Dick Clark is becoming synonymous with New Year’s Eve, so it’s no real surprise the renowned television host is back to ring in 2012 and celebrate the 40th anniversary of his iconic program, “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.”

Clark will once more make a look and feel alongside Ryan Seacrest about the annual ABC special, set to air beginning on December 31th at 10 p.m.

Seacrest has been co-hosting the extravaganza since 2005, one year afterwards Clark a break down stroke that impaired his speech. But since then, health troubles haven’t stopped the indefatigable 82-year-old Clark from taking a dynamic role in their show’s production.

Few places on earth provide such powerful imagery of human-landscape interaction as the Sahara and Sahel regions (Figure 1). Together, the Sahara and Sahel cover nearly 3.85 million square miles in Africa, approximately one third of the continent’s 11.7 million square miles and slightly larger than the 3.6 million square miles that comprise the lower 48 states of the U.S. From east to west across the northern bulge of the African continent, and straddling the tropics between about 10° and 35° north latitude, these two regions exemplify the eternal struggle between humans and their environment. The ‘tragedy of the commons” plays out along the Sahel transition zone as societies try to maximize their economic opportunities, and thus their survival, in competition with each other and with the physical landscape. To the north, camel caravans and modern trucks connect remote Saharan destinations across vast and inhospitable distances.

When it comes to nutrition science, the one thing we can count on is that research information evolves over time. Remember eggs and cholesterol? Over the last several years the buzz about the benefits of soy protein and isoflavones has gained considerable momentum, it culminated in the 1999 decision by the US Food and Drug Administration to approve labelling for foods containing soy protein as protective against coronary heart disease. But once again, we are faced with evolving research that shows the buzz may be “much ado about nothing” — or at least very little.

Finding funding can make the difference between a small-art life and a big-art career

Over the course of her career, author and visual artist Mira Bartók has won more than $80,000 in grants to support her work. The funds have paid for her to travel to research a reindeer-herding community in Norway and attend the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. She has lived in Italy twice on language study grants and participated in residencies in France and Israel. When she had a serious auto accident, grants even provided emergency funds.

To Mars or bust! The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the most advanced Mars rover to date into space November 26 on a 352 million-mile journey to the Red Planet. Once it lands, in August 2012, Curiosity will help the U.S. space agency determine whether Mars is, or once was, habitable to microbial life. The car-sized craft has 10 high-tech instruments to dig, drill, and shoot lasers into rocks to study their chemical makeup. Its cutting-edge cameras can capture details smaller than the width of a human hair. Curiosity’s findings will help NASA prepare for an eventual human-led mission to Mars, perhaps in the mid-2030s.

“[Curiosity] will tell us critical things we need to know about Mars,”
NASA administrator Charles Bolden Jr. says.
“And while it advances science, we’ll be 5 working on the capabilities for a human mission to the Red Planet.”