ScienceInsider

Chosen. If confirmed by U.S. Senate, Allison Macfarlane would become chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Credit: Evan Cantwell/George Mason University News Service

President Barack Obama today nominated a geologist and nuclear waste expert with strong ties to academia to be the next head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The choice of Allison Macfarlane, a professor at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax, Virginia, is drawing positive reviews from key members of Congress and both supporters and critics of nuclear power.

If confirmed by the Senate, Macfarlane would replace Gregory Jaczko, a physicist and former aide to Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), the Senate's Majority Leader. Jaczko announced on 21 May that he would step down following controversy over his management style and policy positions. He had been a controversial figure since joining the commission in 2005.

"The nuclear energy industry urges the administration to submit her confirmation paperwork as expeditiously as possible," Marvin Fertel, head of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), an industry group, said in a statement. Macfarlane "has been an active contributor to policy debates in the nuclear energy field for many years," he added.

A 2013 spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) approved this week by a Senate panel includes good news for the agency's science and technology programs. It also tosses a bit of kibble to dog researchers.

Overall, the $45.2 billion bill (S. 3216) approved on 22 May by the Senate's Committee on Appropriations would cut DHS's total budget of $46.2 billion by about $1 billion over 2012 levels in the fiscal year that begins 1 October. At the same time, it would give a $212 million boost to the department's core research programs, boosting their budget to $478 million. That increase reverses deep cuts that Congress made last year and matches the White House's request made earlier this year. It is also more generous than the $406 million approved earlier this month by a House of Representatives spending panel.

The Senate included no funds for DHS's proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kansas, which is expected to cost more than $1 billion. Two government advisory bodies are studying the need, cost, and safety plans for the controversial laboratory, which would carry out research on dangerous livestock pathogens. In contrast, House appropriators gave NBAF $75 million. The president's budget also withholds any funding.

On the horizon. Scientific journal publishers and others are trying to influence how Europe's upcoming Horizon 2020 funding program will handle open access to publications.

Credit: European Commission

As negotiations proceed to shape the next installment of Europe's gargantuan research funding programs, scientists, librarians, and publishers are eagerly awaiting the answer to a critical question: How strong will the new 7-year program, called Horizon 2020, be on Open Access (OA)?

The European Commission has said that making the research it funds widely available is one of its priorities; its proposal for the rules of participation and dissemination in Horizon 2020 says that the program will have "dedicated support to dissemination (including through open access to research results), communication and dialogue actions" and that "open access shall apply under the terms and conditions laid down in the grant agreement." Last week, the commission's director-general of research and innovation at the commission, Robert-Jan Smits, said in an interview in the Times Higher Education that open access, which typically involves making research papers freely available within months or a year of publication, "will be the norm" for research funded through Horizon 2020. "With our €80 billion we can make one hell of a difference," Smits said.

What that will mean exactly is still unclear, however, and the topic of much lobbying and speculation. OA advocates say a clear mandate to make all E.U.-funded papers publicly available would be hugely significant, and would be another step in what they hope is a complete transition to OA. "We very much welcome" Smits's comments, says Alma Swan, Director of European Advocacy of SPARC, an international alliance of academic and research libraries promoting open access.

Horizon 2020, the successor of the current Framework Programme 7 (FP7), will start in 2014 and run through 2020; the commission has proposed to spend €80 billion on its three themes, dubbed excellent science, industrial leadership, and societal challenges. The entire program, including the budget, will be voted on by the European Parliament and European science ministers in November.

Science on the move. The National Spherical Torus Experiment at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, where the cost of temporary assignments has raised flags.

Credit: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Four physicists from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in New Jersey racked up more than $1.5 million in lodging subsidies while on "temporary" assignment to other labs, according to a report released last week by the Department of Energy (DOE), which owns the lab. Those assignments lasted as long as 14 years, meaning that at least some researchers were no longer commuting but had moved to their new work sites.

In his report, DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman called the costs "questionable" and "unreasonable." Princeton University, which manages the nuclear fusion lab under a contract with DOE, has agreed to return $1 million to the department and has ended the subsidies.

On 18 May, a front-page story in The Washington Post hinted at malfeasance, saying that the four unnamed physicists "had found a way to turn 'per diem' funds for a temporary assignment into a steady flow of extra income." However, Robert Durkee, vice president and secretary of Princeton University, says the researchers did nothing wrong and were simply beneficiaries of an overly generous policy to promote collaboration between labs. "We realize that [the program] could have been done for less, and that is why we were willing to return the $1 million," Durkee says.

Off stage. George Keyworth, Reagan's former science adviser, wasn't invited to participate in a panel of his peers.

Credit: Hudson Institute

George "Jay" Keyworth never fit the traditional mold of the modern presidential science adviser. Except for his background as a physicist, the young, straight-talking conservative who served President Ronald Reagan was a far cry from the seasoned, blend-into-the-background men (there's never been a woman in the job) who held the portfolio for Democratic Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.

This week, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) invited four past and present presidential science advisers to explore the challenges of communicating science to their bosses, peers, politicians, and the public. The 2-day symposium was the first public event held in the renovated National Academies’ headquarters across from the National Mall in downtown Washington, D.C.

But Keyworth wasn't on stage. Instead, the panel consisted of only Democrats—current occupant John Holdren, Frank Press (who served President Carter), and John Gibbons and Neal Lane (who both served President Clinton). And while the 90-minute conversation had its moments, one might wonder if Keyworth's absence was related to his politics.

NAS President Ralph Cicerone insists that ideology played no role in choosing members of the panel, which he moderated. "We would have loved to have had Jack participate," says Cicerone, referring to the late John Marburger, science adviser to President George W. Bush, who died last summer. But when pressed to explain why the academy didn’t aim for a more bipartisan tone by reaching back to Keyworth and the Reagan Administration (President George H. W. Bush’s science adviser, D. Allan Bromley, died in 2005) Cicerone demurred.

Newly reelected Russian President Vladimir Putin will be missing a familiar face at the cabinet table following the announcement yesterday that his longtime colleague and personal friend Andrei Fursenko will not return as Minister for Education and Science in the new cabinet. Instead, he has been appointed an adviser to the president. In his cabinet seat will be Dmitry Livanov, rector of the National University of Science and Technology (MISIS), and Fursenko's deputy from 2005 to 2007.

Formerly a physicist and businessman, Fursenko was made science minister in 2004. One of his successful initiatives was the introduction of a Western-style system of bachelor's and master's degrees in universities, which enabled Russia to join the Bologna process of integration in higher education. His introduction of a Uniform State Examination was not so well received. It was supposed to make it easier for graduates from provincial high schools to get into the university system. But Fursenko was blamed for the high rate of corruption in the university admissions process.

Fursenko also set up a system of multimillion dollar competitive grants to attract foreign researchers and emigres to come to Russian universities and set up labs there. Some say these too are contaminated with corruption: "He brought the system to a situation where bribes and kickbacks were thriving in the funding competitions. At the same time, the quality of research at least didn't improve," says Evgeny Onishchenko of the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow.

Although unpopular with many researchers, Fursenko also tackled the thorny issue of reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). After a long struggle for supremacy, the ministry finally got the upper hand, and RAS is now dependent on the ministry and has lost its role in defining science policy. Worryingly for some academicians, the ministry in recent years has tended to favor applied research over basic science, giving preference in funding to the projects that promise short-term benefits for industry. "Many of his initiatives ended in failure—the RAS reform, an attempt to develop research universities, and so on. In the first years of his work as a minister, the number of publications by Russian researchers began to grow, but the rise stopped completely since 2009," says Onishchenko.

On track. SpaceX rocket heads toward the international space station.

Credit: SpaceX

Presidential science adviser John Holdren made a frank admission today: Selling the Administration’s plan to restructure the U.S. space program hasn’t been easy. And the reason underscores an important lesson about communicating science to the public: Keep the message simple.

In 2010, President Barack Obama announced that he was scrapping his predecessor's 2004 vision for returning astronauts to the moon as a stepping stone to Mars because it was unaffordable and threatened to undermine NASA's other programs, which include telescopes and other robotic exploration missions, Earth observation, and advanced aeronautics. In addition to abandoning plans for a lunar landing in 2020, the new policy assigns private companies the job of ferrying crew and cargo to and from the international space station so that NASA can be free to pursue more advanced technologies. The Administration even evoked the country's past achievements in space, declaring that the new approach would be "putting science back into rocket science"

The new policy strikes a much better balance among all the parts of NASA's $18 billion budget, Holdren explained to an audience attending a 2-day symposium on the science of communicating science. But it requires a sophisticated understanding of the subject.

Defensive maize. MON810 produces a toxin that protects it from the European corn borer.

Credit: Keith Weller/U.S. Department of Agriculture

France's latest attempt to keep genetically modified (GM) crops from its fields has been rebuked by a scientific panel at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Yesterday, EFSA issued an opinion dismissing France's argument that a GM maize variety produced by Monsanto might be harmful to the environment or human health.

The opinion is the latest blow in a long-running battle over MON810, also known as YieldGard, whose cultivation has been banned in a handful of European countries despite its approval by the European Commission in 1998. The French government, faced with strong public opposition to GM crops, banned Mon810 in 2008 under a so-called "safeguard clause" that gives countries some leeway to duck European rules. EFSA rejected the measure later that year, and in 2011, France's Council of State also ruled that the prohibition was out of line.

In February, France again asked the European Commission for permission to ban MON810, armed with a new scientific dossier. In it, the French government argues, among other things, that Cry1Ab, a protein produced by MON810 to ward off maize stalk borers, could hurt non-target species such as bees and butterflies, and that it could linger in the soil. But in yesterday's report, EFSA's Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms said the file contains some of the same evidence France presented—and EFSA rejected—in 2008; in the remainder, the panel "could not identify any new science-based evidence indicating that maize MON 810 cultivation in the EU poses a significant and imminent risk to the human and animal health or the environment."

A psychiatrist whose failure to disclose drug company income contributed to a furor over conflicts of interest in biomedical research has just received his first National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant in 3 years.

Charles Nemeroff's lax reporting of at least $1.2 million in drug company payments to his employer, Emory University, and similar payments to other academic psychiatrists prompted a 2007 Senate investigation. Nemeroff stepped down as chair of psychiatry at Emory, and NIH suspended a $9-million grant he held for a depression study. In December 2008, Emory barred him from applying for NIH funding for 2 years.

A year later, Nemeroff moved to the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida. This prompted concerns because Emory's ban on NIH grants did not move with him. (Fueling the flames was a phone call in which National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) Director Thomas Insel apparently assured the University of Miami medical school dean that Nemeroff could seek NIH funding if he moved.)

NIH asked for input on how to handle this situation in a revision of its conflict of interest rules, but in final rules issued last summer it did not specifically address it.

Now Nemeroff is back in the fold of NIH-funded investigators. According to NIH's grants database, he has received a $401,675 a year, 5-year standard R01 grant from NIMH to study "psychobiological risk factors for PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]." The study is looking at genetic risk factors and doesn't appear to involve testing drugs.

The 2-year ban by Emory would have expired anyway. But Paul Thacker, a former staffer for Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) who led the Senate investigation, says NIH itself had the authority to impose a longer ban. "This shows they're really not serious about the problem," Thacker says.

In a decision that has already sparked a backlash, a U.S. panel of experts today trashed a popular blood test for prostate cancer risk, saying its use is doing more harm than good.

Healthy men have no need to be screened by measuring levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in circulation, concludes the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent group that advises the U.S. government. Men can skip the test, according to this panel, because it’s unreliable: Based on trial data it has prevented few deaths—at best potentially 1 in 1000 men screened. Yet the task force finds that for every 1000 men screened, the subsequent medical treatment leaves one with a blood clot, two with treatment-related heart attacks, and up to 40 with impotence or urinary incontinence. Overall, the task force didn’t think the benefits from PSA screening make it worth supporting.

The final recommendations are a big change from the task force’s previous stance in 2008. Back then, the panel held an equivocal view, saying that while men over age 75 should definitely avoid PSA screening, the benefits for younger men were “uncertain.” After studying recent clinical trials, however, the task force scrapped its hedged language and endorsed a clear negative. It now says that it “recommends against PSA-based screening for prostate cancer” regardless of age. The task force notes that this advice does not apply to men who have been diagnosed with or are being treated for cancer; the task force explains that it did not examine PSA surveillance for these patients.

Gregory Jaczko

Criticized for his management style and his politics, the chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced today that he will step down as soon as a replacement is found.

Gregory Jaczko, a physicist and former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), has been a controversial figure since joining the commission in 2005. He has been targeted by Republicans unhappy with the Obama Administration’s cancellation of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and has been accused of suppressing a report on the long-term safety of the site.

Noteworthy neighbor. An aerial view of the Park Grass experiment, which is near an experimental field of genetically-modified wheat.

Credit: Rothamsted Research

A protester was arrested Sunday morning after attempting to break into a field trial of genetically modified wheat at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research station in Harpenden, U.K. The attack damaged fences and some of the “buffer zone” crops surrounding the experimental wheat, but damaged “less than 0.1%” of the test crop, says Darren Hughes, head of communications at Rothamsted. He says the fence surrounding the experiment, the security guards at the site, and the rapid response by police prevented serious damage to the plot.

Take the Flour Back, a group of activists that has invited the public to a day of protest at the site on Sunday, has said it has no connection to yesterday’s incident. According to an e-mailed statement, the group’s Eleanor Baylis says: "We have no information about this incident, but are relieved if the quantity of GM pollen released from the trial has been reduced.” Their protest plans for next weekend include destroying the experimental plot. Scientists involved in the trial have issued a public plea to the protesters to allow the trial to proceed. Both sides debated the issue last week on a leading BBC news program. Today’s statement from the group says they “are going ahead with their mass action next Sunday 27th May.”

A nearby experiment that has been running for more than 150 years was not damaged in yesterday’s attack, Hughes says. That experiment, called Park Grass, looks at the evolution of species on former farmland as it is allowed to go wild. Researchers are still concerned that Sunday’s protest might damage the site, Hughes says. However, he says, the site “is clearly marked, so anyone who damaged it would be doing so deliberately.” Take the Flour Back has information on Park Grass and another historical experiment on its Web site, urging protestors not to damage those sites.

Hughes says there are no further plans for a public debate before Sunday. Rothamsted researchers had offered to meet the protesters tomorrow evening for a public discussion. Take the Flour Back, however, declined that invitation.

STEM-winder. John Cornyn wants immigrant pool to contain more high-tech workers.

Efforts to enable more foreign-born scientists trained at American universities to stay in the United States got a boost this week with the introduction of two bills in the U.S. Senate. And although the finish line is still distant, observers view the legislation as a sign that Congress is now thinking seriously about how to tweak current immigration laws to retain technical talent without triggering a political free-for-all on the more contentious issue of illegal immigration.

“Short of comprehensive immigration reform, which we’d love for Congress to tackle, we’re happy to see these bills,” says Barry Toiv of the Association of American Universities, a group of 61 prominent research universities that has joined with high-tech companies, professional societies, and other higher-education organizations in urging Congress to act. “These immigrants are job creators,” notes Kasey Pipes, a spokesman for one such coalition, called Compete America. “And while we’re not taking sides, both bills are asking the right question: How do we keep more skilled foreign students in the country after they graduate?”

Warning signs. Developing brain scans and other biomarkers that detect the earliest stages of Alzheimer's is a priority for researchers.

Credit: U.S. National Institute on Aging, Alzheimer's Disease Education and Referral Center

An international panel of experts released recommendations today for future research on Alzheimer's disease. The recommendations will help guide the research component of the new national plan for Alzheimer's disease announced Tuesday by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The plan sets the ambitious goal of developing effective prevention and treatment strategies for Alzheimer's by 2025.

The new research strategy was developed by experts who met during a 2-day summit at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, earlier this week. The panel acknowledges a number of challenges facing the field, including the need to develop better experimental models and to initiate clinical trials at earlier stages of the disease. Their recommendations include conducting more interdisciplinary research on the biological mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease and therapeutic targets, enabling more rapid and extensive sharing of data and biological specimens, and fostering more public-private partnerships (along the lines of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, a successful biomarker development effort jointly funded by NIH and the pharmaceutical industry). The panel also calls for more research on nondrug interventions, such as lifestyle changes, that might prevent or slow the disease.

A financial stimulus for Alzheimer's research appears to be in the works: President Barack Obama's proposed 2013 budget includes $80 million in new funding. Congress has yet to weigh in on that plan.

Part of the Campi Flegrei caldera.

ROME—A project to drill deep into the heart of a “supervolcano” in southern Italy has finally received the green light, despite claims that the drilling would put the population of Naples at risk of small earthquakes or an explosion. Yesterday, Italian news agency ANSA quoted project coordinator Giuseppe De Natale of Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology as saying that the office of Naples mayor Luigi de Magistris has approved the drilling of a pilot hole 500 meters deep.

The Campi Flegrei Deep Drilling Project was set up by an international collaboration of scientists to assess the risks posed by the Campi Flegrei caldera, a geological formation just a few kilometers to the west of Naples that formed over thousands of years following the collapse of several volcanoes. Researchers believe that if it erupted, Campi Flegrei could have global repercussions, potentially killing millions of people and having a major effect on the climate, but that such massive eruptions are extremely rare.

Whither wheat? Debate over U.K. research into genetically modified wheat ended up on a BBC news program.

Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture

The fate of an experimental field of genetically modified wheat in the United Kingdom is still unclear after a televised debate between researchers in charge of the field trial and activists opposed to GM crops. The researchers, led by John Pickett of Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, issued a public appeal to the activists earlier this month asking them to call off their planned destruction of the field on 27 May.

The activists responded, saying they would welcome the chance to debate “on neutral ground, with a neutral chairperson, for an open exchange of opinions and concerns.” Both sides agreed to participate in a roundtable on the BBC’s Newsnight program last night. (Readers in the U.K. can see the program here.)

Why? Rohrabacher wants to know why U.S. agencies are supporting research in China.

Credit: Wikimedia/U.S. House of Representatives

The United States government is "insane" to be funding collaborative research with China according to a senior Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a 12-term lawmaker and frequent critic of China's human rights record, last night took to the floor of the House for nearly 30 minutes to read a list of dozens of federally funded projects "that go directly to supporting development and the economy of China." Many involved grants for research involving physics, climate science, and environmental studies—but a few covered topics that included "judicial education" and green manufacturing.

"Couldn't we have spent this money better in the United States?" Rohrabacher asked.

Among his targets were a $63,000 National Science Foundation grant to Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for neutrino physics at China's Daya Bay nuclear facility, a $300,000 Department of Energy grant for modeling regional climate change in China, and a $100,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant for "climate change adaptation." "Now isn't that great?" Rohrabacher said in one of many ironic asides. "We're paying for them to adapt to climate change."

Leaders of Texas's $3 billion cancer research fund yesterday defended their controversial decision in March to award a $20 million "incubator" grant to Rice University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

As detailed in a news story in Science magazine today, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) has earmarked up to $18 million of the 1-year incubator grant for a drug discovery center at MD Anderson whose scientific director is Lynda Chin, wife of MD Anderson's new president, Ronald DePinho. On 8 May, Alfred Gilman, CPRIT's chief scientific officer, announced he plans to resign in the fall and cited concerns that the incubator grant proposal had not gone through scientific peer review. CPRIT officials have said that is because the proposal focused on commercialization, not scientific research.

A U.K. project that is examining the feasibility of geoengineering the Earth's climate to reduce global warming will no longer involve an outdoor experiment that was scheduled to take place later this year. The Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project was set to test the delivery of aerosols high into Earth's atmosphere. Today, however, planners announced that they have cancelled the test because of concerns that researchers involved in the project could have a commercial interest in its success.

Funded by the U.K. government, SPICE was set up in 2010 by British research institutions to investigate whether aerosols, such as sulfate particles, could be injected into Earth's stratosphere to scatter sunlight back into space, thereby stalling global warming. Aerosols are already known to reduce global warming: The vast clouds of sulfates thrown up in the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, for example, reduced average global temperatures by about half a degree Celsius. Releasing aerosols on purpose is controversial, however, so scientists are keen to understand how such geoengineering might proceed before any policy decisions are made. They would like to understand what sort of aerosols could be used, how they would impact different aspects of climate, and how they would be delivered to the atmosphere.

SPICE scientists were hoping to test an aerosol delivery system later this year. Researchers have proposed various schemes, including the use of high-flying planes and artillery guns. SPICE scientists, however, were going to try using a balloon to carry aloft a kilometer-long pipe that would release 150 liters of water. (The water would serve as a substitute for sulfates.)

In a statement issued today, project leader Matthew Watson of the University of Bristol said one reason the test was cancelled was a lack of international agreement on how to proceed with geoengineering research, even though it would have been "hard to imagine a more environmentally benign experiment." Another, he said, was that the pipe-delivery technology had been the subject of a U.K. patent application before the project began. "The details of this application were only reported to the project team a year into the project lifetime and caused many members, including me, significant discomfort," he said. Efforts are now underway to make sure the intention of the patent application is to protect intellectual property and not to pave the way for commercial gain, he added.

New Leader. MIT elects one of its own, L. Rafael Reif, to head the distinguished research university.

Credit: MIT

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's board of trustees today elected Provost L. Rafael Reif as president of the top-tier research university. He will replace neuroscientist Susan Hockfield, who was the first life scientist to lead MIT, on 2 July.

Reif, who has been an MIT faculty member since 1980, became the institute's chief academic officer in 2005. During his tenure, Reif presided over the development of Web projects that offer MIT and Harvard University courses online for free and led faculty efforts to recruit and retain minorities and women.

Faculty, staff, and students got a chance to welcome the president-elect and his family at a campus reception this afternoon.