A (somewhat) weekly round-up of local science-related issues, offered up for discussion. Feel free to comment, or let us know what else you’ve been reading about this week.

5.4 earthquake rattles San Diegans
A moderate earthquake shook San Diego at 11:42 a.m. on Tuesday. It was first reported as a 5.6 on the Richter magnitude scale, which measures the seismic energy released. But then it was being called a 5.8, only to be later downgraded to 5.4.
How, exactly, are earthquakes measured and reported? Why the discrepancy? How likely is “the big one”? Some say little quakes are good for releasing built-up pressure and preventing a major seismic event, others say they’ll have no effect. Also, how earthquake-ready are San Diego labs?

UCSD researcher chosen to help prevent gene doping in sports
As the Tour de France closes and the Olympics get warmed up, illegal drugs in sports are top in the news lately. So far there are no reports of gene doping, or the use of genetic engineering or injection of genetic material to enhance athletic performance. But since the World Anti-Doping Agency doesn’t want to get caught napping, they’ve asked Dr. Ted Friedmann, a gene therapy expert at UCSD, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center to monitor a big new database that gathers together as much gene doping-related research and information as possible, in order to increase the likelihood that they’ll be the first ones to spot new advances and trends. How do you think current gene therapy techniques could be adapted for use by athletes? How likely do you think it is gene doping will become a reality? Should it be legalized?

UCSD researchers show that physical activity drops dramatically between ages 9 and 15, while scientists at the Salk invent an ‘exercise pill’
Scientists at UCSD and elsewhere spent 16 years tracking the health of 1,032 participants in a NIH-sponsored study. After sifting through all that data, they reported this week in JAMA that children’s physical activity significantly decreases between the ages of 9 and 15. They found this by measuring the amount of time each participant spent in “moderate-to-vigorous physical activity”, or MVPA, over a period of four to seven days. Nine year-olds spent about three hours per day in MVPA, whereas 15 year-olds engaged in MVPA for an average of only about 42 minutes per day. 60 minutes per day are recommended. They also reported that, as you might expect, boys were more active than girls, by about 15 minutes of MVPA per day. Meanwhile, across the street at the Salk, Dr. Ron Evans and his colleagues published a study in Cell this week that may one day be the antidote to physical inactivity. They found that even sedentary mice experienced upregulation of metabolic genes and dramatically improved running endurance following four weeks of treatment with an agonist of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), a master regulator of metabolism. How do we get children moving? As a parent? As a society? What do you think about this new “quick-fix” study?