Scientists

If all goes as planned, sometime this morning a spacecraft will blast off from its launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and ride a fiery plume of contrails upward through the pre-dawn darkness to begin a two-week journey to the International Space Station and back. But the flight won't be just another NASA resupply mission. Instead, the Falcon 9 rocket and its unmanned Dragon cargo capsule built by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - SpaceX for short - will be the first commercially owned and operated vehicle ever to rendezvous with the station's orbiting astronauts.

No one likes to get stuck with a needle. But it's the only way doctors can get blood to test for diabetes, anemia and numerous other health problems. Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing say there is a much less invasive and painless means of detecting illnesses in patients — spit. Like blood, spit contains proteins, hormones, enzymes and DNA that can be used to test for and combat disease. It is easy and inexpensive to collect and analyze, making it ideal for research.

No one likes to get stuck with a needle. But it's the only way doctors can get blood to test for diabetes, anemia and numerous other health problems. Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing say there is a much less invasive and painless means of detecting illnesses in patients — spit. Like blood, spit contains proteins, hormones, enzymes and DNA that can be used to test for and combat disease. It is easy and inexpensive to collect and analyze, making it ideal for research.

Record-high water temperatures and a March sewage leak are contributing to a large algae bloom in the Baltimore harbor, bringing what is known as a "mahogany tide" of reddish-brown algae to the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River. The bloom is somewhat earlier and more severe than usual, scientists say, despite the fact that a developing drought has limited runoff pollution from feeding algae growth. Water testing conducted by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources shows skyrocketing levels of chlorophyll, the molecule plants use to turn sunlight into energy, and plummeting levels of oxygen in waters near Brooklyn and Cherry Hill.

For Charles A. "Karl" Hibbitts and 11 other scientists who hope to fly into space with their experiments someday, the path out of the Earth's atmosphere starts in Philadelphia. Hibbitts, a research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab near Laurel, and his fellow space cadets spent two days last week at a private space training center near Philly getting a taste of the rigors and risks of a quick shot, 350,000 feet up to the edge of space and back. One passed out briefly in a hypobaric chamber that simulated aircraft depressurization at 18,000 feet.

A monthly chance to learn from scientists who study the heavens at the Space Telescope Science Institute takes place tomorrow. The institute, on the campus of Johns Hopkins University at 3700 San Martin Drive, is hosting its regular lecture event at 8 p.m. Scientist Marcel Haas will give a lecture titled “ Growing Galaxies in Supercomputers .” If you can't make it, the Bloomberg telescope is also open to the public Friday evenings,...

No one at the Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth was quite sure what to expect this week when they sat down in a stuffy conference room to host the center's first-ever online kids' "Webinar," on the H1N1 flu pandemic, dubbed Swine Online '09. As it turned out, 55 youngsters logged on from around the country - one as young as 8. And by instant message and telephone, they lobbed 115 questions at two Hopkins epidemiologists....

WASHINGTON -- A Moscow center offering useful work for former Soviet weapons scientists to prevent them from selling their skills abroad is on the way to starting in June, a key State Department official said yesterday.The $75 million International Science and Technology Center will serve as a sort of "dating service," matching scientists' knowledge with peaceful government and private-sector research projects.A high priority, said Robert Gallucci, the State Department official in charge of the project, will be research into nuclear-plant safety and management of nuclear waste.

Scientists from the Smithsonian Institution and Maryland officials spent yesterday examining the carcass of a 10-ton humpback whale that washed ashore Thursday along Assateague Island National Seashore south of Ocean City.Strandings of large whales occur every year or two on beaches in Maryland and Virginia. The scientists were taking advantage of this week's find to examine an intact carcass and learn more about the species, said Jack Kumer, a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service at Assateague.

Baltimore will become one of the brainiest places in America in February 1996, when the city will be the site of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.Up to 5,500 mathematicians, biologists, archaeologists and others will theorize, postulate and ponder at the Convention Center and downtown hotels during the 146-year-old association's annual convention, scheduled for Feb. 8-13 of that year."It's a very exciting opportunity because it brings some of the very best scientists in the United States to the city," said Dr. Rita R. Colwell, president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute and president-elect of the association, one of the world's largest scientific organizations.

In their quest to cure Baltimore's ailing harbor, advocates and authorities have tried one gadget after another: floating wetlands, a solar-powered aerator, even a trash wheel. Add now the "algal turf scrubber," a long wooden sluiceway through which harbor water is pumped over a bed of slimy green algae. The gutter, 350 feet long by a foot wide, uses native algae to strip nutrients, suspended sediment and carbon from water and inject oxygen into it before returning it to the harbor.

In their quest to cure Baltimore's ailing harbor, advocates and authorities have tried one gadget after another: floating wetlands, a solar-powered aerator, even a trash wheel. Add now the "algal turf scrubber," a long wooden sluiceway in which harbor water is pumped over a bed of slimy green algae. The ecological restoration firm Biohabitats and the Living Classrooms Foundation invited news media to see the contraption set up on a former chromium plant site in Fells Point. The gutter, 350 feet long by one foot wide, uses native algae to strip nutrients, suspended sediment and carbon from water and inject oxygen into it before returning it to the harbor.

Heavy spring rains, a hot summer and two major storms caused the Chesapeake Bay's overall health to worsen last year, scientists said Tuesday, though there apparently was a slight improvement in the Baltimore area's Patapsco and Back rivers, long considered among the bay's most degraded tributaries. The beleaguered bay saw its ecological grade slip from a C- in 2010 to D+ last year in an annual report card drawn up by the University of Maryland and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A monthly chance to learn from scientists who study the heavens at the Space Telescope Science Institute takes place tomorrow. The institute, on the campus of Johns Hopkins University at 3700 San Martin Drive, is hosting its regular lecture event at 8 p.m. Scientist Marcel Haas will give a lecture titled “ Growing Galaxies in Supercomputers .” If you can't make it, the Bloomberg telescope is also open to the public Friday evenings,...

Just as they do every April, the fruit orchards at Larriland Farm have donned their spring finery. The plum trees at the pick-your-own place in western Howard County sport brilliant white blossoms, while the peach trees are decked out in bright pink. Thing is, it's still March. Spring came early to Maryland, thanks to a run of unusually warm weather that awakened flowers, trees, birds and bees weeks ahead of schedule across much of the eastern United States. Larriland's fruit trees are flowering about a month earlier than usual, according to Lynn Moore, president of the family-run fruit and produce farm in Woodbine.

Winifred "Wink" Jonas remembered her initial encounter with the world's first computer. She had taken a mathematician job at Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1946 and was soon promoted to programmer for the ENIAC — Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. The astounding machine had taken eight months to assemble, weighed 30 tons and took up an entire room. "I have never been intimidated in my life by anything or anybody," Jonas said in her Southern drawl. "And I certainly wasn't intimidated by a computer, even though it filled a whole room.

So now it's confirmed that South Korean stem cell king Hwang Woo Suk had been lying all along - not just about the illicit manner in which the women's eggs used in his experiments were obtained, but about his major claim to have successfully created clonal human embryos in the first place. He lied to the news media, the public, his government and patients hoping for cures. I heard Mr. Hwang speak just over a year ago at a forum at the United Nations. He was lauded by the scientists present as the Galileo of stem cell research.

Washington. -- Why are so many scientists gloomy? Because they have finally realized that the go-go days of research finance are over and today's hard times are bound to persist and may get worse.For many who are already established in the scientific professions, the situation is difficult. For most beginners, it's disastrous as successive waves of newly graduated Ph. D.s compete for jobs in a shrinking, overpopulated market.Scientists are not alone in feeling the economic aftershocks of the end of the Cold War, corporate down-sizing, and the new era of governmental frugality.

Francis N. Craig, a retired Edgewood Arsenal scientist, died of respiratory failure Thursday at the Broadmead Retirement Community in Cockeysville. He was 100 and had previously lived in the Loreley section of Baltimore County near White Marsh. His daughter, Dorothy Parker Craig of Seattle, Wash., said that the centenarian enjoyed two martinis a night and smoked a pipe until last year, when his retirement community prohibited it. He also took daily walks and played bridge. He drove until he was 98. Born in Englewood, N.J., he was the son of a DuPont chemist and a kindergarten teacher.

The combined fury of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee may have drowned much of the region's stink bug population, but scientists are still hesitant to say that homeowners will see fewer of them when the weather warms. Scientists say something caused a substantial decline in the number of the bugs last fall before they hunkered down in the region's attics and closets. Perhaps it was due to natural predators or an unknown parasite. Just as likely, they say, it was the deluge that began just before Labor Day and lasted through September.