FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Part of Michael Pollan's appeal is his ability to make what should be obvious (and was once normal) seem radical. He's peddling a deeper form of retro, one that digs back centuries rather than decades, to remind us that we can be both full and healthy without Twinkies or tofu. He received a feast of responses this spring when he asked readers of the New York Times to write in with their favorite food rules, and this weekend the Times has published an interactive graphic cataloging Pollan's top picks. Ranging from "It's better to pay the grocer than the doctor" to "Don't eat egg salad from a vending machine," it's an amusing list of foodisms that are hard to disagree with. And if pithy catch-phrases or anecdotes aren't your thing, Pollan deftly sums up our search for sustenance in his accompanying column. "If we can't rely on the marketers or the government or even the nutritionists to guide us through the supermarket woods, then who can we rely on?" Pollan asks. "Well, ask yourself another question: How did humans manage to choose foods and stay healthy before there were nutrition experts and food pyramids or breakfast cereals promising to improve your child's focus or restaurant portions bigger than your head?" (Source: New York Times)

 

A NOBEL EFFORT: President Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Friday morning, making him just the third sitting U.S. president to ever receive the award. The news was unexpected mainly because of Obama's young age and short tenure as president, but the committee is apparently honoring his intentions more than his achievements, writes Paul Reynolds of the BBC. The committee was won over in general by Obama's multilateral and open approach to diplomacy, but it also mentioned specifics, including his emphasis on climate change and nuclear nonproliferation. "The Committee attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons," according to a press release issued Friday morning. "The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations."

 

That may be one side effect of Obama's Nobel — boosting the credibility of his administration, and his agenda, overseas. And with December's U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen occurring around the same time and region as the Dec. 10 Nobel festivities in Oslo, environmentalists are hoping to borrow some of his growing star power. "Now that we know President Obama will be in Scandinavia in December," says the WWF's U.S. climate-change director, "expectations are even higher that he will attend the Copenhagen climate summit in person to usher in a fair, ambitious and binding climate agreement." (Sources: NY Times, Washington Post, BBC News, Reuters, Scientific American)

 

SHOOT THE MOON: It was hard to tell what was going on in the live feed Friday morning, but NASA says it has successfully crashed two spacecraft into the moon's south pole — part of an elaborate plan to kick up ice from the lunar surface. The first probe went down shortly after 7:31 a.m., followed closely by the second at about 7:36. The double 5,600-mph descents created giant explosions that sent up a plume of dirt and dust (or at least we assume they did, since the live feed just went white), which NASA instruments soon began scouring for signs of water ice.

 

Update: In a 10 a.m. press conference following Friday morning's attack on the moon, NASA scientists verified that the mission was successful in gathering data, but stopped short of announcing what those data mean. "I can certainly report there was an impact. We saw the impact," one scientist said. "We have the data we need to address the question we set out to address. I'm not going say anything about water or no water yet, but we got the measurements we need."  (Sources: NASA, USA Today, Associated Press)

 

FISH FRY: Climate change shouldn't affect the amount of fish caught around the world 50 years from now, according to a new study, but it probably will affect where they're caught. Using a computer model based on environmental factors and fishing data, researchers from the University of British Columbia projected future movements of the world's most popular commercial fish species. Those fish will migrate from the tropics toward the poles as waters warm, the researchers reported — robbing places like China, Chile, Indonesia and the lower United States of their current fishing riches, while catches off the coasts of Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Russia will grow. (Source: NY Times)

 

DEAD IN THE WATER: There are more than 400 "dead zones" around the world, most of which are caused by pollution. Fertilizers and other chemicals wash down rivers and into coastal waters, feeding huge algae blooms that create low-oxygen zones where fish and other animals can't breathe. But scientists are warning that a new dead zone off the coast of Oregon isn't caused by pollution — they believe it's one of the first dead zones caused by climate change. About the size of New Jersey, the Northwestern dead zone began appearing around 2002, fueled partly by warmer surface waters that trap cooler, oxygen-depleted waters below them, preventing the natural cycling of seawater that normally feeds oxygen to the depths. A University of Oregon researcher studying the dead zone says it doesn't appear to be temporary, adding that he expects it to appear every summer from now on. (Source: Los Angeles Times) 

 

THE DRILL IS GONE: The U.S. Interior Department has closed oil and gas development at eight of 77 controversial drilling sites in Utah, and put another 52 on hold, with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pointing to problems with the "headlong rush" of a leasing process during the Bush administration's final weeks. The 77 leases cover about 100,000 acres in southern and eastern Utah, and were contested almost immediately by a lawsuit from conservation groups, who argued that drilling would create a wide range of ecological issues in the pristine landscape. An Interior Department review team recently recommended that Salazar only allow drilling at 17 of the sites, finding that some — such as land within national parks — were "simply not appropriate for development." (Sources: Salt Lake Tribune, Wall Street Journal)

 

MONKEY MOMS: The deep stares, exaggerated facial expressions and lilting vocal noises that human mothers exchange with their newborn infants was long thought to be a hallmark of human intelligence. But new research published in Current Biology shows that rhesus macaque mothers do the same thing. "What we found in mother macaques is very similar [to humans]: They exaggerate their gestures, 'kiss' their baby, and have sustained mutual gaze," says one of the researchers. "Our results demonstrate that humans are not unique in showing emotional communication between mother and infant." (Source: e! Science News)

 

— Russell McLendon