Scientists

Just downstream from an industrial recycling operation and a stone's throw from a sewage treatment plant, a fisherman casts his line toward the passing barge traffic and watches it drop into the Delaware River. A couple eating lunch watch curiously. "No way would I ever eat anything from there," the woman says. The fishers who frequent the pier in Camden's Waterfront South neighborhood have heard it all before. That they're crazy, that they're going to grow an extra head or get sick from eating what they catch.

A man in a baseball cap parked a big telescope in an unlikely location recently: the sidewalk at Second and Chestnut Streets. He offered the nighttime crowd in Old City a chance to look at the heavens, but he was also on a scouting mission of sorts. Derrick Pitts was testing the city's appetite for a serious avalanche of science. It was just the merest taste of what is coming here next spring. On Monday, the Franklin Institute and two dozen partners plan to announce the first Philadelphia Science Festival, a two-week celebration of science starting April 15. The festivities include an outdoor science carnival on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a science night with the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park, movies, lectures, hands-on experiments, demonstrations, and quiz shows.

In the latest urgent call for improvements in primary and secondary schools a panel of experts and politicians has recommended national curriculum standards and tests. The message of the National Council on Education Standards and Testing, like that of an Education Department report in September, is that inadequate education, particularly in mathematics and science, threatens our economic well-being, national identity and democratic institutions. Conspicuously absent from the debate has been any mention of a political issue integral to the problem: Students' poor performance mirrors their parents' alienation from those who decide about the risks and benefits of science and technology.

In a research program getting under way this summer, shipboard scientists will punch thousands of holes in the ocean bottom and take samples from greater depths than ever before. They will be investigating the biology, chemistry and physics of "inner space," the vast world hidden beneath the seas. The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, led by American and Japanese scientists, begins in June with a 10-month expedition to plumb the crust beneath the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The layers of rock below the seafloor are an archive of global change, tens of millions of years old, that scientists say can help them understand what's happening to our world today.

Standing before a group of professional scientists, most of whom had their chins in their hands and were murmuring the obligatory "umm . . . interesting," Michael LaLena worked his way through a computer program that creates mazes and their solutions. He must have explained it pretty well, because within the hour the senior at La Salle College High School was given first prize at the Naval Air Development Center's first science fair. The fair was part of an open house Saturday at the facility in Warminster.

There she stood, this would-be open-heart surgeon, untangling cat intestines as she spoke of how she once had wanted to be a hairdresser. Chanel Reed, 14, had wanted to be a hair stylist because she liked being creative with her hands. But since she became part of Camden's pipeline to the sciences last year, her hands aim for higher pursuits. Now, she said, "I want to explore the body, explore what it can do, what goes on inside yourself, makes you tick. " Reed, who is entering her sophomore year at Camden High School, has participated for the last two summers in the Camden Science Pipeline, a three- year program designed to stir enthusiasm for math and science, to increase the students' chances at succeeding in those subjects in high school and college, and to help them make science a career.

An international team of scientists, alarmed by the threat to the Earth's ozone layer, is gathering in California today to prepare for the largest study ever done of the Arctic atmosphere. During the next two weeks, they will fine-tune scientific instruments in preparation for a $30 million expedition involving 200 scientists from seven nations that will be centered in Stavanger, Norway, from late December through mid-February. The scientific team - which includes William Brune of the Pennsylvania State University - will use high-altitude aircraft, balloons, satellites and sophisticated computers to seek to understand how the ozone layer is being eroded by manmade chemical pollutants in the Northern Hemisphere.

While scientists have known for some time how the AIDS virus destroys the immune system, they have not understood how it enters the brain and central nervous system. Today, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania report the discovery of a possible way that the AIDS virus infects nerve cells - through a certain "docking point" on a cell. "Until now this has been a big puzzle," said Francisco Gonzalez-Scarano, associate professor of neurology and microbiology at Penn. "We now believe we have discovered the mechanism by which this infection occurs.

Hilary Koprowski, an internationally known scientist who helped develop vaccines against rabies and polio, was awarded the prestigious Philadelphia Award last night. The $25,000 award, which is given annually to a Philadelphian who has set an example by serving the "best and largest interests of the community," was presented to Koprowski during ceremonies at the College of Physicians at 19 S. 22d St. Koprowski, 73, is giving the award to the Wistar Institute, which he has directed since 1957.

For the initiated, the license plate says it all. GENOME is the moniker on Beatrice Mintz's light-blue Chevrolet in the staff parking lot at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. Lay folk who can't rattle off a definition of that word might prefer others to describe Mintz - words such as biologist, researcher, pioneer, member of the National Academy of Sciences and, as of last month, member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. But her vanity plate expresses in only six PennDOT-approved letters the subject of the life's work that has brought the Fox Chase scientist so many honors.

On a summer's day in 1943, a young scientist at Rutgers discovered an antibiotic that would change millions of lives. But Albert Schatz, who died in West Mount Airy in 2005, was denied credit. His name never appeared on the Nobel Prize given for that work.   That's the little-known story told in Peter Pringle's new book, Experiment Eleven: Dark Secrets Behind the Discovery of a Wonder Drug (Walker & Company, 269 pp., $26). And there's a widow who remembers, and a grandson conquering cerebral palsy to create a documentary film honoring his wronged grandfather's work.

The scientists were a little tired and burned out. For two weeks, they had been aboard a research ship in the Gulf of Mexico, trying to find and analyze deep-sea communities of coral on the dark bottom, nearly a mile below. A robot submersible was down there now. Charles Fisher, a Penn State biologist who specializes in corals, was doing other work as he kept an eye on the video feed. Suddenly, he stopped. They had found the reef they were searching for. And it didn't look good.

Quick: Name a raw material vital to national security and the American consumer lifestyle, prone to rising prices, and largely controlled by foreign interests thousands of miles away. Oil? Sure, but in a physics lab at the University of Delaware, another answer is the class of materials known as rare earths. Prized for their magnetic properties, rare earths are used to make almost any high-tech product you can name - computer screens, hard drives, cameras, smartphones, lasers.

Words matter. Take red tide, the popular term for blooms of harmful marine algae. It's a misnomer because the blooms are not always red, and their movement is largely unrelated to tides. Also, many species of algae that cause red discoloration are not harmful. I worry that we are using inaccurate terminology to describe serious environmental issues throughout the sciences. Though catchy names do grab public attention, they are likely to feed troublesome misconceptions among those unfamiliar with the complexity of the issues.

Sir Paul Callaghan, 64, a top New Zealand scientist who gained international recognition for his work in molecular physics, died Saturday after a long battle with cancer. "New Zealand has suffered a tremendous loss," Sir Peter Gluckman, Prime Minister John Key's chief science adviser, said in a statement. "Paul has been our most distinguished public scientist and in the world of molecular physics has been a giant. " Dr. Callaghan, who was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2008, was best known for his work with magnetic resonance, a field that has practical applications in everything from health care to industrial production.

Sometimes evolution gives and sometimes it takes away. Cats have lost their ability to taste sweets, and dolphins lost the sensors needed to pick up bitter or sweet flavors. From studying their DNA, scientists conclude that the common ancestor we share with these fellow mammals could taste all five of the major flavor types - sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and the more recently discovered savory flavor known as umami. But after we diverged, many lost some of their tasting ability.

WASHINGTON - Earth's magnetic field is about to be shaken like a snow globe by the largest solar storm in five years. After hurtling through space for a day and a half, a massive cloud of charged particles is due to arrive early Thursday and could disrupt utility grids, airline flights, satellite networks, and GPS services, especially in northern areas. But the same blast could also paint colorful auroras farther from the poles than normal. Scientists say the storm, which started with a massive solar flare earlier in the week, is growing as it races outward from the sun, expanding like a giant soap bubble.

Wind-turbine manufacturer Gamesa, a Spanish company with U.S. headquarters in Langhorne, is working with the Department of Energy to transform wind-power technology, making it cheaper and more reliable. Gamesa has sent a turbine to the department's National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado, where scientists will load it with sensors to verify how much power is produced at certain wind speeds and otherwise check the accuracy of computer models used to design the equipment. With all the instrumentation, one might compare the turbine to a heart patient, except "this is more like an athlete," said Jeroen van Dam, senior engineer at the lab. By better understanding how the turbine works, engineers can design closer to the limits, he said.

WASHINGTON - They came from Mars, not in peace, but in pieces. Scientists have confirmed that 15 pounds of rock collected recently in Morocco fell to Earth from Mars during a meteorite shower in July. It was only the fifth time that scientists chemically confirmed Martian meteorites that people had witnessed falling. The fireball was spotted in the sky six months ago, but the rocks were not discovered on the ground in North Africa until the end of December. The find is an important opportunity for scientists trying to learn about Mars' potential for life.

TEHRAN, Iran - It seemed a clockwork killing: Motorcycle riders flashed by and attached a magnetic bomb onto a car carrying a nuclear scientist working at Iran's main uranium-enrichment facility. By the time the blast tore apart the silver Peugeot, the bike was blocks away, weaving through Tehran traffic after what Iran calls the latest strike in an escalating covert war. The attack - which instantly killed the scientist and fatally wounded his driver Wednesday - was at least the fourth targeted hit against a member of Iran's nuclear brain trust in two years.