Nature's cleanup crew

Excerpts from the Globe's environmental blog.

Turkey vultures are never going to win a beauty contest. Their blood-engorged, bald heads are perfectly designed to poke into carcasses. They defecate all over their legs. They regurgitate dead animals and sling them at intruders.

But it's a good time to spot the intriguing creatures: Migrants are passing through on their way north and roosting with the region's resident population. Hundreds of the birds, with their 6-foot wingspan, are searching for dead animals in forests and along roads across Massachusetts.

But why the black birds are in New England at all is a mystery. Even though Buzzards Bay was supposedly named for vultures, there were none here at the time of European settlers. Scientists figure early settlers mistook ospreys or red-tail hawks for buzzards. The birds really began showing up in the 1950s in Massachusetts, but seem to have really exploded in the last 20 years or so, says Norm Smith, sanctuary director of the Blue Hills Trailside Museum.

Some biologists believe that minute warming climate changes have allowed the birds to expand their range. Others say strict environmental laws in Southern states mean farmers aren't leaving animal carcasses in the open, and the birds needed to push north to find food. Highways might have helped, with hot pavement helping create warm thermal winds the birds glide on, as well as an ample supply of road kill.

Whatever the reason. Look up. Watch them soar. It's the best show on the roadway.

ELIZABETH DALEY

Excerpts from the Globe's blog on the Boston-area medical community.

Many of the people who literally write the book on mental illness collect pay checks from companies whose products treat some of those illnesses. Sixteen of the 28 members of a task force overseeing revision of the psychiatry profession's diagnostic bible have disclosed financial ties to drug or medical device companies, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, raising concern about possible conflicts of interest.

The American Psychiatric Association, which will oversee publication of the fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, defended its choice of panel members, who include Harvard Provost Dr. Steven E. Hyman. All panel members have pledged not to receive more than $10,000 per year from industry sources, aside from unrestricted research grants, until the manual is published in 2012.

Hyman(left) who was head of the National Institute of Mental Health before returning to Harvard, reported having consulted for five drug companies and one biotech venture-capital partnership unrelated to psychiatry since 2005. He said he supports disclosure and the limits on industry payments, but defended the practice of researchers interacting with drug companies.

"It is critical for academics to connect to industry," he said in an e-mail interview. "Without the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry there would be no new medications, and new medications are critically needed for people with mental disorders."

Politeness can never replace compassion, but a Beth Israel Deaconess doctor makes the case for what he calls "etiquette-based medicine" in this week's New England Journal of Medicine. Psychiatrist Michael W. Kahn has been paying attention to what patients complain about when they're not happy with their doctors. Often what they mind the most is a rushed, impersonal brusqueness, he writes. He experienced the opposite when he became a hospital patient himself. His European-born surgeon had Old World manners, with impeccable dress, body language, and eye contact that had a remarkably calming effect.

"It helped to confirm my suspicion that patients may care less about whether their doctors are reflective and empathetic than whether they are respectful and attentive," he writes.

Women who took folic acid and B vitamin supplements had the same rate of cardiovascular disease as women who didn't, a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports, adding to the list of substances that showed promise in earlier observational studies but not in more rigorous trials.

The supplements did lower the women's levels of homocysteine, an amino acid previously implicated in the risk of cardiovascular disease. But women randomly assigned to receive the vitamins had about the same number of heart attacks, strokes, coronary artery blockages, or deaths as the women who got dummy pills, according to the study led by Dr. JoAnn E. Manson (above) of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

ELIZABETH COONEY