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USA Today reported Oct. 23 that the great white shark that has resided at the Monterey Bay Aquarium since Sept. 1 may help to answer questions surrounding one of the ocean's greatest but least understood predators. "We don't even begin to understand how animals use the 'blue' part of the planet," said BARBARA BLOCK, the Charles and Elizabeth Prothro Professor in Marine Sciences. For example, the newspaper reported that scientists were perplexed when satellite tracking of tagged white sharks found them going to a place about halfway between California and Hawaii that is the ocean equivalent of a desert—no mountains, no valleys, no food—just an aquatic wasteland. Yet sharks showed up, and researchers called it the Shark Café. At first they thought that if the café had nothing to do with food, it must be about reproduction. "Adult males and females were showing up, so that would sound like sex," Block said. "But then young ones showed up, too, which makes everybody wonder what's going on."
The Los Angeles Times reported Oct. 10 that North Korea's announcement of a nuclear test is a story of failed policies, neglect and missed opportunities by the Bush administration and its predecessors. Sociology Associate Professor GI-WOOK SHIN, director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, said failure to prevent the nuclear test was collective in that the United States and its allies could not come up with a common policy. "The main lesson we have learned from this over the last four years is that U.S. policy cannot succeed alone," Shin told the Times. "Without the United States, South Korean policy will fail. Without South Korea and the others, United States policy will fail." The Associated Press reported that North Korea's nuclear test, in the long term, will unsettle the peace of East Asia and beyond because other countries may feel pressured to join the atomic weapons club, said Consulting Professor GEORGE BUNN, a chief negotiator of the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. "My fear is that North Korea will be followed by South Korea, Japan and Taiwan in due course," Bunn told the AP. "It's very bad for the treaty."
Nobel laureate KENNETH ARROW, professor emeritus of economics, joined more than 650 economists in calling for an increase in the minimum wage, the Associated Press reported Oct. 11. The economists wrote in a statement released the same day that the value of the last increase, in 1997, has been "fully eroded," and the real value of the hourly $5.15 federal minimum wage is less than it has been at any time since 1951. The economists called for a phased-in increase to $7.25 an hour.