Man saves data from fallen shuttle

Jon Edwards often manages what appears impossible. He has recovered precious data from computers wrecked in floods and fires and dumped in lakes.

Now Edwards may have set a new standard: He found information on a melted disk drive that fell from the sky when space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003.

"When we got it, it was two hunks of metal stuck together. We couldn't even tell it was a hard drive. It was burned and the edges were melted," said Edwards, an engineer at Kroll Ontrack Inc., outside Minneapolis. "It looked pretty bad at first glance, but we always give it a shot."

During Columbia's fateful mission, the drive had been used to store data from a scientific experiment on the properties of liquid xenon.

Most of the information was radioed to Earth during Columbia's voyage. Edwards was able to recover the remainder, allowing researchers to publish the experiment in the April issue of a science journal, Physical Review E.

Sinkhole slowing down

Geologists said a 260-foot-deep Texas sinkhole that grew to the length of three football fields over just two days seemed to be slowing down, but that it could take months before it's clear whether surrounding areas are stable. The 900-foot-long sinkhole, with crumbling dirt around its edges resembling sharp teeth, has swallowed up oil tanks and barrels, tires, telephone poles and several vehicles in Daisetta, a once-booming oil town of about 1,000 residents about 60 miles northeast of Houston. Residents feared the appetite of the sinkhole, which began as a 20-foot hole in the ground on Wednesday, would continue unabated Thursday and threaten nearby homes. But by Thursday afternoon officials and geologists allayed those concerns.

Cradle to drain?

Since they first walked the planet, humans have either buried or burned their dead. Now a new option is generating interest -- dissolving bodies in lye and flushing the brownish, syrupy residue down the drain. The process is called alkaline hydrolysis and was developed in this country 16 years ago to get rid of animal carcasses. It uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers. No funeral homes in the U.S. -- or anywhere else in the world, as far as the equipment manufacturer knows -- offer it. In fact, only two U.S. medical centers use it on human bodies, and only on cadavers donated for research. But because of its environmental advantages, some in the funeral industry say it could someday rival burial and cremation.

Soil's slow erosion

Science has provided the souped-up seeds to feed the world, through biotechnology and old-fashioned crossbreeding. Now the problem is the dirt they're planted in. As seeds get better, much of the world's soil is getting worse and people are going hungry. Scientists say if they can get the world out of the economically triggered global food crisis, better dirt will be at the root of the solution. Soils around the world are deteriorating with about one-fifth of the world's cropland considered degraded in some manner. The poor quality has cut production by about one-sixth, according to a World Resources Institute study. Some scientists consider it a slow-motion disaster. In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 1 million square miles of cropland have shown a "consistent significant decline," according to a March 2008 report by a worldwide consortium of agricultural institutions.

Doctors' suicide rate higher

There's a grim, rarely talked-about twist to all that medical know-how doctors learn to save lives: It makes them especially good at ending their own. An estimated 300 to 400 U.S. doctors kill themselves each year -- a suicide rate thought to be higher than in the general population, although exact figures are hard to come by. Some doctors believe the stigma of mental illness is magnified in a profession that prides itself on stoicism and bravado. Many fear admitting psychiatric problems could be fatal to their careers, so they suffer in silence. And when the pain is too much, doctors have easy access to prescription drugs and a precise knowledge of both how the body works and the amount of a drug needed for an overdose to stop breathing and halt the heart. "All physicians have access to neat, clean ways to commit suicide," said Dr. Robert Lehmberg, a Little Rock, Ark., surgeon who has battled depression and long considered suicide "an exit strategy if absolutely necessary." The American Medical Association has called physician suicide "an endemic catastrophe," and pledged two years ago to work to prevent the problem. A study in Denmark, published last year, found more suicides in doctors than among more than 20 other professions, including nurses, factory workers, elementary school teachers, corporate managers and architects.

ATLANTA -- More than half of U.S. adults with diabetes also have arthritis, raising a serious obstacle for diabetic patients urged to exercise, according to a government study.

The survey of nearly 800,000 people is the first extensive look at the overlap between the two conditions, said Dr. John Klippel, president of the Arthritis Foundation.

And its findings highlight a significant challenge: Most diabetics are told exercise is important to their health, but experts say many of them don't do it.

People with diabetes who exercise have better control of their blood sugar and a much lower risk of heart disease complications. But the new research suggests many diabetics see themselves as unable to exercise because of arthritis, said Julia Simard, a Harvard School of Public Health researcher who has studied rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.