LA Times Science Files for 2007/05/16

These are items compiled by staff of the LA Times.

• COSMOLOGY
  Turning the light on space’s dark matter
  

  A team of scientists says it has found the most convincing evidence so far that the mysterious stuff known as dark matter really exists: a gigantic ring of invisible material left over from the ancient collision of galaxy clusters. By John Johnson Jr., Times Staff Writer.

• OUTDOORS
  3 days of minus 20 on an Arctic ice floe
  

  Beaufort Sea, Arctic Ocean – For three days in March I camped on a drifting slab of ice, 200 miles north of Alaska, as close as I’d ever get to the top of the world and to knowing what it would be like to live on an ice cube. By Tomas Alex Tizon, Times Staff Writer.

• PUBLIC HEALTH
  Officials meet to discuss death at King-Harbor
  

  Los Angeles County supervisors met in an emergency closed session Tuesday to discuss how a woman who had complained of severe abdominal pain at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital died last week after reportedly going untreated by medical staff. By Susannah Rosenblatt, Times Staff Writer.

• HEALTHCARE
  Democrats prescribe bigger health levy
  

  SACRAMENTO – Escalating the already tense fight about what financial burden businesses should bear, the Democrats who control the Legislature proposed Tuesday that most California employers be required to spend the equivalent of at least 7.5% of their payrolls on healthcare – nearly twice the amount Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed. By Jordan Rau, Times Staff Writer.

• LETHAL INJECTION
  State offers new lethal injection protocol
  

  Aiming to end a court-imposed moratorium on capital punishment in California, the Schwarzenegger administration Tuesday proposed new procedures to execute inmates by lethal injection, saying the changes “will result in the dignified end of life” for condemned inmates. By Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer.

• PUBLIC HEALTH
  Kaiser accepts patient-dumping settlement
  

  Kaiser Permanente has agreed to a first-of-its-kind settlement aimed at ending patient dumping that requires the HMO to establish new discharge rules, provide more training for employees and allow a well-known former U.S. attorney to monitor its progress, officials announced Tuesday. By Richard Winton and Cara Mia DiMassa, Times Staff Writers.

• PUBLIC HEALTH
  Limiting liquor licenses in poor areas is targeted
  

  At the urging of a nonprofit health organization, Santa Ana officials are considering a proposal to limit liquor licenses in poor neighborhoods. By Jennifer Delson, Times Staff Writer.

• WILDLIFE
  When bears come to call
  

  Goldilocks seemed to be the only thing missing Tuesday in the San Gabriel Valley’s latest installment of Bear Country Jamboree. The animals, visiting from the nearby Angeles National Forest, attracted crowds of onlookers after their pictures flashed on television to prove the whole thing wasn’t just a fairy tale. By Bob Pool, Times Staff Writer.