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Bruce Darling

Credit: Courtesy of the National Academies

A jack-of-all-trades in the U.S. science policy arena, Bruce Darling says that becoming executive officer of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will put him right exactly where he wants to be: in the middle of a "problem-rich environment" at an institution with the talent and resources to make a difference.

Darling, now vice president for laboratory management at the University of California (UC), was named today to the job of overseeing day-to-day operations at NAS and its operating arm, the National Research Council. He replaces William Colglazier, who last fall became science and technology adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. NRC employs 1100 people and has an operating budget of about $300 million.

Aviv Regev

Credit: Broad Institute

The Broad Institute has been showered with $32.5 million from a philanthropist to take on one of the biggest challenges in biology: mapping the molecular circuitry inside mammalian cells. The Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will create what it's calling a cell observatory that brings together biologists from the institute and elsewhere to tackle this problem, akin to how astronomers gather at telescope observatories to collect and analyze data.

The gift announced yesterday comes from the Klarman Family Foundation, a Boston charity founded by financier Seth Klarman, who sits on the Broad's board, and his wife Beth. The Broad will use the money to build on efforts by systems biologists to map how genes, RNA, proteins, and other biomolecules interact in pathways to make cells function in healthy people and in disease. "It is a substantial challenge but it is one in which groups around the world have been making a lot of progress in the past few years," partly thanks to new tools for shutting off genes and analyzing gene-protein interactions, says Broad computational biologist Aviv Regev, who will head the observatory.

Nuclear plant designer Masashi Goto (left) and materials scientist Hiromitsu Ino (right) have raised questions about plans to restart two reactors.

Credit: Dennis Normile

TOKYO—Japan is preparing for the possibility of a summer without nuclear power as utilities and safety experts squabble over the safety of the country's remaining reactors. And a key government minister is calling the power industry's bluff—that blackouts will occur if plants idled for inspection are not brought online—by saying the nation could avoid disruption by relying on conservation and thermal power.

By law, nuclear power plants must be periodically shut down for maintenance and inspection; utilities need national and local permission to restart operations. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, last summer the governing Democratic Party of Japan required "stress tests," analyses of a facility's ability to withstand natural disasters, to be part of the periodic inspection routine. That analysis was carried out for two reactors at a plant in Ohi on the Japan Sea coast and submitted for review to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), which concluded they had passed. Operator Kansai Electric Power is seeking approval to restart the two reactors.

But today two members of a NISA advisory committee called the stress tests flawed and "not proof of safety." At a press conference, Hiromitsu Ino, a materials scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, and Masashi Goto, a former nuclear power plant designer, said their concerns were simply ignored in the final report.

The former head of Italy's civil protection department, Guido Bertolaso, is to be investigated for manslaughter alongside seven scientists and technicians who are currently on trial for allegedly having carried out a superficial seismic risk analysis and giving a false sense of security to people in the central Italian town of L'Aquila only days before a deadly earthquake struck and killed 308 people.

Bertolaso was implicated by a recording of a phone conversation between himself and a regional civil protection officer that took place a week before the earthquake. In it Bertolaso explains that the experts were to meet up "not because we are frightened and worried" by a series of tremors that had been striking the region for several months but because "we want to reassure the public." The prosecution alleges that it was unjustified reassurances provided by the seven who, it is argued, underestimated the threat of a major quake, which caused many people in L'Aquila and the surrounding area to remain indoors and perish in the early hours of 6 April 2009 rather than go outside.

Bill Gates announced yesterday that between now and 2016, his foundation will pump $750 million into the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Gates, who made the announcement at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, noted that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has already committed $650 million to the Global Fund, making it the largest nongovernmental donor. "I am confident that this is one of the most effective ways we invest our money every year, and I always urge other funders to join us in getting so much bang for our buck," wrote Gates in a letter he released on the eve of the Davos forum. Donor countries have paid $20.7 billion to date and pledged $8.2 billion more.

Commercial fishing operations get most of the blame for overfishing, but they're not the only player. Recreational anglers can also have a big impact on fish populations by dint of their numbers: An estimated 11 million anglers took some 73 million saltwater fishing trips in the United States in 2010. How many fish they catch, however, has been somewhat uncertain.

Today the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that it has finished an "ambitious overhaul" of its methods for estimating the impact of recreational fishing. A more accurate count will allow the managers to improve their regulation of fisheries.

Despite billions of dollars spent on nanotechnology research and development over the past decade, the human and environmental safety of nanomaterials remains unclear. As a result, a new nanomaterials safety research strategy is needed, and new governmental oversight is required to ensure the essential research is carried out, according to a report released today by the National Research Council (NRC).

Nanotechnology relies on the ability to engineer materials on the scale of billionths of a meter, the size of mere clumps of atoms. Engineered nanomaterials are already used in a wide variety of products, from cosmetics and food additives, to solar cells and drug delivery systems. In 2009, nanotechnology-based products raked in an impressive $225 billion. By 2015 that number is expected to rise to $3 trillion.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka

Credit: Jeff Miller/University of Wisconsin, Madison

In the heated debate about two labs that engineered a variant of the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus that for the first time easily transmits between mammals, one critical voice has been missing: Yoshihiro Kawaoka. But today, Kawaoka speaks his mind in a Nature commentary and in a detailed response to questions from ScienceInsider.

A virologist at the University of Tokyo and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Kawaoka led one of the studies that has sparked alarm around the world that these lab creations might escape or give ideas to bioterrorists. In a commentary published online by Nature today, he offers intriguing details about his study, a report of which has been accepted by the journal but remains unpublished. Kawaoka also discusses his thoughts about the recommendation from the U.S. government's National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) that Nature and Science, which has accepted but not published a paper by the second lab that did these studies, redact key portions of the experiments to prevent the widespread dissemination of the recipe for a potential bioweapon.

Back to work. Scott Doney's nomination as NOAA chief scientist fell victim to oil drilling politics.

Credit: John Bullister, NOAA/PMEL

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill has claimed another casualty. The White House yesterday formally withdrew its nomination of geochemist Scott Doney to be chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A U.S. Senate vote on Doney's nomination had been blocked for more than a year by Senator David Vitter (R-LA), who was unhappy with the Obama Administration's decision to impose a moratorium on offshore drilling in the wake of the April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

"I was deeply honored by the President's nomination and am disappointed that the confirmation process was, in the end, unsuccessful," Doney, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, wrote in an e-mail to ScienceInsider. "High-quality science is central to all facets of NOAA's mission. The agency would benefit from the appointment of a Chief Scientist who could help focus NOAA's research program and efforts to integrate the best science into NOAA's ocean stewardship and the many products and services NOAA provides to the public."

An anonymous whistleblower has created a YouTube video that details alleged duplication of images by a prominent Japanese scientist.

The nearly 6-minute video, complete with background music, presents a series of still shots of over 60 allegedly duplicated and manipulated images in 24 papers, including 19 instances in a single publication, by a group led by molecular signaling specialist Shigeaki Kato of the University of Tokyo's Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences. The publications go back to 2001, include numerous co-authors, and have appeared in Nature, Cell, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and other journals. The information is also posted on Web sites in English and Japanese.

ScienceInsider tracked down the whistleblower using an e-mail address connected to a blog linked to the Japanese version of the video. A man who said he posted the video agreed to a phone interview and later answered additional questions by e-mail. He asked to be identified by his online handle, "Juuichi Jigen."

Winners. Clockwise from top left: Brian J. Druker, Masato Sagawa, Janet D. Rowley, and Nicholas B. Lydon.

Credit: Japan Prize Foundation

TOKYO—A trio of American researchers will share one of this year's Japan Prizes for bringing their work on a leukemia drug from a basic discovery to a clinical success, while a Japanese material scientist is taking the other prize for a breakthrough with permanent magnets.

Janet Rowley of the University of Chicago, Brian Druker of the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, and Nicholas Lydon of Blueprint Medicines in Cambridge, Massachusetts, jointly won the Healthcare and Medical Technology prize for developing a leukemia drug called imatinib, better known as Gleevec in the United States and Glivec elsewhere. In the 1970s, Rowley identified several chromosomal translocations—in which a part of one chromosome gets transferred to another—in patients suffering chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). Lydon, then at Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis) in Basel, Switzerland, and Druker later collaborated to develop compounds that inhibit the activity of the abnormal enzyme resulting from the translocations, which causes runaway cell proliferation. They steered imatinib through clinical trials starting in 1998.

Michel Kazatchkine announced today that he has decided to step down as the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Kazatchkine, a French clinical immunologist who has headed the Global Fund for 5 years, will stay until March to allow for an orderly transition.

Kazatchkine explained in a message to staff and partners that he is leaving in the wake of the decision by the Global Fund board in November to appoint a general manager to oversee a new "transformation" plan for future operations. The general manager, who was announced today, will report to the board, not the executive director. "While I remain fully committed to the Global Fund and its mission, I have concluded that I should not continue as Executive Director in these circumstances," wrote Kazatchkine.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) today announced the 28 winners of a new $20 million program to jump-start the labs of young biomedical scientists in countries outside of the United States.

The giant biomedical research charity in Chevy Chase, Maryland, created the International Early Career Scientist awards after recognizing that starting a career in science is "even more difficult in other countries" than in the United States, says HHMI President Robert Tjian. The institute invited applications from scientists in 18 countries with an infrastructure to support strong science but inadequate research funding. Applicants must have done graduate or postdoctoral work in the United States and started a lab within the last 7 years. That's because HHMI wants to not only support science globally but also to replenish the "influx of really talented students" who come to the United States, Tjian says.

Cristián Samper, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, is shifting gears in August to become the president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). The $200 million conservation organization runs the Bronx Zoo, other New York City zoos, and wildlife programs in 65 countries. "After 10 years, it feels like a good time to leave. I am ready for the next challenge," he says.

When Samper, a tropical biologist, took over the museum in 2003, morale was low. It had gone through several directors in quick succession, and the Smithsonian was in turmoil, with a controversial secretary at the helm. Samper guided the museum through renovations of two-thirds of its exhibits, including the ocean, mammal, and human origins halls, as well as the building of the Butterfly Pavilion. He also helped to bring in fresh talent; under his watch 25 new curators came on board and the museum started an endowed fellowship program. During that time, the Smithsonian funneled about $100 million into the expansion and renovation of museum collection space. Samper also helped put a focus on the web, promoting the digitization of the collections and co-founding the Encyclopedia of Life, a Web-based database of the world's plants and animals.

Three Finnish researchers have created an online service that could eventually replace or supplement the current way journals get scientists to peer review submitted manuscripts. Already partnered with the ecology journal Ecography, published by Wiley, Peerage of Science is an innovative social network of scientists to which researchers submit their manuscripts; other members with relevant expertise, alerted by keywords in the papers, will then provide reviews that scientific journals can use to decide whether to publish the work. University of Jyväskylä and the University of Eastern Finland, where the three creators of the service are based, have sponsored the company founded to further build up the service this year.

The current peer review system in which journal editors send potentially publishable manuscripts to experts for review is hotly debated. Many scientists complain that the system is slow, inefficient, of variable quality, and prone to favoritism. Moreover, there's growing resentment in some quarters about being asked to take valuable time to provide free reviews to journals that are operated by for-profit publishers or that don't make their papers open-access. Several suggestions have been made to improve the peer review system, such as introducing credits for reviewers, using social media, and making the process more transparent.

Peerage of Science aims to combine these ideas, explains co-founder Mikko Mönkkönen, an applied ecologist at the University of Jyväskylä. A researcher would initially upload a manuscript to Peerage of Science. It will then be made anonymous and posted on a Web site that is exclusively accessible to other members, which currently stands at around 500 scientists. Along with the manuscript, the authors can add a short pitch explaining why peers should review this manuscript.

Ups and downs. NIH research grant applications, awards, and success rates.

Last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that the success rate for research grants, a closely watched indicator of how well investigators are doing in the struggle for funds, fell to an all-time low in 2011: 18%. At first glance, the drop appears to be due to increased competition, reflected in a steep rise on applications last year. But several other factors are also at play, including budget decisions made years ago, says NIH extramural research chief Sally Rockey.

The success rate is the number of funded grants divided by reviewed applications. The 18% success rate, announced by Rockey on her blog, is down 3% from 2010 and is slightly higher than a preliminary estimate last fall. It continues a decline from success rates of around 30% a decade ago when NIH's budget was growing. Part of the explanation is that the denominator is larger: investigators sent a record 49,592 research grant proposals to NIH last year, an 8% rise.

In the eye of the storm. Flu researcher Ron Fouchier has been proactive in discussing the nature and benefits of his research.

Credit: Dirk-Jan Visser

In a statement posted today on the Web sites of Nature and Science, a group of 39 influenza researchers announced a 2-month moratorium on studies that make the avian influenza strain H5N1 more transmissible between mammals. The moratorium is intended to allow time for an international debate about this type of research, which some people say has the potential to help bioterrorists.

ScienceInsider talked to Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who carried out one of the two studies that triggered the international debate. (His paper is under review at Science.) Fouchier's answers have been translated from Dutch and edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: Who took the initiative for this announcement?

R.F.: The initiative came from Adolfo Sastre-García [an influenza researcher at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City who has a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) that funded Fouchier's study], Yoshihiro Kawaoka [whose H5N1 study, in press at Nature, has also been reviewed by the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB)], and myself. We discussed it with a group of about 10 scientists who are doing similar studies themselves; then we asked another 30 or so influenza researchers who are not working on these studies but who could do them, if they wanted to sign. They all agreed wholeheartedly. So it's not a Fouchier show. It's an initiative that is supported very broadly.

Q: Why did you take this step now?

R.F.: We were advised by various organizations, and of course we've followed the press coverage and the political debates. We had the impression, based partly on advice from third parties, that it would be sensible to announce a moratorium.

Stung by a growing global controversy over the potential dangers of experiments involving the H5N1 avian flu virus—and worried about heavy-handed government regulation—the world's leading H5N1 researchers have agreed to a 60-day moratorium on a controversial category of studies "to allow time for international discussion."

"We recognize that we and the rest of the scientific community need to clearly explain the benefits of this important research and the measures taken to minimize its possible risks," a group of 39 researchers write in a statement published today by Science and Nature. "To provide time for these discussions, we have agreed on a voluntary pause of 60 days on any research involving highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 viruses leading to the generation of viruses that are more transmissible in mammals."

"It's a pity that it has to come to this," says Ron Fouchier, of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, one of the scientists who took the initiative for the announcement. (Fouchier's H5N1 paper, under review by Science, was one of two that triggered the international debate.) "I would have preferred if this hadn't caused so much controversy, but it has happened and we can't change that. So I think it's the right step to make."

A group of prominent researchers is asking a U.S. government biosecurity advisory board to reconsider its controversial recommendation that two research teams omit key details from papers in press at Science and Nature. The controversy "warrants pause and a rational discussion of the scientific facts," 18 prominent researchers from U.S. universities wrote to the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) on 18 January.

The signers include several of the most outspoken critics of the NSABB's late December recommendation, including virologists Peter Palese and Adolfo García-Sastre of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Also on the list is Eckard Wimmer of Stony Brook University in New York, the author of a controversial 2002 study that demonstrated how to assemble a synthetic polio virus, and Vincent R. Racaniello of Columbia University, who leads the popular Virology Blog.

Worried about being left behind in the globalization of higher education, the University of Tokyo is laying plans to shift the start of its school year from April to autumn—in 5 years or so.

Japan's April-to-March academic year is out of sync with the majority of universities around the world and is "one big reason" the country lags in both attracting international students and in sending its own youth abroad, Takao Shimizu, a university biochemist, said today at the unveiling of a preliminary report recommending the switch.

The report, produced by a committee Shimzu heads, notes that last year a mere 1.9% of undergrads at Todai, as the university is called in Japan, were international students. This compares with 10% at Harvard University and 7% at Stanford University. The number of Japanese students from Todai going overseas is equally paltry—and declining. The school-year mismatch also affects graduate school enrollments and scholarly exchanges. This all hinders Todai's and Japan's ability to produce "internationally minded leaders," said Junichi Hamada, the university's president.