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This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I'm BobDoughty.
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And I'm Phoebe Zimmermann. This week: the busy hurricane seasonin the Atlantic ...
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A new publishing policy aims to make all drug studies known tothe public ...
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And, calls for stronger warnings about the risk to children fromdrugs that treat depression.
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Hurricane season in the AtlanticOcean extends, officially, from June first to November thirtieth.Weather scientists expected an active season of ocean storms thisyear. But a lot have expressed surprise at just how active thisseason has been already.
The agency known as NOAA [NO-uh] reported that the number ofnamed tropical storms in the Atlantic set a record in August. NOAAis the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the UnitedStates. Eight storms were strong enough to earn a name in August.These started with Alex, the first major storm of the season. Fourof the eight storms developed into hurricanes. This means they hadwinds of at least one hundred nineteen kilometers an hour.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, says the recordbefore was seven. That was in nineteen thirty-three and nineteenninety-five. The hurricane center says the normal number of stormsin a season through the end of August is four.
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Major ocean storms in the northern part of the world usuallydevelop in late summer or autumn over waters near the Equator.Weather movements off the coast of North Africa help to produce thestorms. Warm ocean waters feed the storms which gives them energy.The storms gather strength as they move west toward the CaribbeanSea and North America. The word hurricane comes from the nativeCaribbean language Taino.
Such storms are called hurricanes if they happen in the Atlanticor in parts of the Pacific Ocean east of the international dateline.They are called typhoons in parts of the Pacific west of thedateline. And they are called cyclones in the Southwest Pacific andin the Indian Ocean.
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The Saffir-Simpson scale measures hurricanes by their intensitybased on wind speed. The scale is listed in categories. A categoryone storm has winds of up to about one hundred fifty kilometers anhour. Experts say this storm might damage trees and light structureslike mobile homes.
Top winds of a category two hurricane can reach close to onehundred eighty kilometers an hour. These storms are often strongenough to break windows or take the top off a house.
Categories three and four represent winds between about onehundred eighty and two hundred fifty kilometers an hour. HurricaneIvan was a category four storm. It killed at least one hundred tenpeople on Caribbean islands and in the United States. It causedthousands of millions of dollars in damage.
The highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale is a category fivestorm. This is any storm with a wind speed greater than two hundredforty-nine kilometers an hour.
However, a storm does not have toreach hurricane strength to cause loss of life. In fact thedeadliest storm so far this year was Tropical Storm Jeanne. Morethan one thousand five hundred people were killed when it toreacross Haiti last week. The storm caused severe floods andlandslides in areas cleared of forests.
Tropical Storm Jeanne later strengthened into a hurricane. Thispast weekend it struck the Atlantic coast of Florida, killingseveral people. It caused more damage along an area hit by HurricaneFrances three weeks earlier.
Jeanne was the fourth hurricane tohit Florida in the past six weeks.
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Many people believe that all these storms must have something todo with human activities and climate change. But scientists have nosimple answers. Some say warmer ocean temperatures could producestorms of greater intensity. But they say this would not necessarilymean a greater number of storms. Others say there is no proof of aconnection between global warming and severe weather. Still othersnote that averages can hide the fact that some years just have morestorms than others.
There are cycles of hurricane activity in the Atlantic that lastat least twenty years. These are periods of generally above-normalor below-normal activity. NOAA says tropical storm activity in theAtlantic has been "considerably above normal" since nineteenninety-five. The last above-normal years were in the nineteenfifties and sixties.
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Drug companies are often accused of only publishing studies thatmake their medicines look good. That means the public may never knowabout tests that found a drug to be useless or perhaps evendangerous. This is known as selective reporting. Critics say thiskind of reporting goes against the interests of public health.
As a result, a group of leading medical editors announced a newpolicy this month. They say researchers must publicly list all testsif they want any of them published. The International Committee ofMedical Journal Editors says all eleven of its member journals willfollow this policy.
These include The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal ofthe American Medical Association and The Lancet. Editors for thejournals say that beginning next July, they will no longer publishresults from tests that have not been registered in a publicdatabase. They say that honest reporting begins with announcing theexistence of all experiments.
The announcement came as the United States Congress beganhearings on the issue. Lawmakers are considering measures that wouldrequire drug companies to publicly list their tests, called trials.Companies could also be required to publish their results on agovernment Web site.
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Such possible measures led the drug industry to develop a plan ofits own. A trade group said it will create a database for itsmembers to list their test results if they choose. Some drug makerssay they oppose publishing details of their experiments becausecompetitors could learn trade secrets.
In any case, the medical journal editors say the plan by the drugindustry is not enough. They say doctors and patients need completeinformation to make informed decisions about the use of medicines.
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Selective reporting of drug tests may also lead to a change bythe United States Food and Drug Administration. An advisorycommittee says anti-depression medicines should come with thestrongest possible warnings to doctors and patients. Experts saythat in some cases, these anti-depressants may lead children andyoung adults to want to kill themselves. The F.D.A. is consideringthe recommendations from its Public Health Advisory Committee.
The committee held a series of public hearings in which past drugtests were discussed. Drug companies that supported the tests hadhidden some of the results for years. Family members of children whokilled themselves while on the medicines also spoke at the hearings.
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But critics say the proposals are too little and too late. TheF.D.A. reported last October about the suicidal risks among somechildren taking antidepressant medicines. Six months later, theagency told drug companies to place warnings on ten drugs. Criticsnoted that British health officials had advised doctors late lastyear to avoid the use of most kinds of antidepressants in children.
A study by Medco Health Solutions, however, suggests that theconcerns have had an effect in the United States. The study showsthat number of children on antidepressants dropped eighteen percentduring the first three months of this year.
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Our program was written by Caty Weaver and Jill Moss. CynthiaKirk was our producer. To send us e-mail, write tospecial@voanews.com. This is Bob Doughty.
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And this is Phoebe Zimmermann. Next week, learn about findingsthat air pollution can reduce lung development in children. A studyin California found that children in areas with dirty air were morelikely to grow up with weak lungs, a risk for early death. Also,we'll report on a legal settlement by the DuPont Company. The caseinvolves the possible health risks from a chemical used to makeTeflon products. Those stories, and more, next week on SCIENCE INTHE NEWS, in VOA Special English..