Intel ISEF 2010

Intel ISEF 2010

Dissecting the sound of weapon fire may give soldiers an edge.

WASHINGTON — Here at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, there’s a lot of map talk. People are proudly showing off maps of land rights, maps of cloud formation, even maps of how teenagers form herds in malls. But to me, one of the most compelling maps traced the steps of a single man, a drug addict, as he traveled through Baltimore. The man carried a GPS unit, given to him by clinicians who were treating him at a methadone clinic. The unit, about the size of a thick domino, tracked his motion every time he moved 25 meters, or every 25 minutes if he was still....

Over the past four years, a mysterious white-nose fungus has struck hibernating North American bats. Populations in affected caves and mines can experience death rates of more than 80 percent over a winter. In desperation, an informal interagency task force of scientists from state and federal agencies has just launched an experimental program to fight the plague. Their weapon: a drug ordinarily used to treat athlete’s foot.

The American Chemical Society held a news briefing March 21 to feature a new energy-saving technology. It’s an ostensibly “smart” coating for roofing materials that knows when to reflect heat, like in summer time, and when to instead let the sun’s rays help heat a structure.

Blog: Over the past century, whale hunting released 128,000 Hummers’ worth of carbon into the atmosphere (p. 8)

Talk leaves journalists flossing for details on oral health.