“A deep rift has opened within the Catholic church over the theory of evolution and its compatibility with the Christian faith.

The Vatican’s chief astronomer, George Coyne, has rebuffed controversial comments made by Cardinal Christoph Schonborn in The New York Times on 7 July that evolution is incompatible with a belief in God.” (New Scientist)

“A “vastly larger” number of people than thought may abuse cocaine, suggest the results of a study measuring a breakdown product of the illegal drug in an Italian river.

Levels of a cocaine residue excreted in human urine were measured in the River Po, Italy’s largest river. The river has a catchment basin for about five-million people, with major cities like Turin and Milan situated in the valley.

The equivalent of about 4 kilograms of cocaine flowed in the river each day, say the researchers from Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, and the University of Insubria in Varese.

The analysis indicates that at least 40,000 packets of the drug are snorted each day – 80 times more than the official estimate of just 15,000 doses taken per month by people living in the area. If the study’s estimates are true, a staggering $150 million in street value of cocaine is dealt each year in the valley, say the researchers.” (New Scientist)

“Striking observations of the effects of Hurricane Ivan – which swept across the Atlantic in 2004 – reveals the 100-foot wave which ended the movie The Perfect Storm were no cinematic exaggeration. And new meteorological predictions warn that 2005 may be a bumper year for North Atlantic hurricanes.” (New Scientist)

“Two big scientific debates have attracted a lot of attention over the past year. One concerns the causes of autism, while the other addresses differences in scientific aptitude between the sexes. At the risk of adding fuel to both fires, I submit that these two lines of inquiry have a great deal in common. By studying the differences between male and female brains, we can generate significant insights into the mystery of autism.”

…HBO-style: “In choosing among these idioms of mourning, Lionel Trilling’s great series of lectures, ‘Sincerity and Authenticity,’ published under that title in 1972, comes to mind. Sincerity – what Trilling calls ‘congruence between avowal and actual feeling’- once seemed (to the Romantic poets, say) like an exalted state of existence that could be achieved only with conscientious attention to the heart.

But the ideal of sincerity has long ago been devalued, rendered commercial or quaint. Today, for example, it is associated with Coldplay, mewling God-and-country Republicans and weepie cable-television dramas like Six Feet Under that appeal mostly to women and gay men.

Authenticity, on the other hand, is regarded as rougher stuff, a man’s job. Authenticity is gin to sincerity’s chardonnay. (Look for it on The Sopranos and Deadwood.) It suggests, as Trilling puts it, ‘a more strenuous moral experience’ than does sincerity, as well as ‘a less acceptant and genial view of the social circumstances of life.’ Authenticity, in other words, is a confrontation not with the self, which its practitioners regard as elusive and false, but with death, horror, being, nothingness.” — Virginia Heffernan (New York Times )

“…Mr. Evers, who is executive director of the BioDiversity Research Institute, a nonprofit research and education group in Gorham, Me., is looking for signs of mercury in the songbirds. He has a pretty good hunch that he will find it, as he has already found mercury in songbirds in the Adirondacks and in New England.

If substantial amounts of mercury show up in the blood and feathers he has collected, it could spell trouble for the watershed and, potentially, for the nine million people who rely on the New York drinking water that comes from here because it would mean that the toxin is present in ways that were previously unknown.” (New York Times )

“Much of the improvement in breast cancer survival in recent years is because the average tumor is smaller, not just because treatments are so much better, a new study has found.” (New York Times)