Interesting Articles: June and July 2007

Media
* Pulling Back the Curtain (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). A lively, entertaining story about why radio sounds so polished and how much editing radio interviews undergo. (Listen to it; don't read the transcript!) I always knew at some level how interviews were edited but hearing it explicitly made it much more concrete. I'm generally not bothered by these practices, but I do find the different standards for print and for radio disconcerting. For instance, I appreciate the appearance of ellipses in quotes. Yet radio isn't required to disclose where cuts are made. Another segment, Just Email Me, on the same program discussed why many prominent figures are only doing written interviews. By making a record, it gives the sources a recourse if they feel like they've been misquoted. It's a good follow-up to the first story. It's not surprising On The Media received many letters from listeners about these stories.
* Worst...P.R....Ever (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). I'm only linking to this piece, an interview with the man who wrote a major book on public relations, because a minute from the end he clearly distinguishes advertising and public relations. Previously these two concepts were nearly interchangeable in my mind.

Food
* Food That Travels Well (New York Times). A column that argues, with evidence, that buying food locally to save oil/gas by reducing transportation miles often doesn't make sense. Sometimes it's more energy efficient to import rather than grow locally.

Biology, Psychology, and Neurology
* Broadband Vision (Science News). I was taught in high school biological and college psychology of perception that the inverted structure of the eye (with the rods and cones hidden behind other cells) was a fluke of evolution and that we are lucky some light gets through those other cells. I was taught wrong. It turns out the eye has cells that act like optical fibers, routing light past the frontal cells to the sensing ones. It's a much better structure than scientists previously imagined. The abstract of the source article, Müller cells are living optical fibers in the vertebrate retina (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), is freely available online.
* Face Talk: Babies see their way to language insights (Science News). Babies can distinguish which language someone is speaking by watching the speaker. No sound is necessary. It's too bad we lose this visual perceptual ability as we age. The abstract of the source article, Visual language discrimination in infancy (Science), summarizes the study well and is freely available online.
* Visualizing Cancer: Images of tumors can detect gene expression (Science News). I always like it when scientists discover how to use old data in novel ways. In this case, the data is the result of a CT scan. The abstract of the source article, Decoding global gene expression programs in cancer by non-invasive imaging (Nature Biotechnology), is freely available online.
* Named medical trials garner extra attention (Science News). If, as the research claim, they correctly factored in the quality and funding of the medical trials, that means many studies aren't getting the attention they deserve. An excerpt from the source article, Acronym-named randomized trials in medicine—the ART in medicine study (New England Journal of Medicine), is available online. With a little searching, one can find a copy of the whole article.

Engineering
* Spinning into Control: High-tech reincarnations of an ancient way of storing energy (Science News). Who need fuel cells? Use a flywheel! This alternative needs more attention from the media. You need to e-mail me if you want a copy of the article.
* Carbon Sequestration & Producing Hydrogen (Science Friday). The latter two segments of the program are amazing. The first of this pair describes a new device that'll extract carbon from the atmosphere in an energy efficient manner. Technology for this is much further along than I'd previously thought. Likewise, the second of the pair describes another technological advance: a chemical catalyst that converts water to hydrogen, thus allowing hydrogen fuel cell cars to run without the need for hydrogen filling stations. While it's not a panacea, it's good that there are vaguely plausible ideas like this floating around.
* Tapping out a TAI-CHI tune (Science News). I've seen demonstrations of a system in which a camera is pointed at a surface and that surface can then be used a input device as such a keyboard. This device, however, is new. Rather than using a camera, it uses audio triangulation. The abstract of the talk, Tangible acoustic interfaces for computer-human interaction (Euroscience Open Forum), is available online. The project has a web site.
* Are Computer Keyboards Dishwasher Safe? (NPR's Morning Edition). Wash your keyboard!