Canadian scientists claim 'muzzling'
OTTAWA, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Canadian scientists say the country's government is trying to muzzle them, controlling what they say and who they talk to.
Scientists with Natural Resources Canada say they were told this spring they would need "pre-approval" from the office of Minister of Natural Resources Christian Paradis to speak with national and international journalists, Postmedia News reported.
Documents show the rules apply not only to contentious issues but benign subjects, such as floods that occurred 13,000 years ago, Postmedia said.
Under the rules, critics say, Canadians are being cut off from scientists whose work is financed by taxpayers and is often of significant public interest on issues like fish stocks, genetically modified crops or mercury pollution in the Athabasca River.
"We have new media interview procedures that require pre-approval of certain types of interview requests by the minister's office," Judy Samoil, NRCan's communications manager, wrote in an e-mail to colleagues.
The policy applies to "high-profile" issues such as "climate change, oilsands" and when "the reporter is with an international or national media organization," she wrote.
The ministry defended the new rules.
"The minister is the primary spokesperson for Natural Resources Canada. As such, he needs to be made aware of issues in the media which involve the department so he can effectively fulfill his role," a statement from the minister's office said.
"It's Orwellian," said Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at University of Victoria.
"The sad reality is that these guys in Ottawa think federal scientists work for them.They don't, they work for the people of Canada," he said.
"This is science funded by Canada for the public good. It is not science funded to produce briefing notes for ministers so they can get elected in the next federal campaign."
Study: Nutrition in infancy affects males
EVANSTON, Ill., Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Males who experience rapid weight gain in the first six months of life reach puberty sooner and are taller and more muscular, a study suggests.
A Northwestern University study of men in the Philippines found adult males who had rapid growth as babies -- indicating they were not nutritionally stressed -- grow up stronger and show higher testosterone levels as young adults, a university release said Monday.
Testosterone may hold the key to understanding these long-term effects, researchers say.
"Most people are unaware that male infants in the first six months of life produce testosterone at approximately the same level as an adult male," Christopher W. Kuzawa, associate professor of anthropology and author of the study, said. "We looked at weight gain during this particular window of early life development, because testosterone is very high at this age and helps shape the differences between males and females."
The study is evidence that genes alone do not predict our adult fate, researchers say.
"The environment has a very strong hand in how we turn out," Kuzawa said. "And this study extends that idea to the realm of sex differences and male biology."
The magnitude of difference in height and strength between men and women appears to be the result of nutrition within the first six months of an infant male's life, the study determined.
"Another way to look at it is that the differences between the sexes are not hard wired, but are responsive to the environment, and in particular to nutrition," Kuzawa said.
Walrus 'haul-out' puzzles U.S. scientists
POINT LAY, Alaska, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Scientists say tens of thousands of walruses have hauled themselves from the ocean to gather on an Alaskan beach in a behavior that has researchers puzzled.
The huge pod of marine mammals has congregated on a beach just north of Point Lay on Alaska's Arctic Ocean coast, the Alaska Dispatch reports.
"You can see them right now," Mayor Leo Ferreira said Friday. "I am on the main road facing the ocean. I am right by the church and I can see them right here and they are about two miles away."
Ferreira theorizes that ship traffic is diverting the walruses to shore in unusually large numbers.
But government scientists say they suspect it has more to do with an increasing lack of sea ice.
Walruses have been observed hauling out onto land in large numbers in Russia, but never on the Alaska side of their migratory corridor in such huge numbers.
U.S. Geological Survey scientists have tagged some of the walruses to track and study their movements. They're particularly interested in how much more swimming the hauled-out walruses, most of which are females, will have to do to find food.
They're also concerned for young walruses that depend on a mother's care for two years and which nurse for the first six to seven months of life.
"We suspect it will have real change in the cost of making a living for the walrus. Instead of rolling off the ice and having your food right there, they might have to commute," said Tony Fischbach, a USGS walrus researcher.
Central American manatees under threat
WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- DNA of manatees in Belize shows they are a separate subspecies from their Florida counterparts but are threatened by low genetic diversity, researchers say.
Belize has the largest known breeding population of Antillean manatees that scientists had hoped could repopulate other parts of Central American where manatees are severely reduced or threatened, a U.S. Geological Survey release said Monday.
But the low genetic diversity worries researchers.
"It turns out that the genetic diversity of Belize's manatees is lower than some of the classic examples of critically low diversity," USGS conservation geneticist Margaret Hunter, who led the DNA study, said.
When a population drops to low numbers, researchers say, the diversity of its gene pool also shrinks. Even if it rebounds to greater numbers, that population decline leaves a legacy of reduced genetic diversity known as a bottleneck.
This renders the population more vulnerable to threats to their survival such as disease, hurricanes or habitat destruction, scientists say.
The low genetic diversity in Central American manatees is blamed in part on centuries of hunting that were only curtailed early in the 20th century.
