthusiast Mike Taylor brought it to Dr. Naish's attention, and the two co-authored the description. Without getting bogged down in the details, the bone shows at least three characteristics unknown in any other sauropod species from any location, indicating it belonged to its own family with a unique ancestry.

Congratulations, Darren!

A View of NASA's Future (Lori Garver speech)

I was in attendance earlier this week when Lori Garver, space policy advisor to Senator Hilary Clinton's Presidential campaign, was a lunchtime speaker for the American Astronautical Society's National Conference.
Garver’s talk was mainly an effusive pitch for her candidate, but there was more to it than that.
She restated Clinton’s policy and also reported the limited information she’d found on space statements by other candidates.
Here is her assessment of the two leading Democrats and three of the Republicans:
Senator Clinton: Promised increased support of aeronautics, Earth science, and robotic exploration, accelerating the development of Ares/Orion to avoid a “brain drain” when the Shuttle retired in 2010, and continuing to pursue human exploration, including lunar and eventually Martian ventures (NOTE: she did not specifically commit to NASA's current timetable for when humans should be on the Moon).
Senator Barak Obama: NASA is inspiring, but the agency should “do fewer things better” and must operate in light of a strict budget environment.
Governor Romney: Has not formed a policy yet, but said he’s seen no reason so far to change President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration (VSE)
Senator McCain: strongly in support of the VSE, including sending humans to Mars
Mayor Giuliani: Strongly supports an “aggressive space exploration” program.

Q and A

Q: I was able to ask a followup about what Senator Clinton’s policy meant for NASA’s topline.
A: Senator Clinton cosponsored the Senate-passed bill to add a $1B supplemental to NASA’s budget to make up for Katrina costs. Garver was asked by one of the Senator’s aides to make an estimate on what was needed to support Clinton’s NASA policy. She reported that adding the current $1B proposal to NASA’s budget and making that increased figure the new bottom line for smaller annual increases should do it. Garver said the current budget for exploration was “robust” and didn’t need a hike to carry out the new policy, but the other areas did need new money. She said her estimate was accepted by the campaign.

Q: What qualities do we need in the next NASA Administrator?
(NOTE: Garver has been mentioned as a strong possibility if Clinton is elected.)
A: The thing our recent administrators have not been able to do is better engage with, and be responsive to, the public, and that will be a key attribute to look for. Garver mentioned that, like many in the space community, she held up James Webb of the 1960s as the ideal Administrator.

A Mesozoic Vacuum Cleaner

A new dinosaur discovery from Africa, 10m long with a body mass approximating that of an elephant, shows a dentition unlike any other land creature of its time. With ten rows of tiny teeth, fast-growing and quickly worn out and replaced, in its flat mouth, Nigersaurus taqueti was a highly efficient browser - the "cow of the Mesozoic."

Flying High in Orbit

The Houston Chronicle runs an editorial applauding the recent record-setting spacewalk by Scott Parazynski by noting the mission set a new mark on the "wow factor" meter. It's hard to think of a better word than "wow."

To Clone or Not to Clone?

The United Nations University has released a new report recommending a global policy on human cloning. In the document, "Is Human Reproductive Cloning Inevitable: Future Options for UN Governance," the answer is NO, although perhaps with some narrowly defined medical or "theraputic" exceptions. The authors wrote that, among other aspects of this complex issue, "It is clear that any debate on human dignity needs to separate the various elements of the debate in order to consider whether opposition to cloning stems from concern for human dignity or respect for divine dignity.” The whole report defies thorough summary in this space, but it recommends an international agreement to ban most human cloning.
COMMENT: This seems a fairly sensible approach, but frankly, I doubt anything is going to stop human cloning from happening sometime in the next decade. That's not to say it's a good thing. It sounds naive or fuzzy or something to say that there are cases where we shouldn't take a scientific step, even if the reasons are good, but that's what I think in this case. THere are things humanity should stay away from, not just because of eithical or religious qualms but because we have no idea what the long-term effects on human society will be.

How Flight Began

How did flying get started? Did the earliest reptiles to take wing develop their abilities by hopping from the ground, or by jumping between trees? A new paper in Current Biology argues it was the former. Studying the toes of modern birds, early birds, and feathered ground-dwelling reptiles, the authors report that the toes of all types were similar, and did not match those of tree-dwelling reptiles. Accordingly, they argue. flight evolved from running and jumping on the ground, where winglike, feathered forelimbs might have aided in balance and directional control.

Thanks to Kris Winkler, my good friend and indefatigable volunteer researcher, for this item.

Norman Mailer has died

Norman Mailer, one of America's most colorful and talented writers, has died at 84.
Space afictionados will remember Mailer as the author of "Of a Fire On the Moon," certainly the most unique chronicle of Apollo 11. In this example of his "non-fiction fiction" style, mixing in a lot of his personal life and philosophy, Mailer showed a somewhat grudging admiration for a feat he thought was marred by the bland conformity of the agency and the voyagers carrying it out. He felt this conformity, even in post-Woodstock 1969, was a stifling force holding back all society - and yet, it produced Apollo.
In the book, he wrote: "The astronauts were the core of some magnetic human force called Americanism, Protestantism, or WASPitude... They were the knights of the Silent Majority, the WASP emerging from human history in order to take us to the stars."
He told an interviewer in 1973 about watching an Apollo launch: "It was a thunderingly beautiful experience -- voluptuous, sexual, dangerous, and expensive as hell."

VERY Big News from the world of whales

Loren Coleman has collected some very important news and links in one handy spot on the blog Cryptomundo.
First, there is a link to cetologist Robert Pitman's paper from 2006 on the first definite sighting of a live example of the enigmatic Shepherd’s beaked whale (Tasmacetus shepherdi).
Then there's a link to Pitman's Journal of Mammology paper on a new dwarf species of killer whale from the Antarctic.
Finally, a star-studded cetological team, with Merel L. Dalebout as lead author and a roster of co-authors including two more of the top experts on the mesoplodonts (beaked whales), William F. Perrin and James G. Mead, has determined that DNA taken from stranded whales in the Palmyra Atoll Wildlife Refuge and the Tabiteuea Atoll in the Republic of Kiribati indicate there's a yet-unidentified species in that little-known group.
I covered Pitman's studies of the fault lines between what was once thought to be a single species of killer whale (a.k.a. orca) in the Antarctic and the thoughts of Dalebout and others about yet-unidentified beaked whales in my 2006 book Shadows of Existence (Hancock House). Now, though, we have formal publication of more concrete conclusions in these areas. Thanks again to Loren for putting this together.

Chinese probe orbits Moon

In another first for China's space program, the Chang'e 1 spacecraft, launched October 24, has successfully entrered orbit around the Moon. It now enters a 12-month mission of studying our natural satellite. Pei Zhaoyu of the China National Space Administration reported, "All of the subsystems of the Chang'e 1 are in normal operation so far," and added, "The project is a comprehensive demonstration of China's economic, scientific and technological power."

Some observers have noted the timing is interesting, since Japan's first lunar probe entered its own orbit just a month ago. Given the long lead times for such missions, though, it's doubtful that timing is more than coincidence.

Thanks to Kris Winkler for this item.

Book of the Month: "Red Moon Rising"

This chronicle of the Sputnik era is one of several new histories which have come out this year, and it's a good one. Michael Brzezinski's Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age (2007: Times Books) stands out for a couple of reasons, including solid writing and an in-depth presentation of the Soviet side of events. He adds a good grasp of technical detail. As the co-author of another book on this subject, The First Space Race, I can speak with some authority when I say this is a valuable contribution. If anything gave me pause, it's his inclusion of the quote "Goldstone has the bird" in his acocunt of the Explorer I launch: we demonstrated that must have been based on incorrect memories, as no Goldstone tracking station yet existed. However, a few quibbles like that don't detract much from a book I recommend.

Florida's Weird Fauna

I grew up in Florida, so I noted with special interest the new book by Michael Newton titled, Florida's Unexpected Wildlife: Exotic Species, Living Fossils, and Mythical Beasts in the Sunshine State (2007: University Press of Florida). Florida is teeming with released or escaped exotic creatures (there was a monkey colony south of where I grew up in Vero Beach) and has its own "mystery animals" like sea monsters and the Skunk Ape.

It's official: the Giant Peccary

The formal publication of Marc van Roosmalen's paper naming the giant peccary (Pecari maximus) marks the latest in a series of mammal discoveries in the Amazin region by the prolific (sometimes controversial) zoologist and conservationist. The giant species has almost twice the mass of the previously established species in Brazil. An interesting note is that it was apparently discussed in a book by an American rubber-tapper named John Yungjohann, who described this species accurately as part of the fauna he encountered while working in the region from 1906 to 1919.

Triumph in Orbit

Scott Parazynski, supported by a cast of astronuts on the shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station (ISS) plus experts on the ground, pulled off one of the most difficult feats in the history of human spaceflight. In a complex seven-hour spacewalk, Parazynski anchored an extension boom on the ISS' robot arm, snipped tangled wires, and attached braces improvised on the space station to repair a 33.5-meter-long solar wing that was damaged last Tuesday. Parazynski, a doctor specializing in emergency medicine before he became an astronaut, surely never cured a more important patient. NASA can now proceed with the next launch in December, using the shuttle Atlantis, to continue the station's assembly.

Scott Parazynski's Challenge in Space

This Saturday or Sunday, U.S. astronaut Scott Parazynski will make one of the most difficult and potentially dangerous spacewalks in history. Parazynski will try to fix the ripped solar wing on the International Space Station. The plan requires travel almost from one end of the station to the other, a repair procedure which were just developed and can't be rehearsed, and the need to work next to an electrically charged panel that cannot be turned off. Astronauts on the ISS have already fashioned a brace from aluminum strips to take stress off the panel's damaged hinge.

Bringing back NASA's Think Tank

Leonard David reports that interest is growing, in Congress and elsewhere, in a move to bring back the recently (and, not to put too fine a point on it, stupidly) defunded NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). NASA currently has no office dedicated to seed money and studies for long-term technologies that we will need in fulfilling the Vision for Space Exploration. NIAC was killed to add a fraction of a percent to the money available for the development of the VSE hardware.
I understand the NASA Adminstrator's desire to push the VSE as far along as possible to make it hard to kill if the White House gets an "unfriendly" occupant next year. (That, at least, is my interpretation of the push to kill anything necessary to put more money into the VSE and its hardware program, Constellation.) However, NASA's job is to think about the future. Someone needs to be thinking beyond simply getting the Orion and Ares onto the launch pad.

A Tough Day in Orbit

The report from today's work on the International Space Station (ISS) reminds us how challenging major construction in space can be. Spacewalkers from the 7-person crew of the STS-120 mission had to move a pair of stored solar wings to their final position at the opposite side of the station and install them. At some point in the procedure, a 75-cm tear appeared in the wing. The power loss is minimal, but there's some concern about the structural integrity of the wing. The ISS does not just float up there: every section is under a variety of stresses as the complex structure zips through space at orbital velocity. NASA had lengthened the mission a day to allow for possible repairs to the wing as well as inspection of a joint found to be contaminated with metal shavings.

Before Columbus

A unique archaeological dig in Puerto Rico is shedding light on Caribbean native life in the centuries before Europeans showed up. It's like nothing found before in this region: a stone plaza measuring some 130 feet by 160 feet, carved with elaborate petroglyphs. The site was presumably built by the Taino people or their ancestors and was in use for as long as 900 years, from 600 to 1,500 AD.

Armadillo Aerospace - a bad day

The NASA-run Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge requires an unmanned rocket-powered craft to lift off, go to another pad at least 100 meters away, refuel, and return. It's not as easy as it looks. A well-financed team from Armadillo Aerospace thought they had it nailed this year, but they had four tries, and none of them made it. On the fourth, engine exploded on launch.
COMMENT: The engineers of Armadillo say they will get it next year, and I hope they do. NASA's prize challenges are a great idea, something to involve smaller companies in developing innovative technology for space exploration.

Science and Saucers

Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log offers a good story on what UFO enthusiasts call the best case of the year, a multiple-witness sighting by employees at Chicago's O'Hare airport. Boyle includes a discussion, with links, about some of the phenomena that can be mistaken for strange-looking craft in the atmosphere.
COMMENT: I've always felt that, in dismissing UFOs wholesale, we're missing some clues about still-unknown or poorly-known atmospheric phenomena. I still think the late Philip Klass may have been on to something four decades ago when he hypothesized a kind of larger, longer-lived cousin of ball lighting. His 1968 book UFOs-Identified maintained that this theory, if correct, could explain most UFOs, given the human mind's tendency to fill in extra details like windows. His later work was much more devoted to the idea UFOs were a mix of psychological phenomena, misidentifications of known phenomena, and hoaxes. In a letter to me about 1991, he said he still thought his plasmas were likely to exist, but were behind only about 1% of UFO sightings.

Notes on Cryptozoological Fiction

This essay was published in Craig Heinselman's compendium Elementum Bestia earlier this year. It was written for an audience interested in cryptozoology, but, if that does not include you, please don't be deterred.





Cryptofiction – One Reader’s Thoughts
By Matt Bille

It’s not clear who created the genre of cryptofiction. Perhaps the unknown composer of Beowulf gets credit. More likely, the art goes back to some Cro-magnon telling stories around the campfire of how he saw a strange, unknown breed of short-faced bear (no doubt the size of a mastodon) or rediscovered a presumed-extinct cave lion.
There was a spate of cryptofiction (CF) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that produced some very enjoyable work, mainly in short story form. The writers were not just the expected culprits like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, but included such luminaries as Rudyard Kipling (sea serpents) and Jack London (mammoths). Some of the short stories involved were told in the straightforward manner of a news report. Wells’ “The Sea Raiders” is a standout in this group: those who read about his murderous cephalopods could be forgiven if they thought the material was nonfiction. Chad Arment has put together a wonderful collection of such cryptofiction at http://www.strangeark.com/czfiction.html.
CF continued to crop up in all kinds of works, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan series, where his great apes are just one of many unknown species that play greater or lesser roles. But I want to focus this essay on cryptofiction’s most common 21st-century form, the CF novel. I’m defining a CF novel as one where the main plot centers around discovery or rediscovery of a species of animal (a “cryptid”) not recognized as existing by mainstream zoologists. The modern CF novel might be said to descend from Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, written in 1912 and still in print. Most CF novels would be classified as thrillers, although genres like mystery, SF, and horror can all have cryptid themes.
That covers a lot of ground, and the lines around this subgenre are fuzzy ones. What, for example, does one do with Whitley Strieber’s superb The Wolfen? His creatures are natural animals, and he makes them quite believable, but I think of it as a horror novel. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s equally gripping Relic is a scientific thriller not based on any reported cryptid, and I never figured out whether to call it CF until the sequel, Reliquary, moved the story firmly into the realm of science fiction and saved me from further pondering.
There is also the problem of classifying cryptofiction with supernatural or mystical elements, as in Robert Masello’s Bestiary and Philip Kerr’s Esau. I suggest these are probably still CF, though a bit genre-bending. There are plenty of novels which include cryptozoological elements as secondary or even incidental components (Michael Crichton’s Sphere and Arthur C. Clarke’s The Deep Range, for example), but we’ll set those aside here.
In this reader’s opinion, the truly great CF novel has not been written. There are some top-shelf examples of the genre, with Eric Penz’s Cryptid, Petru Popescu’s Almost Adam, and Steve Alten’s The Loch all come to mind, but nothing I’ve read so far is really transcendent, the way Elizabeth Kostkova’s The Historian is for vampire fiction. There’s no reason there can’t be such a cryptonovel, given the inherently dramatic nature of the subject matter and the many human, scientific, and political conflicts which may be involved. It just has not quite been done yet.
By way of comparison, the vampire novel would seem to have been drained dry, with hundreds or thousands published since Mr. Stoker got the whole thing started in 1897. Yet Anne Rice made a fortune by providing a new and literate take on the legend eighty years later, and then Kostkova essentially did the same thing again, only even better, in 2006. If great novels with a fresh approach can be created in a genre as crowded as this, they certainly can – and, hopefully, will – be published in the CF realm.
Who writes cryptonovels? The authors can be established thriller writers who just choose to do a plot concerning an unknown or unconfirmed animal, or cryptid (e.g., Philip Kerr). They can be cryptozoological researchers who use the novels as a way of exploring what might be the truth behind cryptid tales (e.g., D. L. Tanner, Lee Murphy). They can also be thriller writers who start in CF and branch out from there (e.g., Steve Alten). They can even use the cryptid as a central part of a plot meant to explore some other topic. Frank Peretti did that in his Christian-themed Monster, where his sasquatches just happened to be in the same area as an ape-raising mad scientist who accidentally proves evolution doesn’t work.
The would-be CF author has a dual problem. First, the novel must be a good novel, with believable characters, stories, etc. The usual rules of good writing – people, motivation, story, and conflict – all apply in CF as they do everywhere else. So do details. Dean Koontz’ much-quoted (by me, anyway) maxim is that you can ask a reader to accept one major improbability as long as all the other features of the novel, including the small details, are solidly grounded in reality. (Koontz has not always followed his own rule, but it’s still a good one.)
That does not rule out minor liberties in geography or history, which crop up in non-cryptid writings by everyone from Stephen King to Dana Stabenow without hurting the story, but there are limits: James Michener’s creation of fictitious states in his novel Space was a jarring distraction even in the hands of a skilled writer. (I do hope Dana Stabenow somehow reads this: a novel putting her sleuth Kate Shugak on the trail of Alaska’s legendary Hairy Man would be great fun.)
The second part of the writer’s problem is the cryptid. A horror writer can invoke the supernatural and get away with almost anything, but a CF author can’t. The author has to make Koontz’s big improbability (the cryptid, in this case) seem probable, or at least plausible. The cryptid must be more or less consistent with the existing record and, to a large degree, scientifically believable.
Dedicated readers of cryptofiction are not a large lot, and the writer must appeal to a broader thriller/horror/etc. audience to make a novel successful. However, cryptozoologists are a hard-core bunch, well-read in the facts and theories of their field of interest. If an author attributes the Lachlan Stuart photo from Loch Ness to Tim Dinsdale, there will be hell to pay. It’s almost like writing a Star Trek novel, where an error on some obscure point of Vulcan protocol will draw a deluge of emails calling the author a Romulan or worse.
An author introducing a new or surviving creature has to assume many readers will have, or will look up, sufficient information to judge whether the creature involved might really exist. In James Robert Smith’s enjoyable thriller The Flock, I could generally get past the problems with undetected survival of his terror birds, but was stopped short when one “laughed” at the abstract idea of a dog taking him on, and I almost gave up on the book when the critter actually got a mental image from human hunters.
Sometimes CF authors seem not to know how to get to their tale, and so they gloss over too much. Robert Masello in Bestiary described his animals well, but never explained where they were for millions of years before they ended up as living treasures in care of an Iraqi dynasty. Sometimes authors go the other way, throwing a blizzard of scientific jargon at the reader in hopes said reader will thus buy into the creature’s reality. Dave Freedman’s Natural Selection, which mixes a few real data points and many imaginary (and some impossible) ones, is the most egregious offender on this point. (The astonishing thing is that, to read some reviews by major media outlets, this actually worked. The absurdity of Freedman’s flying mantas was somehow passed over, and I suppose I must give the author some credit for this accomplishment.)
For the author who plans to tell a series of stories in novel form, growth from one tale to the next is always possible and highly welcomed. I wrote harsh reviews of Steve Alten’s original Meg and its sequel, but Alten had improved as a writer by the second sequel, and did a better job as both author and cryptozoologist with The Loch. Likewise, Lee Murphy’s Naitaka corrected what I thought were flaws, most notably in characterization, that had marred his debut novel Where Legends Roam.
Human characterization is the hardest thing for any author to get right, and CF is even less forgiving than most thrillers in this light. The author must not only give us real people, but make us believe in how they would react when faced with the incredible.
Imagine being alone in the forest when confronted by a sasquatch. Some of us would stand and stare in fascination: some would reach for a camera or a gun; some (probably including me) would want to stay but would likely, by reflex, high-tail it out in search of reinforcements. The author needs to think about why this person is in the woods, what shaped their character, and how they would greet a giant, smelly, supposedly non-existent ape. Likewise, the quiet guy who was reluctantly dragged along on an African cryptid expedition should not suddenly burst forth with a long explanation of why a given fruit is probably good dinosaur fodder, unless it’s been established that 1) animal nutrition is his expertise and 2) his character is likely to grab the spotlight if opportunity presents itself.
In some novels (I’ll pick on Natural Selection again here), the author offers us a collection of two-dimensional folks who summon no sympathy from the reader even when they are eaten or dismembered. At the other extreme, Robert Laws is so sure his characters in Ferocity will hold the reader’s attention (and he’s right) that the cryptid gets two brief mentions in the first six chapters. (Laws’ book was going to be on my top picks, but his leaving his British mystery cats’ ability to hide from direct vision unexplained spoiled it for me.) Likewise, one of the reasons I admire Almost Adam is that Popescu’s characters keep us turning the pages even when his australopithecines are “off screen” and not even being discussed.
Not all characters, of course, are equal. By the nature of all fiction, length and pacing dictate that some characters will remain undeveloped. That’s no excuse for stereotypes, though. Examples in CF (especially prominent in CF-related films) include the skeptic who dismisses everything until the cryptid makes human McNuggets out of him or the wise old Native who tells the disbelieving white visitors to stay out of the woods. A personal non-favorite of mine is the business executive who is already wealthy and successful but casually orders or even personally commits kidnapping, murder, etc. in pursuit of more money or to settle a minor score. Even Enron wasn’t the Mafia.
The CF reader wants to be transported into a setting that is right for the animals involved and feels real to the reader. Eric Penz in Cryptid did this better than any other CF author I’ve read, making us see, hear, and smell our surroundings in the Northwest forests. I compared him to Barbara Kingsolver in this regard, and I meant it. One can do a good job with slightly less detail, as Alten did with Loch Ness and Popescu with Kenya, but the point is the environment matters to any cryptid, and thus to any writer or reader of CF.
The writer does not need to explain the plausibility of each point in so much detail that the story bogs down or halts. I remember reading a Tom Clancy novel that went on for two pages about how you make an automobile gas tank, and I remain convinced Clancy had given in to the temptation of simply showing off. CF authors should resist.
The flip side of that is that there’s no excuse for a flat-out wrong detail that most readers will catch. Alten gave us such a moment in Meg: Primal Waters when a prehistoric “flashback” offers us a Steller’s sea cow cruising a tropical lagoon without dying instantly of heatstroke. James Robert Smith does it when one of his characters brings out a Doberman weighing 170 pounds, almost twice the upper end of the bell curve for this breed. (I’ve already had a friendly exchange with Lee Murphy about his next novel – the guys on Mythbusters tried his hero’s playing-card-as-lethal-weapon trick, and it can’t be done.)
The last question that comes to mind is whether there’s a distinction between CF and “monster” thrillers. I think there is, but we are back to drawing fuzzy lines again. When the point is to have an exciting plot about terror, danger, and death, the author is usually not overly concerned with ensuring the creature (note I did not say “cryptid”) is plausible. James Rollins’ Ice Hunt is a first-rate page-turner, but his cetacean “grendels” not only survived 50 million years with no fossil record, but then survived while entombed in ice for fifty thousand years, and the explanation for all this is less than convincing. Just read it as a thriller and enjoy.
Taken together, all these points ask a lot of the would-be writer of great CF. No author will never convince every reader that his sasquatches have the right diet or that her giant octopus has the right mating habits. But he or she needs to show they’ve done the homework without drowning the reader in details that slow the story.
There is an enormous amount of unplumbed material in the crypto-world. We have several novels on sasquatch, but none on Africa’s dodi or Asia’s orang-pendek. We have several on Loch Ness, but almost none exploring sea serpents. Cryptid tales, by their nature, tend to involve exotic locales and often would, in real life, be the catalyst for many competing interests. They set up the most interesting kind of people stories – the kind where true character comes out under great stress – and offer the chance to enlighten readers on the scientific plausibility of the entire field of cryptozoology.
All this is, as I said in the headline, the opinion of one (albeit voracious) reader. Some people may love books I think little of, and vice versa. What is most important about CF is that it’s a vibrant, growing field, drawing in new authors who publish through all venues - large traditional presses, small presses, and self-publishing ventures.
I guess the bottom line of these notes is to tell writers of CF that there are many people eager to read your work, but we expect something of you, too. We expect you to treat the subject with seriousness and depth, not just have the cryptid pop out and chomp someone every now and then. The world needs more good CF, a lot more, and there’s room at the top for great CF. So go forth and write well.

AUTHOR
Matt Bille is a writer of non-fiction cryptozoology (see his books Rumors of Existence and Shadows of Existence, both from Hancock House). He is working on a CF novel which has yet to find a publisher, and hopes any hints of professional jealously do not color the above essay. Matt’s website is http://www.mattwriter.com/.

Cold-adapted dinosaurs?

Paleontologists studying 115-million-year-old dinosaur tracks in Australia report the tracks are evidence that dinosaurs flourished in a period where temperatures ranged from 20 degrees Centigrade (68F) in the summer to a chilling -30C (-22F) in winter. Paleontologist Thomas Rich speculates the species which left the tracks, a carnivore standing about four meters high, may have been a truly warm-blooded species equipped with body fat to ward off the cold. This find reminds us about how much we still have to learn about the most fascinating creatures ever to walk the Earth.

Discovery is in Orbit

The STS-120 mission of the space shuttle Discovery is off to the International Space Station after a smooth and safe launch. Concerns about the outer layer of some of the carbon-fiber heat-resistant panels were examined by NASA leadership, but it was decided the mission could safely proceed on schedule. During the countdown itself, a patch of ice near the hydrogen umbilical on the external tank was examined and discarded as a possible hazard. This link provides a blog written as the countdown was in progress.
NASA notes: "The STS-120 mission will mark the first time females have been in command of both the space shuttle and the International Space Station at the same time. Space shuttle Discovery is being commanded by Pam Melroy, and Peggy Whitson is currently serving as the station's commander."

Progress on commercial space transport

SpaceX, the pioneering private launch firm founded by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, reports its Falcon 9 / Dragon mission for the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program has passed the Critical Design Review (CDR) stage. The CDR was vital to getting NASA funding for the next stage of the program. Documents, hardware, and presentations to NASA got SpaceX the thumbs-up to proceed with the project. Musk said, "In terms of overall design maturity of the Falcon 9 project, we are well ahead of the curve for a program of this size. Few CDRs feature multiple hardware items in fabrication, assembly, integration and test phases." SpaceX plans to fly a demonstration mission carrying cargo to the International Space Station by 2009.

Alaskan tribe receives ancestor's remains

Over ten years ago, human remains estimated at 10,000 years old were found in a cave in the Tongass National Forest. Studies indicated they belonged to the ancestors of the Tlingit nation of Alaska Natives. What's notable about this find is that everything was done right in accordance with the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Tlingit leaders agreed the bones could be studied before their return to the tribe for appropriate reburial. Now the U.S. Forest Service has handed them back, and Tlingit will proceed with permanent re-interment. Anthropologist Rosita Worl, a Tlingit, said, "I think ours is a really good example of what can be accomplished when scientists and federal agencies recognize the legal rights of Native people. They're professional with them, they're sensitive with them. They're equal with them."
COMMENT: This was a simpler case than that of Kennewick Man, whose remains have been claimed by several tribes and remain the subject of contention. Still, it's a good example of how both science and cultural sensibilities can be accommodated when everyone starts with the right mindset.

Strange new creatures of the deep

Completing a trio of animal discoveries and rediscoveries in the news is the latest find from the ocean depths. Researchers off the Philippines have photographed a swarm of strange species, some of them new to science, at depths down to 2,900m. Notable examples include a black jellyfish and a bizarre orange worm with 10 tentacles.

South China Tiger seen again in the wild

The South China tiger, Panthera tigris amoyensis, has not been seen in the wild in over 20 years. There were an estimated 4,000 prowling the forests and mountains 50 years ago - today, there are 68, all in zoos. The subspecies was the victim of development and poaching for the value of its body parts in traditional medicines.
Or so it was thought. A farmer in northwestern China reported seeing the animal two weeks ago, and experts have confirmed the authenticity of the resulting photographs (it's not clear from the AP report whether the farmer took the pictures or officials he talked to came out and got them). It's still unknown whether there is a stable wild population, but even the single sighting is a rare piece of good news for tiger conservationists.

A New Mammal - the Dwarf Manatee

Loren Coleman has posted on the cryptozoology site Cryptomundo a version of the announcement of a formal description my Marc van Roosmalen, et. al., of a large new mammal van Roosmalen had been investigating for some time. This is the dwarf manatee, Trichechus bernardi. It's the second known freshwater-specializing manatee and, at 1.3m in length, by far the smallest. A holotype is in hand, and the species has also been filmed in the wild. DNA analysis confirms its long-term genetic isolation from other manatee species. Sizable new mammals are the rarest of new species, but they still come along more often than most people realize.

Robotic romance?

Artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht has offered the belief that human beings will have sex - and marriage - with robots in this current century. He suggests the politically liberal U.S. state of Massachusetts will legalize such relationships around 2050. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. thesis (no doubt the first person to do so on the topic of human-robot relationships).
COMMENT: Human relationships are so complex that you can't say no one will ever want an intimate relationship, including marriage, with a robot - someone probably will. But legal status with something that can be disabled or dismantled at will? Not a recipe for stability. Let's leave the robots out of this.

Shuttle and Station

Although NASA safety experts recommended a two-week delay due to minute cracks in the outer layer of some protective carbon fiber panels, NASA has decided to launch the shuttle Discovery on schedule on October 23.
COMMENT: This will very likely turn out OK, but the cultural message is unsettling: disregard a possible safety concern and launch on schedule.

Meanwhile, a new crew has docked at the ISS via a Russian Soyuz capsule. Those on board include NASA's Peggy Whitson, the first woman to be in command of what is, for now, Earth's only long-term space outpost. With her were cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Malaysian astronaut Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor.

Darren Naish on Cryptozoology

Dr. Darren Naish, a British paleobologist, has consistently produced some of the most well-researched and scientific articles in the cryptozoological literature. In this post on his blog, he ties it all together in the form of a presentation he's given to conventions on the topic. Naish's insistence that cryptozoology be neither overly restrictive (i.e., counting only large or spectacular animals) nor overly credulous is a valuable insight, and his explanation of it well worth reading.

Steve Fossett may be lost

Authorities have called off the search for pilot/adventurer Steve Fossett in the mountains of Nevada after five weeks of futility. Searchers spotted several other aircraft wrecks, at least on never noticed until now, but found no trace of Fossett. Friends are continuing the search on a small scale, and some, like fellow entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, think Fossett may yet walk out of the mountains. The official view, though, is that Fossett - a man who gave the term "daredevil" new meaning by pushing the limits of balloon, glider, and powered aircraft flight - probably died in the crash of his single-engined plane.

The Birds From Brazil

There have been many new species of birds discovered in Brazil over the last two decades (I have written about several, but I haven't had time to look up the total, so trust me on that). The newest arrival is a handsome brown, black, and white species dubbed Formicivora grantsaui, the Sincorá Antwren. According to BirdLife International, it inhabits a limited area, and that only between altitudes of 850 and 1,100 meters - an interesting reminder that a species' habitat can be restricted by height as well as acreage. This habitat preference, as well as its unique vocalizations, helped scientists classify the bird as distinct from a visually similar relation, the Rusty-backed Antwren (Formicivora rufa).

Shuttle Discovery launch uncertain

With the space shuttle Discovery slated for launch on October 23, NASA is trying to decide whether three of the reinforced carbon panels protecting the leading edges of the spacecraft's wings need replacing. The outer coating on the panels has experienced "degradation" from an unknown cause. Some engineers are optimistic, noting that Discovery has flown twice with this problem and not experienced any further degradation or resulting difficulties. Others are still unnverved by the "unknown cause" part of the equation.

Teleportation, just not for you

Is teleportation of science fiction type ever going to arrive? It will be a long time, if ever. Some recent developments, however, are raising startling possibilities about the utility of teleporting something else: information. Experimenters have already succeeded in "teleporting" the quantum properties of particles, the first step toward a quantum computer with infinite storage and (to us humans) seemingly infinite speed, as well as enabling light-speed transference of huge amounts of data across interplanetary distances.
This CNN article quotes Valerie Jamieson, physics editor of New Scientist, who offers a helpful analogy.
"This is not teleportation as we like to think of it, namely an object disappearing from one place and reappearing in another. Rather, it is about the transferring across space of the quantum properties of particles, and in particular their spin." She suggests imagining a pool table. "In the traditional view of teleportation a spinning ball will de-materialize at one end of the table and exactly the same ball will re-materialize at the other end. In quantum teleportation the spinning ball stays where it is, but its spin is transferred to another ball somewhere else on the table, in effect creating a Doppelganger. It is an aspect or a 'property' of the original ball that has been transmitted rather than the ball itself. Although to complicate matters the process of transmission would destroy the original ball."

Senator Clinton on space

Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton is to be congratulated on being the first of the Presidential candidates to address space policy. It's unfortunate that she didn't say much. Words like "balanced" and "robust" don't commit anyone to anything. Basically, she made a promise to each constituency - earth science, space science, and human spaceflight - to do better by them. The exception was the promise to "speed" development of the next generation of human spaceflight vehicles and launchers, but even that really commits her to nothing - you can always say something along the lines of "We sped it up compared to what the last Administration was likely to do." Finally, she gave no figures and mentioned no funding sources. It also doesn't help to recall that her husband's administration was really supportive only when it came to Earth science. That Administration was no friend to commercial space development or to human spaceflight - at one point telling NASA to halt all planning for a human presence beyond LEO.
Still, Senator Clinton deserves to be commended for two things. One is simply teeing up the space issue, increasing the chance other candidates will address it seriously. The other is her promise in the space speech to reestablish Congress' Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). Now, she can't actually do that, only Congress can. But it should be done. The OTA did some excellent work.

AAS Conference announcement

Here's the official announcement of the American Astronautical Society's upcoming conference in Houston, TX.
Theme:
"Celebrating Fifty Years - But, What's Next?"
REGISTER ONLINE BY OCTOBER 12 AND SAVE $50 OFF FULL REGISTRATION http://www.astronautical.org/

The Skeptical (and despised) Environmentalist

This Times Online profile of Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, is interesting in a couple of ways. One is that Lomborg drew enormous fire from environmentalists and climate scientists for his work challenging the numbers behind most global warming scenarios, but he has persevered. Right or wrong, he remains a voice challenging the current majority view. That is as necessary for good science as it is for good government. The other is that he advocates policies that result in net contributions to the welfare of people over those that sound good but don't end up changing behavior - and he puts most responses to global warming in that category.
I'm no expert on climate change or the degree to which it's human-caused, but I try to point out a couple of things. One is that this situation is incredibly complex and doesn't translate accurately to the kind of simplified presentation shown in An Inconvenient Truth. The other is that sincere dissent should not be criminalized - which some environmentalists have demanded, literally, for global warming skeptics.

Easier dental work?

Harvard researchers report they've come up with a way to kill the pain of dentistry without the numbness and drooling that results. It's interesting because the solution is a well-known plant extract used in a new way - based on one researcher's intuitive "What if?" thought. The result: a compound made up of capsaicin (extracted from red peppers), which binds to receptors on pain-sensing neurons - and ONLY on pain-sensing neurons, not those directing touch, movement, etc. - and allows an anesthetic called QX-314 to infiltrate those neurons. There's a lot of work to be done yet to go from rat experiments to human trials, but the story is a good illustration of how the inventive process works.

One More Sputnik Item

In a good article in Scientific American, JR Minkel neatly summarizes the Sputnik story. The article does say Sputnik was short for "simple satellite," which it wasn't, but Minkel makes the important point that there wasn't a lack of aerospace technology on the US side. There was just no impetus for government to put funding in the right places until Sputnik went up.

The Sputnik Generation

Before we leave this 50th anniversary celebration, I should point out some great articles and links. The title link is to an article by James Oberg on the lessons we have learned - and not learned, or mislearned - from our space efforts of the past half-century. Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log (http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/) includes a series of excellent entries about what's happened since Sputnik and what we should expect in the next half-century. Finally, New Scientist offers a great collection of material at http://space.newscientist.com.

More Avian Intelligence

We've come to think of birds as clever enough, able to use a stick for a tool or figure out how to open a backpack zipper. But a new study with miniature cameras attached to crows has shown the birds make tools, bending, shaping, or stripping twigs and grass leaves to suit their purposes. They also use grass to rummage around on the ground for food, something never reported before.

HAPPY SPUTNIK DAY

Greetings to all who are excited about the past, present, and future of space exploration.
Co-author Erika Lishock and I appeared on the radio/Internet program The Space Show last night to talk about this anniversary's meaning, and that show is archived at www.thespaceshow.com.
To put it all in a nutshell: no matter how big our other problems and concerns, humanity must never forget to look up and outward. It may sound romanticized, but it's still true: cultures which take their eyes off the horizon will never be what they might have been. We can still do great things together that benefit all of humanity.

Ad astra,
Matt Bille

Sputnik and the Hams

Amid the current flood of articles on Sputnik, I noticed one that told a side of the story I hadn't really heard: that of the amateur radio community at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (then under contract to the Army) and its frantic efforts to establish the truth about the reported satellite. A series of improvisations, including the use of a metal window screen as an antenna, made that contact possible. The group would go on to make the first contact with Explorer I on January 31, 1958.

Saber-toothed cat not much of a biter

The saber-toothed cats (popularly called "saber-tooth tigers") were among the most fearsome-looking mammals ever to prowl the planet. But a new study says that, based on computerized reconstruction of saber-tooth skulls, the cat didn't have a strong enough bite to make those canines the primary weapon. Instead, Smilodon fatalis likely took down its prey with its forelimbs and claws and used the "can-opener teeth" to finish it off.

Sputnik and Science

A good article from LiveScience.com explores how the Space Age has spurred science education and scientific discovery. As NASA astrophysicist David Thompson puts it, "Sputnik made everybody think about science and technology more seriously."

Book of the month - The Physics of the Buffyverse

Yes, I'm serious. Jennifer Ouellette's book exploring physics through the activities of our favorite vampire slayer is fun, very well written, and genuinely informative. In the course of explaining everything from relativity to string theory, the author plays with the notion that, if you make one huge assumption - the supernatural characters have access to some mystical source of energy - a lot of things in Buffy's world could actually happen. So don't read this in a spooky graveyard.

Retrieving Mammoth DNA

Attempts to retrieve DNA from the bones and dried flesh of frozen mammoth remains have always been hampered by the post-death bacterial contamination, which meant up to 90 percent of what was recovered was not from the mammoth at all. A new study shows that retrieving DNA from an oft-overlooked source, hair shafts (previously thought to have almost no readable DNA), yields 90 percent mammoth DNA. This breakthrough will make it much easier to understand what ancient mammals - including ancient humans - were like through DNA analysis. It may also move us a step closer to the once-crazy idea of cloning mammoths or other creatures so they can walk the Earth again. One scientist on the project said of such cloning: "It's just a matter of time and money now."

A new Dawn for Space Probes

Boldly going where no machine has gone before, NASA's Dawn probe lifted off from KSC on an eight-year mission to study two unexplored celestial objects: the asteroid Vesta in 2011 and the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015. Principal Investigator Christopher Russell of UCLA said, "Dawn will travel back in time by probing deep into the asteroid belt. This is a moment the space science community has been waiting for since interplanetary spaceflight became possible."

Astronauts: The Next Generation

From Press release: "Space Adventures, Ltd., the world's leading space experiences company, announced today that famed game developer Richard Garriott, son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, has begun preparations for a "commercially active" mission to the International Space Station (ISS)."
COMMENT: OK, it has a whiff of a stunt about it. But it's still cool to have the first child of an astronaut make a space voyage. One more little step in the opening up of space.

Satellites and Cryptozoology

Benjamin Radford has an interesting suggestion for cryptozoologists: that the image-scanning software being used to search the ever-increasing supply of high-resolution commercial satellite imagery for pilot Steve Fossett be used to comb lakes and forests for signs of "cryptids." While a sasquatch might not show up, a family group might, and a large animal on or near the surface of a lake should eventually get captured in a lucky shot.
COMMENT: I must voice one quibble here. Benjamin is a well-informed and scientific writer who's skeptical on cryptozoology and many other topics, but that's no excuse for setting up a subject for ridicule by referring to a "12-foot Bigfoot," when no serious cryptozoologist thinks we have small King Kongs roaming the Northwest.

Turmoil for the Mars Science Laboratory

The most complex spacecraft ever developed for a trip to Mars has been "descoped" because of cost overruns. The $1.7-billions Mars Science Laboratory has lost its Descent Imager and had other experiments "defunded," meaning that no more money will be forthcoming and the development team will have to make do with the budget it has. Planetary scientists are naturally furious, but NASA Headquarters has made it clear there's no money to cover a $75M overrun. The probe is scheduled to be launched in 2009.

New Species from Vietnam

Since the early 1990s, a flood of discoveries has poured out of Vietnam, often from remote regions bypassed by the decades of warfare in that region. The latest round is not as spectacular as the finding of the 100-kg Vu Quang ox, but it reminds us of the bioversity yet to be cataloged. The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) has announced 11 new species of plants and animals including a reptile dubbed the white-lipped keelback snake, two butterflies, and five orchids. All came from Thua Thien Hue province in central Vietnam.

Upcoming Space Show appearance

I and Erika Lishock, my co-author on The First Space Race, will be on the radio/internet program The Space Show on Wednesday October 3 (the night before the Sputnik 50th anniversary). The show is from 7-8:30 PM Pacific time. It's live on AM 11550 in Seattle and is available on the Web live at www.thespaceshow.com.
Thanks as always to Dr. David Livingston for having us on the program.

Obituary: Alex, the talking parrot

Alex, an exceptional African gray parrot, has died in his cage at Brandeis University at the age of 31.
Alex was the subject of a decades-long experiment to see if a parrot could go beyond mimicking words and apply them to objects and events the way humans do. The answer was a limited, but still impressive, "yes." Alex learned over 100 words and could use them in simple sentences and even conversations, such as asking for the red box out of a collection of differently-colored shapes. He could count up to six and apparently understood the concept of zero. "He was so extraordinary in breaking the perceptions of birds as not being intelligent," said his lifelong trainer and lab partner, Irene Pepperberg, who compared his intellect to a five-year-old child's.

Thanks to Kris Winkler for pointing me to this story.

Velociraptor - feathers and all

It appears the stars of Jurassic Park should have been decked out in feathers.
Alan Turner, of the American Museum of Natural History led a new study of a velociraptor forelimb found in 1998 which discovered quill knobs - which anchor feathers on modern birds - on the fossilized bone. “Finding quill knobs on velociraptor, though, means that it definitely had feathers." Turner said. "This is something we’d long suspected but no one had been able to prove.” The link above includes a really cool - and scary - illustration.

The "hobbit" as separate species

Well, it's time for Round 457 in the debate over whether the remains of a 90-cm primate called Flores man, Homo floresiensis, or "hobbit" represent a few microcephalic humans or a new species. This one sounds pretty convincing. (Granted, I've always been in the separate-species camp, so perhaps I'm too easily impressed, but some experts are saying the same thing). A team led by Matthew W. Tocheri of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History has concluded the wrist bones of the Flores specimens are very similar to those of apes like the chimpanzee and early human relations like the autralopithecines, not like those of modern humans. Not all dissenters have been convinced by this study: some, most notably Robert D. Martin of the Field Museum, insist the cranial capacity of the most complete Flores specimen, LB1, indicates insufficient brain power for any sort of "normal" (non-pathological) examples of a human species.

When is an animal "discovered"?

One of my fascinations is with cryptozoology. When researchers pursue "cryptids," as the uncaught or unclassified are called, an interesting question arises: when you declare victory? When is an animal "discovered?"
I had an interesting exchange on this with anthroplogist/cryptozoologist Dale Drinnon, who thinks me something of an idealist about the way science works. Admitting that that is true, here are my thoughts.

It's easy to say that a certain cryptid has been discovered - to our satisfaction - and thus is no longer a cryptid. But saying it has no impact on science or conservation, and thus does not accomplish anything concrete.
While some zoological scientists may be too restrictive in what they accept, there is at least a standard for formal discovery and acceptance - a holotype available for physical examination and a paper published in a refereed journal. Granted, the zillions of tropical insects, etc. don't all get papers on them specifically, but the significantly-sized animals usually put on crytpid lists would all rate publications. And the insects and spiders and so forth at least turn up on the databases kept by the IUCN, the USFWS, etc., providing "evidence of acceptance."
Photographs or seafloor trackways have on occasion gained some acceptance as type specimens, but not in any of the controversial cases cryptozoologists spend most of their efforts on.
Without that standard, anyone can declare, say, the yeti discovered to their satisfaction, based on reports and sometimes hard evidence that, for whatever reason, is difficult to access. The trouble is that everyone's opinion is essentially equal, and there's no meaningful impact on science, conservation, etc. made by declaring a species discovered. (There would be if, say, George Schaller said it, but cases where a widely recognized authority endorses a cryptid as discovered (not just deserving of investigation, ut discovered) are rare indeed.)
Even having a scientific credential does not mean one's opinion has any measurable impact - Jeff Meldrum's endorsement of sasquatch, for example, has not led to funding for sasquatch investigation and conservation, has not gotten the animal in textbooks, etc.
My own inclination is to declare an animal "discovered" only when the two-pronged standard of an available holotype (at least in the form of a DNA sample) and peer-reviewed publication is met. Those standards are not magically correct, and may overlook some valid species, but they are the closest thing there is to a formal standard accepted worldwide.
And that, of course, is just one person's opinion.

NASA opening astronaut applications

NASA has opened up its application system to select the next class of astronauts. The basic requirements? A bachelor's degree in math, engineering, or science and three years' experience. In practice, this is the most competitive job hunt on Earth and those selected will have much more extensive resumes. The chosen class will have to have patience, too: they likely will not get to fly any Shuttle missions and will be doing nonflight duties until well into the Orion CEV program.

Look, up in the sky! A new bat!

A large, very distinctive new species of bat has been described from the Philippine island of Mindoro. Flying foxes are the world's largest bats, with wingspans on some types in the range of 180 cm. The new bat has orange fur and three white stripes on its face. An American-Filipino scientific expedition caught the type specimen after hearing of its from island residents. As zoologist Jake Esselstyn put it, "A local resident of [the town of] Sablayan first described the flying fox in great detail to us, but we were unconvinced until the species showed up in our nets." Now it's in the Journal of Mammology as well.

The Shuttle heads for launch

Although it's not certain just when. NASA's decision to replace leaking seals on the shuttle Discovery's starboard main landing gear will take time and may imperil the launch date of October 23. It might slip considerably further. The shuttle is slated for a 13-day mission, with the main goal being to deliver and attach a new Italian-built node to the ISS.

Happy 150th birthday, Tsiolkovsky!

OK, I'm a day late - the Russian space theorist Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky was born on September 17, 150 years ago. It merits repeating that the founder of modern space-travel theory was a poor, almost totally deaf rural mathematics teacher who was fired by an imagination that kept him awake nights working out equations and concepts ranging from large hydrogen/oxygen-powered rockets to staging, space stations, and space suits. The world will owe him a debt for all time.

"Earth is the cradle of mankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever." - Tsiolkovsky

Item I add just to show that I know it: English-speaking readers may look at his surname and assume the "T" is silent, but it's not. The Cyrillic character beginning his name is pronounced "ts."

Google Launches a New Moon Race

The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. have announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon with up to $30M in prize money at stake. The winner must land a privately funded robotic rover on the Moon and meet several requirements including sending video, images and data back to the Earth while traveling at least 500 meters on the lunar surface.The $30M is broken up into a $20 million Grand Prize, a $5 million Second Prize, and $5 million in bonus prizes for additional mission objectives.
COMMENT: This is wonderful stuff. I don't know if you can do this mission for $20M, but there are companies in the small "Newspace" field that will certainly try, just as the did for the original Ansari X Prize. My early favorite, if they choose to compete, would be a team of SpaceX Technologies (launcher) and a small-vehicle specialist like SpaceDev.

Japanese probe off to Moon

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), supported by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., has launched the nation's heaviest, most ambitious lunar probe. The Lunar Orbit Explorer "KAGUYA" (SELENE) went up from the Tanegashima Space Center on an H-IIA Launch Vehicle No. 13 at 10:31:01 a.m. on September 14, 2007 (Japan Standard Time).

Bad news for the Florida panther

Florida wildlife officials confirmed that the 15th Florida panther this year was killed on by a vehicle, eclipsing last year’s record of 11 panthers killed by vehicles. The panther was a two-year-old male discovered on I-75 just west of SR-29. After hitting a bottleneck of 20-30 surviving animals, the Florida panther has climbed precariously back to 90-100 cats in total. However, no species can handle having 10-15% of its population killed every year. The panther's case is a reminder that even an intense, well-funded conservation program may not succeed unless accompanied by the provision of adequate habitat with minimal road hazards.

A kilogram isn't what it used to be

The agreed-on international physical standard for the kilogram, a cylinder kept in airtight conditions in a locked vault in France, has lost weight. Losing 50 micrograms isn't much - about the weight of a fingerprint, as one writer put it - but it's baffling. As physicist Richard Davis of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures put it, the master kilogram and its many copies used around the world "were all made of the same material, and many were made at the same time and kept under the same conditions, and yet the masses among them are slowly drifting apart. We don't really have a good hypothesis for it."

Species on the Edge

The IUCN has released its annual Red List of threatened species worldwide. It's not fun reading. The number of animals and plants threatened with extinction is 16,306, up 200 from last year. The number of documented recent extinctions of species is now 785 this year. Another 65 species are hanging on only in captivity or in cultivation. The Yangtze River dolphin, which was declared extinct only to have one sighting report come in afterwards, is "Critically Endangered and Possibly Extinct."

Disturbing news for the gray whale

This is not a good time to be a gray whale, individually or as a species. As if the recent news that some idiots killed one off the Northwest coast of the U.S. with a machine gun wasn't depressing enough, there's no reason to worry about them all.
In 1994, the gray whales of the eastern north Pacific were removed from the U.S. Endangered Species List in a step considered a major success for conservation. The population was up to 20,000 individuals, considered equal to its historic (pre-modern whaling) level. But a new analysis of the whale's DNA indicates the original population was much larger, perhaps five or even six times as large. That it's apparently leveled off at around 22,000, combined with the small but increasing numbers of underfed animals observed, indicates things aren't as healthy and stable as we'd hoped. Some researchers suspect that warming has damaged the Arctic ecosystem and cut the crustacean population the grays depend on. It's too early to be sure, but there's definitely reason for concern.

The Viking Past

Archaeologists are opening a Viking burial mound in Norway to analyze the bodies of two women placed there over 1,100 years ago. The bodies were found in 1904 along with a longship, now in a museum, that told us much about the Vikings. The longship was apparently the grave for a queen, buried with another woman who might have been her daughter or a servant. The bodies were re-interred in 1948.
COMMENT: This kind of story, and others like the current display of an Incan princess, always bring up the question of how ancient human remains ought to be treated, and whether there's a chronological dividing line between burials that are and are not OK to disturb. It's a given that there is much cultural, medical, and scientific information to be gained by studying human remains, but there are ethical gray areas.
My view is somewhat stricter than that of most archaeologists (and, granted, I'm not an archaeologist at all). For what it's worth, though, I believe graves belonging to cultures still extant should be opened only in cooperation with representatives of those cultures. Graves of cultures unknown or no longer extant could be opened if there's reasonable expectation of important knowledge, but bodies should not be kept forever on display. After a period of study, they should be re-interred in or near the original site, or at least in a museum or other facility near the original site. This view is unrelated to any views about spirituality or an afterlife. It's just my thought about how to treat all cultures and all humans with a universal level of respect while still preserving the interests of science.

Trouble for a private space venture

It might be said that most private space ventures have trouble - hurdles from legalities to finances have laid low many a sincere effort to build new launch vehicles or innovative payloads. It's especially sad, though, to read that NASA declared Rocketplane Kistler in default for lack of progress and private financing for its effort to develop an alternative cargo services to the International Space Station. Bankruptcy appears quite possible. People at the two companies that eventually merged to form Rocketplane Kistler included well-known and respected names in the space engineering community. It now appears they couldn't quite get it done. If RpK does fail, it nevertheless deserves a salute as a valiant try, and its alumni will no doubt go on to contribute elsewhere. This leaves SpaceX as the only contractor under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.

Seeing Sputnik

A thread on sci.space.policy brought to mind the question of what people were actually looking at when they "saw Sputnik."
In developing our book The First Space Race: Launching the World's
First Satellites, (Texas A&M, 2004) I and/or co-author Erika Lishock discussed this with a lot of people, including James Van Allen. The consensus was that Sputnik 1 itself
was never observed with the naked eye, except possibly for brief
flashes near dawn and dusk. (Jim Oberg has an authoritative article on this in the new issue of Astronomy magazine.) What the newspapers and everyone else
announced about where to look for Sputnik related to the core stage of
the R-7. Even this usually appeared as a small, although sometimes
very bright, point of reflected light.
This in no way diminishes the importance or impact of the experience
people all over the world had in watching a Soviet satellite (whatever
piece of hardware it was) track across the night sky. Among other
things, it was the experience of watching with the naked eye that
inspired the physicists and engineers at China Lake to start one of
my all-time favorite programs, the audacious shoestring satellite
effort called Project Pilot or NOTSNIK.
Alas, work schedules will force us to miss the big commemorations.
I'll make it to the AAS National Conference in November, which might
be called one of the "close out" American commemorative meetings, to be
on panel about what NASA's first 50 years offers in the way of
projections about the next 50.

An Ocean in Space

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected enough water vapor to fill the oceans on Earth five times inside the collapsing nest of a forming star system. Astronomers say the water vapor is pouring down from the system's natal cloud and smacking into a dusty disk where planets are thought to form. The observations provide the first direct look at how water, an essential ingredient for life as we know it, begins to make its way into planets, possibly even rocky ones like our own. Dan Watson of the University of Rochester said, “For the first time, we are seeing water being delivered to the region where planets will most likely form.” The star system, called NGC 1333-IRAS 4B, is still growing inside a cool cocoon of gas and dust. Ice from the stellar embryo's outer cocoon is falling toward the forming star and vaporizing as it hits the disk.

Thanks to Kris Winkler for pointing me to this item

An Impressive Ape

A team from the departments of Anthropology at two Turkish universities has recovered a new species of Ouranopithecus, a fossil ape from the late Miocene period. This might be the second-largest prehistoric ape (after the famous Gigantopithecus) known to science.
"A new great ape from the late Miocene of Turkey:" by Erksin Savas Gulec, Ayla Sevim, Cesur Pehlevan, and Ferhat Kaya: Anthropological Science 115: 153-158, 2007.
Abstract: An adult maxilla and partial mandibles of a hominoid primate recovered from the late Miocene locality of Çorakyerler (central Anatolia) are recognized as a new species of Ouranopithecus, one of the rare western Eurasian hominoids to have survived well into the late Miocene."
Thanks to Loren Coleman for putting this on the Cryptomundo page.

Yeti photos auctioned off

The most famous item of evidence in the controversial case of the yeti can be yours. The original prints of four footprint photographs taken in a high snowfield over 50 years ago by Eric Shipton will be sold by Christie's later this month.

COMMENT: While the evidence for the yeti is unsatisfying at best, no one has ever explained these footprints. Options:
1. An unknown animal.
2. Prints of known animals (or humans) expanded by melting and refreezing. This is easy enough to disprove experimentally. Tracks melt into a blob - they don't expand in a way that gives you clear edges and well-defined toes.
3. A hoax. No evidence Shipton and his companion Ward hoaxed the prints has ever been offered.
4. Simply, a mystery.

Ares 1 - How Boeing won

Boeing won NASA's ~$1B competition to build the Ares I upper stage, which will boost the Orion capsule into orbit, based on price. The ATK/LockMart bid scored higher in both the technical and managerial categories.
COMMENT: "Technically acceptable, lowest cost" - it's hard to picture this being a good idea for something this complex and this critical. I'm trying in vain to think of a case in history where a complex system contractor chosen on this basis turned out to be the right choice in the long run. Either the price will go up and negate the savings (remember the Advanced EHF National Team approach? The Space Shuttle?) and/or the contractor will be temped to cut corners and say "that's good enough." I'm not impugning anyone at Boeing, but the record on selecting a contractor based on price over one with superior technical and managerial scores is not reassuring. NASA may well have made the wrong call. Sure, they are in a tight budget situation, but for lofting a manned spacecraft, you either buy the solution you think is technically best and push Congress for enough money or you find you can't afford that solution and you give it up.

Steve Fosset is missing

Aviation daredevil Steve Fossett, the first man to make a solo, non-stop, unrefueled aircraft trip around the world, is missing. A massive aerial search is concentrated in western Nevada. Fossett had taken off Monday from a private airstrip near Yerington, NV and has not been seen since. Fossett holds over a hundred world records or world firsts, including his solo circumnavigation of the Earth by balloon.

The Croc Hunter: a sad anniversary

On September 4, 2006, conservationist Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray while diving off Australia.

The link above connects to a CNN site where people all over the world can express their comments.

My thoughts: Irwin was, as his critics said, a showman, but science and conservation need showmen. While Irwin’s enthusiasm perhaps clouded his judgment at times, there is no denying his impact for good. He took a global audience through countless lessons about wildlife and the environment, and he made it all fun. He demonstrated a love for creatures from snakes to spiders to (of course) crocodiles that helped him get across to everyone how important these “vermin” or “killers” are in their ecosystems.

Of special note to cryptozoological researchers is that Irwin also made a brief search for the presumed-extinct Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine: he found no evidence, but didn’t dismiss the possibility the world’s largest known marsupial carnivore was still out there somewhere.

We miss you, Steve.

Dr. McCoy, you dropped your gadget

One of the staple items on Star Trek was the array of devices Dr. McCoy had to repair internal injuries without the need to open up the patient. (In the original series, some of those devices were (this is true) fancy salt shakers.)
It can take a while for science to catch up to science fiction, but University of Washington engineers and doctors from Harborview Medical Center are trying to perfect a small device which could seal punctured lungs using high-intensity ultrasound. The first successful proof-of-concept experiment has already been done. Human trials have not begun, but the device offers promise for a host of uses if the technique of focusing ultrasonic beams to create a "hot spot" and cauterize leaks is proven to work on lung injuries.

The Ultimate Question

Here's a great article and discussion on the ultimate question facing science (and religion, and philosophy): Why is there something rather than nothing? Doesn't the principle of entropy make nothing (or at least a dead, inactive universe) more "natural" and likely than this complex cosmos we live in?
One response to "Why?" is "Why not?" Another is that we have only one universe to examine, and that doesn't tell us anything about the possible alternatives. It's an endlessly fascinating (sometimes maddening) question.

Lucy - a Controversial Tour

Leading paleontologist Richard Leakey's voice is one of many raised against the decision to send "Lucy" - the 3.2 million-year-old partial skeleton considered the keystone of the current theory of human evolution - on an international tour. The fossil was flown out of Ethiopia in secret and is now in the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Ethiopian officials say the tour will bring an important financial boost to the museums of the impoverished nation, but Leakey and others fear the fragile remains will inevitably be damaged, no matter how carefully they are handled.

COMMENT: I agree with Leakey that this was a bad idea. Yet, hypocritical though it may be, I'll try my best to get to Denver when the tour reaches my home state. The opportunity to see Lucy in person is one I can't pass up.

Russia Thinks Big in Space

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti has reported on the nation's new blueprint for space exploration - and it's an ambitious one. The plan envisions a cosmonaut on the moon by 2025, a lunar base seven years later, and a human expedition to Mars sometime after 2035.

COMMENT: The ghost of Sergey Korolev must be smiling. It's an audacious plan, every bit as ambitious as the U.S. Vision for Space Exploration. Whether Russia can pull it off, given the nation's economic and political challenges as well as the technical advancements required, remains to be seen, but nothing happens without a goal. It makes sense that something ambitious will eventually pull all the world's space powers into a joint program, but that, too, faces a lot of difficulties. The only thing we know for sure is that the next couple of decades should be very interesting.