Scientists

Residents and city leaders who gathered Thursday night in the Northeast Baltimore neighborhood where a 51-year-old scientist was recently gunned down spoke passionately about taking the streets back from criminals intent on intimidation. Gathered in the Belair-Edison neighborhood to take a "solidarity walk" after the killing Monday night of Peter Marvit, they spoke of sticking together to confront crime throughout the city. "We know we cannot let the cowards win, not in this neighborhood, not in any neighborhood in this city," said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, telling the 100 or so residents in attendance that they "deserve to live in safe neighborhoods.

I still remember - although details are somewhat cloudy now, the gist of it is still clear as bell - the night when my teen and toddler brother and sisters, my father, some workers on the farm and I sat around a fire, on a somewhat cold night, in the middle of a jungle, and, with an occasional roar of a panther in the background, listened to a decrepit old radio. It was the late 60's in Western India, on my father's farm, and we were all very excited. We were trying very hard to listen, amid heavy static, to the live broadcast of a NASA capsule splash-landing in the ocean, after a journey around the moon.

The answer to why some obese people develop diabetes and other health problems may be found not in just a love for junk food, but in the bacteria that thrive deep in the human gut. Scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have identified 26 species of intestinal bacteria linked to insulin resistance and the high blood pressure, cholesterol and sugar levels suffered by the obese. These preventable conditions often lead to potentially fatal health problems including stroke, heart disease and diabetes.

Ever notice how late summer nights come alive with the chirps and rhythmic whirrs of crickets and katydids? Now, just by stepping outside and listening for a minute or two, you can help scientists understand more about nature's symphony, and the unseen insects making all that music. On Friday night, people all over the Baltimore-Washington area are invited to help with " Cricket Crawl 2012 ," the region's first sound-based census of crickets and katydids. It's so easy almost anyone can do it, and a scientist organizing it says the effort will provide valuable information about an underappreciated set of critters in our ecosystem.

Half a century ago, a nearby cluster of stars appeared to astronomers as a single glowing ball of gas. As recently as 15 years ago, scientists realized it was in fact a cluster of stars but were convinced they all must have formed at the same time and with the same composition. Now astronomers at Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute have found evidence that one cluster may actually be two, one a million years older than the other, in the process of merging. The clusters are 170,000 light years from Earth in an area known as the Tarantula Nebula.

On a hot summer day, it's hard to see how the Conowingo Dam could hurt the Chesapeake Bay. Anglers line the shore below the 94-foot high impoundment, casting out into the gently roiling Susquehanna River for rockfish breaking the water. Yet unseen, on the other side of the dam, millions upon millions of tons of sediment and nutrient pollution are slowly building up that could wreak havoc on the bay if they get through. "It's an invisible problem," said Michael Helfrich, the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper, as he watches the fishermen.

Climate change presents us with a difficult dilemma because there is so much even scientists still do not know, including what is "normal" and how much of the changes observed are caused by human activity. The scientific community has yet to reach consensus on these issues. But while scientists debate the nature of climate change and our role in it, citizens face another dilemma. We are already suffering from heat waves, power outages, and derecho-related storm damage. We should not need scientists to confirm a global problem to recognize the smaller-scale one of our own. Climate change may be a global problem, but real and significant steps can be taken to address it at the local level.

Gov. Martin O'Malleycorrectly flags STEM fields - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - as critical economic enablers, and an administrative priority. Thus, it was good news when Towson University recently won a $2 million grant to study science instruction. They'll find better ways to teach traditional sciences, just asUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore County leads the nation with teaching mathematics. Unfortunately, the future is not bright for one key STEM area: computer science.

Perched atop a weathered navigational marker near Rocky Point in Back River, the osprey shifted nervously, screeched and flew off as a boat full of people approached. With the raptor circling overhead, Rebecca Lazarus climbed onto the marker and peered into its nest, a tangled heap of tree branches and scraps of plastic. "She's got one chick in here," called out Lazarus, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland, College Park. The osprey had laid two eggs, but only one hatched.

Breakthrough: Scientists at Europe's CERN research center found evidence of a new subatomic particle thought to be the Higgs boson, known popularly as the "God particle. " Researchers: Thousands of scientists around the world collaborated; locally, researchers from the University of Maryland College Park and Johns Hopkins University were involved. Description: Scientists observed trillions of collisions of protons, with what Hopkins assistant professor Andrei Gritsan called the equivalent of 16,000 digital cameras watching and recording.