Poor Mojo's Newswire

The primary engine fueling the storm will be the remnants of Hurricane Sandy, a Category 2 storm that is currently making life miserable in Haiti and Cuba. Once it makes its way up the East coast, it will be reinvigorated by an early winter storm coming in from the West, and a blast of arctic air from the North. And as if to add insult to injury, the storm will co-incide with a full moon — a time when tides are at their highest. Government meteorologists say there's a 90% chance that the storm will hit as predicted, up from 60% two days ago. Speaking to the AP, Cisco noted, "We don't have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting." He worries that it could be historic in terms of its scope and the damage it may inflict.

The study, widely considered the most reliable attempt to measure puberty in American boys, estimates that boys are showing signs of puberty six months to two years earlier than was reported in previous research, which historically taught that 11 � was the general age puberty began in boys. But experts cautioned that because previous studies were smaller or used different approaches, it is difficult to say how much earlier boys might be developing. The study echoes research on girls, which has now established a scientific consensus that they are showing breast development earlier than in the past. The study, which was to be announced at the Academy of Pediatrics national conference on Saturday and published online in the journal Pediatrics, did not try to determine what might be causing earlier puberty, although it mentioned changes in diet, less physical activity and other environmental factors as possibilities. Experts said that without further research, implications for boys are unclear. “This should perhaps set a standard going forward for being very attentive to puberty in boys and being mindful that they’re developing earlier,” said Dolores J. Lamb, a molecular endocrinologist at Baylor College of Medicine and president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. She was not involved in the study.

The entrepreneur, Russ George, said his team scattered 100 tons of iron dust in mid-July in the Pacific several hundred miles west of the islands of Haida Gwaii, in northern British Columbia, in a $2.5 million project financed by a native Canadian group. The substance acted as a fertilizer, Mr. George said, fostering the growth of enormous amounts of plankton that were monitored by the team for several months. He said the result could help the project meet what it casts as its top goal: aiding the recovery of the salmon fishery for the native Haida people. But marine scientists and other experts said the experiment, which they learned about only in news reports this week, was shoddy science, irresponsible and probably in violation of international agreements intended to prevent tampering with ocean ecosystems under the guise of trying to fight the effects of climate change. While the environmental impact of Mr. George’s foray could well prove minimal, they said, it raises the specter of what they have long feared: rogue field experiments that could upend ecosystems one day put the planet at risk. Mark L. Wells, a marine scientist at the University of Maine, said that what Mr. George’s team did “could be described as ocean dumping.”