Two Miami-Dade teachers used stories of their experiences in a weightless flight to inspire their students to consider careers in science.

Robert Jastrow, who led a major space science institution and helped to bring space down to earth for millions of Americans, died Friday at his home in Arlington, Va. He was 82.

Shawn Carlson was 8 when his grandfather found a whale carcass on a California beach, cleaned the bones and reassembled the skeleton on top of his house.

For much of President Bush’s tenure in the White House, members of the scientific community have often complained they are being squeezed out of the political process on issues such as climate change, energy policy and federal spending.

Now, with one of their own locked in a high-profile congressional race, scientists from across the country are rallying to Democratic nominee Bill Foster, a physicist who spent much of his career at the Energy Department’s Fermilab, in the form of campaign contributions and endorsements from high-profile members of the community.

Foster is running to fill the seat left vacant by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) in a March 8 special election. But observers say it unlikely that his scientific background or the issues that are important to the scientific community will be much of a factor when voters head to the polls.

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Biofuel blends may not always be what the label claims. A study at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that many smaller distributors could be “splash blending.”

While sampling blended biodiesel fuels purchased from small-scale retailers, researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that many of the blends do not contain the advertised amount of biofuel.

Marine chemist Chris Reddy and colleagues sampled pure biodiesel and blends from more than a dozen distributors across the United States. When testing fuels listed as 20 percent biodiesel (commonly known as B20), they found that the actual percentage of biofuel ranged from as little as 10 percent to as much as 74 percent. Only 10 percent of samples met the specifications for biofuel blends required for vehicles of the U.S. Department of Defense, one of the leading consumers of the products.

The Canadian government is urging the United States to avoid an “expansive interpretation” of a new U.S. energy law that could block government purchases of fuels derived from Alberta’s booming oil sands region.

Section 526 of the law that President Bush signed last December bars government contracts for alternative fuels — including non-conventional petroleum sources — whose lifecycle emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases exceed those of conventional fuels.

“Canada would not want to see an expansive interpretation of Section 526, which would then include commercially available fuel made in part from oil derived from Canadian oil sands,” Ambassador Michael Wilson told Defense Secretary Robert Gates in a Feb. 22 letter. Wilson also sent copies of the letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

A new study by two University of California-Santa Barbara economics professors is challenging the widely held notion that daylight-saving time reduces energy use.

The two professors analyzed more than 7 million monthly meter readings from the last three years of Indiana households — a state where the majority of residents were not on daylight-saving time until 2006 — and determined that having the entire state set their clocks an hour ahead in the spring and an hour back in the fall was costing residents an additional $8.6 million in electricity bills.

The study concluded the reduced cost of lighting in the afternoons during daylight-saving time is more than offset by the higher air conditioning costs on hot afternoons and increased heating costs on cool mornings.

Water supplies to about 200,000 people in central China have been contaminated by pollution, which has turned branches of a major river system red. At least three tributaries of the Han river - a branch of the Yangtze - have been affected.

State media reported high levels of chemicals in the water.

China is increasingly concerned about its environment. A recent ban on plastic bags has led to the country’s largest bag factory shutting down.

Some 160 Brazilian troops have been sent to the Amazon to join hundreds of police officers involved in efforts to tackle illegal deforestation. The move follows clashes last week when local people and sawmill workers forced environmental officials out of the town of Tailandia in the state of Para.

Officials say they do not want more confrontations but the operation against illegal logging will go on.

Deforestation in the Amazon jungle rose sharply in the second half of 2007.